THE BIBLE IN THE LIFE OF TO-DAY

THIS lecture must differ at two points from

those which have preceded it. In the first

place, the other lectures have dealt entirely with

facts. This must deal also with judgments. In

the earlier lectures we have avoided any consideration

of what ought to have been and have

centered our interest on what actually did occur.

We especially avoided any argument based on

a theory of the literary characteristics or literary

influence of the Bible, but sought first to find

the facts and then to discover what explained

them. It might be very difficult to determine

what is the actual place of the Bible in the

life of to-day. Perhaps it would be impossible

to give a broad, fair judgment. It is quite certain

that the people of James's day did not

realize the place it was taking. It is equally

certain that many of those whom it most influenced

were entirely unconscious of the fact.

It is only when we look back upon the scene that

we discover the influence that was moving them.

But, while it is difficult to say what the place of

the Bible actually is in our own times, the place

it ought to have is easier to point out. That will

involve a study of the conditions of our times,

which suggest the need for its influence. While

we must consider the facts, therefore, we will be

compelled to pass some judgments also, and

therein this lecture must differ from the others.

The second fact of difference is that while the

earlier lectures have dealt with the King James

version, this must deal rather with the Bible.

For the King James version is not the Bible.

There are many versions; there is but one

Bible. Whatever the translators put into the

various tongues, the Bible itself remains the

same. There are values in the new versions;

but they are simply the old value of the Bible

itself. It is a familiar maxim that the newest

version is the oldest Bible. We are not making

the Bible up to date when we make a new version;

we are only getting back to its date. A

revision in our day is the effort to take out of

the original writings what men of King James's

day may have put in, and give them so much the

better chance. There is no revised Bible; there is

only a revised version. Readers sometimes feel

disturbed at what they consider the changes

made in the Bible. The fact is, the revision

which deserves the name is lessening the changes

in the Bible; it is giving us the Bible as it

actually was and taking from us elements which

were not part of it. One can sympathize with

the eloquent Dr. Storrs, who declared, in an

address in 1879, that he was against any new

version because of the history of the King James

version, describing it as a great oak with roots

running deep and branches spreading wide. He

declared we were not ready to give it up for any

modern tulip-tree. There is something in that,

though such figures are not always good argument.

Yet the value to any book of a worthy

translation is beyond calculation. The outstanding

literary illustration of that fact is

familiar. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam lay

in Persian literature and in different English

translations long before Fitzgerald made it a

household classic for literary people. The translator

made the book for us in more marked way

than the original writer did. In somewhat the

same way the King James version gave to the

English-speaking people the Bible; and no other

version has taken its place.

Yet that was not a mistaken move nearly

forty years ago, when the revision of the King

James version was proposed and undertaken.

Thirty years ago (1881) it was completed in what

we ordinarily call the Revised Version, and ten

years ago (1901) the American form of that

Revised Version appeared. Few things could

more definitely prove the accepted place of the

King James version than the fact that we seem

to hear less to-day of the Revised Version than

we used to hear, and that, while the American

Revised Version is incomparably the best in

existence in its reproduction of the original, even

it makes way slowly. In less than forty years

the King James version crowded all its competitors

off the field. The presence of the Revised

Version of 1881 has not appreciably affected

the sales or the demand for the King James version.

In the minds of most people the English

and the American revisions stand as admirable

commentaries on the King James version. If

one wishes to know wherein the King James

version failed of representing the original, he will

learn it better from those versions than from

any number of commentaries; but the number

of those to whom one or other of the versions

has supplanted the King James version is not

so large as might have been expected.

There were several reasons for a new English

version of the Bible. It was, of course, no

indignity to the King James version. Those

translators frankly said that they had no hope

to make a final version of the Scriptures. It

would be very strange if in three hundred years

language should not have grown by reason

of the necessities of the race that used it, so that

at some points a book might be outgrown. In

another lecture it has been intimated that the

English Bible, by reason of its constant use, has

tended to fix and confirm the English language.

But no one book, nor any set of books, could

confine a living tongue. Some of the reasons for

a new version which give value to these two revisions

may be mentioned.

1. Though the King James version was made

just after the literary renaissance, the classical

learning of to-day is far in advance of that day.

The King James version is occasionally defective

in its use of tenses and verbs in the Greek and

also in the Hebrew. We have Greek and Hebrew

scholars who are able more exactly to reproduce

in English the meaning of the original.

It would be strange if that were not so.

2. Then there have been new and important

discoveries of Biblical literature which date

earlier in Christian history than any our fathers

knew three hundred years ago. In some instances

those earlier discoveries have shown that

a phrase here or there has been wrongly

introduced into the text. There has been no marked

instance where a phrase was added by the revisers;

that is, a phrase dropped out of the

original and now replaced. One illustration of

the omission of a phrase will be enough. In

the fifth chapter of I John the seventh verse

reads: "For there are three that bear record

in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy

Ghost, and these three are one." In the revised

versions it is omitted, because it seems

quite certain that it was not in the original

writing. It does not at all alter the meaning

of Scripture. While it appears in most of the

best manuscripts which were available for the

King James translators, earlier manuscripts

found since that time have shown that it was

formerly written at the side as a gloss, and was

by some transcriber set over in the text itself.

