THE INDISPENSABLE BOOK 
 
 WALTER W. MOORE 
 
BS 538 .M66 1910 
 
 Moore, Walter W. 1857-1926. 
 
 The indispensable book 
 
APR r'.9. ] 
 
 The Indispensable Book 
 
 By \ 
 
 WALTER W, MOORE 
 
 President of Union Theological Seminary, 
 Richmond, Virginia 
 
 " To ike Bible men will return because they 
 cannot do without it.^' — Matthew Arnold. 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H, Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
Copyright, 1910, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 125 No. Wabash Avenue 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 
 
To my Mother 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 SOME of the matter here presented 
 has been used in informal addresses 
 to young men, and is now published 
 at their request, together with considerable 
 additions. Many striking tributes to the 
 Bible, culled from writers of widely diver- 
 gent views, have been woven into the vari- 
 ous chapters, in the hope that they may 
 be of interest and value more especially to 
 younger readers, who may not have seen 
 them all or who may not have felt the 
 cumulative force of them when arranged 
 as the author has attempted to arrange 
 them here. These citations are so numer- 
 ous and some of them so well worth re- 
 ferring to again and again that, notwith- 
 standing the brevity of the booklet and 
 the simplicity of its plan, it has been 
 thought worth while to provide it with a 
 
 full index. 
 
 7 
 
8 Foreword 
 
 What is said about the Bible in schools is 
 tentative and will doubtiess be wholly un- 
 satisfactory to two quite antipodal parties, 
 but it is given in the hope that it may help 
 to impress upon our people the great im- 
 portance and growing difficulty of this 
 question and may do something towards 
 calling forth a more illuminating discus- 
 sion of it by some more competent writer. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. The Palladium 15 
 
 Mythical story of the founding of Troy. — The 
 heaven-sent image of Pallas on which the 
 safety of the city depended. — Partial parallel 
 in the history of America. — It too was founded 
 with prayer for God's special protection. — 
 John Richard Green's statement of the relig- 
 ious motive which actuated the first settlers 
 of our country. — Their Palladium was not a 
 heaven-born image but a heaven-born book. 
 — If that book is preserved, honoured and 
 obeyed, their work as nation-builders will en- 
 dure. — But if it is ignored, neglected and 
 lost, the republic will perish. — The Bible is 
 the only guarantee of our civilization, charac- 
 ter and culture, our freedom, prosperity and 
 power. — Impressive statement of the fact by 
 Daniel Webster. — Ominous failure of many of 
 our people to recognize the relation of God's 
 word to our national permanence and pros- 
 perity. — Object of this booklet to remind its 
 readers of the indispensableness of the Bible 
 to our best intellectual culture, to the conser- 
 vation of our national ideals, to the mainte- 
 nance of vital morality and benevolence, and 
 to the existence of a true spiritual life. 
 
 II. The Bible and Literary Culture . 19 
 
 The Bible preeminent both as Literature of 
 Knowledge and as Literature of Power. — Un- 
 equalled in its power of inspiring and fertiliz- 
 ing the mind. — Force and melody of the Eng- 
 lish Version. — Its creative influence on the 
 makers of English Literature. — Poets, essay- 
 
 9 
 
J o Contents 
 
 ists, orators, and novelists alike indebted to 
 it: Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, Tennyson, 
 Browning, Macaulay, Stevenson, Hawthorne, 
 Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burke, Webster, 
 Ruskin, Froude, Dickens, Huxley. — Testi- 
 monies to its excellence as a model of style : 
 Edwin Arnold, Hallam, Coleridge, Spofford, 
 Saintsbury, Charles A. Dana, George Henry 
 Lewes, Professor Baldwin, Dr. Osier. — Sena- 
 tor Beveridge on " The Bible as Good Read- 
 ing." — Lord Macaulay on the Bible as show- 
 ing the whole extent of the beauty and 
 power of our language. — Astounding igno- 
 rance of the Bible among college students, as 
 shown by the experiments reported by Presi- 
 dent Thwing, Professor Phelps and others. — 
 This neglect of Scripture an incalculable loss 
 to our intellectual life. — Authors and educa- 
 tors testify that, quite apart from its ethical 
 and religious value, the Bible is indispensable 
 to a true education : Charles Dudley Warner, 
 Dr. A. P. Peabody, Count Tolstoy, President 
 Schurman. — Therefore to shut this Book out 
 of the schools is to perpetrate a fraud upon 
 the intellects of our children. 
 
 III. The Bible and National Ideals . 51 
 
 Justice Brewer on the Bible as the source of 
 American ideals. — God's ideal for Israel : a 
 kingdom of priests and an holy nation. — Not 
 an ideal of military glory or material wealth, 
 but of personal and national righteousness, of 
 spiritual privilege and helpful service to man- 
 kind. — «' All kings and all priests " : the germ 
 of civil and religious liberty. — Oriental idea 
 of government : the people exist for the glory 
 of the ruler. — Our idea of government: the 
 ruler exists for the good of the people. — We 
 learned it from the Bible. — It was this Book 
 which reversed the oriental theory of despot- 
 ism, taught the dignity of man as man, and 
 gave the world the conception of a common- 
 
Contents 1 1 
 
 wealth. — The uplifting Old Testament re- 
 frain about " the people." — No other ancient 
 literature shows such concern for the welfare 
 of the common people and the dignity and 
 rights of the poor. — The form of government 
 first prescribed by Jehovah for Israel was not 
 a monarchy but a republic. — It embodied the 
 essentials of a democratic constitutional gov- 
 ernment : representation, civil equality, and 
 a written constitution to which the whole peo- 
 ple gave their public assent. — The Hebrew 
 commonwealth was the mould of the Amer- 
 ican Republic. — Testimonies to the Bible as 
 the safeguard of popular rights and the public 
 good : Thomas H. Huxley, Andrew Jackson, 
 Ulysses S. Grant, Thomas Carlyle, Queen Vic- 
 toria, Giuseppe Garibaldi. 
 
 IV. The Bible in Morals and Benevo- 
 lence 64 
 
 Testimonies to the power of the moral teachings 
 of the Bible and its effects in human society : 
 Lord Bacon, President Wayland, William J. 
 Bryan, Richard S. Storrs, Charles L. Brace, 
 — The lands in which the Bible is best 
 known and most widely circulated have en- 
 joyed the largest measure of liberty and of 
 public and private morality. — Answer to the 
 objection that it has obstructed the path of 
 pi-ogress, hindered the advance of science and 
 kindled the fires of persecution. — We must 
 distinguish between the characteristic effects 
 of the Bible and the infirmities and faults of 
 the men and organizations which at times have 
 claimed to represent its teachings. — Its results 
 are confessedly incomplete. — Cavillers at de- 
 tails should take a steady look at the broad 
 permanent effects of Christianity in the world. 
 — And picture to themselves the condition of 
 human society if the moral principles of this 
 
12 Contents 
 
 Book were universally practiced. — May not 
 human conduct now be left to go on by itself 
 in moral evolution without any further direct 
 influence of the Bible ? — Prince Bismarck's 
 
 answer The objection that there are many 
 
 good men who do not profess to regulate their 
 conduct by the teachings of Scripture. — Such 
 non-Christian moral men are themselves prod- 
 ucts of Christianity. — But parasites cannot 
 survive the larger organisms on which they de- 
 pend. — Testimonies of Arthur J. Balfour, 
 James Russell Lowell, Thomas Jefferson. 
 
 V. The Bible in the Schools ... 78 
 
 The Book which promotes the best mental cul- 
 ture, the most intelligent citizenship, and the 
 highest moral character cannot be safely shut 
 out of our schemes of education. — Persistent 
 attempts of a minority of our people to exclude 
 it from the schools. — Violation of the McDon- 
 ogh Trust by the city of New Orleans. — 
 Roman Catholic opposition to the use of the 
 Bible in connection with the public schools. — 
 Decision of the supreme court of Illinois. — 
 Lord Macaulay's statement that the chief 
 object of the Church of Rome is to stunt the 
 growth of the human mind. — Some Roman 
 Catholic citizens do not endorse the antagonism 
 of the priests to Bible-teaching. — Jewish oppo- 
 sition to the use of the Bible in the public 
 schools. — Protest of the convention of Ameri- 
 can Rabbis. — Disraeli's statement : all nations 
 that refuse the Cross wither. — Impracticable 
 to exclude the Bible from schools absolutely, 
 because it is interwoven with all our litera- 
 ture. — Refusal of the University of Toronto 
 to exclude it, on the ground that many sub- 
 jects cannot be properly taught without it. — 
 Enormous increase of crime since the expul- 
 sion of the Bible from the schools began. — 
 Testimony of Ambassador Whitelaw Reid, of 
 Judge Grosscup. — Can the Bible be taught in 
 
Contents 13 
 
 connection with the public schools without 
 violating the principle of religious liberty ? — 
 Protestants have the right to say what their 
 children shall be taught, but not to require 
 the attendance of the anti-Biblical minority. — 
 The minority may provide for their children 
 whatever instruction they desire, but they shall 
 not prevent the majority from doing the same 
 for their children. — Views of Professor Huxley. 
 
 VI. The Bible and Spiritual Life . . 99 
 
 Statements of Theodore Parker, Thomas Car- 
 lyle, William E. Gladstone, S. T. Coleridge, 
 and D. L. Moody concerning the relation of 
 the Bible to spiritual life. — Other books have 
 taught many of the virtues enjoined in the 
 Bible, but they have not been able to give 
 spiritual life. — No vital power in mere moral 
 precepts. — The religion of the Bible more 
 than a moral system. — It alone enables men 
 to attain what it has taught them to prize and 
 desire. — It is not a dead book but a living 
 word, operative, inworking, power-producing. 
 — Prof. William James on the common nucleus 
 of all religious creeds. — Its two parts : an un- 
 easiness and its solution. — The uneasiness : 
 a sense that there is something wrong about 
 us. — The solution : we are saved from the 
 wrongness by making proper connection with 
 the higher powers. — But the Bible alone tells 
 us how we can make connection with the 
 higher powers. — It alone reveals a Redeemer, 
 the lamb of God that taketh away sin. — It 
 alone presents an ideal character which in- 
 spires the hearts of men with an impassioned 
 love, and which is thus both the highest pat- 
 tern of virtue and the strongest incentive to 
 its practice. — Testimony of Lecky, of Brown- 
 ing, of Ewald, of Scott. — " There is but one 
 Book." — Conclusion. 
 
 Index in 
 
THE PALLADIUM 
 
 WE read in the mythology of the 
 ancients that, after the building 
 of Troy, the founder of the city 
 prayed that the place might be taken under 
 the special protection of the gods, and be- 
 sought Jupiter to give him a sign that his 
 request would be granted. In answer to 
 this prayer, so the story runs, there fell 
 from heaven that night a wooden image of 
 Pallas, the goddess of wisdom and war. 
 The people of Troy took this Palladium, as 
 the figure was called, and placed it in their 
 citadel, fully assured that if it remained 
 there the town would be invincible, but if 
 it were lost or stolen, some great disaster 
 would befall them. And so it came to pass, 
 when, during the Greek war against Troy, 
 Diomedes and the crafty Ulysses stole the 
 
 IS 
 
i6 The Indispensable Book 
 
 Palladium and carried it away, thus bring- 
 ing about the downfall of the city. 
 
 All a superstitious fancy, you say, and 
 so it was ; but in modern times and in our 
 own land we have at least a partial paral- 
 lel in historic fact. The foundations of this 
 country were laid by our fathers in the fear 
 of God. Many of them indeed came from 
 their native lands to these shores solely for 
 the purpose of securing liberty to worship 
 God according to their own understanding 
 of His requirements. As Green says in 
 his "Short History of the English People," 
 " They were driven forth from their father- 
 land, not by earthly want, or by the greed 
 for gold, or by the lust of adventure, but 
 by the fear of God and the zeal for a godly 
 worship." In the very beginning of their 
 work in the New World they prayed that 
 the Almighty would have this country un- 
 der his special care. Their Palladium was 
 not a wooden image, but an inspired book, 
 a precious gift of God which had indeed 
 
The Palladium 17 
 
 come down from heaven through the men 
 whom He had chosen to record His will ; 
 and this book these early settlers and pa- 
 triots had brought with them from beyond 
 the seas. They were convinced that so 
 long as this Palladium was preserved, so 
 long as this book was honoured, so long 
 as its instructions were obeyed, their work 
 as nation-builders would endure ; but if 
 this word of God were ignored or neg- 
 lected, the commonwealth would perish. 
 The fathers of the republic were right. 
 The only guarantee of our civilization and 
 character and culture, our freedom and 
 prosperity and power, is the word of God. 
 This fact has been clearly recognized and 
 strongly stated by many of the ablest of 
 their successors. Thus, for instance, Dan- 
 iel Webster said : " If we abide by the 
 principles taught in the Bible our country 
 will go on to prosper ; but if we and our 
 posterity neglect its instructions and au- 
 thority, no man can tell how sudden a cat- 
 
i8 The Indispensable Book 
 
 astrophe may overwhelm us and bury all 
 our glory in profound obscurity." Now, 
 however, there are not a few ominous in- 
 dications that great numbers of our people 
 fail to recognize the knowledge of God's 
 word and obedience to its precepts as 
 indispensable conditions of the perma- 
 nence and prosperity of our nation. It is 
 therefore more than ever important to re- 
 mind ourselves afresh of the indispensa- 
 bleness of the Bible to everything that 
 constitutes our true prosperity and suc- 
 •^ cess — its indispensableness to our intelle<> 
 ^ tual culture, to the conservation of our na- 
 " tional ideals, to the promotion of sound 
 morality and true benevolence, and to the 
 development of our spiritual life. 
 
