The Old Testament as a whole, with precious exceptions, can only by a great stretch of imagination be claimed as an integral part of "_the_ book of religion"--the title which Matthew Arnold asserts for the entire Bible. The phrase can scarcely be applied to the Old Testament, unless it be read through a medium surcharged with association and prepossession. Much of its morality has been outgrown; many of its early stories are revolting to us: much, of which the inner meaning is at one with our deepest life, is disguised under phraseology wholly alien to our modern thought and speech. As a manual of devotion, or as a textbook for the young, the Old Testament can never again fill such a place as it filled to our fathers. But we can still trace in it many of the upward steps of the race, and there are portions which still hold a deep place in the affections of the truly religious. The mind at certain stages personifies the Deity with the greatest ease and naturalness. The primitive man interprets the whole world about him by the analogy of his own activity. He sees in all the phenomena of nature the presence of personal beings,--beings who act and suffer and enjoy and love and hate as he does himself. The sky, the sun, the wind, the ocean, represent each a separate deity. Next, each clan, or city, or nation, comes to regard itself as under the patronage of one of these deities. The national god of the Israelites, at the earliest time we know them, bore the name of Yahveh,--a name more familiar to us under the form Jehovah. Originally he was probably the god of the sun and fire. His acts were seen everywhere, his motives guessed. The heat and light of the sun--now illumining, now fructifying, now blasting--were his immediate manifestations. Later, he was conceived to favor certain kinds of human action. He was at first appeased under the influences of analogies from the lower side of human nature,--Give him a present, something to eat, or to smell, or to see. Then came the idea that he was the friend and favorer of the righteous,--of the merciful and just. The turning-point in the history of Judaism--the birth-hour of religion as it has come down to us--is marked by that great dimly-seen personality, Moses, who taught that the worship of Yahveh forbade murder, adultery, theft, false witness, covetousness.