The process of making the early manuscripts

shows how easily that could have occurred.

Let us suppose that two or three manuscripts

were being made at once by different copyists.

One was set to read the original; as he read, the

others wrote. It would be easy to suppose that

he might read this marginal reference as a suitable

commentary on the text, and that one or

more of the writers could have written it in the

text. It could easily happen also that a copyist,

even seeing where it stood, might suppose it had

been omitted by the earlier copyist, and that he

had completed his work by putting it on the

margin. So the next copyist would put it into

his own text. Once in a manuscript, it would

readily become part of the accepted form. Discoveries

that bring that sort of thing to light

are of value in giving us an accurate version of

the original Bible.

3. Then there are in our King James version

a few archaic and obsolete phrases. We

have already spoken of them. Most of them

have been avoided in the revised versions. The

neuter possessive pronoun, for example, has been

put in. Animal names have been clarified,

obsolete expressions have been replaced by more

familiar ones, and so on.

4. Then there were certain inaccuracies in

the King James version. The fact is familiar

that they transliterated certain words which

they could not well translate. In the revised

versions that has been carried farther still. The

words which they translated "hell" have been

put back into their Hebrew and Greek equivalents,

and appear as Sheol and Hades. Another

instance is that of an Old Testament word,

Asherah, which was translated always "grove,"

and was used to describe the object of worship

of the early enemies of Israel. The translation

does not quite represent the fact, and the revisers

have therefore replaced the old Hebrew

word Asherah. The transliterations of the King

James version have not been changed into translations.

Instead, the number of transliterations

has been increased in the interest of accuracy.

At one point one might incline to be adversely

critical of the American revisers. They have

transliterated the Hebrew word Jehovah; so

they have taken sides in a controversy where

scholars have room to differ. The version would

have gained in strength if it had retained the

dignified and noble word "Lord," which comes

as near representing the idea of the Hebrew word

for God as any word we could find. It must be

added that the English of neither of our new

versions has the rhythm and movement of the old

version. That is partly because we are so

accustomed to the old expressions and new ones

strike the ear unpleasantly. In any case, the

versions differ plainly in their English. It seems

most unlikely that either of these versions shall

ever have the literary influence of the King

James, though any man who will prophesy about,

that affects a wisdom which he has not.

These, then, are the two differences between

this lecture and the preceding ones, that in this

lecture we shall deal with judgments as well as

facts, and that we shall deal with the Bible

of to-day rather than the King James version.

Passing to the heart of the subject, the question

appears at once whether the Bible has or

can have to-day the influence or the place which

it seems to have had in the past. Two things,

force that question: Has not the critical study

of the Bible itself robbed it of its place of

authority, and have not the changes of our times

destroyed its possibilities of influence? That is,

on the one hand, has not the Bible been changed?

On the other hand, has it not come into such new

conditions that it cannot do its old work?

It is a natural but a most mistaken idea that

the critical study of the Bible is a new thing.

From long before the childhood of any of us

there has been sharp controversy about the

Bible. It is a controversy-provoking Book. It

cannot accept blind faith. It always has made

men think, and it makes them think in the line

of their own times. The days when no questions

were raised about the Bible were the days when

men had no access to it.

There are some who take all the Bible for

granted. They know that there is indifference

to it among friends and in their social circle;

but how real the dispute about the Bible is no

one realizes until he comes where new ideas, say

ideas of socialism, are in the air. There, with

the breaking of other chains, is a mighty effort

to break this bond also. In such circles the

Bible is little read. It is discussed, and time-

worn objections are bandied about, always growing

as they pass. In these circles also every

supposedly adverse result of critical study is

welcomed and remembered. If it is said that

there are unexplained contradictions in the Bible,

that fact is remembered. But if it is said further

that those contradictions bid fair to yield to

further critical study, or to a wiser understanding

of the situations in which they are involved, that

fact is overlooked. The tendency in these circles

is to keep alive rather the adverse phases

of critical study than its favorable phases. Some

of those who speak most fiercely about the study

of the Bible, by what is known as higher criticism,

are least intelligent as to what higher

criticism actually means. Believers regret it,

and unbelievers rejoice in it. As a matter of

fact, in developing any strong feeling about higher

criticism one only falls a prey to words; he

mistakes the meaning of both the words involved.

Criticism does not mean finding fault with the

Bible.[1] It is almost an argument for total

depravity that we have made the word gain an

adverse meaning, so that if the average man

were told that he had been "criticized" by another

be would suppose that something had been

said against him. Of course, intelligent people

know that that is not necessarily involved.

When Kant wrote The Critique of Pure Reason

he was not finding fault with pure reason. He

was only making careful analytical study of it.

