n earth today like Plato's? Where
is there a spirit today like Paul's?

The past invites us still to look back for revelations in the realm of
creative personality. Some things have been done in history, like the
sculptures of Phidias, that never have been done so well since and that
perhaps never will be done so well again. As for the Bible, we may
well look back to that. There is no book to compare with it in the
realm of religion. Most of the books we read are like the rainwater
that fell last night, a superficial matter, soon running off. But the
Bible is a whole sea--the accumulated spiritual gains of ages--and to
know it and to love it, to go down beside it and dip into it, to feel
its vast expanse, the currents that run through it, and the tides that
lift it, is one of the choicest and most rewarding spiritual privileges
that we enjoy. As for Jesus, it is difficult to see what this
twentieth century can mean by supposing that it has outgrown him. It
has outgrown countless elements in his generation and many forms of
thought which he shared with his generation, but it never will outgrow
his spirit, his faith in God, his principles of life: "Our Father who
art in heaven, Hallowed by thy name;" "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength,
and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself;" "It is not the
will of your Father who is in heaven, that one of these little ones
should perish;" "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples,
if ye have love one to another;" "If any man would be first, he shall
be last of all, and servant of all;" "All things therefore whatsoever
ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them;"
"Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you;" "Thy will be
done, as in heaven, so on earth." Take principles like these, set them
afire in a flaming life the like of which has never come to earth, and
we have in Jesus a revelation of the spiritual world which is not going
to be outgrown. Still for the Christian he is Saviour and Lord, and
across the centuries in his face shines the light of the knowledge of
the glory of God.

IV

Progress, therefore, intelligently apprehended, does not involve that
flippant irreverence for the past that so often is associated with it.
It offers no encouragement to the chase after vagaries in which so many
moderns indulge, as though all that is old were bel