IT is almost universally admitted that the narratives of the Old Testament stand unrivaled in the literature of the world for beauty of diction and form, and for the extraordinary vividness with which characters and events are brought before the reader. Every student of the Bible will admit that in the accounts of various episodes in the history of Moses, Abraham, Elijah, and Elisha, whose whole length does not exceed that of the introduction to a modern story, the events, local conditions, characters, action, and cause are presented so vividly that the actors in the drama remain in thought as far more living and real than do historical characters of periods much nearer his own time.
While many reasons have been advanced to account for this, to the Christian Scientist there is only one which offers any satisfactory explanation. In studying what is called secular history, we deal merely with the changing conditions of human thought, the fleeting phases of human passions in their "ceaseless action and reaction" one upon the other, the "whirligig of time" bringing "in its own revenges." The issues at stake so vital to one generation are almost incomprehensible to the next, the beliefs for which martyrs are burnt at the stake in one century become the common creed in the following. In the sacred histories, however, this is not the case. There we deal directly with the great issues of truth in its warfare with error. The mighty men of the Old Testament narratives stood, and stand to-day, as the forth-tellers of the eternal fact—the reality and omnipotence of good, as opposed to the unreality and impotence of error.
In reading these simple stories, therefore, we find that they are presenting eternal realities, that the issues at stake are as vital to us to-day as then, and that the actors stand as examples or warnings to each individual in his "passage from sense to Soul" (Science and Health, p. 566). We do not all have to play the part of Julius Cæsar. Queen Elizabeth, or Napoleon, but every one has at some time or another to meet in his own consciousness the difficulties of the Red Sea, the temptations to serve other gods in the wilderness. Each must stand boldly for Truth against the corruption and malice of a sensual age, face the lions of doubt and fear when no way of escape seems possible.