Now, critical study of the Bible is only careful

study of it. It finds vastly more new beauties

than unseen defects. In the same way the adjective

"higher" comes in for misunderstanding. It

does not mean superior; it means more difficult.

Lower criticism is the study of the text itself.

What word ought to be here, and exactly what

does that word mean? What is the comparative

value of this manuscript over against that

one? If this manuscript has a certain word and

that other has a slightly different one, which

word ought to be used?

[1] Jefferson, Things Fundamental, p. 90.

Take one illustration from the Old Testament

and one from the New to show what lower or

textual criticism does. In the ninth chapter of

Isaiah the third verse reads: "Thou hast multiplied

the nation and not increased the joy."

That word "not" is troublesome. It disagrees

with the rest of the passage. Now it happens

that there are two Hebrew words pronounced

"lo," just alike in sound, but spelled differently.

One means "not," the other means "to him"

or "his." Put the second word in, and the sentence

reads: "Thou hast multiplied the nation

and increased its joy." That fits the context

exactly. Lower criticism declares that it is

therefore the probable reading, and corrects the

text in that way.

The other illustration is from the Epistle of

James, where in the fourth chapter the second

verse reads: "Ye lust, and have not; ye kill,

and desire to have, and cannot obtain; ye fight

and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not."

Now there is no commentator nor thoughtful

reader who is not arrested by that word "kill."

It does not seem to belong there. It is far more

violent than anything else in the whole text,

and it is difficult to understand in what sense

the persons to whom James was writing could

be said to kill. Yet there is no Greek manuscript

which does not have that word. Well, it

is in the field of lower criticism to observe that

there is a Greek word which sounds very much

like this word "kill," which means to envy;

that would fit exactly into the whole text here.

All that lower criticism can do is to point out

such a probability.

When this form of criticism has done its part,

and careful study has yielded a text which holds

together and which represents the very best

which scholarship can find for the original, there

is still a field more difficult than that, higher in

the sense that it demands a larger and broader

view of the whole subject. Here one studies

the meaning of the whole, the ideas in it, seeks

to find how the revelation of God has progressed

according to the capacities of men to receive it.

Higher criticism is the careful study of the

historical and original meanings of Scripture, the

effort to determine dates and times and, so far

as may be, the author of each writing, analyzing

its ideas, the general Greek or Hebrew style, the

relation of part to part. That is not a thing to

be afraid of. It is a method of study used in

every realm. It is true that some of the men

who have followed that method have made others

afraid of it, because they were afraid of these

men themselves. It is possible to claim far

too much for such study. But if the result of

higher criticism should be to show that the latter

half of the prophecy of Isaiah is much later than

the earlier half, that is not a destruction of the

Word of God. It is not an irreverent result of

study. If the result of higher criticism is to show

that by reason of its content, and the lessons

which it especially urges, the Epistle to the Hebrews

was not written by the Apostle Paul, as it

does not at any point claim to have been, why,

that is not irreverent, that is not destructive.

There is a destructive form of higher criticism;

against that there is reason to set up bulwarks.

But there is a constructive form of it also.

Scholarly opinion will tell any one who asks

that criticism has not affected the fundamental

values of the Bible. In the studies which have

just now been made we have not instanced anything

in the Bible that is subject to change.

No matter what the result of critical study may

be, the fundamental democracy of the Scripture

remains. It continues to make its persistent

moral appeal on any terms. Both those great

facts continue. Other great facts abide with

them. And on their account it is to our interest

to know as much as we can learn about it. The

Bible has not been lessened in its value, has not

been weakened in itself, by anything that has

taken place in critical study. On the other hand,

the net result of such studies as archaeology has

been the confirmation of much that was once

disputed. Sir William Ramsay is authority for

saying that the spade of the excavator is to-day

digging the grave of many enemies of the Bible.

Take the second question, whether these times

have not in them elements that weaken the hold

of the Bible. There again we must distinguish

between facts and judgments. There are certain

things in these times which relax the hold

of any authoritative book. There is a general

relaxing of the sense of authority. It does not

come alone from the intellectual awakening, because

so far as that awakening is concerned, it

has affected quite as much men who continue

loyal to the authority of the Bible as others.

No, this relaxing of the sense of authority is the

result of the first feeling of democracy which

does not know law. Democracy ought to mean

that men are left independent of the control of

other individuals because they realize and wish

to obey the control of God or of the whole equally

with their fellows. When, instead, one feels

independent of others, and adds to that no sense

of a higher control which he must be free to

obey, the result is not democracy, but individualism.

Democracy involves control; individualism

does not. A vast number of people

in passing from any sense of the right of another

individual to control them have also passed out

of the sense of the right of God or of the whole

to control them. So that from a good many all

sense of authority has passed. It is characteristic

of our age. And it is a stage in our progress

toward real democracy, toward true human

liberty.

