foe aan jas Ped alana eh et anh mh sh nh ah anh eho mal re nr : cesaghtaast gag as el epee a a Sa fee ee ere eset eps paar n eae ey a caer eet et Fate eat zt ea rr erp nn rat Ha ea ae arn eee aes ee ii ie eh aaah Te a Library of Che Theological Seminary PRINCETON - NEW JERSEY 7 Ke FROM THE LIBRARY OF THE REVEREND JESSE HALSEY, D.D. { Ca - f oe ’ / / 7 a ee i i$ a Sh ae ae The Influence of the Bible By THOMAS TIPLADY The Influence of the Bible On History, Literature and Oratory . . $1.00 Mr. Tiplady shows how the Scriptures constitute the master interpreter of human nature exhibiting a marvelous insight into character. Altogether, it is a volume of an unusually readable and deeply interest- ing sort. Social Christianity in the New Era | Second: Edition "is! 2) "esis. cide vee eae “But just as sure as the water wears away the granite so shall such books as this reshape and re- mould the world and bring in a new and better social order.”’—Boston Transcript. The Soul of the Soldier Echoes from the Western Front. With ° Frontispiece. Second Edition . . . $1.25 “Filled with the love of his soldiers and the deep sense of their bravery and great achievement. Throughout one feels Mr. Tiplady’s actual closeness to the front. A brave and human collection of pictures from the war.”’ —New York Times Book Review. The Cross at the Front Fragments from the Trenches. With Frontispiece. Eighth Edition . . . $1.25 ““*Vivid’ is too dim a word to express the living pictures which this chaplain has seen in France. Some of the chapters are among the finest pieces of of pathos we have read anywhere. Read the book and you will be a better man for all your tasks.” —Chicago Standard. ‘ the Bible On History, Literature, and Oratory By ee THOMAS TIPLADY Author of “‘ The Cross at the Front.’? New Yorre CHICAGO Fleming H. Revell Company LONDON AND EDINBURGH Copyright, 1924, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street “‘ The Bible thoroughly known is a literature of itself—the rarest and the richest in all departments of thought or imagination which exists.’’-— James Anthony Froude, the historian. “T loved and valued the Bible, for almost to tt alone I owed my moral culture.” —Goethe. ‘“‘In regard to the Great Book, I have only to say it 1s the best gift which God has ever given to man.’—Abraham Lincoln. ' PREFACE ANY years ago a traveler found M a Kaffir boy playing at marbles with a stone which looked very ordinary, until he took it in his hand and carefully examined it. After examination he declared the stone to be a diamond, and under the ground where the Kaffir boy played there are now the famous Kim- berley mines. For centuries men had walked over Kimberley’s dusty surface without suspecting their nearness to mines of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. In like manner Europe, for ages, had in its midst a book of truth and beauty unequalled in literature, but to the mass of men it was a closed mine. Its discovery and reopening by Erasmus and Luther caused an infinitely greater sensa- tion than the opening of the Kimberley mines, and has enriched all nations. The sensation, however, is now over, so far as the Western nations are concerned, and familiarity is in danger of breeding con- 7 8 PREFACE tempt. The modest black binding of the Bible looks as uninteresting as the shafts of a diamond mine; and people are in danger of passing by it instead of going down into its depths for the enrichment of their minds and hearts. It is to draw the attention of gifted young men to the Bible as the supreme guide to leadership — in public life, literature, and oratory, that I have written this little book. To prove my points, I have found it necessary to call upon historians, authors, and orators to bear witness. The sources from which I have quoted are, as a rule, indicated in the text; and I wish to thank the authors and publishers most sincerely. I trust that the quotations will so whet the appe- tites of my readers that they will want more, and will therefore get the books of the authors mentioned, so that they may browse at their leisure and to their hearts’ content. BBS bye Tk. III. IV. Contents THE Book oF Books . Inspiration not Dictation — Supreme Book of Power — The Vision Splen- did — Course of History Changed THE BIBLE As A MEANS OF CULTURE Hebrew, Greek, and Roman — Life- giving Power of the Bible —A Fal- lacy — Culture: Ancient and Modern THE CREATIVE POWER OF THE BIBLE Popularity of the Bible — ‘‘Noblest Example of the English Tongue’? — The First Democracy Tue INSPIRING EFFECT OF THE BIBLE ON ENGLISH LITERATURE : Why Men are Great— The N ew Light — What Happened Three Cen- turies Ago BUNYAN AND THE BIBLE Lord Macaulay on Bunyan — Where Bunyan got his Style— Green and Hallam on Bunyan HEINE AND THE BIBLE : The “Plain Old Book” —“ The Aristophanes of Heaven’’ — The Failure of Philosophies — The King- dom of the Spirit 11 21 33 43 50 57 10 VI. VIII. IX. aia XII, CONTENTS THE BIBLE AND LITERARY STYLE A Portable University — The Nurs- ing Mother of Poets— Byron and the Bible—The Bible Ruskin’s Standard Tue AuTHOR’S LAMP AND LIGHT Addison’s Lamp — Handing on the Torch — A great Editor’s Testimony — Edward FitzGerald’s Bible English THE BIBLE’s TRANSMISSION OF LIFE Spiritual History of the Puritans — Terms on Which Life is Granted — Greek Youths and Hebrew Men — The Bible Faces all Facts ORATORS AND THE BIBLE . Lloyd George — Ramsay Macdon- ald — C. H. Spurgeon — Dr. Joseph Parker — Savonarola — Edward Irv- ing Stix Books THat Mabe LINCOLN PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES Growth of Lincoln’s Greatness — Tendency of His Life — Lincoln and Bunyan — A Mind Saturated with the Bible — His Greatest Speech Tue Master Licut oF our KNOWL- EDGE OF HUMAN NATURE .. The Vital Nature of the Bible — Car- lyle on David— The Ascent of a Soul — Insight into Character — The Moulders of Men 64 75 85 97 106 117 If THE BOOK OF BOOKS HE Bible was not written by an in- dividual. It was written by a race. It is not a wayside well built over a single spring, but a mighty river into which a million springs have poured their waters. In the Bible we have not one man’s experience of God, but a whole peo- ple’s. It covers not the brief span of an individual’s life, but the thousands of years through which a race lives. It re- cords the spiritual experience not of a chosen man but of a chosen people. The Bible holds the life blood of the Jewish race. It is a living thing, full of vitality and regenerating power. In it all that God meant to the Jewish people in their indi- vidual, social, and national life is distilled, preserved, and revealed to mankind. It 11 12 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE enshrines the soul of a people and is the Hebrews’ priceless legacy to the world. | The Legacies of Three Civilizations The Greeks taught the world Art and the love of beauty: the Romans taught it Law and ordered Government; but the Jews taught it Religion and Righteous- - ness. Hach of these ancient civilizations left mankind a priceless heritage, but the greatest of these gifts was the legacy of the Hebrews. The Jewish people were the ‘‘ God-carrying people,’’ as the Russians loved to call themselves. They were re- ceivers of God and revealers of Him. They had a peculiar sensitiveness towards God. Sensitive as the negative plate of a camera, they received the impress of God . and revealed it to the world through the medium of the Bible. In the fullness of time there came to this people a full revelation of God. The Word became flesh and dwelt among them and they be- held His Glory. The record of this in- carnation of the Son of God and many of the words of Jesus are preserved in this wonderful book. Whatever truth the Holy Spirit may yet reveal to mankind, the THE BOOK OF BOOKS 13 Bible can never be dispensed with nor superseded. The living Christ is more to men than the Bible, but we have His own authority for saying that the Bible is the text-book which the Holy Spirit will ever use in teaching men divine knowledge. The scholar will need the help of the Di- vine Teacher if he is to fathom the depths of the text-book; but a study of the ways of Providence will, I think, show that the Divine Teacher felt the need of such a text-book in teaching men, and co-operated with saintly men in its preparation. ‘‘ For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost ’’ (II Peter 1:21). Insyration Not Dictation The word ‘‘ moved’’ is a perfect ex- pression of the meaning of ‘‘ inspiration.’’ When a poet has been deeply moved by his communion with Nature, the poem which springs to birth is not his alone. It is Nature speaking through him. The poet feels that something greater than himself has taken him in hand and is using him as a musician uses a violin. The poem grows 14 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE up within him while he lies in a passive and dreamy mood. So pronounced was this feeling in Blake that he took no credit to himself for his poems, but regarded himself merely as an instrument writing as he was inspired by a power not him- self. The poet does not feel that he made his poem but that it was made in him. It is his own, and has all his characteristics, for it has soaked through his personality and taken the dye of his own mind, yet he does not feel that he created it. The poem is his and yet not his. It is something that entered into him, clothed itself in his characteristics, and passed out into the world. Hach poem he writes bears his likeness, but he does not feel that it is en- tirely his. In like manner, I take it, holy men of old were ‘‘ moved ’’ while in com- munion with God. In passive tranced mood they came under the influence of the Holy Ghost and experienced a spiritual exaltation unknown to them in ordinary moments. In these high moments they spake as they were moved to speak. Their nature vibrated with a music touched to life by a heavenly hand. The music took its form and tone from them, © THE BOOK OF BOOKS 15 but was not in essence their own. Hence the confidence of their declaration, ‘‘ Thus saith the Lord.’’ Some writers were moved more deeply than others, and the same writer was probably moved more deeply at one time than at another. What they wrote was theirs and yet not theirs. It was human and yet divine. There is little likeness, except in essence, between the writings of David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, St. Matthew, St. John, and St. Paul. In every case the writings are characteristic of the personality. The individual note blends with the universal and the human with the divine. One cannot say where the human ends and the divine begins. We cannot define the boundaries, and this inability has often been a rock of offence to the in- tellectual pride of man and a cause of con- troversy both within the Church and with- out. As in the person of Christ, the human and divine are inextricably min- gled. No man can mark where the one begins and the other ends. There are some things too mysterious for man to de- fine and too profound for him to dog- matize about; and the inspiration of the Bible is one of them. 16 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE The Supreme Book of Power Was it not because Christ was so su- premely human that men came to realize that He was more than human? ‘They first knew Him as ‘‘ the Son of Man.’’ Later they realized that He was the ‘‘ Son of God.’’ In lke manner men passed from the human to the divine element in the Scriptures and declared the Bible to be the word of God. It is a mistake, I think, to demand from men a belief in the inspiration of the Bible until they have discovered for themselves the divine ele- ment in it. They should be permitted to grow slowly into belief by contact with the book’s spiritual power. Many have turned away from the Bible because we have asked them to believe in its inspira- tion before they have felt its power. Men should go to the Bible without preconcep- tions as to its authority, and read it sym- pathetically as an ordinary book. When they have read deeply, and with under- standing, they will realize that it has a range beyond the reach of unaided man. Delving into the human they will break through into the divine, and when they reach it their hearts will warm within — THE BOOK OF BOOKS 17 them, and they will know instinctively that it is God who has been talking to them by the way. It is this commingling of the human with the divine, this incarnation of the divine mind in the literature of the Jewish race, which gives the Bible its ex- traordinary power. Erasmus says in one of his letters to Colet, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, ‘‘I am rushing at full speed into sacred literature, and look at nothing which keeps me back from it. I hope now I have returned to France to put my af- fairs on a slightly better footing. This done, I shall sit down to Holy Scripture with my whole heart, and devote the rest of my life to it.’’ The Vision Splendid The book enchanted him and gave him a new vision of life. ‘‘ Compared with Christ,’’ he says, ‘‘ the best of men are but worms.’’ ‘‘ Erasmus,’’ Froude says, ‘¢ had undertaken to give the book to the whole world to read for itself the original Greek of the Epistles and Gospels, with a new Latin translation—to wake up the in- telligence, to show that the words had a real sense, and were not mere sounds like 18 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE the dronings of a barrel-organ. It was finished at last, text and _ translation printed, and the living facts of Christian- ity, the persons of Christ and the Apos- tles, their history, their lives, their teach- ing were revealed to an astonished world. For the first time the laity were able to see, side by side, the Christianity which converted the world, and the Christianity of the Church with a Borgia pope, car- dinal princes, ecclesiastical courts, and a mythology of hes. The effect was to bea spiritual earthquake. Never was volume more passionately devoured. A hundred thousand copies were soon sold in France alone. The fire spread, as it spread be- hind Samson’s foxes in the Philistines’ corn. The words of the Bible have been so long familiar to us that we can hardly realize what the effect must have been when the Gospel was brought out fresh and visible before the astonished eyes of mankind.’’?’ The publication of the New Testament by Erasmus began the Refor- mation of Hurope—that mighty uprising of intellectual and spiritual forces which changed the course of history. About the same time, a poor monk in an Augustinian ~ THE BOOK OF BOOKS 19 convent found, in the library, ‘‘ a copy of the New Testament lying dusty on the shelves. He studied it, digested it, discov- ered the extraordinary contrast between the Christianity which was taught in the Gospels and Epistles and the Christianity of the monasteries.’’ The Course of History Changed The book made Luther a new man and sent him out to make a new world. ‘‘ Sud- denly,’’ says Froude, ‘‘ as a bolt out of the blue, there came a flash of lightning, which set the world on fire. A figure now steps out upon the scene which has made a deeper mark on the history of mankind than any one individual man has ever left, except Mahomet.’’ With the Bible for a torch, Luther set the world on fire and burned up much of its dross and super- stition. The New Testament of Erasmus and the Gospel preaching of Luther set in motion spiritual forces that no human power could stay or control. In the height of this upheaval, Luther resolved to trans- late the Bible into the common tongue of Germany, so that all his countrymen might read it for themselves. Froude says: 20 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE ‘* The names of Luther and Erasmus were about to be coupled closer than ever by their joint service to mankind. Hrasmus had edited the Greek New Testament and made a new translation. Luther, in the castle of Wartburg, was translating it into vernacular German, with the Old Testa- ment to follow. Together, these two men. had made accessible the rock stronger than the rock of Peter, on which the faith of mankind was to be rebuilt.’’ Such is the verdict of the historian on the effect of the rediscovery of the Bible. No other book has ever so completely changed the course of human destiny. In light and power the Bible stands by itself. ‘It bor- rows from none and gives to all. Where it shines, life and beauty spring to birth. It is the supreme book of power. IT THE BIBLE AS A MEANS OF CULTURE who died recently, was assistant editor of The Outlook. Three of his books—Books and Culture, Essays on Nature and Culture, and Shakespeare, Poet, Dramatist, and Man—are among my leading favorites. I would rather go barefoot for a week than part with any of them, for they are among the most illuminating books on life and literature that I have read. Others of his are: My Study Fire (two series), Under the Trees and Elsewhere, Short Studies in Litera- ture, and Essays in Literary Interpreta- tion. In a chapter—‘‘ The Books of Life’’—he says: ‘‘The books of power, as distinguished from the books of knowl- edge, include the original, creative, first- hand books in all lteratures, and consti- 21 2 ees WRIGHT MABIR, 22 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE tute, in the last analysis, a comparatively small group, with which any student can thoroughly familiarize himself. . . . If it be true, as many believe, that the funda- mental process of the universe, so far as we can understand it, is not intellectual but vital, it follows that the deepest things which men have learned have come to them not as the result of processes of thought, but as the result of the process of living. . . . Every leading race has its characteristic thought concerning its own nature, its relation to the world, and the character and quality of life. These vari- ous fundamental conceptions have shaped all definite thinking, and have very largely moulded race character, and, therefore, determined race destiny. _ Hebrew, Greek, and Roman ‘“‘The Hebrew, the Greek, and the Roman conceptions of life constitute not only the key to the diverse histories of the leaders of ancient civilization, but also their most vital contribution to civil- ization. These conceptions were not defi- nitely thought out; they were worked out. They were the result of the contact of A MEANS OF CULTURE 23 these different peoples with Nature, with the circumstances of their own time, and with those universal experiences which fall to the lot of all men, and which are, in the long run, the prime sources and in- struments of human education. The man who would get