II 
 
 THE BIBLE AND LITERARY CULTURE 
 
 THE Bible is a literary necessity. 
 It is indispensable to our best in- 
 tellectual culture. De Quincey 
 has drawn a suggestive distinction be- 
 tween the literature of knowledge and 
 the literature of power. He says the 
 function of the first is to teachy the function 
 of the second is to 7nove. The first is a 
 rudder, the second is an oar or a sail. A 
 cook-book in so far as it is literature at all 
 belongs to the literature of knowledge. 
 Milton's ** Paradise Lost " belongs to the 
 literature of power. What do you learn 
 from "Paradise Lost"? Nothing at all. 
 What do you learn from a cook-book? 
 Something new, something you did not 
 know before in every paragraph. But 
 you would not for that reason put the 
 
 19 
 
20 The Indispensable Book 
 
 cook-book on a higher level of estimation 
 than the great epic. What you owe to 
 Milton is not any knowledge. What you 
 owe is power^ that is exercise and expan- 
 sion to your own latent capacity of sym- 
 pathy with the infinite. 
 
 By the literature of knowledge, then, 
 De Quincey means that class of writings 
 whose sole aim is to convey information, 
 and by the literature of power he means 
 that class of writings the object of which 
 is not mainly to instruct but to move the 
 feelings and to give pleasure, such as 
 fiction and poetry. But the distinction, 
 while suggestive, is not absolutely correct ; 
 for, as De Quincey himself says in a note, 
 a great proportion of books — history, bi- 
 ography, travels, miscellaneous essays, etc., 
 — do not belong strictly to either of these 
 two classes. Macaulay's "History of 
 England," for instance, contains a vast 
 amount of information, but it is not its 
 stores of information only which have 
 
Literary Culture 21 
 
 attracted to it millions of readers ; it is its 
 fascinating style, its power of exciting the 
 emotions, and its appeal to the moral 
 nature.* The Bible also belongs to both 
 categories in a still higher sense. It be- 
 longs unquestionably to the literature of 
 knowledge, for it is our only adequate 
 source of information concerning the most 
 momentous interests of mankind. It an- 
 swers with infallible certainty all the great 
 questions which have for ages agitated the 
 minds of men: What is God? What is 
 man ? What are the conditions of de- 
 liverance from sin and acceptance with 
 God? What lies beyond the grave? 
 That the book which answers these tran- 
 scendent questions belongs to the litera- 
 ture of knowledge is too obvious for 
 discussion. It is no less clear that the 
 Scriptures belong to the literature of 
 power, and that here too they occupy 
 the highest place. Not only for variety, 
 
 * H. J. Nicoll, " Landmarks of English Literature," p. lo. 
 
22 The Indispensable Book 
 
 interest and importance of matter, but 
 also for simplicity, dignity and power of 
 style, for perfection of ethical ideals, and 
 for efficacy of impulse to righteousness, 
 these sixty-six heaven-born books never 
 have had and never will have a peer or 
 rival in the literature of the world. 
 
 Merely as literature, therefore, the Bible 
 is to the last degree stimulating and 
 creative. There are many books that are 
 mentally quickening, but this Book is 
 unique in the measure of its power to 
 arouse and energize the intellect. ** Noth- 
 ing else," says Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler, 
 " so sinews up the intellect, so clarifies the 
 perception, so enlarges the views, so 
 purifies the taste, so quickens the imagina- 
 tion, strengthens the understanding, and 
 educates the whole man. The humblest 
 day labourer who saturates his mind 
 with this celestial school-book becomes a 
 superior man to his comrades — not merely 
 a purer man, but a clearer-headed man. 
 
Literary Culture 23 
 
 It was the feeding on this honey from 
 heaven which gave to the Puritans their 
 wonderful sagacity as well as their uncon- 
 querable loyalty to the right. Simply as 
 an educator the Scriptures ought to be 
 read in every schoolhouse, and there 
 ought to be a chair of Bible instruction in 
 every college." The late Dr. Teunis 
 Hamlin says : ** Follow the linked logic 
 of St. Paul, the glowing fervour of 
 St. John, the brilliant fancy of the Hebrew 
 poets, the majestic eloquence of Amos, 
 Micah, and Isaiah, especially the unap- 
 proachable simplicity, directness and pro- 
 fundity of Jesus, and you will have such a 
 mental awakening as neither Homer nor 
 Virgil, Plato nor Seneca, Goethe nor 
 Shakespeare, Macaulay nor Emerson can 
 ever give." " It is impossible," says the 
 New York Evening Post, " to overestimate 
 the importance of the Bible as a promotive 
 influence in English literature." 
 
 When the Bible was translated into the 
 
24 The Indispensable Book 
 
 English tongue the people found them- 
 selves put into possession of a most noble 
 and original literature ; stirring history 
 and romantic adventure, " cosmical 
 theories and priestly injunctions, pro- 
 found metaphysics and pithy proverbs, 
 psalms of unrivalled grandeur and pas- 
 torals of exquisite loveliness, parables 
 fraught with solemn meanings, the mourn- 
 ful wisdom of the preacher, the exultant 
 faith of the apostle, the matchless elo- 
 quence of Job and Isaiah, the apocalyptic 
 ecstasy of St. John. Great consequences 
 have flowed from the fact that the first 
 truly popular literature in England — the 
 first which stirred the hearts of all classes 
 of people, filled their minds with ideal 
 pictures and their every-day speech with 
 apt and telling phrases — was the literature 
 comprised within the Bible. The superi- 
 ority of the version of the Bible made in 
 the reign of James I. over all other 
 versions is generally admitted. The 
 
Literary Culture 25 
 
 sonorous Latin of the Vulgate is very 
 grand, but in sublimity of fervour as in 
 the unconscious simplicity of strength, it 
 is surpassed by the English version, which 
 is scarcely inferior to the original, while it 
 remains to-day and will remain the noblest 
 monument of English speech." It ap- 
 peared just at the time when it was able 
 to combine with unique felicity Saxon 
 force and Latin melody. In the reign of 
 James the First, ** the glow and splendour 
 of the Elizabethan era flung a robe before 
 the advancing steps of Scripture more 
 rare and splendid than that which Raleigh, 
 in the story, laid at the feet of the Virgin 
 Queen." John Richard Green, the his- 
 torian, says that "as a mere literary 
 monument, the English of the Bible re- 
 mains the noblest example of the English 
 tongue, while its perpetual use made it 
 from the instant of its appearance the 
 standard of our language." Dr. Faber, 
 Roman Catholic though he was, paid this 
 
26 The Indispensable Book 
 
 exquisite tribute to our Protestant Bible : 
 *' The diction of the English Bible, with its 
 simplicity, its dignity, its power, its happy 
 turns of expression, its general accuracy, 
 the music of its cadences, and the felicities 
 of its rhythm, is the consecrated diction of 
 devotion and religious instruction for all 
 denominations of English-speaking Chris- 
 tians, God's greatest gift to the many 
 millions of Britain and America. It lives 
 on the ear like music that can never be 
 forgotten, like the sound of church bells 
 which the convert hardly knows how to 
 forego, and the felicities often seem to be 
 almost things rather than words. It is 
 part of the national mind and the anchor 
 of national seriousness. The memory of 
 the dead passes into it. The potent 
 traditions of childhood are stereotyped in 
 its voices. The power of all the griefs and 
 trials of man's life are hid beneath its 
 words. It is the representation of his best 
 moments ; and all that there has been 
 
hiiterary Culture 27 
 
 about him of soft and pure and penitent 
 and good speaks to him from out of his 
 Protestant Bible. It is his sacred thing 
 which doubt has never dimmed and con- 
 troversy never soiled." ^ 
 
 In view of these characteristics of con- 
 tent and form there is nothing surprising 
 in Coleridge's remark that " to give the 
 history of the Bible as a book would be 
 little else than to relate the origin or first 
 excitement of all the literature we possess. 
 From this storehouse of literary materials 
 our leading writers have most freely 
 drawn." In all the long list of English 
 and American writers whose names sur- 
 vive there is not one whose pages are not 
 sprinkled with the words and figures of 
 Holy Writ. Emerson, speaking of the 
 Bible as the most original book in the 
 world, and affirming that it came out of a 
 
 1 See Faber's essay on " The Characteristics of the Lives 
 of the Saints " prefixed to his " Life of St. Francis of As- 
 sisi." 
 
28 The Indispensable Book 
 
 profounder depth of thought than any 
 other, says that Shakespeare, the first lit- 
 erary genius of the world, leans on it. In 
 thirty-seven of his plays there are allusions 
 to the Bible. Prof. J. Scott Clark, in 
 his " Study of English Prose Writers," says 
 that " Bacon's acquaintance with Holy 
 Writ is almost equal to that of Shake- 
 speare, and the works of both unite with 
 many modern masterpieces in testifying to 
 the value of the English Bible as a literary 
 model." Milton, as all know, is saturated 
 with its thought and diction. ** I have 
 found," says Dr. Henry van Dyke, " more 
 than four hundred direct references to the 
 Bible in the poems of Tennyson." In 
 Longfellow there are almost as many. 
 Browning's " Christmas Eve and Easter 
 Day," a poem of about twenty-five hun- 
 dred lines, contains one hundred and 
 thirty Scriptural allusions. They abound 
 also in his other poems, even those whose 
 subjects are not closely allied to Scriptural 
 
Literary Culture 29 
 
 themes. Macaulay's essays are full of 
 them.^ So too are the essays of Robert 
 Louis Stevenson. Hawthorne, the great- 
 est American writer of fiction, confesses 
 that the Bible and the ** Pilgrim's Progress" 
 (itself a product of the Bible) were the 
 main sources of his inspiration. To 
 Wordsworth, "the grand storehouses of 
 enthusiastic and meditative imagination 
 . . . are the prophetic and lyrical parts of 
 the Holy Scriptures." Coleridge declares 
 concerning the vigour of the Biblical 
 writers that "after reading Isaiah, or St. 
 Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews, Homer and 
 Virgil are disgustingly tame to me, and 
 Milton himself barely tolerable." Milton's 
 own testimony is that "There are no 
 songs to be compared to the songs of Zion, 
 no orations equal to those of the prophets." 
 Edmund Burke, the greatest philosophical 
 
 1 See two articles on "Macaulay's Use of Scripture in his 
 Essays," by R. De Witt Mallary in " The Old Testament 
 Student," Vol. VII, pp. 212-216, 246-249. 
 
30 The Indispensable Book 
 
 statesman that the British people ever pro- 
 duced, made a habit of reading a chapter in 
 Isaiah before going to speak in the House 
 of Commons. " Isaiah," he says, " pos- 
 sesses both the blaze of eloquence and the 
 light of truth." Of Daniel Webster also 
 it is authoritatively stated that he did not 
 think himself prepared to appear before 
 the United States Senate in the delivery 
 of his immortal orations " until he had 
 taken as a tonic the eighth Psalm and the 
 fortieth chapter of Isaiah ; " and Webster 
 himself said, ** If there is aught of eloquence 
 in me it is because I learned the Scripture 
 at my mother's knee." ^ Professor Moul- 
 ton of the University of Chicago, who has 
 made the literary forms of Scripture his 
 specialty, expresses a similar estimate of 
 Biblical oratory, saying that he once read 
 through on three successive days, each at 
 a single sitting, an oration of Demosthenes, 
 
 1 " The Fascination of the Book," Edgar Whitaker "Work, 
 p. 150. 
 
L,iterary Culture 31 
 
 one of Burke, and the book of Deute- 
 ronomy, and he had the feeling at the time 
 that neither of the other two rose to the 
 oratorical level of the speeches of Moses. 
 