Observe that relaxed sense of authority in the

common attitude toward law. Most men feel

it right to disregard a law of the community

which they do not like. It appears in trivial

things. If the community requires that ashes

be kept in a metal receptacle, citizens approve

it in general, but reserve to themselves the right

to consider it a foolish law and to do something

else if that is not entirely convenient. If the

law says that paper must not be thrown on the

sidewalk, it means little that it is the law. Those

who are inclined to be clean and neat and do

not like to see paper lying around will keep the

law; those who are otherwise will be indifferent

to it. That is at the root of the matter-of-

course saying that a law cannot be enforced

unless public opinion sustains it. Under any

democratic system laws virtually always have the

majority opinion back of them; but the minority

reserve the right to disregard them if they

choose, and the minority will be more aggressive.

Rising from those relaxations of law into far

more important ones, it appears that men in

business life, feeling themselves hampered by

legislation, set themselves to find a way to evade

it, justifying themselves in doing so. The mere

fact that it is the law does not weigh heavily.

This is, however, only an inevitable stage in

progress from the earliest periods of democracy

to later and more substantial periods. It is a

stage which will pass. There will come a democracy

where the rule of the whole is frankly

recognized, and where each man holds himself

independent of his fellows only in the sense that

he will claim the right to hold such relation to

God and his duty as he himself may apprehend.

In these times, also, the development of temporal

and material prosperity with the intellectual

mood which is involved in that affects

the attitude of the age toward the Bible. Sometimes

it is spoken of as a scientific age over

against the earlier philosophical ages. Perhaps

that will do for a rough statement of the facts.

It is the age of experiment, of trying things out,

and there naturally works into men a feeling

that the things that will yield to the most material

scientific experimentation are the things

about which they can be certain and which are

of real value. That naturally involves a good

deal of appreciation of the present, and calls for

the improvement of the conditions of present

life first of all. It looks more important to see

that a man is well fed, well housed, well clothed,

and well educated than that he should have the

interests of eternity pressed on his attention.

That is a comparatively late feeling. It issues

partly from the fact that this is a scientific age,

when science has had its attention turned to the

needs of humanity.

Another result of our scientific age is the magnifying

of the natural, while the Bible frankly

asserts the supernatural. No effort to get the

supernatural out of the Bible, in order to make

it entirely acceptable to the man who scouts

the supernatural, has thus far proved successful.

Of course, the supernatural can be taken out of

the Bible; but it will destroy the Bible. Nor is

there much gain in playing with words and insisting

that everything is supernatural or that

everything is natural. There is a difference between

the two, and in an age which insists upon

nature or natural laws or forces or events as all-

sufficient it is almost inevitable that the Bible

should lose its hold, at least temporarily.

Regarding all this there are some things that

need to be said. For one thing, this, too, is a

passing condition. As a matter of fact, men are

not creatures of time. They actually have

eternal connections, and the great outstanding

facts which have always made eternity of importance

continue. The fact is that men continue

to die, and that the men who are left behind

cannot avoid the sense of mystery and awe

which is involved in that fact. The fact also

is that the human emotions cannot be explained

on the lower basis, and the only reason men

think they can be is because they have in the

back of their minds the old explanations which

they cast into the lower forms, deceiving themselves

into thinking they are new ideas when

they are not.

It ought to be added that the Bible has greatly

suffered in all its history at the hands of men

who have believed in it and have fought in its

behalf. Many of the controversies which were

hottest were needless and injurious. All the

folly has not been on one side. Some one referred

the other day to a list of more than a

hundred scientific theories which were proposed

at the beginning of the last century and abandoned

at the end of it. Scientific men are feeling

their way, many of them reverently and

devoutly, some of them rather blatantly and

with a readiness for publication, which hastens

them into notoriety. But there has been enough

folly on both sides to make every one go

cautiously. It has been remarked that in Dr.

Draper's book The Conflict Between Science and

Religion he makes science appear as a strong-

limbed angel of God whereas religion is always

a great ass. The title of the book itself is

not fair. In no proper understanding of the

words can there be any conflict between science

and religion. There can be a conflict, as Dr.

Andrew D. White puts it, between science and

theology. There can certainly be contest between

scientists and religionists. Science and

religion have no conflict.

It is interesting to observe how far back most

of the supposed conflicts actually lie. There is

no warfare now; and, while our fathers one or two

generations ago felt that they must fly to the

defense of religion against the attacks of science,

no man wastes his strength doing that to-day.

That period has passed. The trouble is that some

good people do not know it, and are just fond

enough of a bit of a tussle to keep up the fighting

in the mountain-passes while out in the plain

the main armies have laid down their arms and

are busy tilling the soil.

