"THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND"
This is not at all to oppose the Scriptural statement that " the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God,"32 nor to wish to go beyond Paul's decision " to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified."33 Both those statements it is essential to understand and to accept, and the true meaning of them is an excellent exercise in Bible study. The contrast is between men who, in their cleverness, cannot stomach the revelation of God's plan of salvation, so little in accord with their own intellectual conceit, and the man who is prepared (rather, who is glad) to subordinate any dispositions of his own to the manifestation of God's Way. The decision to " know nothing save Jesus Christ " is born of Paul's proper determination that no attainments of his shall dazzle men's eyes with the cleverness of Paul when they should be directed to the Cross of Christ. Yet Paul was a learned man who had studied in the best school of Jewry, and could, and did, quote Greek authors.34

Such learning in the world's knowledge as we would acquire is not otherwise. If we had any desire to have men wonder at the depth of our learning, we had better not learn (for only the very learned could succeed in such a desire in any case); but if we seek to bend all our endeavour to presenting the Gospel message acceptably before men, then, while still we know before them nothing but this, and seek to seem no more (if there were more) than ambassadors for Christ, we can be helped by what we learn from others. Such true learning as we acquire will not show itself-true learning never does-in an assumption of superiority, but in a clearer simplicity, a more transparent profundity.

There is a sense in which we must learn from without. " The proper study of mankind is man " is not altogether true for us, whose proper study is to be approved of God, 35 but it has truth. Jesus " knew what was in man,"36 and that not only led him to a proper prudence on the occasion to which it refers, but to a true understanding of the needs (" They are as sheep not having a shepherd ", for example), and the weaknesses (" This generation is like to children playing in the market-place ") of those to whom he preached. He turned local history to his purpose, 37 and the common experience of natural history and men's toil on the land was the burden of many of his parables, 38 their simple activities at home or on social occasions of others.39 We preach as men to men; as men with a knowledge of the Way to men without, certainly, but as men of like passions, touched with a feeling of our common infirmity.40 Our message must therefore be to men as men are, with appeals and illustrations suited to their needs and their apprehension.

Much of the experience we need for this will come from our daily lives, and what we see and hear around us (for example, " As I passed by and beheld your devotions "") must be laid under heavy contribution. We must learn to take advantage of situations in which we find ourselves (thus:.

" When Paul perceived that the one part were Pharisees .. ."42). and speak the unchanging message of God to the ephemeral fancies of an unstable world. Our daily lives are now, however, so inextricably involved with reading on well-nigh everyone's part, that this must be part of our experience for preaching. Our newspapers, journals and reviews provide a background of common experience which should avail us, neither to share the world's anxiety for the things which pass away, nor to keep us up to date in our adaptations of Bible prophecies to current and near-future events, but to ensure that we minister to the real world around us, and not to a fanciful world of our own cloistered imagination.

The same can be said of other " broadening " reading. This is open to no criticism of the kind which alleges that we seek to broaden the " straight and narrow way." It seeks simply to make sure that we are sufficiently well-informed for men to know that our feet are on the ground, though our head be-as it should be-very high. We can judge for ourselves wherein we find our real delight, and discipline our reading accordingly. Since nearly all of us will take some recreation even from our contemplation of the Bible, it is proper enough that we should-without prejudice to that study-turn aside to know our fellow-men in their history, their poetry and their prose-literature. If our time is such that we may not thus venture, the loss is not considerable and need not be mourned, but if we may, our hearers may be none the worse for listening to a gospel offered with something of the beauties of our modern English tongue, as the translators of the Authorized Version presented it in the grace of Shakespeare's.