 John Ruskin, the supreme master of 
 English prose, tells us, like Webster, that 
 whatever of merit or power there is in 
 anything that he has written is due to the 
 fact that when he was a child his mother 
 made him thoroughly familiar with the 
 English Bible. Of her requiring him to 
 learn by heart certain chapters of it, he 
 says, ** I count it very confidently the most 
 precious, and, on the whole, the one 
 essential part of all my education." ** The 
 Cambridge History of English Literature " 
 says that the creations of the greatest 
 lyric poets of the Greeks, when placed be- 
 side the lyrics of the Hebrews, suffer in the 
 comparison. Addison speaks of Horace 
 and Pindar as showing, when compared 
 with the Psalms, ** an absurdity and con- 
 fusion of style" and "a comparative 
 
32 The Indispensable Book 
 
 poverty of imagination." James Anthony 
 Froude says it will be found at the last that 
 the Book of Job towers above all the 
 poetry of the world. Coleridge calls the 
 Epistle to the Romans " the profoundest 
 writing in existence." Renan pronounces 
 the Gospel of Luke " the most beautiful 
 book in the world." Charles Dickens, 
 master of pathos, when asked to name the 
 most touching story in the literature of the 
 world, answered immediately, "The par- 
 able of the prodigal son." Coleridge, who 
 ranged the whole province of letters, when 
 asked to name the richest passage in all 
 literature, answered, "The Beatitudes." 
 Even Huxley testifies to the preeminence 
 of the Bible in literary culture. " Con- 
 sider," he says, " the great historical fact 
 that, for three centuries, this book has been 
 woven into the life of all that is best and 
 noblest in English history ; that it has be- 
 come the national epic of Britain, and is as 
 familiar to noble and simple, from John-o'- 
 
Literary Culture 33 
 
 Groat's house to Land's End, as Dante and 
 Tasso once were to the ItaUans ; that it is 
 written in the noblest and purest English, 
 and abounds in exquisite beauties of pure 
 literary form ; and finally, that it forbids 
 the veriest hind who never left his village 
 to be ignorant of the existence of other 
 countries and other civilizations, and of a 
 great past stretching back to the furthest 
 limits of the oldest civilizations of the 
 world." ^ 
 
 Sir Edwin Arnold, author of the *' Light 
 of Asia," says : ** In response to the query. 
 What do I owe to the Bible? my short 
 reply would be everything ; my long reply, 
 to be sufficiently serious and comprehen- 
 sive, would run to reams of paper. But, if 
 I am addressed as a man of letters, I 
 would simply say that I owe my education 
 as a writer more to the Bible than to any 
 other hundred books that could be 
 named." " Its style," says Hallam, " is 
 
 1 «• Critiques and Addresses," Thomas Huxley, p. 51. 
 
34 The Indispensable Book 
 
 the perfection of our English language." ^ 
 Hence Coleridge's remark that "intense 
 study of the Bible will keep any writer 
 from being vulgar in point of style." Dr. 
 Spofford of the Congressional Library, in 
 a recent address at Richmond on " The 
 World of Books," said that *'the Bible, 
 considered merely as literature, without 
 any regard to its doctrines, has more 
 strong, nervous English, more pathos, more 
 sublimity, more pith and power, than any 
 other work in our language." Professor 
 Saintsbury says more broadly still that it 
 is " the greatest prose work in any lan- 
 guage." 
 
 The study of the Bible is no less neces- 
 sary for the mastery of the direct and 
 practical style of the journalist than for the 
 mastery of the more deliberate and 
 elaborate style of the author. Charles A. 
 
 * See a valuable essay on " The Authorized Version and 
 Its Influence," by Prof. Albert S. Cook of Yale in " The 
 Cambridge History of English Literature," Vol. IV. 
 
Literary Culture 35 
 
 Dana, the veteran editor of the New York 
 Sun and a master of his craft, addressing 
 prospective journalists, used these words : 
 " There are some books that are absolutely 
 indispensable to the kind of education that 
 we are contemplating and to the profes- 
 sion that we are considering ; and of all 
 these the most indispensable, the most use- 
 ful, the one whose knowledge is most ef- 
 fective, is the Bible. There is no book 
 from which more valuable lessons can be 
 learned. I am considering it now, not as 
 a religious book, but as a manual of 
 utility, of professional preparation and 
 professional use for a journalist. There is, 
 perhaps, no book whose style is more sug- 
 gestive and more instructive, from which 
 you learn more directly that sublime 
 simplicity which never exaggerates, which 
 recounts the greatest events with solemnity, 
 of course, but without sentimentality or af- 
 fectation — none which you open with such 
 confidence and lay down with such rever- 
 
36 The Indispensable Book 
 
 ence : there is no book like the Bible." It 
 is worthy of notice in this connection that 
 in his " Principles of Success in Litera- 
 ture " George Henry Lewes commends to 
 the student "the masterly plainness of 
 Genesis," and that Dr. Charles Sears Bald- 
 win, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric at 
 Yale University, has given to a little 
 volume recently published the significant 
 title, ** How to Write — a Handbook Based 
 on the English Bible." Dr. William Osier, 
 the eminent diagnostician, whose command 
 of excellent English is no less remarkable 
 than his skill in his own profession, is a 
 good illustration of the influence of the 
 Bible upon the speech of the best type of 
 present day orators. His Harvard lecture 
 on ** Science and Immortality," though not 
 concerned with the teaching of the Gospel 
 in regard to the future life, is nevertheless 
 full of the Bible. " Its forty-three small 
 pages contain forty-one Biblical allusions 
 and quotations," and on one of these pages 
 
Literary Culture 37 
 
 seven Scriptural expressions are made use 
 of in close succession/ 
 
 The Hon. Albert J. Beveridge, at 
 present a United States Senator from 
 Indiana, has recently published a little 
 booklet, entitled " The Bible as Good 
 Reading," in which he describes an expedi- 
 tion made by himself and a companion to 
 the great woods of the North when they 
 were both thoroughly tired by their year's 
 work. Up the streams and over the lakes 
 they went, he says, and "at last far out 
 from the path of even canoe voyagers, on 
 the shores of a lake whose name is Beauty, 
 and in the depths of a forest whose name 
 is Noble, by a mossy spring whose name 
 is Delight, they swung their axes and built 
 their camp." Nature began her work ; 
 they slept like pieces of iron and ate with 
 the appetite of the primal man ; but some- 
 
 1 *« Bible Study in Relation to Modern Literature," Mrs. 
 Minnie G. Machen, in The Union Seminary Magazine, 
 Vol. XVI, p. 123. 
 
[' 
 
 38 The Indispensable Book 
 
 what to their surprise they discovered in a 
 day or two that their minds also craved 
 some pabulum, and his companion said, " I 
 want something to read." " Well," replied 
 Beveridge, " what's the matter with the 
 magazines?" The answer was, ** I have 
 read them all." ** Well, what's the matter 
 with the Bible?" ''Oh," said his com- 
 panion, " I don't want anything dull ! " 
 " Why, man," replied the senator, *' the 
 Bible has more good reading in it than any 
 book I know of. What will you have — 
 poetry, adventure, politics, maxims, ora- 
 tory ? for they are all here." And he pro- 
 duced the Bible. 
 
 Thus occurred the first Bible reading in 
 the woods. After it was over his compan- 
 ion said, ** Why, I never knew that was in 
 the Bible. Let's have some more of that 
 to-morrow." And on the morrow they did 
 have more of it. By chance, says the nar- 
 rator, one of the guides was near and he 
 sat down and listened. The next day all 
 
Literary Culture 39 
 
 the guides were there. The day after, the 
 reading was delayed and Indian Charley 
 modestly suggested : ** Isn't it about time 
 to have some more of that there Bible?" 
 And more of it they had. This continued 
 day in and day out through the long vaca- 
 tion in the woods and thus another group 
 of men discovered that there is more good 
 reading in the Bible than in all the volumes 
 of fiction, poetry and philosophy put to- 
 gether. The writer proceeds to show that 
 this conclusion is natural enough ; that this 
 book has not held its sway over the 
 human mind for two thousand years with- 
 out having engaging qualities, something 
 which appeals to our " human interest." 
 Surely the Old Testament, which is a story 
 of the most masterful and persistent peo- 
 ple who ever lived, cannot help overflow- 
 ing with everything human ; and surely 
 *• The New Testament, which is the ac- 
 count of the Man who dominates all 
 Christendom to-day, the Man who is the 
 
40 The Indispensable Book 
 
 most powerful influence in civilization two 
 thousand years after He has passed from 
 earth ; surely such an account could 
 not be without a fascination compared 
 wdth which our most thrilling novels 
 and most passionate poems are vapid and 
 tame." 
 
 For the detailed proof of his proposition 
 which Senator Beveridge gives the reader 
 must be referred to the booklet itself with 
 its successive chapters on Old Testament 
 Short Stories ; New Testament Short 
 Stories ; The Bible and Common Sense ; 
 Moses the Lawgiver ; Joseph the Dreamer ; 
 St. Paul, Orator and Missionary ; and the 
 rest. 
 
 Lord Macaulay, whose judgment on 
 such a matter no informed man will lightly 
 question, speaks of " that stupendous work, 
 the English Bible, — a book which if every- 
 thing else in our language should perish 
 would alone suffice to show the whole ex- 
 tent of its beauty and power." 
 
Ljiterary Culture 41 
 
 Such testimonies and facts might be 
 multiplied indefinitely. They are so nu- 
 merous and so convincing that the suprem- 
 acy of the Bible as literature and its 
 unequalled power of inspiring and fertiliz- 
 ing the mind would scarcely need to be re- 
 ferred to further but for another set of facts 
 represented by the disheartening statistics 
 published not long ago by President 
 Thwing in regard to the astounding ig- 
 norance of the Scriptures displayed by 
 certain bodies of college students, in one 
 of the most prosperous and progressive 
 parts of our country, when examined as to 
 the meaning of various allusions in the 
 greatest and most popular of contemporary 
 poets to some of the most familiar incidents 
 of Biblical history. Twenty-two quota- 
 tions from Tennyson's poems, containing 
 references to the commonest passages of 
 Scripture, were given to a body of young 
 college men and a body of young college 
 women, and they were asked to explain 
 
42 The Indispensable Book 
 
 these allusions. They evinced almost in- 
 credible ignorance. Out of the thirty-four 
 men, nine failed to understand the quo- 
 tation, ** My sin was as a thorn among the 
 thorns that girt Thy brow." Eleven had 
 never heard, apparently, of the "manna 
 in the wilderness," nor sixteen of the "rock 
 whence issued water." Only two had 
 ever heard of the shadow turning back on 
 the dial for Hezekiah's lengthening life. 
 Only eight had ever heard of ** Joshua's 
 moon." Twenty-two did not know who 
 *' Baal " was. Nineteen had never read 
 the exquisite idyl of " Ruth," with which 
 Franklin once charmed and surprised a 
 company of learned Frenchmen. Eight- 
 een did not know what " Pharaoh's dark- 
 ness " meant, and twenty-eight knew noth- 
 ing of " Jonah's gourd." Only nine could 
 explain an allusion to " Lot's wife." 
 Twenty-three could not understand who 
 " Arimathean Joseph " was ; and so on 
 throughout the entire twenty-two questions. 
 
Literary Culture 43 
 
 With the men, only forty-three per cent 
 of the questions were answered correctly ; 
 and with the women, forty-nine per cent. 
 Some of the answers were positively start- 
 ling. One young woman said that Joseph 
 was called ** Arimathean " because he had 
 a coat of many colours before being sold 
 by his brothers. Another, when asked to 
 tell who Iscariot was, said that " Iscariot 
 means the cross on which Christ was cru- 
 cified." Yet this test was made with those 
 lay people whose knowledge of the Bible 
 would presumably be most ample. The 
 investigator, in calling attention to the dis- 
 heartening result of his experiment, says : 
 " To the Christian, this fact is significant, 
 for the Bible is the corner-stone of the 
 Christian system. To the moralist, this 
 presentation is significant as evidence that 
 the most important treatise on ethics is 
 not adequately known. To the scholar, it 
 is significant as standing for the failure of 
 the better class of people of scholarly en- 
 
44 Tf^^ Indispensable Book 
 
 vironment to know the most important 
 piece of literature." 
 
 Similar experiments have been made by 
 other investigators with equally discourag- 
 ing results. "A professor of English lit- 
 erature in Amherst College stated several 
 years ago that he had floored an entire 
 Junior class by a reference in one of the 
 poems of Dryden to the blind patriarch 
 feeling after his son's hands. In a large 
 American university a professor of litera- 
 ture read two pages from an English 
 classic containing several Biblical allusions. 
 Very few in the large class were able to 
 detect or explain such references as the 
 Valley of Dry Bones, the Waters of Marah, 
 and the Cave of Adullam. A professor of 
 philosophy in Northwestern University 
 made a test with one hundred students. 
 He asked them nine simple questions, such 
 as, 'What is the Pentateuch?' 'Is the 
 Book of Jude in the Old or New Tes- 
 tament ? * * Name one of the judges.' 
 
Literary Culture 45 
 
 * Give one of the Beatitudes.' Out of 
 ninety-six papers returned only eight gave 
 correct answers to all the questions. 
 Over half could not locate the Book of 
 Jude. Solomon, Jeremiah, Daniel, and 
 Leviticus were named as judges. Mat- 
 thew, Luke, and John were turned into 
 prophets, while Herod, Ananias, and 
 Nebuchadnezzar were transformed into 
 Kings of Israel. One student said that the 
 Pentateuch was the same as the Gospel." ^ 
 Prof. William Lyon Phelps, who oc- 
 cupies a chair in English at Yale Uni- 
 versity, gives similar testimony. He says, 
 "The ignorance of college students of 
 Biblical literature is universal, profound 
 and complete. The students at Harvard 
 and Yale, different as they are in many 
 respects from their brothers in small col- 
 leges, resemble them closely here. . . . 
 It is certainly unfortunate that the best 
 
 1 " The Fascination of the Book," Edgar Whitaker Work, 
 p. 29. 
 
