Certain parts of the Bible appeal with unexpected force to various races, and to men in different stages of civilization, who read the Scriptures with other eyes than ours. We may illustrate this point by a few actual examples.
When Dr. Kilgour was translating the Old Testament into Nepali (India), he found it an arduous, not to say a tedious, task, to render the long chapters of ritual regulations in Leviticus; he was surprised, however, to discover that his Nepalese assistant considered these chapters to be among the most interesting and important in the whole Pentateuch.
So, again, the Chinese, who lay enormous stress on reverence for ancestors, are profoundly imprest by the first chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, because it begins with the genealogy of our Lord, which, as a colporteur wrote last year, "goes back to our Chinese Hsia dynasty."
In Egypt, Moslems are attracted by the Book of Genesis, which they call "the history of the creation of the world." In the south of Europe the Book of Proverbs is often purchased eagerly by Freemasons, who look back to King Solomon as the legendary founder of their craft.
In heathen countries it is by no means uncommon for the missionaries, who are translating the Old Testament, first to make a version of the Psalter and perhaps of Genesis, and then to translate the Book of Jonah before attempting any other of the prophets. They realize-what we sometimes forget-that Jonah is the one thoroughly missionary book in the Old Testament, and they find that its message comes home to their converts with peculiar power.- The Lutheran