the ripest enitaye from books ought to read many, but there are a few books which he must read; among them, first and foremost, are the Bible, and the works of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe. These are the supreme books of life as distinguished from the books of knowledge and skill. They hold their places because they com- bine in the highest degree vitality, truth, power, and beauty. They are the central reservoirs into which the rivulets of indi- vidual experience over a vast surface have been gathered; they are the most com- plete revelations of what life has brought and has been to the leading races; they bring us into contact with the heart and soul of humanity. They not only convey information, and, rightly used, impart discipline, but they transmit life. There is a vitality in them which passes on into the nature which is open to receive it. 24 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE They have again and again inspired intel- lectual movements on a wide scale, as they are constantly recreating individual ideals and aims. Agreement About the Infe-giving Power of the Bible ‘‘Whatever view may be held of the. authority of the Bible, it is agreed that its power as literature has been incalculable by reason of the depth of life which it sounds and the range of life which it com- passes. There is power enough in it to revive a decaying age or give a new date and a fresh impulse to a race which has parted with its creative energy. The re- appearance of the New ‘Testament in Greek, after the long reign of the Vulgate, contributed mightily to that renewal and revival of life which we call the Reforma- tion; while its translation into the modern languages liberated a moral and _ intel- lectual force of which no adequate meas- urement can be made. In like manner, though in lesser degree, the Jlad and Odyssey, the Divine Comedy, the plays of Shakespeare, and Faust have set new movements in motion, and have enriched A MEANS OF CULTURE 25 and enlarged the lives of races. With these books of life every man ought to hold the most intimate relationship; they are not to be read once and put on the upper shelves; they are to be always at hand. Whoever knows them in a real sense knows life, humanity, art, and him- self.’ } That is what Mabie, a leading lterary critic of our time, says about the Bible as a means of culture. He places it ‘‘first and foremost’’ amongst the supreme books of the world. ‘‘There is power enough in it to revive a decaying age or give a new date and a fresh impulse to a race which has parted with its creative energy.’’ The England of to-day has parted with its creative moral energy. That is what lies at the root of all our discontent and failure. And every leader of men, whether Conservative, Liberal, or Socialist, knows it in his lucid moments when he sits watching the faces in the hearth fire. The Fallacy of Inevitable Progress The discovery of evolution as a process of nature is responsible, I suppose, for 26 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE the present-day fallacy that human nature must inevitably progress with the cen- turies from lower to higher types of per- sonality and life. It is an application of natural law to the spiritual world which forgets fundamental differences. In the natural world God is not dealing with per- sonality, yet, even there, rivers do not al- » ways take the nearest way to the sea, but sometimes turn back on themselves. In human life, however, personality is the central fact, and the theory of inevitable human progress is, in reality, a denial of personality in man—and, more or less, in God, for it imagines God as a mighty ir- resistible force overriding man’s power of choice, and driving him, willy-nilly, to a predestined end as a river is driven to the sea. If man is a personality, he has the power of choice. If he has the power of choice he may choose either good or evil. If he wishes, he may say to evil, ‘‘Be thou my good,’’ and resist the divine will. Hence the Bible begins with man in a beautiful garden where he possesses everything that heart could wish. In this perfect condition he is tempted of the devil, and he chooses, for the time being A MEANS OF CULTURE 27 at any rate, evil as more to be desired than good. He is a personality, not a ma- chine. The last chapter of the Bible ends on the same note: ‘‘He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is right- eous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.’”? From the beginning of the Bible to the end there is no overriding of the prerogatives of personality. Isaiah, whose religious interpretation of history is unequalled, when asked, ‘‘Watchman, what of the night?’’ replies, ‘‘The morning cometh, and also the night.’’ Day and night al- ternate. There is ebb and flow, progress and ‘‘the putting back of the clock.”’ Jesus declares, in no uncertain voice, that God will ‘‘avenge his own elect.’’ ‘‘Nev- ertheless,’?’ He asks, ‘‘when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?’’ And He leaves the question un- answered. He knows what God will do; but what will man choose to do? In Christ’s picture of the final judgment of the world, men are divided on His right hand and on His left. They are sheep _and goats, righteous and unrighteous, and 28 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE they go different ways to different des- tinies. There is no suggestion here of an ‘‘inevitable progress’’ of humanity. Man is left free to choose, and some prefer darkness to light. The Bible throughout pictures God as wrestling with the soul of man as He wrestled with Jacob. With Jacob God won, but with Judas Jesus lost. — The Rise and Fall of Empires The issues of the future are uncertain. Empires rise and fall. Races progress or deteriorate. The English-speaking race has progressed during the last two. thou- sand years, but the Greeks and Romans have degenerated in the same _ period. And neither the progress of the first nor the degeneracy of the others was inevi- table. It was due to moral causes, and all morality rests on choice. If culture, for such all true progress must be, were a matter of mechanical invention, it would perhaps be safe to prophesy an inevitable development for mankind; but culture is an affair of the spirit. A man is not cul- tured because he rides in a motor car in- stead of on, or behind, a horse. He is simply comfortable. Homer had neither A MEANS OF CULTURE 29 a horse nor a motor car, but he was more cultured than any man of our time. An Atlantic liner is not a sign of the progress of culture, it is merely a sign of the de- velopment of comfort; and comfort is more the result of wealth than of culture. In fact, the men who sailed the Atlantic in the old sailing vessels derived more cul- ture from their voyages than people do to-day who cross over in the Mauretania, for they were brought into contact with the mighty forces of nature. They bat- tled with storms and faced death amid the loneliness of the high seas. Their wrest- ling with nature developed their souls. The modern liner has robbed the sea of its glory and terror, and a voyage to-day enlarges the experience and cultivates the soul as little, almost, as a week spent in a city hotel. It is the fishermen on our coasts who now derive most culture from the sea. A train is not a symbol of cul- ture. It is merely a symbol of luxury and speed. | Culture: Ancient and Modern The ancient Greeks had no trains, tele- phones, steamships, motor cars, or aero- 30 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE planes, but where to-day is there a race so cultured? The modern Greeks with all their trains and motor cars are not worthy to carry the sandals of the Greeks who chiselled La Venus de Milo and wrote the Odyssey. Sir Walter Scott never saw a typewriter, nor Burns a motor car, but where are the Scotsmen of: to-day who have reached the same degree of culture? Dante, St. Francis of Assisi, Raphael, and Michael Angelo never heard of a train or aeroplane, but where to-day are their equals in the art of living? With all our material inventions, can we write poetry like Shakespeare, paint pic- tures like Rembrandt, or chisel like the ancient Greeks? Our inventions pamper the body, but do they enlarge the mind and elevate the spirit? Are our souls greater than the souls which lived cen- turies ago? England is infinitely richer in material wealth than in the days of old, but is it richer in spirit than when Crom- well, Milton, and Bunyan were alive; or when Shakespeare, Raleigh, Drake, and Spenser breathed English air? It is folly to suppose, merely because we can all read and write in these days, that we are — A MEANS OF CULTURE 31 more cultured than in the days of Shake- speare, and have made progress. Read- ing and writing are nothing in themselves. The question is: What do we read and what do we write? The culture of the average man in Shakespeare’s time is in- dicated by the fact that Shakespeare’s great plays were written to meet the needs of his time, as our plays are written to meet the needs of our time. Shake- speare seems to have thought far less about publication than our modern play- wrights, and to have troubled himself less about giving posterity a chance to read his works—the sonnets apart. Running Away From LInfe The Elizabethans sought experience. We