§ 8. The Christian Prepossession. It is a great thing to read a book with expectation instead of distrust. Expectation opens the mind to light, and makes it easy to see. Distrust closes it. If I have read Shakespeare till I feel sure of his poetic inspiration, then I read with expectation all he writes; I am looking for truth and beauty, and so I find it. If I had never read Shakespeare, nor heard of him, and Hamlet were put into my hand, I should probably be displeased with something or other, and throw it aside, and so lose the deepness and loveliness of that wonderful creation. How much we find in the words of Jesus and Paul, because we read them with expectation and hope! because we read them always looking for what is deep and high! Nevertheless many persons recommend a contrary course. They say that we ought to forget all that has been told us about the Book, and read it as if we had never seen it before. But this method is neither practicable nor desirable. It is impossible to look at the Bible as though it were an unknown book; impossible to forget that it is the text book of Christianity; regarded as sacred by millions of our fellow-men; the source of spiritual and moral life to the world for the last fifteen hundred years; that our parents and friends have found in it strength for duty, comfort in trial, hope in the hour of death. You might as well tell the child who begins to study geography to forget that he lives in America, or when he studies the history of the United States, to forget that it is the history of his own land. Nor would it be desirable to study the New Testament thus. For it is this grand belief concerning it which makes us desire to study it at all. Were it not for this belief it might be occasionally read by a student in the interest of science, but never by the mass of the community. Faith in its divine origin and divine purpose, causes it to be read in families, schools, churches, to be used as a manual of prayer in the closet, and to grow familiar in every home. The Book is surrounded by a traditional halo of wonder, reverence, and hope, and this gives us motive and power with which to read it. If a cold criticism, a sceptical spirit, shall ever succeed in causing the New Testament to be regarded as a common book, on the natural plane of human thought, full of errors and imperfections, inspired only as Plato is inspired, then it will be read as Plato is read, that is, by one man in a million. It is not desirable to lose the reverence which causes us to expect extraordinary truth and good in certain books, men, and institutions; for so we lose the best motive power of the soul; so life becomes tame, the day empty, and events unmeaning.