sincerity of their purpose. They demonstrate that God's revelation
is adapted to the needs of life and the comprehension of man, because it
was through life and expressed in the terms of life. Their individual
peculiarities and minor errors often introduce us more intimately to
the biblical writers and help us to understand more clearly and
sympathetically their visions of truth and of God. Above all, they teach
us to look ever through and beyond all these written records to the
greater revelation, which they reflect, and to the infinite Source of
all knowledge and truth.

[Sidenote: _The record of a gradual revelation_]

The inconsistencies and imperfect teachings which are revealed by a
critical study of the Old Testament are also but a few of the many
indices that it is the record of a gradually unfolding revelation. Late
Jewish tradition, which is traceable even in the Old Testament itself,
was inclined to assign the origin of everything which it held dear to
the very beginnings of Hebrew history, and in so doing it has done much
to obscure its true genesis. Fortunately, however, the history of God's
gradual training of the race was writ too plainly in the earlier Old
Testament scriptures to be completely obscured by later traditions. The
recognition that God's all-wise method of revealing spiritual as well as
scientific truth was progressive, adapted to the unfolding consciousness
of each succeeding age, at once sweeps away many of the greatest
difficulties that have hitherto obscured the true Old Testament. Jesus
with his divine intuition appreciated this principle of growth.
Unhesitatingly he abrogated certain time-honored Old Testament laws with
the words, _Ye have heard that it was said ... but I say to you_. His
own interpretation of his relation to the sacred writings of his race
was that he came to bring them to complete fulfilment. Rearranged in