“When we open the Old Testament we find it, first of all, a book of history. We are apt to look upon the Bible as a dictionary of doctrine, wherein we are to search for sentences as proof-texts. But instead it contains the story of redemption in the form of a history. We see how God chose a family and pruned off its dead branches and caused it to grow into a nation; then, how he trained and disciplined that nation through fifteen centuries, until upon it blossomed the Divine Man. The history of the Bible is the history of humanity, of literature, of ethics, of religion, of doctrine; and no one who studies it carefully will fail of an abundant reward for his endeavor.”