The period of conflict is past, partly because

we are learning to distinguish between the Bible

as it really is and certain long-established ideas

about the Bible which came from other sources

and have become attached to it until it seemed

to sustain them. The proper doctrine of evolution

is entirely compatible with the Bible. The

great Dr. Hodge declared that the consistent

Darwinian must be an atheist. For that matter,

Shelley defended himself by saying that, of

course, "the consistent Newtonian must necessarily

be an atheist." But fifty years have made

great changes in the doctrine of evolution, and

the old scare has been over for some time. Newton

is honored in the church quite as much as

in the university, and Darwin is not a name

to frighten anybody. Understanding evolution

better and knowing the Bible better, the two do

not jangle out of tune so badly but that harmony

is promised.

The doctrine of the antiquity of the world is

entirely compatible with the Bible, though it is

not compatible with the dates which Archbishop

Ussher, in the time of King James, put

at the head of the columns. That is so with

other scientific theories. Any one who has read

much of history has attended the obsequies of

so many theories in the realm of science that he

ought to know that he is wasting his strength

in trying to bring about a constant reconciliation

between scientific and religious theories. It

is his part to keep an open mind in assurance of

the unity of truth, an assurance that there is no

fact which can possibly come to light and no

true theory of facts which can possibly be formed

which does not serve the interest of the truth,

which the Bible also presents. The Bible does

not concern itself with all departments of knowledge.

So far as mistakes have been made on

the side of those who believe it, they have issued

from forgetting that fact more than from any

other one cause.

On the other hand, it has sometimes occurred

that believers in the Bible have been quite too

eager to accommodate themselves to purely

passing phases of objection to it. The matter

mentioned a moment ago, the excision of the

supernatural, is a case in point. The easy and

glib way in which some have sought to get

around difficulties, by talking in large terms

about the progressiveness of the revelation, as

though the progress were from error to truth,

instead of from half light to full light, is another

illustration. The nimble way in which we have

turned what is given as history into fiction, and

allowed imagination to roam through the Bible,

is another illustration. One of our later writers

tells the story of Jonah, and says it sounds like

fiction; why not call it fiction? Another tells

the story of the exodus from Egypt, and says it

sounds like fiction; why not call it fiction?

Well, certainly the objection is not to the presence

of fiction in the Bible. It is there, openly,

confessedly, unashamed. Fiction can be used with

great profit in teaching religious truth. But

fiction may not masquerade in the guise of history,

if men are to be led by it or mastered by

it. If the way to be rid of difficulties in a narrative

is to turn it into pious fiction, there are

other instances where it might be used for relief

in emergencies. The story of the crucifixion

of Christ can be told so that it sounds like

fiction; why not call it fiction? Certainly the

story of the conversion of Paul can be made to

sound like fiction; why not call it fiction?

And there is hardly any bit of narrative that can

be made to sound so like fiction as the landing

of the Pilgrims; why not call that fiction? It

is the easy way out; the difficulties are all gone

like Alice's cat, and there is left only the broad

smile of some moral lesson to be learned from

the fiction. It is not, however, the courageous

nor the perfectly square way out. Violence has

to be done to the plain narrative; historical

statement has to be made only a mask. And

the only reason for it is that there are difficulties

not yet cleared. As for the characters involved,

Charles Reade, the novelist, calling himself "a

veteran writer of fiction," declares that the

explanation of these characters, Jonah being one

of them, by invention is incredible and absurd:

"Such a man [as himself] knows the artifices

and the elements of art. Here the artifices are

absent, and the elements surpassed." It is not

uncommon for one who has found this easy

way out of difficulties to declare with a wave of

his hand, that everybody now knows that this

or that book in the Bible is fiction, when, as a

matter of fact, that is not at all an admitted

opinion. The Bible will never gain its place

and retain its authority while those who believe

in it are spineless and topple over at the first

touch of some one's objection. It could not be a

great Book; it could not serve the purposes of a

race if it presented no problems of understanding

and of belief, and all short and easy methods

of getting rid of those problems are certain to

leave important elements of them out of sight.

All this means that the changes of these times

rather present additional reason for a renewed

hold on the Bible. It presents what the times

peculiarly need. Instead of making the influence

of the Bible impossible, these changes

make the need for the Bible the greater and

give it greater opportunity.

Add three notable points at which these times

feel and still need the influence of the Bible.

First, they have and still need its literary influence.

So far as its ideas and forces and words

are interwoven in the great literature of the past,

it is essential still to the understanding of that

literature. It remains true that English literature,

certainly of the past and also of the present,

cannot be understood without knowledge of the

Bible. The Yale professor of literature, quoted

so often, says: "It would be worth while to read

the Bible carefully and repeatedly, if only as a

key to modern culture, for to those who are

unfamiliar with its teachings and its diction all

that is best in English literature of the present

century is as a sealed book."

From time to time there occur painful reminders

of the fact that men supposed to know

literature do not understand it because they are

not familiar with the Bible. Some years ago

a college president tested a class of thirty-four

men with a score of extracts from Tennyson,

each of which contained a Scriptural allusion,

none of them obscure. The replies were suggestive

and quite appalling. Tennyson wrote, in

the "Supposed Confessions":

"My sin was a thorn among the thorns that

girt Thy brow."

