Men hate bits and scraps, as this writer says, and as Bible teachers we should bring our methods into harmony with their natural constructive sense. Like the expert mountain climber, let us take them to the highest peak first, that they may see the whole range, and then they can intelligently and enthusiastically study the features of the lower levels in their relation to the whole. The opposite plan is confusing and a weariness to the flesh. Give people to see for themselves what the Bible is in the large, and then they will have a desire to see it in detail. Put a telescope in their hands first, and a microscope afterwards. [Sidenote: Luther and the Apple Tree] Martin Luther used to say that he studied the Bible as he gathered apples. He shook the tree first, then the limbs, then the branches, and after that he reached out under the leaves for the remaining fruit. The reverse order is monotonous in either case-- studying the Bible or gathering apples. THE PLAN AT WORK PART III THE PLAN AT WORK [Sidenote: Begin at the Beginning] There are certain simple rules to be observed in the synthetic study of the Bible if we want to master it, and the first is to begin to study it where God began to write it, _i.e._ at the book of Genesis. The newer criticism would dispute this statement about the primary authorship of Genesis, but the best answer to the objection is to try the plan. As Dr. Smith says in his _The Integrity of Scripture_: "Inherent in revelation there is a self-witness. The latest portion points to the beginning, and the beginning, with all that may be limited and provisional, contains the germ of the end. God's discovery of Himself is not an episode, but rooted in a vast breadth of the world's life, intertwined with human history, and growing from less to more, as in this divine education and discipline man became capable of receiving the full self-unveiling of God." Dr. Ashmore, for fifty years an honoured missionary of the American Baptist Missionary Union at Shanghai, relates the following, which furnishes a practical illustration of this thought. At one time he and his brother missionaries started a Bible school for their young converts, and began to teach them the Epistle to the Hebrews. Now the Chinese are remarkable for an inquiring disposition, and questions began to descend upon the teachers to such a degree that they were compelled to forego their purpose to teach Hebrews and go back to Leviticus as explanatory of or introductory to it. But the teaching of Leviticus produced the same result, and they went back to Exodus. And from Exodus they were driven to Genesis, when the questions materially abated. The Bible is wondrously self-interpretive if we will give it an opportunity, and that opportunity is afforded if in its perusal we will wisely and submissively follow the channel marked out by its divine Author. [Sidenote: Read the Book]