This leads us to the third use of the sword as seen in our illustration. The gallant soldier took the weapon and used it in harmony with its intent. So the Bible should be employed preeminently as a means of spiritual defense and warfare. The Scriptures are profitable, not for immoral justification, not for mere criticism however exact and searching, not for the solving of superficial riddles, but "for doctrine, for reproof, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." To go to the Bible with the motive revealed in these great words is to recover the Bible to its divine purpose as the book of human practice. Such a motive lifts the volume above any mere literary or historical aspects. There is, for example, the oft-quoted story about Benjamin Franklin's experience at the Court of France. He was passing an evening with a company of cultured ladies and gentlemen. The conversation turned to the subject of Oriental life. Franklin read aloud to the company the book of Ruth. Struck by the beautiful simplicity and spirit of the narrative, his hearers expressed their delight and desired to know in what book the charming pastoral could be found! It is safe to say that these men and women needed the lesson of fidelity in the book of Ruth far more than they needed the sense of its literary merit. We must always return to the idea that the key to the Bible is the deeply religious instinct and motive. Nothing else will really open its pages. Nor does the Bible herein wholly differ from other literature. There are men and women so thoroughly cultivated on the so-called practical side of their natures that it would be punishment for them to read Whittier, or Longfellow, or Lowell, or Tennyson for a full hour. The demands of business or social life have killed the poetic impulse. So many persons may crush from their natures the religious instinct and then wonder why the Bible does not appeal to them! The truth seems to be that a person gets from the Bible about what he seeks. It takes divinely opened eyes to see the wondrous things in the law. The psalmist, therefore, prayed that the change might come over himself rather than over the parchment. The way to illumine the sacred page was to illumine him. The Book may lie in a great light, but what can the Book do for a man with closed eyes? Seneca tells of an idiot child in his home who, becoming blind, insisted always that the room was dark! Herein is another parable.