Of these thirty-four young men nine of them

did not understand that quotation. Tennyson

wrote:

"Like Hezekiah's, backward runs

The shadow of my days."

Thirty-two of the thirty-four did not know what

that meant. The meaning of the line,

"For I have flung thee pearls and find thee swine,"

was utterly obscure to twenty-two of the thirty-

four. One of them said it was a reference to

"good opportunities given but not improved."

Another said it was equivalent to the counsel

"not to expect to find gold in a hay-stack."

Even the line,

"A Jonah's gourd

Up in one night, and due to sudden sun,"

was utterly baffling to twenty-eight of the

thirty-four. One of them spoke of it as an

"allusion to the uncertainty of the length of

life." Another thought it was a reference to

"the occasion of Jonah's being preserved by the

whale." Another counted it "an allusion to the

emesis of Jonah by the whale." Another considered

it a reference to "the swallowing of

Jonah by a whale," and yet another considered

that it referred to "things grand, but not worthy

of worship because they are perishable." It is

amazing to read that in response to Tennyson's

lines,

"Follow Light and do the Right--for man can

half control his doom--

Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the

vacant tomb,"

only sixteen were able to give an explanation of

its meaning! The lines from the "Holy Grail"

were equally baffling:

"Perhaps like Him of Cana in Holy Writ,

Our Arthur kept his best until the last."

Twenty-four of these thirty-four young men

could not recall what that meant. One said that

the keeping of the best wine until the last meant

"waiting till the last moment to be baptized!"

All that may be solely the fault of these young

men. Professor Lounsbury once said that his

experience in the class-room had taught him the

infinite capacity of the human mind to withstand

the introduction of knowledge. Very

likely earnest effort had been made to teach

these young men the Bible; but it is manifest

that they had successfully resisted the efforts.

If Tennyson were the only poet who could not

be understood without knowledge of the Bible,

it might not matter so much, but no one can

read Browning nor Carlyle nor Macaulay nor

Huxley with entire intelligence without knowledge

of the greater facts and forces of Scripture.

The value of the allusions can be shown by comparing

them with those of mythology. No one

can read most of Shelley with entire satisfaction

without a knowledge of Greek mythology. That

is one reason why Shelley has so much passed

out of popularity. We do not know Greek

mythology, and we have very largely lost Shelley

from our literary possession. The chief power

of these other great writers will go from us when

our knowledge of the Scripture goes.

The danger is not simply with reference to the

great literature of the past. There is danger of

losing appreciation of the more delicate touches

of current literature, sometimes of a complete

missing of the meaning. An orator describing

present political and social conditions used a fine

phrase, that "it is time the nation camped for a

season at the foot of the mount." Only a knowledge

of Bible history will bring as a flash before

one the nation in the desert at Sinai learning

the meaning and power of law. Yet an intelligent

man, hearing that remark, said that

he counted it a fine figure, that he thought there

did come in the life of every nation a time before

it began its ascent to the heights when it

ought to pause and camp at the foot of the

mountain to get its breath! After Lincoln's

assassination Garfield stood on the steps in New

York, and said: "Clouds and darkness are around

about him! God reigns and the government at

Washington still lives!" Years after, some one

referring to that, said that it was a beautiful

sentence, that the reference to "clouds and

darkness" was a beautiful symbolism, but that

Garfield had a great knack in the building-up of

fine phrases! He lacked utterly the background

of the great Psalm which was in Garfield's mind,

and which gives that phrase double meaning.

If we go back to Tennyson again, some one has

proposed the inquiry why he should have called

one of his poems "Rizpah," since there was no

one of that name mentioned in the whole poem!

When, some years ago, a book was published,

The Children of Gideon, one of the reviewers

could not understand why that title was used,

since no one of that name appeared in the entire

volume. And when Mrs. Wharton's book, The

House of Mirth, came out some one spoke of the

irony of the title; but it is the irony of the Scriptures

and the book calls for a Scriptural knowledge

for its entire understanding.

Take even an encyclopedia article. Who can

understand these two sentences without instant

knowledge of Scripture? "Marlowe and Shakespeare,

the young Davids of the day, tried the

armor of Saul before they went out to battle,

then wisely laid it off." "Arnold, like Aaron

of old, stands between the dead and the living;

but, unlike Aaron, he holds no smoking censor of

propitiation to stay the plague which he feels

to be devouring his generation."[1] That is in an

encyclopedia to which young people are often

referred. What will they make out of it without

the Bible? In a widely distributed school

paper, in the question-and-answer department,

occurs the inquiry: "Who composed the inscription

on the Liberty Bell?" The inscription

is, "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land to

all the inhabitants thereof."[2] It is to be hoped

it was a very young person who needed to ask

who "composed" that expression!

[1] New International Encyclopedia, art. on English Literature.

[2] Current Events, January 12, 1912.

