No literary work of the sixteenth century better measures the vast significance of the Renaissance than the esegetical writings of Calvin. To pass from the study of Athanasius or Augustine to that of Calvin is almost like a change of worlds. In the exegetical writings of those great men of the early church one flounders in a boundless morass, whose occasional bright and fragrant flowers are a poor substitute for solid and safe ground. Their Bible was a magical book, stranger than any fairy-tale, unreal, impossible. Quite different was the Bible of Calvin. Walking with him through the paths of Scripture, one feels that there is something firm under the feet, that one is dealing with real human history and life. The voice of the guide may be less winning and attractive than the voice of Augustine, but it is immeasurably more competent in explaining the significance of what is seen as we pass along. The fanciful allegorizations of Augustine give place to the sane comments of a balanced judgment fortified by much exact knowledge. The exegesis of Calvin was as remarkable in its way as were the deeds of Luther, and when compared with the work of the third and fourth centuries is at once seen to belong to a vastly higher order. But while all this may truthfully be said to the praise of the French reformer, nevertheless his Bible was not the Bible of Jesus. He did not handle sacred books as Jesus did or as we do today. In some points his method was fundamentally wrong. It was neither that of supreme religious genius, like the method of Jesus, nor that of science, like the method of modern scholars. Of these points in Calvin's treatment of the Bible, hitherto unnoticed or ignored, it is our purpose now to speak; and this we do in the interest of a juster estimate of the foremost theologian of the reformation, and also to illustrate the great advance made in biblical interpretation since his day. Calvin's conception of the Bible, though purified from many