besides that of the Hebrews--we might say scientific, philosophical, extra-Christian Scriptures--have stood for the existence of God; but none have stood for the existence of such a God as the God of the Bible. The salient feature of the Bible is its thought of God. CHAPTER V THE BOOK OF CHRIST It is of course the merest commonplace to say that the revelation of God in the Scriptures comes to its climax in Christ. The revelation in Christ gathers up all that is loftiest in the utterances of the Old Testament and gives it embodiment in a human life. It is legitimate to declare that there is little either in the teaching of Christ or in his character that is not at least foreshadowed in the Old Testament. The uniqueness of the Christ revelation consists in the manner in which the separate streams of truth of the law and the prophets and the seers and the poets are merged together in the Christ teaching, and in the fine balance with which the ideal characteristics seen from afar by the saints of the older day were realized in the living Christ. We might justly say that a devout reader of the Old Testament could find rich elements of the Christ revelation even if he should never see a page of the New Testament. The virtue of the New Testament, however, is that all the elements revealed throughout the course of the historic periods of Israel's career are bound together in the life and character of Christ. It is no mere epigram to say that if the greatest fact about the Scriptures is God, the greatest fact about God is Christ. Any thorough study of the Scriptures must revolve around Christ as its center. If the Scriptures mean anything, they mean that in Christ we see God. Of course it is open to the skeptic to reply that in all this the Scriptures are completely mistaken; but he cannot maintain that this is not what the Scriptures mean. The Book comes to its climax with an honest conviction that Christ is the consummate revelation of God. The day when men could charge any sort of manipulation of the material by Scripture writers for unworthy doctrinal purposes is past. We have in another connection said that each of the New Testament books was, indeed, written with a definite aim, but this does not mean that facts and teachings were twisted out of their legitimate significance. That Christ is the supreme gift of God to men is so thoroughly built into the biblical revelation that there is no digging that idea out without wrecking the entire revelation itself. To maintain anything else would be to do violence to the entire scriptural teaching. The burden of the entire New Testament is that God is like Christ.