try to escape experience. We have drugs for the body and cinemas and light novels for the mind. The majority of the people in Milton’s days fed themselves on the Bible—the greatest literature in the world. The majority of the people to-day feed themselves on newspapers, maga- zines, and poor fiction. Our fathers won for us freedom of speech, and we have no use for our liberty—no great convictions 32. THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE to utter. They won for us the right to worship God according to our own con- science, and the right is of no value to us, because, except for a minority, we have no desire to worship God either in one way or in another. Our fathers won for us civil rights and liberties, and forty out of every hundred of us do not even. trouble to vote. Whether the white races will progress or degenerate depends on individual and national choice. Neither progress nor decay is inevitable. That we still have the capacity for greatness was shown not by the War but in the War. The fine qualities revealed. during that terrible struggle, rightly guided and fostered, may lead on to an age more glorious than any in the past. To pro- gress we must dare to live. We must stand up to life. We must seek, and not shun, experience. We must read, and live in the spirit of great books; for they hold all that was most vital in the great days of old. And of all great books, the com- mon sense of mankind has declared the Bible to be the supreme guide in the art of living. Til THE CREATIVE POWER OF THE BIBLE quoted Hamilton Wright Mabie’s judgment of the Bible, that ‘‘there is power enough in it to revive a decaying age or give a new date and a fresh im- pulse to a race which has parted with its creative energy.’’ That this is not an ex- aggeration I want to prove from the his- tory of England. The Bible actually did, three hundred years ago, ‘‘revive a decay- ing age and give a new date and a fresh impulse to our race when it had parted with its creative energy.’’ Buy John Richard Green’s. standard work, the Short History of the English People. On the first page of the second half this is what you read: ‘‘No greater moral change ever passed over a nation than passed over England during the years 33 ew in the previous chapter, 34 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE which parted the middle of the reign of Hlizabeth from the meeting of the Long Parliament. England became the people of a ‘book, and that book was the Bible. It was as yet the one English book which was familiar to every Englishman: it was read at churches and read at home, and everywhere its words, as they fell on ears which custom had not deadened to their force and beauty, kindled a startling en- thusiasm. When Bishop Bonner set up the first six Bibles in St. Paul’s ‘many well-disposed people used much to resort to the hearing thereof, especially when they could get any that had an. audible voice to read to them. One John Porter used sometimes to be occupied in that goodly exercise to the edifying of himself as well as others. This Porter was a fresh young man and of a big stature; and great multitudes would resort thither to hear him, because he could read well and had an audible voice.’ Popularity of the Bible ‘‘The popularity of the Bible was owing to other causes besides that of religion. . The whole prose literature of HKngland, CREATIVE POWER 35 save the forgotten tracts of Wyclif, has grown up since the translation of the Scriptures by Tyndale and Coverdale. No history, no romance, no poetry, save the little known verse of Chaucer, existed for any practieal purpose in the English tongue when the Bible was ordered to be set up in churches. Sunday after Sun- day, day after day, the crowds that gath- ered round Bonner’s Bibles in the nave of St. Paul’s, or the family group that hung on the words of the Geneva Bible in the devotional exercises at home, were leavened with a new literature. Legends and annals, war song and psalm, State rolls and biographies, the mighty voices of prophets, the parables of evangelists, stories of mission journeys, of perils by the sea, and among the heathen, philoso- phic arguments, apocalyptic visions—all were flung broadcast over minds unoccu- pied for the most part by any rival learn- ing. The disclosure of the stories of Greek literature had wrought the revolu- tion of the Renaissance. The disclosure of the older mass of Hebrew literature wrought the revolution of the Reforma- tion. But the one revolution was far 36 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE deeper and wider in its effects than the other. No version could transfer to an- other tongue the peculiar charm of lan- guage which gave their value to the au- thors of Greece and Rome. : “The Noblest Example of the English Tongue”’ ‘‘Classical letters, therefore, remained in the possession of the learned, that is of the few; and among these, with the ex- ception of Colet and More, or of the pedants. who revived a Pagan worship in the gardens of the Florentine Academy, their direct influence was purely intel- lectual. But the tongue of the Hebrew, the idiom of Hellenistic Greek, lent them- selves with a curious felicity to the pur- poses of translation. As a mere literary monument, the English version of the Bible remains the noblest example of the English tongue. Its perpetual use made it from the instant of its appearance the standard of our language. But for the moment its literary effect was less than its social. The power of the book over the mass of Englishmen showed itself in a thousand superficial ways, and in none CREATIVE POWER 3t more conspicuously than in the influence it exerted on ordinary speech. The mass of picturesque allusion and _ illustration which we borrow from a thousand books our fathers were forced to borrow from one; and the borrowing was the easier and the more natural that the range of the He- brew literature fitted it for the expression of every phase of feeling. When Spenser poured forth his warmest love notes in the Eypithalamion, he adopted the very words of the Psalmist as he bade the gates open for the entrance of his bride. Cromwell’s Battle Cry ‘“When Cromwell saw the mists break over the hills of Dunbar, he hailed the sunburst with the ery of David: ‘Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered. Like as the sun riseth, so shalt thou drive them away.’ Even to common minds this familiarity with grand poetic imagery in prophet and apocalypse gave a loftiness and ardor of expression, that with all its tendency to exaggeration and bombast we may prefer to the slipshod vulgarisms of the shopkeeper of to-day. , “*But far greater than its effect on 38 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE literature or social phrase was the effect of the Bible on the character of the peo- ple at large. Elizabeth might silence or tune the pulpits; but it was impossible for her to silence or tune the great preachers of justice, and mercy, and truth, who spoke from the book which she had again opened for her people. The whole moral effect which is produced nowadays by the religious newspaper, the tract, the essay, the lecture, the missionary report, the ser- mon, was then produced by the Bible alone. And its effect in this way, however dispassionately we examine it, was simply amazing. ‘he whole temper of the nation was changed. The First Democracy ‘“A new conception of life and of man superseded the old. A new moral and religious impulse spread through every class. Literature reflected the general tendency of the time. ‘Theology rules there,’ said Grotius of England. The study of the country gentleman pointed towards theology as much as the scholar. The whole nation became, in fact, a Church. We must not, indeed, picture the CREATIVE POWER 39 early Puritan as a gloomy fanatic. The lighter and more elegant sides of the Elizabethan culture harmonized _ well enough with the temper of the Puritan gentleman. Serious as was his temper in graver matters, the young squire was fond of hawking, and piqued himself on his skill in dancing and fence. If he was ‘diligent in his examination of the Scrip- tures,’ he ‘had a great love for music, and often diverted himself with the viol.’ A taste for music, indeed, seems to have been common in the graver homes of the time. ‘‘Their common call, their common brotherhood in Christ, annihilated in the mind of the Puritans that overpowering sense of social distinctions which charac- terized the age of Elizabeth. The mean- est peasant felt himself ennobled as a child of God. The proudest noble recog- nized a spiritual equality in the poorest saint.’’ The Secret of Greatness Mr. J. L. Paton, a well-known educa- tionalist, says: ‘‘If men read trash they 40 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE think trash, and if they think trash they become trash.’’?’ The English people in the reign of Elizabeth did not read trash. They read a great book—the book. There- fore, they thought great thoughts and be- came a great people. The rise of the English dates from that period. As coal feeds a fire the Bible has fed the spirit of - our race. The foundations of the United States were laid by Bible readers—the Pilgrim Fathers. And to-day there is a British Commonwealth of Nations and a great English-speaking Republic, which, together, dominate the world. How? By the sword? No! By cleverness? No! They dominate by the force of character, and their character has been built up by three centuries of close communion with the great thoughts and principles of the Bible. The civilization and Christianiza- tion of the world depend to-day upon America and the British Commonwealth of Nations—English-speaking peoples who have risen to greatness through contact with the mighty spirit which surges through the Bible. CREATIVE POWER 41 The Fall of Germany We have seen the German nation rise to greatness through the Bible-teaching of the Reformation, and then fall into ruin by turning away from the Bible to Nietzsche and accepting ‘‘Darwin’s science of the animal efficient in its own interest’’ as ‘‘the science of civilization itself.’? Nietzsche parodied the Sermon on the Mount, and taught its opposite. To quote Benjamin Kidd, ‘‘ Nietzsche gave Germany the doctrine of Darwin’s efficient animal in the voice of his super- man. Bernhardi and the military text- books in due time gave Germany the doc- trine of the superman translated into the national policy of the superstate aiming at world power.’’ The religious interpre- tation of history as contained in the Bible was rejected, and Darwin’s scientific in- terpretation of the history of animal life was applied to the things of the soul. In- stead of walking humbly with their God as the Bible teaches, the Germans loved to shout: ‘‘Life exists for Me. All the dim eons behind have toiled to produce Me. I am the Fittest. Give Me My Rights. 42 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE Stand clear of My way. I want and I will have.’’? Like Nebuchadnezzar, they lifted up their pride to the heavens and fell into the abyss. For nations, as for individ- uals, there is only one absolutely safe guide-book here below, and that is the Bible. I am convinced that the rise of the English was due to the regenerating | power of the Bible, which they read and absorbed; that there will be no racial de- cay while we give it the place in our lives which our fathers gave it, but that any serious decline in Bible reading and the influence of Bible principles will be fol- lowed by the decline and fall of the Eng- lish-speaking peoples. IV THE INSPIRING EFFECT OF THE BIBLE ON ENGLISH LITERATURE ‘T= Bible has done more to create Kinglish literature than any other book. Before it was translated into English, England had practically no prose writings and little poetry. After it, came Shakespeare (who alludes to it con- stantly), John Milton, John Bunyan, and a host of others. Its influence is directly visible in nearly all our great writers down to the present day. It is acknowl- edged by all literary men to be ‘‘the well of English undefiled.’’ It is the standard of English speech and writing; and the book, above all others, in which a youth ought to steep himself if he ever wishes to write the best English. It created in England that great spirit among the peo- ple out of which great literature has its rise. For supreme writers like Shake- 43 44 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE speare are not isolated from their fellows, but are the fine flower and most perfect expression of the spirit of their age. Why Men Are Great They stand on the shoulders of their countrymen, and are great because their age is great, and pours its spirit through them. We see the same law at work in the rise of Greek literature and art, and in the development of the great painting age in Italy. The Bible created a new spirit in England. Froude, the historian, attributes the greatness of the sailors in the time of Drake and the Armada to the fact that they were mostly Protestants brought up on the Bible. And historians are agreed that the greatness of Crom- well’s soldiers was due to the religious convictions and increased sense of per- sonal worth inspired in them by the Bible. Great thoughts and great acts alike spring from a great spirit, and this great spirit came through the nation’s vital contact with the Bible. The uplifting influence of the Bible was perhaps most marked in Milton’s time, for the whole nation was feeding its soul on it. And this is what EFFECT ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 45 he says of the spirit of the age in his Areopagitica: ‘‘ Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing her- self like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam: purging and un- scaling her long-abused sight at the foun- tain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twi- light, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms. What should ye do, then? Should ye sup- press all this flowery crop of knowledge and new light sprung up, and yet spring- ing daily, in this city? Should ye set an oligarchy of twenty engrossers over it, to bring a famine upon our minds again, when we shall know nothing but what is measured to us by their bushel?’’ The New Light Such was the light and new spirit that the Bible had brought to England. It was the translation of the Bible that ‘‘roused 46 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE the strong man after sleep.’’ It was in the truths the Bible had brought to light that the eagle was ‘‘kindling her un- dazzled eyes, and purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain it- self of heavenly radiance.’’ There is no Milton in the land to-day, because there is no light and spirit in the nation such as he describes, and great poets can live only in great communities. It was the newly translated Bible that made the England of Milton great. Speaking of England, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, Professor of English Literature at Cambridge, says: ‘‘For three centuries or so it has held rule over vast stretches of the earth’s sur- face and many millions of strange peo- ples.’’ ‘‘For three centuries or so!’’ What Happened Three Centuries Ago What happened ‘‘three centuries or so’? ago? This: In 1535 ‘‘there appeared the first copy of the English Bible.’”’ (1 am quoting from Froude’s History of England.) ‘‘In this act was laid the foundation-stone on which the whole later history of England, civil as well as ecclesi- astical, has been reared; and the most — EFFECT ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 47 minute incidents became interesting, con- nected with an event of so mighty mo- ment.’’ That was 388 years ago, when Shakespeare was 29. Fifty years later (from 1583 to 1603, especially) the Bible was spreading into every home, and crowds were gathering in St. Paul’s to hear it read. In 1611 the Authorized Ver- sion of the Bible was issued. That is a little over three hundred years ago. In 1599 Cromwell was born; Milton in 1608; and Bunyan in 1628. All three were born and nurtured in an England filled with the light and fire of the Bible, and they be- eame the very expression of the spirit of their time. Milton’s mind was dyed through with the Bible, as we see in Paradise Lost and in all his prose works. He is the organ voice of England, and stands but a little below Shakespeare. Wordsworth says of him: Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour; England hath need of thee. . Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart; Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea; Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life’s common way In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay. 48 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE That was the kind of poet a Bible-loving age produced. Poetry—and Faith But what poet can this secularistic half-believing age produce? Milton is su- preme in the English language as a writer of the sublime style; and Bunyan, who be- | longed to the same age, is supreme in the simple style. And both are the children of the revolution produced by the transla- tion of the Bible. Quiller-Couch, in On the Art of Reading, says: ‘‘ Masterpieces will serve us as prophylactics of taste, even from childhood; and will help us, further, to interpret the common mind of civilization. But they have a third and yet nobler use. They teach us to lift our own souls. . « . The real battle for Kinglish lies in our elementary schools, and in the learning of our elementary teachers. It is there that the foundation of a sound national teaching in English will have to be laid, as it is there that a wrong trend will lead to incurable issues. For the poor child has no choice of schools.’’ The Bible as the masterpiece of the English language should be taught EFFECT ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 49 to every child; for, to quote again John Richard Green, ‘‘The English Version of the Bible remains the noblest example of the English tongue—the standard of our language.’’ Vv BUNYAN AND THE BIBLE OCKHART, in his biography of Sir Walter Scott, tells how in his last hours he ‘‘desired to be drawn into the library, and placed by the central window, that he might look upon the Tweed. Here he expressed a wish that I should read to him, and when I asked from what book, he said: ‘Need you ask? There is but one.’’’ What Sir Walter Scott did not know about literature was not worth knowing; and his last testimony was that there is but one supreme book, and that is the Bible. Out of that book has come most of our great H!nglish litera- ture. If we had never known the Bible, our literature would have been of an en- tirely different kind. Perhaps its direct effect is most marked in Bunyan. The Bible dyed Milton’s mind through and through, as his works show, but the clas- 50 BUNYAN AND THE BIBLE 51 sics of Rome and Greece mixed their col- ors with it. But Bunyan was a poor tinker, and knew no other book. He was literally ‘‘a man of one book.’’ But this book was a library in itself, and made him the greatest writer of simple English in our language. Robert Blatchford, the ag- nostic, is one of the best writers of simple English in our own time, and it was his style that made him such a power in the land twenty years ago. Had his matter been equal to his style, he would have re- tained his influence, and become one of the immortals; but he was handicapped in youth, and had little chance to study deeply until he left the army. Where Men Learn to Write Where did he get his style? Was it from the Rationalist Press? No, no one ever got it there. He got it where all must get it who wish to write sweet, simple, beautiful, nervous English. He got it from John Bunyan, the Bible, and the Church of England Prayer Book. The Litany in the Prayer Book especially ap- peals to him—as it must to all who have any taste at all in English—and he places 52 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE ‘‘ Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solo- mon,’’ from the Bible, among his favorite ‘‘bed books.’’ But it is Bunyan who, more than anyone else, has given him his sim- ple and limpid style. He says, in My Favorite Books, ‘‘I fear I cannot ap- proach the Pilgrim’s Progress with the same critical calm with which J ap- | proached Urn Burial. I was turned of forty years, and somewhat of a writer and student myself, when Sir Thomas Browne was introduced to me, but Bunyan was the friend and teacher of my childhood; the Pilgrim’s Progress was my first book. It was for me one of the books to be ‘chewed and digested,’ and in my tenth year 8 knew it almost all by heart. ‘‘T used at times, when the baby was restless, to ride it upon my knee, and re- cite to it passages out of Bunyan, or sing to it the verses—they are but feeble poetry—from that wonderful book, to tunes of my own composing. ‘‘Criticism of Bunyan’s work is rete me. I might as well try to criticize the Lord’s Prayer, or ‘The House that Jack Built,’ or ‘Annie Laurie.’ Bunyan’s Eng- lish is tinker’s, and soldier’s, and preach- BUNYAN AND THE BIBLE 53 er’s English. It is the English of the Bible, of the Ironsides, and of the village green. Therefore, all who write for the people shall do well to study Bunyan.”’ Lord Macaulay on Bunyan In this Blatchford had practised what he preached. Macaulay, in his essay on Bunyan, says: ‘‘ We are not afraid to say, that though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, there were only two minds (both Puritans) which possessed the imaginative faculty in a very eminent degree. One of these minds produced the Paradise Lost, the other the Pilgrim’s Progress. The style of Bunyan is delight- ful to every reader, and invaluable as a study to every person who wishes to ob- tain a wide command over the English lan- guage. The vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. . . . Yet no writer has said more exactly what he meant to say. For magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for sub- tle disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the orator, and the divine, this homely dialect, the dialect of plain work- 54 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE ing men, was perfectly sufficient. There is no book in our literature on which we would so readily stake the fame of the old unpolluted English language, no book which shows so well how rich that lan- guage is in its own proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed.’’ Dr. Johnson and Rob- — ert Louis Stevenson had like praise for Bunyan. Where Bunyan Got His Style Now where did Bunyan get his wonder- ful style? How came an illiterate tinker of three hundred years ago to write an — English masterpiece that has been ‘trans- lated into nearly every language in the world? I have no hesitation in saying that, but for the English Version of the Bible, Bunyan would never have written a single word in our literature. Bunyan says, in Grace Abounding: ‘‘I fell into company with one poor man, who, as [ thought, did talk pleasantly of the Scrip- tures and of Religion; wherefore, liking what he said, I betook me to my Bible, and began to take great pleasure in reading, especially with the historical part thereof; BUNYAN AND THE BIBLE 55 for as for Paul’s Epistles and such-like scriptures, I could not away with them.”’ A few pages further on he says—and the change in taste is instructive—‘‘And now I began to look into the Bible with new eyes; and especially the Epistles of the Apostle St. Paul were sweet and pleasant to me.’’ It was this reading that made Bunyan an author. He himself says: ‘‘My Bible and Concordance are my only library in my writings.”’ Green and Hallam on Bunyan’s Bible | English Green, in his Short History of England, says of Pilgrim’s Progess: ‘‘In no book do we see more clearly the new imagina- tive force which had been given to the common life of Englishmen by their study of the Bible. Its English is the simplest and homeliest English which has ever been used by any great English writer; but it is the English of the Bible. So completely has the Bible become Bunyan’s life, that one feels its phrases as the natural ex- pression of his thoughts. He has lived in the Bible till its words have become his own.’’ Hallam, another historian, says: 56 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE ‘“‘There is scarcely a circumstance or metaphor in the Old Testament which does not find a place bodily and literally in the Pilgrim’s Progress, and this has made Bunyan’s imagination appear more creative than it really is.’’ Coleridge said that the Pilgrim’s Progress was ‘‘incom- parably the best compendium of Gospel truth ever produced by a writer not mi- — raculously inspired.’? ‘The Bible made Bunyan; and it has moulded all literature since his time. It is the voice of God Who at sundry times, in manners many Spake to the fathers, and is speaking still. VI HEINE AND THE BIBLE EINE was a philosopher of such H originality of thought and out- spokenness of speech that almost all his writings were mutilated by the Ger- man censor. He was also ‘‘the first in rank and the last in time of the Romantic poets of Germany.’’ In the Preface to the second edition of Religion and Philosophy in Germany, one of his most important works, he says: ‘‘At that time (when the book was first published) I was yet well and hearty; I was in the zenith of my prime, and as arrogant as Nebuchadnezzar before his downfall. Alas! a few years later, a physical and spiritual change oc- eurred. How often since then have I mused over the history of that Babylonian king who thought himself a god, but who was miserably hurled from the summit of his self-conceit, and compelled to crawl on 57 58 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE the earth like a beast, and to eat grass (probably it was only salad). This legend is contained in the grand and magnificent Book of Daniel; and I recommend all god- less, self-worshippers to lay it devoutly to heart. There are, in fact, in the Bible many other beautiful and wonderful nar- rations, well deserving their considera- tion; for instance, the story of the forbid- den fruit in Paradise, and the serpent which already six thousand years before Hegel’s birth promulgated the whole Hegelian philosophy. The ‘‘Plain Old Book’’ ‘‘T owe my enlightenment simply to the reading of a book! One book! Yes, it is a plain old book, as modest as nature, and as simple; a book that appears as work- day-like and as unpretentious as the sun that warms, as the bread that nourishes us; a book that looks on us as kindly and benignly as an old grandmother, who, with her dear tremulous lips, and spectacles on nose, reads in it daily: this book is briefly called the book—the Bible. With good reason it is also called the Holy Scrip- tures: he that has lost his God can find HEINE AND THE BIBLE 59 Him again in this book, and towards him who has never known Him it wafts the breath of the divine word. The Jews who are connoisseurs of precious things, well knew what they were about when, at the - burning of the second temple, they left in the lurch the gold and silver sacrificial vessels, the candlesticks and lamps, and even the richly jewelled breast-plate of the high-priest, to rescue only the Bible.’’ Later, Heine calls the Bible, ‘‘this holiest book of humanity.’’ From 1848 to his death in 1856 Heine was the victim of a painful paralysis which kept him to his ‘‘mattress-grave.’’ ‘‘ He lay,’’ says an English visitor in 1855, ‘‘on a pile of mat- tresses, his body wasted so that it seemed no bigger than a child under the sheet which covered him—his eyes closed, and the face altogether like the most painful and wasted ‘Ecce Homo’ ever painted by some old German painter.’’ In these pain- ful circumstances he wrote: ‘‘Alas! fame once sweet as sugared pineapple and flat- tery, has for a long time been nauseous te me; it tastes as bitter to me now as worm- wood. What does it avail me that at ban- quets my health is pledged in the choicest 60 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE wines and drunk from golden goblets, when I, myself, severed from all that makes life pleasant, may only wet my lips with an insipid potion? What does it avail me that enthusiastic youths and maidens crown my marble bust with laurel-wreaths, if meanwhile the shriv- elled fingers of an aged nurse press a blis- ter of Spanish flies behind the ears of my actual body? “The Aristophanes of Heaven’’ ‘‘Alas! the irony of God weighs heavily upon me! the great Author of the uni- verse, the Aristophanes of Heaven, wished to show the petty, earthly, so-called Ger- man Aristophanes that his mightiest sar- casms are but feeble banter compared with His, and how immeasurably he excels me in humor and in colossal wit.’’? He had at this time been kept to his bed for six years. ‘‘He went out for the last time,’’ says Havelock Ellis, ‘‘in May, 1848. Half blind and half lame, he slowly made his way out of the streets, filled with the noise of revolution, into the silent Louvre, to the shrine dedicated to ‘the goddess of beauty, our dear lady of Milo.’ There he sat long HEINE AND THE BIBLE 61 at her feet; he was bidding farewell to his old gods; he had become reconciled to the religion of sorrow; tears streamed from his eyes, and she looked down at him, com- passionate but helpless: ‘Dost thou not see, then, that I have no arms, and cannot help thee?’ ’’ During the weary years that followed he seems to have drawn real com- fort from the Bible, for, five years after his pathetic farewell to La Venus de Milo, he writes from his ‘‘mattress-grave’’: ‘“You see that I, who in the past was wont to quote Homer, now quote the Bible, like Uncle Tom. In truth I owe it much. It again awoke in me the religious feeling; and this new birth of religious emotion suffices for the poet, for he can dispense far more easily than other mortals with positive religious dogmas. The Failure of Philosophies ‘‘It is strange! during my whole life I have been strolling through the various festive halls of philosophy, I have partici- pated in all the orgies of the intellect, I have coquetted with every possible sys- tem, without being satisfied; and now, after all this, I suddenly find myself on 62 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE the same platform whereon stands Uncle Tom. That platform is the Bible, and I kneel by the side of my dusky brother in faith with the same devotion. What hu- miliation! With all my learning, I have got no farther than the poor ignorant negro who can hardly spell! It is even true that poor Uncle Tom appears to see in the holy book more profound things than I, who am not yet quite clear, espe- cially in regard to the second part.’’ Later on, in his Confessions, Heine says: ‘*At an earlier period when philosophy possessed for me a paramount interest, I prized Protestantism only for its services in winning freedom of thought. Now, in my later and more mature days, when the religious feeling again surges up in me, and the shipwrecked metaphysician clings fast to the Bible—now I chiefly honor Protestantism for its services in the dis- covery and propagation of the Bible. The Jews rescued the Bible from the bank- ruptey of the Roman empire, and pre- served the precious volume intact during all the tumults of the migration of races, until Protestantism came to seek it and translated it into the language of the land © HEINE AND THE BIBLE 63 and spread it broadcast over the whole world. ‘““The Kingdom of the Syrit’’ ‘‘This extensive circulation of the Bible has produced the most beneficent fruits, and continues to do so to this very day. While by tricks of trade, smug- gling, and commerce the British gain foot- holds in many lands, with them they bring the Bible, that grand democracy wherein each man shall not only be king in his own house, but also bishop. They are demand- ing, they are founding, the great kingdom of the spirit, the kingdom of the religious emotions, and the love of humanity, of purity, of true morality, which cannot be taught by dogmatic formulas, but by par- able and example, such as are contained in that beautiful, sacred, educational book for young and old—the Bible.’’ Vil | THE BIBLE AND LITERARY STYLE KINE, in his Religion and Philoso- | H phy of Germany, says: “‘I have said that we gained freedom of thought through Luther. But he gave us not only freedom of movement, but also the means of movement; to the thought he gave words. He created the German lan- guage. This he did by his translation of the Bible. In fact, the Divine author of that book seems to have known, as well as we others, that the choice of a translator is by no means a matter of indifference; and so He Himself selected His translator, and bestowed on him the wonderful gift to translate from a language which was dead and already buried, into another lan- guage that as yet did not exist. Luther’s Bible is an enduring spring of rejuvena- tion for our language. All the expres- sions and phrases contained therein are 64 THE BIBLE AND LITERARY STYLE 65 German, and are still in use by writers. As this book is in the hands of even the poorest people, they require no special learned education in order to be able to express themselves in literary forms.’’ It has been the work of the Bible to do for many races what it has done for the Ger- mans. Wherever the missionary goes he translates the Bible into the native lan- guage, and often it is the first book the race possesses in its own tongue. It thus becomes the standard of the language. When the book is printed the missionary teaches the people to read it, and the edu- cation of the race begins. The Bible a Portable University The Bible is to them a portable univer- sity. Later on, as a result of this educa- tion by the Bible, schools and colleges will be built, and a national literature will slowly come into existence. What Luther did for Germany by means of the Bible, the missionaries of to-day are doing for native races in all the lands where they labor. What happened in Germany, hap- pened also in England. The historian, J. R. Green, says: ‘‘As a mere literary 66 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE monument, the English Version of the Bible remains the noblest example of the English tongue. Its perpetual use made it from the instant of its appearance the standard of our language.’’ Heine’s de- scription of the effect of Luther’s Bible on the German language may be used, without the alteration of a word, to de- scribe the effect of the English Bible on- the English language. For centuries the Bible was the only school the working peo- ple of England possessed. Its influence alone made Bunyan, the Bedford tinker, a master in English literature. And to it, as ‘‘the noblest example of the English tongue’’ our poets and writers have ever turned. The works of all our greatest writers, from Spenser to the present day, bear its imprint, as all who know the Bible may see for themselves. Burns declared that he never heard the words ‘‘Let us worship God’’ without a feeling of awe overtaking him, for they reminded him of the daily act of worship conducted by his father in the home. In The Cotter’s Saturday Night he describes a_ scene which took place regularly in his own cot- THE BIBLE AND LITERARY STYLE 67 tage and in scores of thousands through- out Seotland and England. The cheerfu’ supper done, wi’ serious face, They, round the ingle, form a circle wide; The sire turns o’er, wi’ patriarchal grace, The big ha’ Bible, once his father’s pride: His bonnet rev’rently is laid aside, His lyart haffets wearing thin an’ bare: Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, He wales a portion with judicious care; And “‘ Let us worship God! ” he says with solemn air. The priest-like father reads the sacred page, How Abram was the friend of God on high; Or, Moses bade eternal warfare wage, With Amalek’s ungracious progeny! Or how the royal bard did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heaven’s avenging ire; Or, Job’s pathetic plaint, and wailing ery; Or rapt Isaiah’s wild, seraphic fire; Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre. Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme, How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed; How He, who bore in Heaven the second name, Had not on earth whereon to lay His head; How His first followers and servants sped, The precepts sage they wrote to many a land; How he, who lone in Patmos banishéd, Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand; And heard great Bab’lon’s doom pronounced by Heaven’s command. The Bible the Nursing Mother of Poets Were it not that the minds of the Scot- tish peasants, generation after generation, had been saturated with the Bible—‘‘the 68 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE standard of our language,’’ it may well be doubted whether Burns would have found it possible to express the poetry that was in him. But, ‘‘as this book,’’ again to quote Heine, ‘‘is in the hands of even the poorest people, they require no special learned education in order to be able to express themselves in literary forms.’’ It is true that, since the days of Knox, Scot- land has had a superior educational sys- tem and that all her sons have been given a chance to enter on the path of learning; but, as the educational system sprang from the Reformation, so the Reformation sprang from the re-discovery and DEEP Sg gation of the Bible. The Bible, as the nursing mother of poets, is clearly seen in the life of James Hogg. Rowland EK. Prothero says, in The Psalms in Human Infe: ‘‘On the Psalms, as his mother repeated them to him in the metrical version of Scotland, James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, nursed his childish imagination, and mingled with them her tales of giants, kelpies, brownies, and other aerial creations of the fairy world. Before he knew his letters he could say Psalm 122, and, as he grew older, he THE BIBLE AND LITERARY STYLE 69 learned by heart the greater part of the Psalter. The Bible was, in fact, the herd- boy’s only book.’’ The writer says: ‘‘Of Walter Scott’s familiarity with the Psalms his novels give abundant evidence, and scraps of the Psalms were among the last words which his friends could distinguish from his lips.’’ Byron and the Bible That Byron, ‘‘half a Scot by birth,’’ was familiar with the Bible, we see from the Hebrew Melodies written during his honeymoon, and by many passages in his poems. Despite his waywardness, he gained from his nurse a love and knowl- edge of the Bible, which never forsook him. While still a boy, he committed to memory many of the Psalms, the 1st and 23rd among others. Ruskin, who, in his earlier days, took Byron as a master of style, speaks of the Bible, as ‘‘the library of Kurope, for that, observe, is the real meaning, in its first power, of the word Bible. Not book, merely; but ‘Biblio- theca,’ Treasury of Books.’’ In Prae- terita Ruskin tells how his early familiar- ity with the Bible preserved his literary 70 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE taste from deterioration and his style from becoming superficial and formal. He says: ‘‘Walter Scott and Pope’s Homer were reading of my own elec- tion, but my mother forced me, by steady daily toil, to learn long chapters of the Bible by heart; as well as to read it every syllable through, aloud, hard names and all, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, about once a year: and to that discipline—pa- - tient, accurate, and resolute—I owe, not only a knowledge of the book, which I find occasionally serviceable, but much of my general power of taking pains, and the best part of my taste in literature. The Bible, Ruskin’s Standard of Interary Taste : ‘rom Walter Scott’s novels I might easily, as I grew older, have fallen to other people’s novels; and Pope might, perhaps, have led me to take Johnson’s English, or Gibbon’s, as types of language; but, once knowing the 32nd of Deuteronomy, the 119th Psalm, the 15th of 1st Corinthians, the Sermon on the Mount, and most of the Apocalypse, every syllable by heart, and having always a way of thinking with my- THE BIBLE AND LITERARY STYLE 71 self what words meant, it was not possible for me, even in the foolishest times of youth, to write entirely superficial or for- mal HKnglish.’? If a boy wishes to be- come a great writer or orator he cannot do better than follow Ruskin’s example, and commit large portions of the Bible to memory, for the simple and stately lan- guage of the Bible will then become the standard by which, through life, he will test all he reads, writes, or speaks. In Our Fathers Have Told Us Ruskin says: ‘‘Indeed, the Psalter alone, which prac- tically was the service book of the Church for many ages, contains merely in the first half of it the sum of personal and social wisdom. The Ist, 8th, 12th, 14th, 15th, 19th, 23rd, and 24th Psalms, well learned and believed, are enough for all personal guidance; the 48th, 72nd, and 75th, have in them the law and the proph- ecy of all righteous government; and every real triumph of natural science is antici- pated in the 104th. ‘‘Hor the contents of the entire Bible, consider what other group of historic and didactic literature has a range comparable to it. There are: 72 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE 1. The stories of the Fall and of the Flood, the grandest human traditions founded on a true horror of sin. : 2. The story of the Patriarchs, of which the effective truth is visible to this day in the policy of the Jewish and Arab races. 3. The story of Moses, with the results of that tradition in the moral law of all the civilized world. 4. The story of the Kings—virtually that of all Kinghood in David, and of all Philosophy in Solomon!—culminating in the Psalms and Proverbs, with the still more close and practical wisdom of He- clesiasticus and the Son of Sirach. 5. The story of the Prophets—virtually that of the deepest mystery, tragedy, and permanent fate, of national existence. 6. The story of Christ. 7. The moral law of St. John, and his closing Apocalypse of its fulfillment. The Bible Unmatched By Any Other Interature ‘‘Think, if you can match that table of contents in any other—I do not say ‘book’ but ‘literature.’ Think, so far as it is THE BIBLE AND LITERARY STYLE 73 possible for any of us—either adversary or defender of the faith—to extricate his intelligence from the habit and the asso- ciation of moral] sentiment based upon the Bible, what literature could have taken its place, or fulfilled its function, though every library in the world had remained unravaged, and every teacher’s truest words had been written down? ‘‘T am no despiser of profane literature. So far from it, that I believe no interpre- tations of Greek religion have ever been so affectionate, none of Roman religion so reverent, as those which will be found at the base of my art teaching, and current through the entire body of my works. But it was from the Bible that I learned the symbols of Homer, and the faith of Horace.’’ It has been said that ‘‘On the Psalms is founded much of Ruskin’s xs- thetic teaching. The guiding principle of Modern Painters is that glad submission to the Divine law which is the keynote of Psalm 119.’’ Of this Psalm, Ruskin says: ‘‘It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my mother thus taught me, that which cost me most to learn, and 74 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE which was, to my child’s mind, chiefly re- pulsive—the 119th Psalm-—has now be- come of all the most precious to me in its overflowing and glorious passion of love for the law of God.’’ Vill THE AUTHOR’S LAMP AND LIGHT HE Bible, which has given Chris- tian names to hundreds of mil- lions of Western children in the course of the ages, has poured its light through the window of every study in Kurope and America where books have been written. It has been impossible for men to shut out the direct or indirect rays of its light. Even atheists and enemies of the book have been indebted to it, for they have been born into a civilization and lived under a public opinion and code of morals founded upon the Bible. Every book they picked up reflects its light like a diamond. Every institution bears its impress. The Bible has so permeated civ- ilized life that there is no way of escape from its influence. It is as impossible to empty the world of the influence of the Bible as to empty the Atlantic of water. 75 76 THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE As there is no escape from the light of the sun—not even at night, for it is reflected from the moon—so there is no escape from the Bible. Over the portal of every library the words, from Ruskin’s favorite Psalm—‘‘Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path’’—should be engraved; for the books within give out the light they absorbed from the Bible as coals give out the light and warmth they derived from the sun. | Addison’s Lamp To Joseph Addison, the famous essayist of the Spectator papers, the Bible was as a lamp on his study table, and he wrote in its light. In the Spectator of July 26, 1712, he paraphrased the 23rd Psalm, and on August 23rd of the same year he ren- dered the 19th Psalm into a metrical ver- sion. This version, ‘‘The spacious firma- ment on high,’’ has been sung by millions who have never read a page of his famous essays. His version of the 31st Psalm, ‘‘When all thy mercies, O my God,’’ is known to all English-speaking peoples. Cardinal Newman, whose hymns ‘‘Lead, Kindly Light’’ and ‘‘Praise to the Holiest THE AUTHOR’S LAMP AND LIGHT 77 in the Height’’ are sung in all the churches, was one of the supreme masters of the English tongue. His Apologia is a mas- terpiece which all who desire to culti- vate literary taste should read. His familiarity with the Bible is evident in all he writes, and not least in the Dream of Gerontius, wherein he imagines the souls of the departed singing the 90th Psalm. Charles Kings- ley, another master of language, and the antagonist in reply to whom New- man’s Apologia was written, found in the Bible his source of strength. The 76th Psalm, from which John Endicott’s party took the name ‘‘Salem’’ for their first set- tlement in America, was the favorite Psalm of Kingsley and expresses the spirit that breathes through Westward Ho! and his other books. Robert Louis Stevenson, whose position as a ‘‘lord of language’’ is questioned by none, says: ‘ = E 2 ae es Ss & = <= > : z= c iss] o 6s woe . re) 2n ams ew 2 = ~~ ~— o oz wv a ; | n= & re S -3 @ : = = £ Fe = Toa : : N= 2 cor eseer S ae :