To sum up the results of our study: As Christians we may find our loftiest inspiration in the study of the life, the character, and the teachings { 255} of the Master, and of the words of his disciples. But the New Testament is little more than a quarter of the Bible. In the preceding pages the attempt has been made to emphasize the permanent value of the larger division of the Sacred Book. It has been carefully scrutinized, tested in furnaces heated seven times, but out of the fire it has come bearing the stamp of God, testifying more confidently than ever before that God in olden times spake unto the fathers, and that in its pages may be found records and interpretations of these revelations. The features of the Old Testament which assure to it a permanent place in religious thought and life may be briefly indicated as follows:
The Old Testament will always prove attractive as literature. The more we know of other literatures of antiquity, the more evident it becomes that even from the literary viewpoint the Old Testament is far superior to any other literary remains of ancient civilization. "If the inimitable freshness of life is preserved in Homer, it is not less preserved in the epic stories of the Old Testament; while the still more intangible simplicity of the idyl is found perfect in Ruth and Tobit, the orations of Deuteronomy are as noble models as the orations of Cicero. Read by the side of the poetry of the Psalms, the lyrics of Pindar seem almost provincial. The imaginative poetry of { 256} the Greeks is perfect in its own sphere, but by the Hebrew prophets as bold an imagination is carried into the mysteries of the spiritual world. If the philosophy of Plato and his successors has a special interest as the starting point for a progression of thought still going on as modern science, yet the field of biblical wisdom offers an attraction of a different kind, in a progression of thought which has run its full round and has reached a position of rest.... And in the inner circle of the world's masterpieces, in which all kinds of literary influences meet, the Bible has placed Job, the Isaiahan Rhapsody, ... unsurpassed and unsurpassable."[23]
From the standpoint of history the Old Testament still occupies, and ever will occupy, a unique position. Important as are the contributions of archæology, the student of ancient history can by no means spare the testimony of the Bible. The Old Testament is still the main source of information for the national history of the Hebrew people, and it is and will remain a very important secondary source for the history of the surrounding nations. It also retains a unique place in the history of religion, for without it the religious development of the Jews could not be traced; and since the Jewish religion is the foundation upon which Christianity was developed, ignorance of that earlier religion [257] would prove a serious handicap to the student of Christianity.