The study of the Bible that contributes to the boy’s education is now generally accepted to be that which is adjusted to the known characteristics of boys.  At one time, not so very far distant, all Scripture was supposed to be good for a boy’s moral and spiritual character-building.  One part of the Bible was held to be as good as any other, the important thing necessary being to get the Bible into the life of the boy, somehow.  It did not matter much whether the boy understood all he read and was told, or not.  It would prepare him for some future crisis and enable him some time to better meet a possible temptation.  It was to be a sort of preventive application, very much as vaccination now is administered to ward off dreaded disease.  And, to tell the exact truth, it often did, and the treatment proved more efficacious than some of the present-day Bible study methods, where mere knowledge is attempted.  The mistake was the misunderstanding (for misunderstanding it was, and not a desire to merely plague the boy) of the fact that boys were developing creatures, spiritually as well as physically, and that Bible study could be made pleasant as well as profitable.  It was a mistake due to a purely mature point of view and a failure to know that the boy mind needed different treatment from that of the adult.  Lately we have discovered, thanks to general education, that a boy’s Bible study can be adapted to a specific purpose, and to a present, clear, distinct and practical need of boy life.

A recent writer has said, “We have come to a fairly definite understanding that we must take the boy as he is; we must inquire into his needs; we must consider the conditions of his religious development.  We must ask, then, of the Bible, how far it can be effective to meet these needs and this development.  The fixed factor is the boy, not the Book.  At the same time, we are not obliged to begin always as if the Bible were a new thing in the world, and its claim to value as religious material were to be considered afresh.  We know that the Bible has proved itself good.  We know that it has been effective in the life of boys.  The question, then, really before us is, What parts of the Bible are really desirable for the boy, and how are they to be presented so as to be most useful?”

This, in other words, is Graded Bible Study, and, possibly, were we to give a Bible to the boy and induce him to read it, the parts which he would read would help us a lot in determining the material that would challenge his interest.  The parts he skipped over would also fix our problem for us.