Confessions of a Book-Lover

by Maurice Francis Egan

and Agrippa's answer, after Paul's apologia:

In a little thou persuadest me to become a Christian!

But the story did not end then. I rehearsed over and over again what the King Agrippa might have said to his sister, the noble and beautiful Bernice—I knew nothing of the lady's reputation then—and how finally they did become Christians. In my imagination, princely dignity and exquisite grace were added to the external beauty of religion; and Paul went to Rome protected by the law of the Romans. And yet the very fineness of his attitude was the cause of his further imprisonment. "This man," I often repeated with Agrippa, "might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed to Cæsar."

It was St. Paul who sent me back to the Prophet

Micheas, who had previously struck me as of no importance at all, and I read:

And Thou, Bethlehem Ephrata, art a little one among the thousands of Juda; out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be the ruler in Israel; and his going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity.

And back again to St. Matthew—

But they said to him: In Bethlehem of Juda; For so it is written by the prophet; And thou, Bethlehem, the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda; for out of thee shall come forth the captain, who shall rule my people Israel.

These exercises in completing the prophecies of the Old Testament with the fulfilments of the New were interesting, and I found great pleasure in them. And this led me to a greater appreciation of the Old Testament, against which I had been once rather prejudiced. One day, I was led, by some reference or other in another book, to read the twenty-third psalm of David, in the King James version. It struck me as much more simple and appealing than the version in the Douai Bible, which begins in Latin "Dominus regit me." It runs: