The difficulties of calling public schools to this task appear at once. It would be monstrous if they should be sectarian or proselytizing. But the Bible is not a sectarian Book. It is the Book of greatest literature. It is the Book of mightiest morals. It is governing history. It is affecting literature as nothing else has done. A thousand pities that any petty squabbling or differences of opinion should prevent the young people in the schools from realizing the grandeur and beauty of it! But the final and most important agency which will magnify the influence of the Bible must necessarily be the home. It will gather up all its traits, religious, moral, and literary. Here is the fundamental opportunity and the fundamental obligation. Robert Burns was right in finding the secret of Scotia's power in such scenes as those of "The Cottar's Saturday Night." One can almost see Carlyle going back to his old home at Ecclefechan and standing outside to hear his old mother making a prayer in his behalf. A newspaper editorial of recent date says this decay of literary allusion is traceable in part to the gradual abandonment of family prayers. Answering President Butler, it is urged that it is not so important that the Bible be in the public schools as that it get back again into the homes. "Thorough acquaintance with the Bible is desirable; it should be fostered. The person who will have to foster it, though," says this writer, "is not the teacher, but the parent. The parent is the person whom Dr. Butler should try to convert." Well, while there may be differences about the school, there can be none about the place of the Bible in the home. It needs to be bound up with the earliest impressions and intertwined with those impressions as they deepen and extend. So, by the Church, which will accent its religious value; by the press, which will accent its moral power; by the school, which will spread its literary influence; and by the home, which will realize all three and make it seem a vital concern from the beginning of life, the Bible will be put and held in the place of power to-day which it has had in the years that are gone, and will steadily gain greater power. FOOTNOTES: [52] Jefferson, _Things Fundamental_, p. 90. [53] _New International Encyclopedia_, art. on English Literature. [54] _Current Events_, January 12, 1912. [55] _Autobiography_, p. 252. [56] Speer, _Light of the World_, iv. [57] _Autobiography_, vol. ii, p. 570. [58] _Literary Study of the Bible_, passim. THE END * * * * * TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES Occasional missing punctuation marks have been inserted. The variant forms non-conformity (p. 50) and non-conforming (pp. 227, 229) appear in this text. On p. 71, "Illustrate with one instance" should perhaps read "I'll illustrate with one instance" but has been left unchanged. The following amendments have been made to the text: On p. 36 "Crammer" amended to "Cranmer".