This applies to all the great classics. There

has come about a "decay of literary allusions,"

as one of our papers editorially says. In much

of our writing, either the transient or the permanent,

men can no longer risk easy reference

to classical literature. "Readers of American

biography must often be struck with the important

part which literary recollection played

in the life of a cultured person a generation or

two ago. These men had read Homer, Xenophon

and Virgil, Shakespeare, Byron and Wordsworth,

Lamb, De Quincey and Coleridge. They

were not afraid of being called pedants because

they occasionally used a Latin phrase or referred

to some great name of Greece or Rome."

That is not so commonly true to-day. Especially

is there danger of losing easy acquaintance

with the great Bible references.

There are familiar reasons for it. For one

thing, there has been a great increase of literature.

Once there was little to read, and that

little became familiar. One would have been

ashamed to pretend to culture and not to know

such literature well. Now there is so much that

one cannot know it all, and most men follow the

line of least resistance. That line is not where

great literature lies. Once the problem was how

to get books enough for a family library. Now the

problem is how to get library enough for the books.

Magazines, papers, volumes of all grades overflow.

"The Bible has been buried beneath a

landslide of books." The result is that the

greatest literary landmark of the English tongue

threatens to become unknown, or else to be

looked upon as of antiquarian rather than present

worth. There our Puritan fathers had the advantage.

As President Faunce puts it: "For

them the Bible was the norm and goal of all

study. They had achieved the concentration

of studies, and the Bible was the center. They

learned to read that they might read the literature

of Israel; their writing was heavy with

noble Old Testament phrases; the names of Old

Testament heroes they gave to their children;

its words of immortal hope they inscribed on

their tombstones; its Mosaic commonwealth they

sought to realize in England and America; its

decalogue was the foundation of their laws, and

its prophecies were a light shining in a dark

place. Such a unification of knowledge produced

a unified character, simple, stalwart, invincible."

It is very different in our own day.

As so-called literature increases it robs great

literature of its conspicuous outstanding character,

and many men who pride themselves on

the amount they read would do far better to

read a thousandth part as much and let that

smaller part be good.

Another reason for this decay of the influence of

literary knowledge of the Bible is the shallowness

of much of our thinking. If the Bible were

needed for nothing else in present literary life,

it would be needed for the deepening of literary

currents. The vast flood of flotsam and jetsam

which pours from the presses seldom floats on a

deep current. It is surface matter for the most

part. It does not take itself seriously, and it

is quite impossible to take it seriously. It does

not deal with great themes, or when it touches

upon them it deals with them in a trifling way.

To men interested chiefly in literature of this

kind the Bible cannot be of interest.

That is a passing condition, and out of it is certain

to come here and there a masterpiece of

literature. When it does appear, it will be

found to reveal the same influences that have

made great literature in the past, issuing more

largely from the Bible than from any other book.

That is the main point of a bit of counsel which

Professor Bowen used to give his Harvard

students. To form a good English style, he

told them, a student ought to keep near at hand

a Bible, a volume of Shakespeare, and Bacon's

essays. That group of books would enlarge the

vocabulary, would supply a store of words,

phrases, and, allusions, and save the necessity

of ransacking a meager and hide-bound diction

in order to make one's meaning plain. Coleridge

in his Table-Talk adds that "intense study of the

Bible will keep any writer from being VULGAR in

point of style." So it may be urged that these

times have and still need the literary influence

of the Bible.

Add that the times have and still need its

moral steadying. Every age seems to its own

thoughtful people to lack moral steadiness, and

they tend to compare it with other ages which

look steadier. That is a virtually invariable

opinion of such men. The comparison with

other ages is generally fallacious, yet the fact is

real for each age. Many things tend in this age

to unsettle moral solidity. Some of them are

peculiar to this time, others are not. But one

of the great influences which the Bible is perpetually

tending to counteract is stated in best

terms in an experience of Henry M. Stanley.

It was on that journey to Africa when be found

David Livingstone, under commission from one

of the great newspapers. Naturally he had made

up his load as light as possible. Of books he

had none save the Bible; but wrapped about his

bottles of medicine and other articles were many

copies of newspapers. Stanley says that "strangest

of all his experiences were the changes wrought

in him by the reading of the Bible and those

newspapers in melancholy Africa." He was frequently

sick with African fever, and took up the

Bible to while away his hours of recovery.

During the hours of health he read the newspapers.

"And thus, somehow or other, my views

toward newspapers were entirely recast," while

he held loyal to his profession as a newspaper

man. This is the critical sentence in Stanley's

telling of the story: "As seen in my loneliness,

there was this difference between the Bible and

the newspapers. The one reminded me that

apart from God my life was but a bubble of air,

and it made me remember my Creator; the

other fostered arrogance and worldliness."[1]

There is no denying such an experience as that.

That is precisely the moral effect of the Bible

as compared with the moral effect of the newspaper

accounts of current life. Democracy

should always be happy; but it must always

be serious, morally steady. Anything that tends

to give men light views of wrong, to make evil

things humorous, to set out the ridiculous side

of gross sins is perilous to democracy. It not

only is injurious to personal morals; it is bound

sooner or later to injure public morals. There

is nothing that so persistently counteracts that

tendency of current literature as does the

Bible.

