There is likewise what we might well call the "lowest" criticism--the spirit that uses the Bible as a volume of puzzles rather than as a volume of directions. Many a man has spent more time in speculating about where Cain got his wife than he has in trying to find out how to make his own wife happy. Many a man has spent more time in trying to find out about the Witch of Endor as an excuse for his consulting some vulgar fortune-teller of modern time than he has spent in trying to learn the will and secure the guidance of the good and wise God. Many a man has spent more time in discussing Melchizedek, who had neither ancestors nor descendants, than he has spent in trying to learn from the Bible how he himself may honor his forbears and may train his own children in righteousness. Many a man has been so piqued by curiosity about the exact nature of Saint Paul's "thorn in the flesh" as to forget the teaching that the grace of God can make us equal to any burden and torment of life. The men of this type will not allow the Bible the use of hyperbole. When it suits their contentious mood they become strict literalists. Even though they themselves may declare that it is "raining pitchforks" or that the waves are dashing "mountain high," they will insist that Christ's words about the two coats and the two cloaks and the two miles are not the strong urging of much forbearance and generosity, but the counsel of literal folly. Meanwhile the certainties and duties of the Bible outnumber its riddles and its curiosities many-fold. The importunate call to holy practice ceases not. From each of a thousand passages of the Good Book there issues a patient rebuke for the curiosity monger, "What is that to thee? Follow thou me."