46 The Indispensable Book 
 
 book ever printed should be so little 
 known, and that the frequent references to 
 it in practically every English author 
 should be meaningless." Writing in the 
 Yale Alumni Weekly he says : "If I 
 were appointed a committee of one to 
 regulate the much debated question of 
 college examinations in English, I should 
 erase every list of books that has thus 
 far been tried or suggested, and I should 
 confine the examination wholly to the 
 authorized version of the Bible." Pro- 
 fessor Phelps is mistaken in supposing 
 that the students of all the other colleges 
 are as ignorant of the Bible as he says 
 those of Yale and Harvard are. When 
 his statement was published, Prof. C. 
 Alphonso Smith, then of the University 
 of North Carolina, gave to his students 
 such an examination as Professor Phelps 
 proposed as a test of their knowledge of 
 the factual contents of Scripture, and the 
 answers he received proved that the 
 
Literary Culture 47 
 
 students of the Carolina institution did 
 have a fair knowledge of them. Doubtless 
 the same thing could be shown of the 
 students in some other colleges. Never- 
 theless a man would be blind indeed who 
 could not see that the old fashioned famil- 
 iarity with Scripture is largely a thing of 
 the past in nearly every part of our land. 
 How serious a loss this is to the intel- 
 lectual life of the great masses of the 
 people, those who do not enjoy the ad- 
 vantages of liberal culture in the usual 
 sense, is recognized even by the more 
 thoughtful unbelievers of our time. Thus 
 Mr. F. J. Gould, a leading free-thinker of 
 England, says that " Millions of church- 
 going and chapel-going men and women 
 are shut out from the rich resources of the 
 classics, of general oriental legend, and 
 from the varied treasures of Teutonic 
 mythology, European folklore, and medi- 
 aeval chronicles and poetry. They have 
 no imaginative reservoir, so to speak, but 
 
48 The Indispensable Book 
 
 the Bible." It is through the Bible only 
 that such people attain a sympathetic in- 
 sight into history. *' The history they 
 learned at school was too often lifeless 
 and meaningless ; but in the Bible they 
 experience a combination of history and 
 moral emotion. In its pages the peasant 
 and the ill-educated housemother gain 
 glimpses of a large past, of kings, judges, 
 prophets, patriarchs, poets, heroes, and 
 martyrs ; and of glowing landscapes of 
 the East, of pyramids and temples, of the 
 tents of Shem, the rose of Sharon, and the 
 cedars of Lebanon. I should profoundly 
 distrust any rationalistic analysis which 
 was so intent on liberating the proletarian 
 soul from theological bonds that it care- 
 lessly left that soul without a popular and 
 easily accessible treasury of poetic remi- 
 niscence and metaphor." ^ 
 
 Charles Dudley Warner says that 
 "Wholly apart from its religious or its 
 
 1 Literary Digest^ March 18, 1905. 
 
Literary Culture 49 
 
 ethical value, the Bible is the one book 
 that no intelligent person, who wishes to 
 come into contact with the world of 
 thought and to share the ideas of the 
 great minds of the Christian era, can 
 afford to be ignorant of." 
 
 " Our Bible," says Dr. A. P. Peabody, 
 " is still the key to the best English dic- 
 tion ; and by conversance with it our 
 children are made familiar with their own 
 language in a purer form than any other 
 which can be placed before them." Count 
 Tolstoy says that " without the Bible the 
 education of the child in the present state 
 of society is impossible." President 
 Schurman of Cornell University, who can 
 hardly be accused of any partisan interest 
 in the Scriptures, has this to say about 
 the relation of this book to education : 
 "The Bible is the most important doc- 
 ument in the world's history. No man 
 can be wholly uneducated who really 
 knows the Bible, nor can any one be con- 
 
50 The Indispensable Book 
 
 sidered a truly educated man who is 
 ignorant of it." 
 
 In view of these facts and testimonies 
 the inference is inevitable : To shut such 
 a book out of the schools where the chil- 
 dren of the nation are educated is to per- 
 petrate a palpable fraud upon the intellects 
 of the rising generation. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE BIBLE AND NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 THE late Justice David J. Brewer 
 has well said that " No nation is 
 better than its sacred book. In 
 that book are expressed its highest ideals 
 of life, and no nation rises above those 
 ideals. No nation has a sacred book to 
 be compared with ours. This American 
 nation from its first settlement at James- 
 town to the present hour is based upon 
 and permeated by the principles of the 
 Bible. The more this Bible enters into 
 our national life the grander and purer 
 and better will that life become." 
 
 The noblest ideal ever set before a 
 nation was that which God placed before 
 the Israelites when He entered into cove- 
 nant with them at Mt. Sinai. It was ex- 
 pressed in these words : ** Ye shall be unto 
 
 51 
 
52 The Indispensable Book 
 
 Me a kingdom of priests and an holy 
 nation." This was no ideal of military 
 glory or material wealth, such as most 
 nations have striven to attain. It was an 
 ideal of personal and national righteous- 
 ness, of spiritual privilege and of helpful 
 service to mankind. " Ye shall be unto 
 Me an holy nation " — there was God's 
 requirement of righteousness. " Ye shall 
 be unto Me a kingdom of priests " — that 
 is, as the construction really means, a 
 dynasty of persons invested with royal 
 rank and priestly functions — there was 
 God's appointment of Israel to religious 
 privilege and religious responsibility. A 
 priest is a mediator and teacher of God's 
 will. 
 
 This Magna Charta of Israel teaches that 
 God's people are of the seed royal, all of 
 them. It teaches not only that all are 
 kings but also that all are priests. Every 
 man may be face to face with God. This 
 passage, then, contains the germ of civil 
 
National Ideals 53 
 
 and religious liberty. With such a con- 
 ception as this — *' All kings and all priests " 
 — fully worked out, there can be no des- 
 potism in church or state. 
 
 The oriental idea of government, with a 
 single shining exception, has always been 
 this — that the people existed for the glory 
 of the ruler ; the king was everything, the 
 people nothing. Our idea of government 
 is entirely different from this. We hold 
 that, so far from the people existing for the 
 glory of the ruler, the ruler exists for the 
 good of the people. Where did we get 
 that idea? We got it from the excep- 
 tional case just referred to, from the He- 
 brews, from the Bible, from God. It was 
 He who first insisted upon a reversal of the 
 oriental theory of despotism and gave to 
 mankind the great ideal of a constitutional 
 government by representatives of the peo- 
 ple. It was He who first taught the dignity 
 of man as man and gave to the world 
 the conception of a commonwealth. No 
 
54 The Indispensable Book 
 
 student of comparative history can fail to 
 be impressed with the world-wide differ- 
 ence between the pompous inscriptions 
 of ancient Egypt and Babylon and that 
 simple but matchless story of the common 
 people which runs through the Old Testa- 
 ment Scriptures. On the one hand we 
 have colossal egotism, high-sounding titles, 
 boastful narrations of personal prowess, 
 elaborate descriptions of royal wealth and 
 splendour, kings, courts, wars, conquests, 
 but not one word about the people, save 
 indeed an occasional contemptuous refer- 
 ence to the "• stinking multitude." On the 
 other hand, we have not a favoured indi- 
 vidual but a chosen people, not a pampered 
 despot but a royal nation, not the intrigues 
 of courts and the exploits of kings only, 
 but also and chiefly the every-day life of 
 plain people, and there is throughout an 
 unmistakable respect for manhood as such, 
 a disregard for the merely outward and 
 accidental, a high estimate of the spiritual 
 
National Ideals 55 
 
 and essential, a just appreciation of per- 
 sonal character and piety regardless of the 
 circumstances of birth or wealth or station. 
 
 Observe the recurrence of that uplifting 
 refrain throughout the Old Testament : 
 " The Lord's portion is His people " (Deut. 
 xxxii. 9). ** The Lord taketh pleasure in 
 His people " (Psa. cxlix. 4). " The Lord 
 said unto Pharaoh, thou art exalting thy- 
 self against My people" (Ex. ix. 17). " Let 
 My people go that they may serve Me" 
 (Ex. Vo i). " If thou lend money to any 
 of My people who are poor, thou shalt not 
 exact interest of him " (Ex. xxii. 25). 
 Little wonder that Principal Fairbairn in 
 an address to working men should affirm 
 that " no literature of antiquity is possessed 
 with so deep a love of the poor, speaks so 
 strong and generous words concerning 
 them, surrounds them with so much dig- 
 nity and so many rights as the Old Testa- 
 ment." 
 
 The form of government which God or- 
 
56 T^he Indispensable Book 
 
 dained for the Hebrews was not a mon- 
 archy but a repubhc. The wise sugges- 
 tion of Jethro to Moses at Mt. Sinai, when 
 he saw how the great leader was over- 
 burdened with administrative duties, was 
 that he should ** provide out of all the peo- 
 ple able men, such as fear God, men of 
 truth, hating unjust gain,^ and place such 
 over them, to be rulers of thousands, 
 rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and 
 rulers of tens ; " but, in carrying out the 
 suggestion, Moses required the people to 
 elect these rulers themselves, saying, " Take 
 you wise men, and understanding, and 
 known, according to your tribes, and I will 
 make them heads over you," ^ giving them 
 at the same time a body of statutes for their 
 guidance. Here, then, a thousand years 
 before Plato dreamed of his ideal republic, 
 we find the essential principles of republi- 
 
 *Ex. xviii. 21 : A perfect description of the model public 
 man — able, pious, truthful, incorruptible. 
 'Deut. i. 13. 
 
National Ideals 57 
 
 can government : The principle of repre- 
 sentation — " Take you " ; the principle of 
 civil equality — ** out of all the people " ; 
 and a written constitution, to which the 
 whole people gave their public assent. 
 
 Algernon Sidney, who gave his life on 
 the scaffold for the doctrine that a people 
 had the right to depose an unworthy 
 sovereign, and whose name is linked 
 with that of the illustrious Hampden in the 
 title of a Virginia college founded in the 
 significant year 1776, wrote a work en- 
 titled " Discourses Concerning Govern- 
 ment " which became the chief text-book of 
 the founders of our republic,^ and in which 
 he says that the Hebrew commonwealth was 
 composed of three organisms, besides the 
 magistrates of the several tribes and cities : 
 (i) a Chief Magistrate who was called a 
 judge ; (2) a Council composed of elders ; 
 and (3) the Great Congregation or Gen- 
 
 * " The Origin of Republican Form of Government in the 
 United States of America," Oscar S. Straus, p. 113. 
 
58 The Indispensable Book 
 
 eral Assembly, which reflected the popular 
 will. These were the germs of the three 
 organisms of our American Constitution, 
 the President, the Senate, and a popular 
 Chamber. 
 
 When the Israelites in their folly in- 
 sisted on having a king like the neighbour- 
 ing nations, God permitted it, saying to 
 Samuel, ** Hearken unto the voice of the 
 people in all that they say unto thee ; for 
 they have not rejected thee, but they have 
 rejected Me, that I should not rule over 
 them." ^ But displeased though He was, 
 He still sought to save them from the 
 extreme penalty of their folly, viz., an 
 enslaving and grinding despotism, by 
 warning them of the probable character of 
 their kings and the probable loss of their 
 liberties ; ^ and when they refused to 
 hearken and still clamoured for a king, He 
 made it clear in the anointing of Saul, that 
 He wished him to be their servant and not 
 
 * 1 Sam. viii. 7. ^ \ Sam. viii. 9-18. 
 
National Ideals 59 
 
 their oppressor, saying to Samuel, '* Anoint 
 him to be captain over My people, that he 
 may save My people out of the hand of 
 their enemies," ^ instituting at the same 
 time, as a further safeguard, that great 
 order of the prophets, who were thence- 
 forth the spokesmen for the people, against 
 the tyranny both of kings and priests. 
 
 Dr. Lyman Abbot, expressing his dis- 
 satisfaction with the results of our present 
 methods of Sunday-school teaching, says 
 he would like to know how many children 
 who have graduated from our Sunday- 
 schools could tell anything comprehen- 
 sively about the Bible. ** How many of 
 them have any comprehensive conception 
 of its political teachings ? How many of 
 them know that the Hebrew common- 
 wealth was the first government on the 
 face of the globe to put restrictions upon 
 the absolute power of a monarchy, the first 
 to have a popular legislative assembly, the 
 
 1 X Sam. ix. i6. 
 
6o The Indispensable Book 
 
 first to ask for the judgment of the people 
 in general elections, the first to organize 
 government in three departments — legisla- 
 tive, judicial and executive — the first to 
 prohibit class or caste distinctions, the first 
 to make any provision for popular instruc- 
 tion ? How many of the children of our 
 Sunday-schools know the simple facts of 
 its political teaching ? And yet this self- 
 governing republic is anchored on those 
 great fundamental principles." ^ 
 
 The late Professor Huxley, agnostic 
 though he was, made a plea for the use of 
 the Bible in schools in these words : " By 
 the study of what other book could chil- 
 dren be so much humanized and made to 
 feel that each figure in that vast historical 
 procession fills, like themselves, but a 
 momentary space in the intervals between 
 two eternities ; and earns the blessings or 
 the curses of all time, according to its ef- 
 fort to do good and hate evil, even as they 
 
 1 The Outlook^ July 30, 19 10. 
 
National Ideals 61 
 
 also are earning their payment for their 
 work. The Bible has been the Magna 
 Charta of the poor and the oppressed. 
 Down to modern times no state has had a 
 constitution in which the interests of the 
 people are so largely taken into account, 
 in which the duties so much more than the 
 privileges of rulers are insisted on, as that 
 drawn up for Israel. Nowhere is the 
 fundamental truth that the welfare of the 
 state in the long run depends on the wel- 
 fare of the citizen, so strongly laid down." ^ 
 Andrew Jackson in his last illness declared 
 this book to be ** the rock on which our 
 republic rests." Ulysses Grant urged our 
 people to " Hold fast to the Bible as the 
 sheet anchor of our liberties," adding, 
 " Write its precepts on your hearts and 
 practice them in your lives. To the in- 
 fluence of this book we are indebted for 
 the progress made in true civilization and 
 to this we must look as our guide in the 
 
 1 " Critiques and Addresses," Thomas Huxley* 
 
62 The Indispensable Book 
 
 future." Thomas Carlyle says : ** The 
 period of the Reformation was a judgment 
 day for Europe, when all the nations were 
 presented with an open Bible, and all the 
 emancipation of heart and intellect which 
 an open Bible involves. England, North 
 Germany, and other powers accepted the 
 boon, and they have been steadily grow- 
 ing in national greatness and moral in- 
 fluence ever since. France rejected it ; 
 and in its place has had the gospel of 
 Voltaire, with all the anarchy, misery, and 
 bloodshed of those ceaseless revolutions of 
 which that gospel is the parent." There 
 is a story that when an East Indian prince 
 visited the late Queen Victoria on business 
 of state and asked her to tell him the 
 secret of England's greatness and glory, 
 she simply handed him a copy of the Bible 
 with the words : ** This is the secret of 
 England's greatness." To the same effect 
 Garibaldi, the Italian liberator, said : *'The 
 best of allies you can procure for us is the 
 
National Ideals 63 
 
 Bible. That will bring us the reality of 
 freedom." 
 
 As it is to the Bible we are indebted for 
 the existence of our national ideals and re- 
 publican institutions, so to the Bible we 
 must look for their preservation through- 
 out the future. 
 
IV 
 
 THE BIBLE IN MORALS AND BENEVO- 
 LENCE 
 
 LORD BACON says : " There never 
 was found in any age of the world 
 either religion or law that did so 
 highly exalt the public good as the Bible." 
 **That the truths of the Bible," says 
 Dr. Wayland, late President of Brown 
 University, " have the power of awaken- 
 ing an intense moral feeling in man under 
 every variety of character, learned or ig- 
 norant, civilized or savage ; that they make 
 bad men good, and send a pulse of health- 
 ful feeling through all the domestic, civil, 
 and social relations ; that they teach men 
 to love right, to hate wrong, and to seek 
 each other's welfare, as the children of one 
 common Parent ; that they control the 
 
 baleful passions of the human heart, and 
 
 64 
 
In Morals and Benevolence 65 
 
 thus make men proficient in the science of 
 self-government ; and, finally, that they 
 teach him to aspire after a conformity to a 
 Being of infinite holiness, and fill him with 
 hopes infinitely more purifying, more ex- 
 alted, more suited to his nature, than any 
 other which this world has ever known, 
 are facts as incontrovertible as the laws of 
 philosophy or the demonstrations of math- 
 ematics." 
 
 The Honourable William Jennings 
 Bryan said at the World's Missionary 
 Conference in Edinburgh that he would 
 stake his belief in the Divinity of Christ on 
 what had been accomplished in His name 
 in the last 1,900 years. By the same token 
 the Bible is a Divine Book. It has been 
 incomparably the most potent of all influ- 
 ences in purifying and elevating the race 
 and in promoting the general good of all 
 classes of mankind. A summary of what it 
 has accomplished in these ways may be seen 
 in such works as Richard S. Storrs's Lee- 
 
66 The Indispensable Book 
 
 tures on *' The Divine Origin of Christian- 
 ity Indicated by its Historical Effects," and 
 Charles Loring Brace's ** Gesta Christi, or 
 A History of Humane Progress under 
 Christianity." It tamed and transformed 
 the savage and sensual life of the Roman 
 empire. It softened and civilized the fierce 
 barbarians who conquered Rome. It 
 covered Europe with churches and schools 
 and asylums and hospitals. It taught the 
 necessity of temperance, the duty of per- 
 sonal purity, and the sacredness of mar- 
 riage. It revolutionized the legal and 
 social position of woman. It abolished 
 the inhuman custom of abandoning unfor- 
 tunate infants and set a new value on the 
 person and well-being of children. It 
 brought to an end innumerable forms of 
 cruelty and oppression, and secured the 
 humane treatment of the weak, the poor, 
 the stranger, the prisoner, and even the 
 brute. It taught the duty of the more for- 
 tunate classes to raise up the unfortunate. 
 
In Morals and Benevo knee 67 
 
 It stimulated the demand for an equitable 
 division of the profits of labour and the 
 friendly cooperation of employers and em- 
 ployees. It taught that the injury of one 
 nation is the injury of all. It mitigated 
 the horrors of wars which it could not pre- 
 vent. And it is to-day leading the van in 
 the movement to substitute arbitration for 
 the sword in the settlement of international 
 disputes. One of the bishops of the Eng- 
 lish Church proposes this simple test : ** I 
 invite any honest-minded man to look at a 
 map of the world and see what a story 
 that map tells. Which are the countries 
 on the face of the globe at this moment 
 where there is the greatest amount of idol- 
 atry, or cruelty, or impurity, or misgov- 
 ernment, or disregard of life, liberty, and 
 truth ? Precisely those countries where 
 the Bible is not known. Which are the 
 Christian countries, so called, where the 
 greatest quantity of ignorance, supersti- 
 tion, and corruption is to be found at this 
 
68 The Indispensable Book 
 
 moment? The countries in which the 
 Bible is a forbidden or neglected book, — 
 such countries as Spain and the South 
 American States. Which are the coun- 
 tries where liberty and public and private 
 morality have attained the highest pitch ? 
 The countries where the Bible is free to all, 
 like England, Scotland, Germany, and the 
 United States. Yes ! when you know how 
 a nation deals with the Bible you may 
 know what that nation is." 
 
 But, it may be objected, has not the 
 Bible been the cause of much evil ? Have 
 not those who claimed to represent its 
 teachings obstructed the path of progress, 
 and hindered the advance of science, and 
 kindled the fires of persecution ? Yes, un- 
 doubtedly they have in some instances. 
 But to infer the character of this Book 
 from these perversions and abuses of its 
 teachings would be to repeat the error 
 of those who have " mistaken the gar- 
 goyles, the grinning stone caricatures 
 
In Morals and Benevolence 69 
 
 mounting their guard over cathedrals, for 
 the gleaming statues of saints within." 
 We must distinguish between the char- 
 acteristic products of Christianity on the 
 one hand and what is common to human 
 wickedness or human infirmity on the 
 other. We must separate the special 
 effects of Christianity, the necessary fruits 
 of its normal operation, from the blindness 
 of the men and the alien and insolent 
 temper of the organizations which at times 
 have assumed to direct the propagation 
 of it.^ Its results are confessedly incom- 
 plete. It does not claim to have enlight- 
 ened, restrained and subdued the whole of 
 any one generation, nor even the whole of 
 any one body of its professed adherents. 
 But, considering the material it has had 
 to work upon and the opposition it has 
 had to encounter, its marvellous though 
 partial success in the past is the strongest 
 
 J " The Divine Origin of Christianity Indicated by its 
 Historical Effects," R. S. Storrs, p. 27. 
 
70 The Indispensable Book 
 
 proof of its power ; and in the results 
 which it has already accomplished lies the 
 sure prophecy of its ultimate universal 
 triumph. 
 
 Would that the men who are fumbling 
 around the fringes of divine revelation and 
 standing aloof from the vast and benefi- 
 cent work of Christianity because forsooth 
 they do not know what to make of geol- 
 ogy and the Book of Genesis, or astron- 
 omy and the Book of Joshua, or the com- 
 posite structure of the Pentateuch, or the 
 literary form of the Book of Jonah, or the 
 authorship of the last twenty-seven chap- 
 ters of Isaiah, or the dates of the synoptic 
 Gospels — would that these men would lift 
 their eyes from these details and take a 
 clear and steady look at the broad, perma- 
 nent effects of Christianity in the world ! 
 Would that the men of this sordid age 
 who measure everything in dollars would 
 picture to themselves the condition of a 
 world in which the character and conduct 
 
In Morals and Benevolence 7 1 
 
 of all its inhabitants were moulded and 
 controlled by the moral principles of this 
 book I What an untold saving of wealth 
 would result ! We could at once do away 
 with all the vast military and judicial and 
 reformatory apparatus by which the na- 
 tions now seek to keep themselves in 
 existence and in order. We could dismiss 
 our courts of law, pull down our jails and 
 penitentiaries, and never spend another 
 dollar in the erection of court-houses and 
 prisons ; there would be no violation of 
 law. We could release the millions of 
 capital invested in great plants for the 
 making of heavy guns and armour plate, 
 and cruisers and battle-ships, and all the 
 costly up-keep of preparation for war, and 
 use the money, not for maiming and 
 murdering our fellow men, but for lifting 
 the burden of pain from afflicted humanity, 
 and easing the hard lot of the poor ; the 
 whole world would be at peace. Our 
 hardware merchants would go out of the 
 
72 The Indispensable Book 
 
 business of selling locks and keys ; there 
 would be no occasion for that kind of 
 protection of property. Dishonesty in 
 business and corruption in politics would 
 be unknown and the hateful word " graft " 
 would never be heard. The golden rule 
 would regulate all domestic and social and 
 business relations, and none would defraud 
 or deprave or destroy in the whole wide 
 world. God hasten the day I 
 
 There are some, however, who, while 
 admitting that the Bible has done much 
 to elevate human conduct, seem to think 
 that human conduct may now be left to go 
 on by itself in moral evolution without 
 any further direct influence of the Bible at 
 all. Does the ship go on when the fires 
 in the engine-room are put out? No 
 more will human conduct go on when the 
 impulse of personal relationship to God is 
 quenched. " When the fires in the engine- 
 room are put out, the ship swings hither 
 and thither in the trough of the sea, and it 
 
In Morals and Benevolence 73 
 
 is drifted by the tide, or it founders in the 
 tempest ; and human conduct founders 
 when the soul of man is bereft of God." * 
 Bismarck, ** the strongest intellect of the 
 nineteenth century in Germany," said : 
 " How, without faith in a revealed religion, 
 in a God who wills what is good, in a su- 
 preme Judge, and a future life, men can 
 live harmoniously, each doing his duty, 
 and letting every one else do his, I do not 
 understand." 
 
 But, says the objector, are there not in 
 fact thousands of good citizens, honest 
 business men, charitable neighbours, faith- 
 ful husbands, and loving parents who do 
 not read the Bible and who do not profess 
 to regulate their conduct by its teachings ? 
 Undoubtedly there are, but these cases 
 are individual and partial. ** Try your 
 experiment on any large and general 
 scale, and you will find that the loss of 
 God means ruin to character and conduct." 
 
 1 " The Threshold of Manhood," W. J. Dawson, p. 240. 
 
74 The Indispensable Book 
 
 Witness the French Revolution. More- 
 over, the men referred to are themselves 
 the indirect products of a Biblical moral- 
 ity. These lives in which Christian vir- 
 tues appear though Christian discipleship 
 is denied are lived in a Christian atmos- 
 phere. As ex-Prime Minister Balfour says, 
 they are like the parasite which lives upon 
 the strength and in virtue of the life of 
 some larger being ; and if the life on 
 which the parasite depends should cease 
 then the parasite also will die. 
 
 Similar to this is the testimony of James 
 Russell Lowell, in an after-dinner speech, 
 following a noted infidel : *' I fear that 
 when we indulge ourselves in the amuse- 
 ment of going without a religion, we are 
 not, perhaps, aware how much we are 
 sustained at present by an enormous mass 
 all about us of religious feeling and relig- 
 ious conviction, so that, whatever it may 
 be safe for us to think, for us who have had 
 great advantages, and have been brought 
 
In Morals and Benevolence 75 
 
 up in such a way that a certain moral 
 direction has been given to our character, 
 I do not know what would become of the 
 less favoured classes of mankind if they 
 undertook to play the same game. 
 
 " Whatever defects and imperfections 
 may attach to a few points of the doc- 
 trinal system of Calvin — the bulk of 
 which is simply what all Christians 
 believe — it will be found that Calvin- 
 ism, or any other ism which claims an 
 open Bible and proclaims a crucified and 
 risen Christ, is infinitely preferable to any 
 form of polite and polished skepticism 
 which gathers as its votaries the degener- 
 ate sons of heroic ancestors, who, having 
 been trained in society and educated in 
 schools, the foundations of which were laid 
 by men of faith and piety, now turn and 
 kick down the ladder by which they have 
 climbed, and persuade men to live with- 
 out God and leave them to die without hope. 
 
 " The worst kind of religion is no relig- 
 
76 The Indispensable Book 
 
 ion at all, and these men living in ease 
 and luxury, indulging themselves in the 
 amusement of going without religion, may 
 be thankful that they live in lands where 
 the Gospel they neglect has tamed the 
 beastliness and ferocity of the men who, 
 but for Christianity, might long ago have 
 eaten their carcasses like the South Sea 
 Islanders, or cut off their heads and tanned 
 their hides like the monsters of the French 
 Revolution. 
 
 " When the microscopic search of skep- 
 ticism, which has hunted the heavens and 
 sounded the seas to disprove the existence 
 of a Creator, has turned its attention to hu- 
 man society, and has found a place on this 
 planet ten miles square where a decent 
 man can live in decency, comfort and secur- 
 ity, supporting and educating his children 
 unspoiled and unpolluted ; a place where 
 age is reverenced, infancy protected, man- 
 hood respected, womanhood honoured, and 
 human life held in due regard ; when skep- 
 
In Morals and Benevolence 77 
 
 tics can find such a place ten miles square 
 on this globe, where the Gospel of Christ has 
 not gone and cleared the way, and laid the 
 foundations and made decency and secur- 
 ity possible, it will then be in order for the 
 skeptical literati to move thither and there 
 ventilate their views. But so long as these 
 very men are dependent upon the religion 
 they discard for every privilege they en- 
 joy, they may well hesitate a little before 
 they seek to rob the Christian of his hope 
 and humanity of its Saviour, who alone 
 has given to man that hope of life eternal 
 which makes life tolerable and society pos- 
 sible, and robs death of its terrors and the 
 grave of its gloom." 
 
 Even Thomas Jefferson, with all his 
 skepticism and all his emasculation of 
 Scripture, makes this emphatic statement, 
 ** I always have said and always will say 
 that the studious perusal of the sacred 
 volume will make better citizens, better 
 fathers, and better husbands.' ' 
 
THE BIBLE IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 IN view of the fact that this Book is es- 
 sential not only to the best mental 
 culture of our children, and not only 
 to their training in the truest national 
 ideals, but also to the making of the best 
 type of moral character, which is the real 
 end and aim of all true education, one of 
 the strangest and most discreditable facts 
 of our time, as well as one of the most 
 dangerous, is the persistent and largely 
 successful effort of a hostile minority of the 
 people of this country to exclude the Bible 
 from the schools in which the great major- 
 ity of our children are taught. In order to 
 secure its exclusion from schools founded 
 by individual benevolence, these enemies 
 of the Bible have not hesitated to violate 
 the most sacred trusts. Nearly half a 
 
 78 
 
In the Schools 79 
 
 century ago John McDonogh left a large 
 fortune to the cities of Baltimore and New 
 Orleans for the purpose of instructing 
 youth ** in the knowledge of the Lord, and 
 in reading, writing, arithmetic, history, 
 geography, etc., under such regulations as 
 the commissioners of said schools shall es- 
 tablish, always understood and provided, 
 however, that the Holy Bible of the Old 
 and New Testaments shall be at all times 
 and forever made use of in those schools 
 as one (and the principal one) of the read- 
 ing or class books which shall be used by 
 the pupils therein ; as the first object of 
 every school and all teaching should be to 
 implant in their minds a knowledge of 
 their duty to God and the relations of men 
 to their divine Creator, and singing classes 
 shall be established and forever supported, 
 and singing taught as a regular branch of 
 such schools, which means that each pupil 
 shall acquire the rudiments of the art, and 
 obtain a knowledge of singing sacred 
 
8o The Indispensable Book 
 
 music." While Baltimore is faithful to 
 this trust and is using her part of the be- 
 quest as provided for by the founder, New 
 Orleans has shamefully violated it by 
 keeping the Bible out of the schools built 
 with her benefactor's money. The redis- ' 
 CO very of the original will last year (1909) 
 in the rubbish of the Cabildo, where it had 
 lain hidden for forty years or more, accen- 
 tuates the city's shame. The honour 
 which New Orleans pays to McDonogh's 
 memory once a year, when all her school 
 children march around his monument and 
 cover it with flowers, only deepens and 
 proclaims her own dishonour. 
 
 But the master-stroke of this anti- 
 Biblical minority for the accomplishment 
 of its baleful purpose is its attempt to pre- 
 vent the Protestant Christians of our coun- 
 try from providing any instruction in the 
 Bible for their children in connection with 
 their general education in the public 
 schools. The interpretation it seeks to 
 
In the Schools 81 
 
 force upon our principle of the separation 
 of church and state and upon the deci- 
 sions of the courts forbidding sectarian 
 teaching in the public schools is that not 
 only must the Bible not be taught in the 
 regular curriculum of these schools to all 
 the pupils regardless of the religious faith 
 of their parents, which we readily grant, 
 but that it must not be taught even in 
 connection with such schools by any in- 
 structors, however and by whomsoever 
 they may be appointed — that it must not 
 be taught even to those children whose 
 parents wish it done. 
 
 Now, we believe that it would be a 
 violation of the American principle of 
 religious liberty for the state to require the 
 teaching of Christianity in the common 
 schools and to compel the children of all 
 its citizens to attend such teaching. It is 
 indeed the right and duty of the state to 
 teach morals and to give to all the children 
 in its schools the fullest possible teaching 
 
82 The Indispensable Book 
 
 concerning God as the creator and moral 
 governor of mankind. But the state has 
 no warrant to teach evangelical religion, 
 to inculcate the doctrines of grace, to ex- 
 pound the plan of salvation. Therefore it 
 has no right to prescribe the teaching of 
 the whole Bible as a book of religion in 
 the pubHc schools. But neither has it the 
 right to proscribe it in such a way as to 
 prevent Christian parents from having the 
 Bible taught to their children in connection 
 with their general education, by teachers 
 of their own appointment, even though 
 some of these teachers might be instructors 
 in the public schools. Yet it is claimed by 
 the opponents of the Bible that this is the 
 efTect of the decisions recently made by 
 some of our municipal and state courts, 
 and one cannot doubt that it was the re- 
 sult aimed at by those who procured these 
 decisions. For instance, on the petition of 
 Roman Catholic residents of the town of 
 Winchester, Illinois, the Supreme Court of 
 
In the Schools 83 
 
 that state, in July, 19 10, reversing the 
 action of a lower court, declared religious 
 exercises in the public schools unlawful, 
 two of the justices dissenting from the 
 decision. The exercises to be suppressed 
 under the court's ruling are the reading of 
 the Bible, the recitation of the Lord's 
 Prayer, and the singing of hymns. By 
 some, as already stated, this decision is in- 
 terpreted to mean not only that the teach- 
 ing of the Bible as a part of the required 
 curriculum in the public schools of Illinois 
 is forbidden, but also that any teaching of 
 the Bible in any way in those schools dur- 
 ing school hours is forbidden, even though 
 such teaching be desired by Protestant 
 parents for their children and be given by 
 teachers designated by those parents. 
 
 This interpretation seems to us too 
 broad. Protestant parents should not be 
 forbidden to have their children instructed 
 in the Bible in the public schools by 
 teachers of their own selection. Of course 
 
84 The Indispensable Book 
 
 the children of Roman Catholic and Jewish 
 parents should not be required to attend 
 such teaching. On the contrary they 
 should be left equally free to provide in 
 the same way for whatever religious teach- 
 ing they wish their children to have. 
 
 As the priests of the Roman Catholic 
 Church have taken the leading part in 
 securing the decisions referred to and in 
 putting upon them the too broad interpre- 
 tation above mentioned, it will not be 
 amiss for the American people to recall 
 the incontrovertible statement of Lord 
 Macaulay in the first chapter of his " His- 
 tory of England " concerning the influence 
 of the Church of Rome in this regard : 
 
 " From the time when the barbarians 
 overran the Western Empire to the time of 
 the revival of letters, the influence of the 
 Churcti of Rome had been generally 
 favourable to science, to civilization, to 
 good government. But during the last 
 three centuries, to stunt the growth of the 
 
In the Schools 85 
 
 human mind has been her chief object. 
 Throughout Christendom, whatever ad- 
 vance has been made in knowledge, in 
 freedom, in wealth, and in the arts of life, 
 has been made in spite of her, and has 
 everywhere been in inverse proportion to 
 her power. The loveliest and most fertile 
 provinces of Europe have, under her rule, 
 been sunk in poverty, in political servi- 
 tude, and in intellectual torpor, while 
 Protestant countries, once proverbial for 
 sterility and barbarism, have been turned 
 by skill and industry into gardens, and 
 can boast of a long list of heroes and 
 statesmen, philosophers and poets. Who- 
 ever, knowing what Italy and Scotland 
 naturally are, and what, four hundred 
 years ago, they actually were, shall now 
 compare the country round Rome with the 
 country round Edinburgh, will be able to 
 form some judgment as to the tendency of 
 papal domination. The descent of Spain, 
 once the first among the monarchies, to 
 
86 The Indispensable Book 
 
 the lowest depths of degradation, the 
 elevation of Holland, in spite of many 
 natural disadvantages, to a position such 
 as no commonwealth so small has ever 
 reached, teach the same lesson. Whoever 
 passes in Germany from a Roman Catholic 
 to a Protestant principality, in Switzerland 
 from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant 
 canton, in Ireland from a Roman Catholic 
 to a Protestant county, finds that he has 
 passed from a lower to a higher grade of 
 civilization. On the other side of the 
 Atlantic the same law prevails. The 
 Protestants of the United States have left 
 far behind them the Roman Catholics of 
 Mexico, Peru and Brazil. The Roman 
 Catholics of Lower Canada remain inert, 
 while the whole continent round them is 
 in a ferment with Protestant activity and 
 enterprise. The French have doubtless 
 shown an energy and intelligence which, 
 even when misdirected, have justly entitled 
 them to be called a great people. But this 
 
In the Schools 87 
 
 apparent exception, when examined, will 
 be found to confirm the rule, for in no 
 country that is called Roman Catholic has 
 the Roman Catholic Church, during several 
 generations, possessed so little authority 
 as in France." 
 
 Happily many of the people whom the 
 priests have heretofore dominated are be- 
 ginning to observe for themselves the 
 difference thus clearly pointed out by 
 Macaulay — and not only by him, but 
 by Gladstone, by Dickens, and by such 
 Roman Catholic writers as Mr. Michael 
 McCarthy — between the effects of Ro- 
 manism and Protestantism respectively 
 on human intelligence and civilization, 
 and to draw the inevitable inference 
 that there is something radically wrong 
 with the system in which they have 
 been reared, and that, as the very exist- 
 ence of our free institutions depends upon 
 the intelligence and moral character of our 
 citizens, it is nothing but national suicide 
 
88 The Indispensable Book 
 
 to shut out from the training of our future 
 citizens the one book which has shown it- 
 self to be the greatest of all promoters both 
 of intelligence and moral character. There 
 are not a few cheering signs that a steadily 
 increasing number of our more intelligent 
 Roman Catholic people in America will 
 refuse to follow the priests in their antag- 
 onism to Bible teaching as a discipline 
 for prospective citizens. 
 
 But the Roman Catholic priests and 
 their followers are not the only opponents 
 of religious training in connection with the 
 common schools. The Jewish rabbis of 
 America at their annual conference (19 lo) 
 at Charlevoix, Michigan, protested against 
 the use of the Bible in the public schools 
 as a grievous wrong, declaring that this 
 is not a Christian country. That it is a 
 Christian country in a general sense is 
 clearly shown by the fact that it has ever 
 been a haven of refuge for the persecuted 
 Jews. But the Jewish rabbis, though en- 
 
In the Schools 89 
 
 joying in this Christian land full civil 
 and religious liberty, have shut their eyes 
 to the fact stated by the most illustrious 
 modern member of their race, that "all 
 nations that refuse the Cross wither " and 
 have apparently joined forces with the 
 infidels and the Roman Catholic priests 
 in their war against any kind of Bible 
 teaching in connection with our common 
 schools. 
 
 As a matter of fact, however, the propo- 
 sition to exclude the Bible from the schools 
 absolutely is an impracticable one, for, even 
 were all the courts of the land to forbid the 
 direct use of it, there is a sense in which it 
 would still remain. How can the writings 
 which permeate all modern literature be 
 excluded from a real education? How can 
 the book which is interwoven with all the 
 noblest prose and poetry in our language 
 be torn out without destroying the whole 
 fabric of our literature and with it the 
 means of our best intellectual culture? To 
 
go The Indispensable Book 
 
 a Jewish gentleman who remarked that he 
 did not want his children to read the New 
 Testament in the public schools a better 
 informed citizen said with truth : " Then 
 you must throw out Shakespeare, Milton 
 and Carlyle, Wordsworth, Browning and 
 Tennyson, Whittier, Longfellow and 
 Holmes, — in short, all the greatest poets 
 and essayists who have used the English 
 tongue." And what can the schools do in 
 the departments of art, fiction, philosophy, 
 and ethics without giving their pupils a 
 knowledge of the Bible? How can stu- 
 dents without such knowledge understand 
 the Biblical allusions, images and ideas 
 with which the best treatises on all these 
 subjects abound ? It is not a question of 
 sectarianism. It is a question of general 
 intelligence. 
 
 An attempt was recently made to exclude 
 instruction in the Bible from the University 
 College of Toronto on the ground that the 
 charter of the institution forbids the teach- 
 
In the Schools 91 
 
 ing of theology and that any interpretation 
 or discussion of Biblical passages in the 
 class rooms was a violation of this charter. 
 The governors of the University, after 
 careful consideration of the complaint by 
 a committee of their own number, made 
 this answer : " Many of the subjects as- 
 signed to University College could not be 
 fully and properly taught without the use 
 of the Bible — notably Oriental languages, 
 ethics, ancient history, and Greek require 
 the assistance of the Bible for their full 
 and proper appreciation. To exclude all 
 discussion of the Bible and the literary, 
 historical, linguistic and ethical sides 
 thereof, whether in the Hebrew, Greek, 
 English or other version, would be to ex- 
 clude from the arts course of the college 
 an important literary work, an important 
 help to the study of languages, and the 
 greatest code of ethics known to the world. 
 Your committee begs further to report 
 that, in its opinion, discussions of the 
 
92 The Indispensable Book 
 
 books and narratives of the Bible in the 
 study of literature, ancient history, Oriental 
 languages and Greek may take place 
 without entering upon the domain of 
 theology, contrary to the statute." 
 
 But this diffused and pervasive presence 
 of the Bible in all our literature, which can 
 never be got rid of — this general influence 
 of it in liberal education — while of priceless 
 value to culture, is not sufficient. In order 
 that it may effectually mould the moral 
 character of our future citizens, it must be 
 studied directly, regularly, continuously, 
 under the direction of sympathetic living 
 teachers. The number of schools in 
 which this is done has diminished rapidly 
 in the last half century, and the result is 
 seen in the enormous increase of crime in 
 the same period. The Hon. Whitelaw 
 Reid, our Ambassador to Great Britain, 
 is quoted as saying that in 1850 there was 
 in this country only one criminal to every 
 3,422 of the population, but that now there 
 
In the Schools 93 
 
 is one criminal to every 300 — surely one 
 of the most startling and significant facts 
 ever brought to the attention of a people. 
 He adds that ** in Austria, since religious 
 teaching was abolished in the day-schools, 
 crime has increased seventy-five per cent." 
 The best showing among all the nations 
 seems to be made by Great Britain. Mr. 
 Reid states the reason and also the lesson 
 to be drawn by our own people : " The 
 British schools turn out pupils well 
 grounded in Christianity, and America 
 might well follow her example." Judge 
 Grosscup of Chicago sees the same defect, 
 utters the same warning, and gives the 
 same counsel : ** The only blot on the 
 American public schools is the exclusion 
 of spirituality as one of the great facts of 
 the world. The law admits Darwin, ad- 
 mits science, and admits all facts except 
 the supreme fact that religion is the funda- 
 mental influence in all movements of man- 
 kind. As long as America turns its back 
 
94 The Indispensable Book 
 
 on religion and the existence of God— the 
 perfect message given by Jesus Christ — it 
 is excluding the most powerful influence 
 for good, both spiritual and civil, that the 
 world has at its command." 
 
 We have indicated above our own belief 
 that we can teach the Bible in connection 
 with the public schools without violating 
 our national principle of religious liberty 
 and the separation of church and state. 
 Though Jews, Roman Catholics, and un- 
 believers object to the teaching of it to 
 their children in the schools which are 
 supported by taxes levied upon all the 
 people, and though their objection must 
 be sustained, we can without oppressing 
 the consciences of this minority of our 
 citizens teach it to the children of the 
 evangelical Christian majority. 
 
 Some, indeed, despairing of any solution 
 of the problem as to the public schools, 
 insist that the only thing to do is to fall 
 back on the old plan of private schools 
 
In the Schools 95 
 
 and church schools which for so long a 
 period and in so large a measure did yield 
 the desired results in character and con- 
 duct, and to patronize them in preference 
 to the public schools. We trust that, as 
 things now stand, this will be done wher- 
 ever possible. Happy the children whose 
 parents can send them to schools in the 
 curricula of which the Bible is taught 
 freely and fully. But to establish, equip 
 and maintain a sufficient number of such 
 schools to meet the requirements of all 
 the Protestant children of the country 
 seems to us to be out of the question. 
 Under present conditions they cannot 
 hope to compete successfully with the 
 public free schools on the scale required. 
 Others, therefore, claim that the Prot- 
 estant majority, who brought the Bible to 
 this land and under its teachings subdued 
 the wilderness and developed our institu- 
 tions and made our country what it is, 
 have at least the same right to say what 
 
96 The Indispensable Book 
 
 their children shall be taught as the non- 
 Protestant minority have to say what theirs 
 shall be taught, and that to allow this 
 minority of Jews, Roman Catholics and 
 infidels, who have been freely admitted to 
 all the privileges purchased by the blood 
 of our Protestant sires, to dictate to us 
 what shall or shall not be taught to Prot- 
 estant children in connection with their 
 general education is an intolerable travesty 
 on liberty. This party therefore says — We 
 will have the Bible taught to our children 
 in connection with the day-schools, but 
 we will oppress no man's conscience. The 
 children of Jews, Roman Catholics and 
 infidels shall not be required to attend the 
 religious instruction provided for the 
 children of the Protestant majority. These 
 anti-Biblical elements of our population 
 shall be free to provide whatever instruc- 
 tion in religion for their children they may 
 desire and at the hands of whatever teach- 
 ers they may choose. But they shall not 
 
In the Schools 97 
 
 prevent our doing the same for our chil- 
 dren and doing it in the most effective 
 way, viz., in connection with our day- 
 schools. 
 
 Why cannot the children of Protestants, 
 Roman Catholics and Jews be gathered 
 separately at the school for a half hour 
 every day for religious instruction, to be 
 given by such teachers or ministers as the 
 parents may designate ? An equally unob- 
 jectionable method, though one that would 
 probably be less effective, is the one said 
 to have been recently proposed by the 
 Protestant ministers in Charleston, S. C, 
 viz., that instead of any religious instruc- 
 tion at the school itself the pupils should 
 gather at their several churches for two 
 hours of their school time on specified 
 days of the week, say from eleven o'clock 
 till one, and there be taught by their own 
 ministers or other teachers approved by 
 their parents. 
 
 The special object of this discussion, 
 
98 The Indispensable Book 
 
 however, is not to solve the question as to 
 the best method of reintroducing the Bible 
 into our systems of education, but to re- 
 mind our people of the necessity of doing 
 it. When once they see that the inevi- 
 table result of its exclusion is the intellec- 
 tual impoverishment of their children, the 
 weakening of their attachment to our re- 
 publican ideals, and the failure to develop 
 a sound and controlling moral character, 
 they will not be long in solving the mere 
 problem of method. 
 
 Even Professor Huxley, bitterly preju- 
 diced though he was against the Bible, 
 said : " I have always been strongly in fa- 
 vour of secular education without theology, 
 but I must confess that I have been no 
 less seriously perplexed to know by what 
 practical measures the religious feeling, 
 which is the essential basis of moral con- 
 duct, is to be kept up in the present utterly 
 chaotic state of opinion on these matters 
 without the use of the Bible." 
 
VI 
 
 THE BIBLE AND SPIRITUAL LIFE 
 
 "A ■ ^HIS collection of books," says 
 I Theodore Parker, "has taken 
 such a hold on the world as has 
 no other. The literature of Greece, which 
 goes up like incense from that land of 
 temples and heroic deeds, has not half the 
 influence of this book from a nation alike 
 despised in ancient and modern times. In 
 all the temples of Christendom is its voice 
 lifted up, week by week. The sun never 
 sets on its gleaming page. It goes equally 
 to the cottage of the plain man and the 
 palace of the king. It is woven into the 
 literature of the scholar, and it colours the 
 talk of the street. ... It blesses us 
 when we are born ; gives names to half 
 Christendom ; rejoices with us ; has sym- 
 pathy for our mourning ; tempers our 
 
 99 
 
loo The Indispensable Book 
 
 grief to finer issues. It is the better part 
 of our sermons. It lifts man above him- 
 self ; our best of uttered prayers are in its 
 storied speech, wherewith our fathers and 
 the patriarchs prayed. The timid man, 
 about awaking from this dream of life, 
 looks through the glass of Scripture, and 
 his eye grows bright ; he does not fear to 
 stand alone, to tread the way unknown 
 and distant, to take the death-angel by the 
 hand, and bid farewell to wife, and babes, 
 and home. . . . Some thousand fa- 
 mous writers come up in this century, to 
 be forgotten in the next. But the silver 
 cord of the Bible is not loosed, nor its 
 golden bowl broken, as Time chronicles his 
 tens of centuries passed by. Has the hu- 
 man race gone mad ? . » . It is only 
 a heart that can speak, deep and true, to 
 a heart ; a mind to a mind ; a soul to a 
 soul ; wisdom to the wise, and religion to 
 the pious. There must then be in the 
 Bible mind, heart, and soul, wisdom and 
 
The Bible and Spiritual Life i o i 
 
 religion. Were it otherwise, how could 
 millions find it their lawgiver, friend, and 
 prophet?" The Bible, says Thomas Car- 
 lyle, is " the one Book wherein, for thou- 
 sands of years, the spirit of man has found 
 light and nourishment, and the response 
 to whatever was deepest in his heart." 
 William E. Gladstone says : " If I am 
 asked to name the one comfort in sorrow, 
 the safe rule of conduct, the true guide of 
 life, I must point to what in the words of a 
 popular hymn is called 'The old, old 
 story,' told in an old, old Book, which is 
 God's best and richest gift to mankind." 
 Coleridge says, " I know the Bible is in- 
 spired because it finds me at greater 
 depths of my being than any other book ; " 
 and Dwight L. Moody more succinctly, ** I 
 know the Bible is inspired because it in- 
 spires me." We know that it is the Word 
 of God because it speaks to our hearts. 
 These statements bring us to our last 
 point. 
 
102 The Indispensable Book 
 
 The Bible is necessary to our spiritual 
 life. This is the most familiar of all the as- 
 pects of the Holy Scriptures, and therefore, 
 though it is far the most important, it does 
 not need to be fully stated here. We have 
 seen, when speaking of the relation of the 
 Bible to morals and benevolence, that it 
 teaches men justice, honesty, truthfulness, 
 purity, temperance, love, kindness and 
 gendeness. But other books have done 
 that in a measure ; yet they have not been 
 able to give spiritual life. There is no 
 vital power in mere moral precepts. They 
 point out what is right but they do not 
 give the ability to do it. A Japanese 
 student, writing recently in the Japan 
 Weekly Mail, says : ** Of all our studies 
 ethics is the most tedious. Our teachers 
 tell us we must be honest, truthful and 
 virtuous, all of which we know very well, 
 but they impart to us no moral power to 
 do these things." Now the religion of the 
 Bible is more than a system of morals. 
 
The Bible and Spiritual Life 1 03 
 
 The essential difference between it and 
 other systems is that they have always 
 lacked ** the vitality of conscience touched 
 by the Spirit of God." The Bible pos- 
 sesses the unique power of ** enabling men 
 to attain what it has taught them to prize 
 and desire." For, in addition to the ex- 
 ternal rule, there is " the inward work of 
 the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and 
 with the word in our hearts." Hence the 
 writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says ^ 
 that ** the word of God is quick and pow- 
 erful," that is, living and active. It is not 
 a dead book but a living word, operative, 
 inworking, power-producing. " It is the 
 glory of Christianity that it not only 
 teaches what is good and right, but has a 
 power in it to cause men to love and prac- 
 tice that good and right. The morality 
 of Paganism was tentative, where Chris- 
 tianity is authoritative — dim where Chris- 
 tianity is bright — it gives only a rule where 
 
 1 Heb. iv. 12. 
 
104 The Indispensable Book 
 
 Christianity supplies a principle. It lacked 
 sanction, it wanted ardour, intensity ; it 
 could not furnish a faultless example ; it 
 gave no sufficient motive under tempta- 
 tion, no support under trials ; above all, 
 there was no causative power to make men 
 love holiness or the very morality it taught. 
 It could not impart the new birth" The 
 Bible, on the other hand, *' is alive," as 
 Chinese Gordon said. It possesses and 
 communicates life. Its ideas are not 
 merely perceived but apperceived. *' The 
 Gospel is educative because its Teacher 
 put its truth before men in a form to be 
 apperceived, to become, not a part of a 
 man's mental store, but a part of his men- 
 tal life. The words of Plato are a priceless 
 treasure, but the words of Jesus are spirit 
 and life." ^ 
 
 This is life eternal to know the only true 
 God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent ; ^ 
 
 1 «* Educational Evangelism," Charles E. McKinley, p. 
 1 20. 'John xvii. 3. 
 
The Bible and Spiritual Life 105 
 
 and this knowledge the Bible alone gives. 
 Prof. Wm. James, in his recent work on 
 "The Varieties of Religious Experience," 
 says that under all the discrepancies of 
 creeds there is a common nucleus to which 
 they bear their testimony unanimously ; 
 that, however widely the formulas of the 
 various religions may differ, there is a cer- 
 tain uniform deliverance in which religions 
 all appear to meet. ** It consists of two 
 parts : i. An uneasiness ; and 2. Its 
 solution. I. The uneasiness reduced to 
 its simplest terms is a sense that there is 
 something wrong about us as we naturally 
 stand. 2. The solution is that we are 
 saved from the wrongness by making 
 proper connection with the higher powers." 
 That is as far as other religions can take 
 us. But is that a real *' solution" which 
 does not answer the question, How can we 
 make proper connection with the higher 
 powders? To that question the Bible, and 
 the Bible alone, gives adequate answer. 
 
io6 The Indispensable Book 
 
 It shows us that God loves us and that He 
 has made provision for the pardon of our 
 guilt through the atonement of His Son 
 for sin, and it draws us to Him in penitence 
 and faith. Here is the real secret of the 
 power of this book. Not its incomparable 
 wealth of literature, nor its incomparable 
 wealth of moral teaching, but its Evangel 
 — its revelation of a Redeemer — the Lamb 
 of God that taketh away the sin of 
 the world. That meets the deepest need 
 of the human soul. " And I, if I be 
 lifted upy^ said Jesus, ** will draw all men 
 unto Me." It is thus the means of our re- 
 generation. The Apostle Peter says ^ we 
 are "born again, not of corruptible seed, 
 but of incorruptible, by the word of God, 
 which liveth and abideth forever." And 
 not only born, but also nourished ; for the 
 same apostle elsewhere^ calls the word 
 milk, and exhorts us, as new-born babes, 
 to grow thereby. It is therefore not only 
 
 1 I Peter i. 23. « i Peter ii. 2. 
 
The Bible and Spiritual Life 107 
 
 the means of regeneration but of sanctifi- 
 cation as well. The Apostle Paul com- 
 mends the elders of Ephesus '* to God and 
 the word of His grace, which is able to 
 build you up and to give you an inherit- 
 ance among all them that are sanctified." ^ 
 It substitutes for the cold principle of 
 utility or expediency as a reason for right 
 conduct the vital and effectual motive of 
 gratitude and love to our Redeemer. 
 
 As W. E. H. Lecky says : ** It was 
 reserved for Christianity to present to the 
 world an ideal character which, through all 
 the changes of eighteen centuries, has in- 
 spired the hearts of men with an impas- 
 sioned love ; has shown itself capable of 
 acting on all ages, nations, temperaments 
 and conditions ; has been not only the 
 highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest 
 incentive to its practice ; and has exercised 
 so deep an influence that it may be truly 
 said that the simple record of three short 
 
 1 Acts XX. 32, 
 
io8 The Indispensable Book 
 
 years of active life has done more to re- 
 generate and soften mankind than all the 
 disquisitions of philosophers and all the 
 exhortations of moralists." Hence the 
 virile words of Browning : 
 
 ** I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ 
 Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
 All questions in the earth and out of it, 
 And has so far advanced thee to be wise." 
 
 And so in every age weary men who have 
 traversed all the continents of philosophy 
 and sounded all the seas of speculation 
 come back 
 
 *' To find that all the sages said 
 Is in the Book our mothers read." 
 
 When Dean Stanley was visiting Hein- 
 rich Ew^ald, the greatest genius in the long 
 line of German critics, Ewald took up a 
 copy of the New Testament and said : 
 " All the wisdom of the world is in this 
 little book." The Bible alone can make 
 
The Bible and Spiritual Life 1 09 
 
 men " wise unto salvation." ^ When Sir 
 Walter Scott lay dying at Abbotsford, he 
 expressed a wish that his son-in-law should 
 read to him, and when Lockhart asked 
 from what book, he said : " Need you ask ? 
 There is but one." Lockhart read to him 
 the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of 
 John, and it cheered and comforted Scott 
 as it has cheered and comforted thousands 
 of others when approaching the end of 
 earthly life. There is indeed ** but one 
 book " that can give to dying men eternal 
 life. 
 
 For all these reasons the Bible is The 
 Indispensable Book. Therefore, as we 
 value the culture and character of our peo- 
 ple, as we value their civil liberty and their 
 material prosperity, as we value their 
 deliverance from the guilt and power and 
 pollution of sin, as we value their consecra- 
 tion to God in righteousness, as we value 
 their peace in death and their blessedness 
 
 1 2 Tim. iii. 15. 
 
no The Indispensable Book 
 
 in eternity, let us labour in season and out 
 of season to saturate the minds and hearts 
 of our whole people with the uplifting and 
 refining and saving word of God. 
 
 THE END 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbot, Lyman, on our debt to the Bible for the principles 
 
 of our government, 59. 
 Addison, Joseph, on the superiority of the Psalms to Horace 
 
 and Pindar, 31. 
 America, founded by men of God, 16. 
 
 Arnold, Edwin, owes everything as a writer to the Bible, 33. 
 Arnold, Matthew, on the Bible a necessity, title page. 
 Authorized Version, its character and influence, 24. 
 
 Bacon, Francis, his acquaintance with the Bible, 28 ; on 
 the Bible as the greatest promoter of the public good, 64. 
 
 Baldwin, C. S., on the Bible as a model for writers, 36. 
 
 Balfour, Arthur J,, on moralists as parasites of Christi- 
 anity, 74. 
 
 Beveridge, Albert J., on " The Bible as Good Reading," 37-40. 
 
 Bible, as literature of knowledge, 21 ; as literature of power, 
 22; necessary to intellectual culture, 19-50 ; ignorance 
 of, shown by college students, 41-45 ; necessary to our 
 national ideals, 51-63; necessary to sound and perma- 
 nent morality and benevolence, 64-77 > evils falsely 
 ascribed to, 68 ; picture of a community in which it was 
 fully obeyed, 71 ; study of in connection with the 
 public schools, 80-98 ; necessary to spiritual life, 99-108. 
 
 Bismarck, on the necessity of faiih in a revealed religion, 73. 
 
 Brace, Charles Loring, " Gesta Christi," 66. 
 
 Brewer, David J., on America as the product of the Bible, 51. 
 
 Browning, his use of Scripture, 28 ; on God in Christ the 
 solution of all things, 108. 
 
 Bryan, William Jennings, on proof of the divinity of Christ, 
 65. 
 
 Burke, Edmund, his use of Isaiah as an intellectual tonic, 30. 
 
 « Cambridge History of English Literature," on the 
 
 preeminence of Bible lyrics, 31. 
 Carlyle, Thomas, on the Bible and modern progress, 62; 
 
 on the Bible as the one answer to the deepest human 
 
 need, loi. 
 
 Ill 
 
112 
 
 Index 
 
 Coleridge, on the creative literary influence of the Bible, 27 ; 
 on the vigour of its style, 29 ; on the profundity of the 
 Epistle to the Romans, 32 ; on the Beatitudes, 32 ; on 
 the Bible as a promoter of purity in style, 34 ; on the 
 Bible as inspired, 10 1. 
 
 Cook, A. S., on " The Authorized Version and Its Influ- 
 ence," 34. 
 
 Cuyler, Theodore L., on the value of the Bible for mental 
 discipline, 22. 
 
 Dana, Charles A., on the value of the Bible to journal- 
 ists, 35. 
 
 DeQuincey, on literature of knowledge and literature of 
 power, 19. 
 
 Dickens, on the parable of the prodigal son, 32. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, on the originality of the Bible, 
 
 Ewald, Heinrich, on the New Testament as containing all 
 the wisdom of the world, 108. 
 
 Faber, F, W., on the charm and power of the English 
 
 Bible, 25-27. 
 Fairbairn, Principal, on the Old Testament and the poor, 55. 
 Froude, J. A., on the preeminence of the Book of Job as 
 
 poetry, 32. 
 
 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, on the Bible and freedom, 62. 
 Gladstone, on the Gospel as God's best gift to mankind, loi. 
 Gould, F. G., on the Bible as an imaginative reservoir for 
 
 the common people, 47. 
 Grant, U. S., on the Bible as the guarantee of our liberties, 61. 
 Green, John Richard, on the Enghsh of the Bible, 25 ; on 
 
 the motive of the settlers of America, 16, 
 Grosscup, Judge, on the use of the Bible in the day schools, 
 
 93- 
 
 Hallam, on the perfection of the English of the Bible, ^iZ- 
 
 Hawthorne, his debt to the Bible, 29. 
 
 Hebrew republic ordained of God, Hebrew monarchy 
 substituted by the people, 56-58. 
 
 Huxley, on the influence of the English Bible, 32 ; on the 
 Bible as the charter of popular rights, 6r ; on the 
 necessity of religious teaching in day schools, 98. 
 
Index 113 
 
 Jackson, Andrew, on the Bible as the rock on which the 
 republic rests, 61. 
 
 James, William, on the universal uneasiness and its solu- 
 tion, 105. 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas, on the Bible as a promoter of morals, 77. 
 
 Jews, oppose the teaching of the Bible in public schools, 88^ 
 
 Lecky, W. E. H., on the regenerating power of the char- 
 acter of Christ, 107. 
 Lewes, G. H., on the masterly plainness of Genesis, 36. 
 Lowell, J. R.,on the necessity of the Bible to civiUzation, 74. 
 
 Macaulay, T. B., his use of Scripture, 29 ; his tribute to 
 the English Bible, 40; on the influence of the Church 
 of Rome, 84-88, 
 
 Machen, Mrs. M. G., on " Bible Study in Relation to Modern 
 Literature," 37. 
 
 McDonogh Trust, violation of by New Orleans, 79. 
 
 Milton, " Paradise Lost," 19; his works saturated with Scrip- 
 ture, 28; his estimate of the songs and orations of the 
 Bible, 29. 
 
 Moody, D. L., on the Bible as inspired, 10 1. 
 
 Moulton, Richard, on the preeminence of the speeches of 
 Moses, 30. 
 
 New Orleans, disgraced by violation of the McDonogh 
 
 trust, 80, 
 New York Post, on the influence of the Bible in English 
 
 literature, 23. 
 
 OsLER, William, his style strongly influenced by the 
 Bible, 36. 
 
 Palladium, of Troy, 15; of America, 16. 
 
 "Paradise Lost," as literature of power, 19. 
 
 Parker, Theodore, on the permanence and power of the 
 
 Bible, 99. 
 Peabody, A. P., on the Bible as the key to the best English 
 
 diction, 49. 
 Phelps, William Lyon, on the ignorance of the Bible among 
 
 college students, 45, 
 Public schools, the Bible and, 80-98. 
 
 Reid, Whitelaw, on the necessity of religious teaching in 
 day schools, 92. 
 
114 Index 
 
 Renan, on the beauty of the Gospel of Luke, 32. 
 Republican form of government first given to the Hebrews 
 
 by Moses, 56. 
 Roman Catholic Church, a hindrance to civilization, 84-88. 
 Roman Catholic priests, their opposition to the use of the 
 
 Bible in connection with public schools, 84. 
 Ruskin, his power as a writer due to early knowledge of 
 
 Scripture, 31. 
 
 Saintsbury, on the preeminence of the English Bible as 
 prose, 34. 
 
 Schurman, Jacob, on the Bible as a necessity in educa- 
 tion, 49, 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, "There is but one book," 109. 
 
 Shakespeare, his use of the Bible, 28. 
 
 Sidney, Algernon, his *• Discourses Concerning Govern- 
 ment," 57. 
 
 Smith, C. Alphonso, on the knowledge of the Bible among 
 college students, 46. 
 
 Spofford, Librarian, on the power of Biblical English, 34. 
 
 Stanley, A. P., his quotation of Ewald on the New Testa- 
 ment, 108. 
 
 Straus, O. S., on the Hebrew origin of the American gov- 
 ernment, 57. 
 
 Tennyson, his use of the Bible, 28, 
 
 Thwing, President, on the ignorance of Scripture evinced 
 
 by college students, 41-43. 
 Tolstoy, on the impossibility of education without the Bible, 
 
 49- 
 
 University of Toronto, refusal of to exclude the Bible, 90. 
 
 Warner, Charles Dudley, on the Bible as a necessity in 
 education, 48. 
 
 Wayland, President, on the moral and religious influence 
 of the Bible, 64. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, on the Bible as the guarantee of our pros- 
 perity, 17 ; his eloquence due to his early knowledge 
 of Scripture, 30; his use of Scripture as an intellectual 
 tonic, 30. 
 
 Wordsworth, his estimate of the Bible as literature, 29. 
 
 Work, E. W., on the ignorance of the Bible among college 
 students, 45. 
 
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