his needs; we must consider the conditions of his religious development.
We must ask, then, of the Bible, how far it can be effective to meet
these needs and this development. The fixed factor is the boy, not the
Book. At the same time, we are not obliged to begin always as if the
Bible were a new thing in the world, and its claim to value as religious
material were to be considered afresh. We know that the Bible has proved
itself good. We know that it has been effective in the life of boys. The
question, then, really before us is, What parts of the Bible are really
desirable for the boy, and how are they to be presented so as to be most
useful?"

This, in other words, is Graded Bible Study, and, possibly, were we to
give a Bible to the boy and induce him to read it, the parts which he
would read would help us a lot in determining the material that would
challenge his interest. The parts he skipped over would also fix our
problem for us.

The writer had a unique experience in his boyhood. His folks were
members and officers of a church where long doctrinal sermons were the
rule. These had little interest for the growing boy, but parental
persuasion kept him in the pew for hours at a stretch. The boy, under
these circumstances, had to do something in self-preservation, so he
spent the long hours in reading the Bible. The stories of the
Patriarchs, the Judges, the Kings, and the Acts were his peculiar
delight. The sermon period ceased to be tiresome and often was not long
enough. He never read Leviticus, or the Prophets, or the Gospels, or the
Epistles, however. They had no meaning for him. As well as he can now
remember, between his ninth and twelfth years, his favorite Scripture
was the Patriarchs and Judges. Between his twelfth and sixteenth years
he was passionately fond of the Kings and the Acts. After that he began
to feel interested in the Gospels. He was pretty well grown up before he
cared either for the Prophets or the Epistles; they were too abstract
for him.

The writer's experience corresponds fairly well with the growing modern
usage in Bible study with boys. The philosophy underlying Graded Bible
Study is merely to meet the present spiritual needs, as indexed by the
characteristics of the period of his development.

At present there are many schemes of Graded Bible Study for boys on the
market. Some of it has been prepared to meet a theory of religious
education. The University of Chicago Series of te