This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
III. THE LION TAMER.
133

literature has a range comparable with it. There are—

I. The stories of the Fall and of the Flood, the grandest human traditions founded on a true horror of sin.

II. The story of the Patriarchs, of which the effective truth is visible to this day in the polity of the Jewish and Arab races.

III. The story of Moses, with the results of that tradition in the moral law of all the civilized world.

IV. The story of the Kings—virtually that of all Kinghood, in David, and of all Philosophy, in Solomon: culminating in the Psalms and Proverbs, with the still more close and practical wisdom of Ecclesiasticus and the Son of Sirach.

V. The story of the Prophets—virtually that of the deepest mystery, tragedy, and permanent fate, of national existence.

VI. The story of Christ.

VII. The moral law of St. John, and his closing Apocalypse of its fulfilment.

Think, if you can match that table of contents in any other—I do not say 'book' but 'literature.' Think, so far as it is possible for any of us—either adversary or defender of the faith—to extricate his intelligence from the habit and the