FAMILY BIBLE READING.
[To ma EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] Srn,—The Rev. Mr. Harlow's suggestion that, since family worship is a thing of the past, a short time each morning should be devoted to a short and selected reading from the Bible will have the approval of all thoughtful people in these days of deplorable indifference and ignorance concerning that book. Where used in schools it is too often made a vehicle of dogmatic teaching; while only in a small minority of families is it ever read at all. If you quote it, people look puzzled, and wonder whether your quotation comes from Shakespeare, with whom they are a trifle more familiar. So the generation grows spiritually and intellectually poorer; ignorant as they are of a book which, to cite Huxley (whom none will charge with Bibliolatry), "has been woven into the life of all that is best and noblest in English history, and which is written [translated] in the noblest and purest English and abounds in exquisite beauties of mere literary form." Selec- tion in readings therefrom needs knowledge and discretion, and there are two books for right guidance in Sir James Frazer's Passages front the Bible, which has the addition of a few helpful notes, and Dr. W. L. Courtney's Literary Man's Bible.—
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