Editor’s Table: Modern Value of the Bible

especially in the way of condensing by the elimination of phrases or statements not necessary to the development of the main incident of the circumstance related. We ask the officers of associations everywhere to interest themselves in this matter, and call the attention of returned missionaries in their respective localities to this opportunity of making known the goodness and power of God within their experience, and thus assist in promoting faith in the minds of our youth. We particularly invite the brethren now upon missions in all parts of the world to contribute to this series of articles. / MODERN VALUE OF THE BIBLE. By a great many people the Bible is supposed to be a book of very little interest to the people of modern days except as being in the minds of Christians something of a guide in matters of faith and morals. To think of looking through its pages with a view to ascertaining anything of value on such subjects as sanitation or hygiene would doubtless be considered altogether out of order. Nevertheless it will be found that divine wisdom, operating through inspired men, provided regulations which, if but adhered to, would have saved our race from very much of evil, and are worthy of consideration even in these modern days. A friend of the Era's, one who has contributed to our pages, and who is one of those delightful people sufficiently old-fashioned to have a profound respect amounting to veneration for the Bible, sent us, a few days ago, the following excerpt which he clipped from the Youth's Companion. Accompanying it was a note in which our friend said, "the enclosed slip seems to be worthy of a place in the Era." And as we are of the same opinion, here it is: The Asiatic Quarterly Review lately contained a collection of facts to prove its contention that the sanitary laws of Moses were not only

on a line with the modern rules of hygiene, but in some cases in advance of them. The Jew, thousands of years before Christ, settling in a semitropical country, was forbidden to eat pork or shell-fish, and milk was designated as a source of contagion. In the Talmud a method of slaughtering animals was prescribed which is acknowledged today in our markets as the most sanitary. Five thousand years before Doctor Koch gave to the world the results of his researches in bacteriology, the Mosiac law pointed out the danger to man from tuberculosis in cattle, but did not forbid infected poultry as food. It was only a few years ago that German specialists discovered that fowl tuberculosis was harmless to man. The Mosaic law also enforced the isolation of patients with contagious diseases, and the burial of the dead outside of all cities. These hints the slow Gentile world did not fully accept until a century or two ago. The wise law-giver prescribed not only fasting at certain periods of the year, but the removal of whole families in summer out to camps, where for a time they could live close to nature and to God, and rejoice in both with innocent merrymaking. Many of the laws of Moses, like this one, the Asiatic Quarterly urges, were prescriptions intended for the health of both soul and body. Now that some of our young people profess to regard the Old Testament as a book whose mission is fulfilled, a careful study of it might cause them to change their opinion. Apart from its moral teachings, its physical rules, if obeyed, would lessen the prevalence of some of the diseases among us, especially those which result from exhausted nervous systems. The best teacher of duties that are dim to us is the practice of those we see and have at hand. The chief'secret of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, without thought of fame. If fame comes at all, it will come because it is deserved, not because it is sought after. Nothing is gained by depreciating the difficulties of any undertaking. To look them in the face courageously, and to 'estimate them fairly, will generally enable us to overcome them; while, if they are hidden or ignored, they will, all unconsciously to ourselves, bar the way to success.