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ON this side of the sea we sit down with a big book in our hands. It is an old book. Nearly two thousand years have passed since the last word of it was written, and no one can tell how many thousands of years ago the records were made or the words uttered, out of which its first writer prepared his wonderful statements. This old book is a singular book as to the variety of its contents, — ranging from dry chronological state ment to highest flight of royal poetry. Many pages of it are simply historical, with lists of kings, and names of family lines through many generations. Geographical allusions descending to minutest detail are strewn thickly through its pages. There is no department of natural science which does not find some of its data recognized in the chapters of this venerable volume. Stones and stars, plants and rep tiles, colossal monsters of sea and land, fleet horse, bird of swift flight, lofty cedar and lowly lily,~ these all find their existence recognized and recorded in that book of various theme. AS it is a long time since these records were made, so are the lands far away in which the events recorded are said to have occurred. We measure the years by millenaries, and by the thousand miles we measure the distance. The greatest contrast exists between the age and land in which we live and the age and lands in which this book found its beginning, its material and its ending.
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