as required to know from memory
exactly how many letters of each kind there should be in his sheet
before he began to write. Every sheet of parchment must contain an
equal number of lines, and the breadth of each column had to be thirty
letters wide.

There are eleven verses in the Book of the Law beginning and ending
with 'N,' there are forty verses in which 'Lo' is read three times--and
so on, and so on.

How tedious and meaningless such information appears! Of what value
were all these details?

To spend all his days in learning such things as these could have no
influence on a man's character, nor make him a power for good in the
world. Not for this purpose had God revealed His will to man.

Some years ago in the coffin of an Egyptian mummy, a little jar of
wheat was found. For thousands of years it had lain there, shut up in
the dark, while out in the fields the corn which had been sown had
grown up and been reaped every year, and men and women had been fed.
But this jar of corn was useless, because it had been prevented from
doing the work in the world for which it was created.

Just so was it with the Hebrew copies of God's Word. Locked up in a
dead language, kept close, away from the world, they were like the jar
of wheat which could not grow.

But meanwhile God's Book was growing in the wide fields beyond. While
the Jews were keeping safe the _letters_ of the Old Testament, the New
Testament was beginning to do its mighty work in the great heathen
cities of the world.

[1] Josephus: 'Wars,' Books v. and vi.

CHAPTER X

THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

[Illustration: (drop cap T) Coin of Thessalonica]

Turn to the list of books given in the beginning of your New Testament.
You will see that first come the four Gospels, or glimpses of the
Saviour's life given by four different writers. Then follows the Acts
of the Apostles, and, lastly, after the twenty-one epistles, the volume
ends with the Revelation.

Now this is not the order in which the books were written--they are
only arranged like this for our convenience.

The first words of the New Testament were written, not as we should
have supposed by one of the twelve apostles, or by some one who had
loved and followed the Lord Jesus Christ when He was upon earth. They
are written by a Pharisee who had been one of Christ's bitterest
enemies.

Though Saul had, as far as we know, never seen the Saviour on earth,
what he had h