them according to the sort of promises they contain.

Read, for instance, Job xxii, 21, etc. This is a most remarkable passage
containing among other things the promise of earthly wealth; or again
Job v, 19, etc., where we find promises of protection in time of danger,
power over material nature, and prolonged life. While in Job xxxiii, 23,
etc., there is promise of return to youth, a promise which is repeated
in Psalm ciii, 5. Again in Isaiah lxi, 20, etc., there is the promise of
immensely extended physical life, death at the age of one hundred being
counted so premature as to resemble that of an infant, and the normal
standard of age being compared to a tree which lives for centuries; and
the same passage also promises immediate answer to prayers. The Psalms
are full of such promises, and they are scattered throughout the Bible.

Now there is an unfortunate tendency among people who read their Bible
with reverence, to what they call "spiritualize" such passages as these,
which means that they do not believe them. They say such things are
impossible; and therefore they must have some other meaning, and
accordingly they interpret the words metaphorically, as referring to
something to be experienced in another life, but quite impossible in
this one.

Of course there are spiritual equivalents to these things, and the
teaching of the Bible is, that they are the outward correspondences of
inward spiritual states; but to "spiritualize" them in the way I am
speaking of, is nothing but unbelief in the power of God to work on the
plane of Nature. How such readers square their opinion with the fact
that God has created Nature, I do not know. Even in the animal world we
find wonderful instances of longevity. If an elephant be not overworked
before he is twenty, he is in full working power up to eighty, and will