Much that is valuable in these two testaments is recorded in events or in parables, and for all young minds and for nearly all older intellects, the doctrines, the alarms, the benedictions, the promises, the hopes are treasured up in incidents which might be thrown upon canvas or carved out of marble. Faith is seen in the picture of Abraham; patriotism, courage, honor, piety in Moses; justice in the story of Lot's wife; eternal friendship in Ruth; reckless ambition in Absalom; resignation in Job; faithfulness in Daniel; while in the New Testament the pictures offered in the Christ, the Marys, the Johns and St. Paul have been too many and too great for art to equal. These incidents and persons of the Bible form in the mind of the one who knows them a perfect treasure-house filled with the gems of true religion. When that gifted writer who composed the hymn "Nearer my God to Thee" sat down to her task, what an imperfection would have marked her poem had she not known of Jacob's stony pillow and beautiful dream! Though like a wanderer, The sun gone down, Darkness be over me, My rest a stone. And the two following stanzas would have been wanting; nor is it probable that the writer, although a woman most gifted, could have found in all literature any compensation for her loss and our loss. In the "Battle-Hymn of the Republic," the eloquent writer shows in her first line her memory of Simeon, and through his eyes she looked and said: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord," and in the last verse, back comes one of the most beautiful incidents in the New Testament: "In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea." Thus have thousands of years, in all, acted as the great time-space for attaching the Hebrew and Christian mind and heart to the persons and incidents found in the Holy Scriptures. Not to know all these Heaven-sent emblems of virtue, wisdom, piety and salvation is not only not to be a Christian, but it is to stand afar off from the honor of even a common education and the most needful culture.