this fact is clearly recorded on every page of the Gospels.

[Sidenote: _His familiarity with all parts of it_]

The events of Hebrew history, and its heroes --Abraham, David, Elijah--
were all familiar to him. The Old Testament was the background of a
large portion of the Sermon on the Mount. From Deuteronomy vi. 4, 5, and
Leviticus xix. 18 he drew his marvellous epitome of all law and duty. In
the wisdom literature, and especially in the book of Proverbs, he found
many of those practical truths which he applied to life with new
authority and power. From the same storehouse of crystallized experience
he derived certain of those figures which he expanded into his
inimitable parables; he adopted also, and put to new use, the effective
gnomic form of teaching of the wisdom school. As in the mouth of his
herald, John the Baptist, the great moral and spiritual truths, first
proclaimed by the ancient prophets, live again on the lips of Jesus. At
every point in his teachings one recognizes the thought and language of
the older Scriptures. At the moments of his greatest temptation and
distress, even in the last agony, the words of the ancient law and
psalms were on his lips and their consoling and inspiring messages in
his mind.

[Sidenote: _Attitude of the apostles_]

What is so strikingly true of Jesus is equally true of the apostles and
disciples who have given us the New Testament books: the atmosphere in
which they lived, the thoughts which they thought, and the language in
which they spoke, were those of the Old Testament. Not bowing slavishly
before it, as did their Jewish contemporaries, but with true reverence,
singling out that which was vital and eternal, they made it the basis of