[1] Autobiography, p. 252.

From an ethical point of view, "the ethical

content of Paul is quite as important for us as

the system of Schopenhauer or Nietzsche. The

organization of the New England town meeting is

no more weighty for the American boy than the

organization of the early Christian Church. John

Adams and John Hancock and Abraham Lincoln

are only the natural successors of the great

Hebrew champions of liberty and righteousness

who faced Pharoah and Ahab and put to flight

armies of aliens." But aside from the definite

ethical teaching of the Bible there is need for

that strong impression of ethical values which it

gives in the characters around which it has

gathered. The conception of the Bible which

makes it appear as a steady progression should

add to its authority, not take from it. The

development is not from error to truth, but from

light to more light. It is sometimes said that

the standards of morality of some parts of

Scripture are not to be commended. But they

are not the standards of morality of Scripture,

but of their times. They are not taught in

Scripture; they are only stated; and they are so

stated that instantly a thoughtful man discovers

that they are stated to be condemned. When

did it become true that all that is told of a good

man is to be approved? It is not pretended

that Abraham did right always. David was

confessedly wrong. They move much of the time

in half-light, yet the sum total of the impression

of their writings is inevitably and invariably for

a more substantial morality. These times need

the moral steadying of the Bible to make men,

not creatures of the day arid not creatures of

their whims, but creatures of all time and of

fundamental laws.

Add the third fact, that our times have and

still need the religious influence of the Bible.

No democracy can dispense with religious culture.

No book makes for religion as does the

Bible. That is its chief purpose. No book can

take its place; no influence can supplant it.

Max Muller made lifelong study of the Buddhist

and other Indian books. He gave them to the

English-speaking world. Yet he wrote to a

friend of his impression of the immense superiority

of the Bible in such terms that his

friend replied: "Yes, you are right; how tremendously

ahead of other sacred books is the

Bible! The difference strikes one as almost unfairly

great."[1] Writing in an India paper,

The Kayestha Samachar, in August, 1902, a

Hindu writer said: "I am not a Christian; but

half an hour's study of the Bible will do more

to remodel a man than a whole day spent in

repeating the slokas of the Purinas or the

mantras of the Rig-Veda." In the earlier

chapters of the Koran Christians are frequently

spoken of as "people of the Book." It is a

suggestive phrase. If Christianity has any value

for American life, then the Bible has just that

value. Christianity is made by the Bible; it

has never been vital nor nationally influential

for good without the Bible.

[1] Speer, Light of the World, iv.

Sometimes, because of his strong words regarding

the conflict between science and theology,

the venerable American diplomat and educator,

Dr. Andrew D. White, is thought of as a

foe to religion. No one who reads his biography

can have that impression half an hour. Near

the close of it is a paragraph of singular insight

and authority which fits just this connection:

"It will, in my opinion, be a sad day for this or

for any people when there shall have come in

them an atrophy of the religious nature; when

they shall have suppressed the need of communication,

no matter how vague, with a supreme

power in the universe; when the ties which bind

men of similar modes of thought in the various

religious organizations shall be dissolved; when

men, instead of meeting their fellow-men in

assemblages for public worship which give them a

sense of brotherhood, shall lounge at home or in

clubs; when men and women, instead of bringing

themselves at stated periods into an atmosphere

of prayer, praise, and aspiration, to hear

the discussion of higher spiritual themes, to be

stirred by appeals to their nobler nature in behalf

of faith, hope, and charity, and to be moved

by a closer realization of the fatherhood of God

and the brotherhood of man, shall stay at home

and give their thoughts to the Sunday papers,

or to the conduct of their business, or to the

languid search for some refuge from boredom."[1]

Those are wise, strong words, and they sustain

to the full what has been urged, that these

times still need the religious influence of the

Bible.

[1] Autobiography, vol. ii, p. 570.

The influence of the Bible on the literary,

moral, and religious life of the times is already

apparent. But that influence needs to be constantly

strengthened. There remains, therefore,

to suggest some methods of giving the Bible

increasing power. It should be recognized first

and last that only thoughtful people will do it.

No help will come from careless people. Moreover,

only people who believe in the common

folk will do it. Those who are aristocrats in

the sense that they do not believe that common

people can be trusted will not concern themselves

to increase the power of the Bible. But

for those who are thoughtful and essentially

democratic the duty is a very plain one. There

are four great agencies which may well magnify

the Bible and whose influence will bring the

Bible into increasing power in national life.

First among these, of course, must be the

Church. The accent which it will place on the

Bible will naturally be on its religious value,

though its moral value will take a close second

place. It is essential for the Church to hold

itself true to its religious foundations. Only

men who have some position of leadership can

realize the immense pressure that is on to-day

to draw the Church into forms of activity and

methods of service which are much to be

commended, but which have to be constantly

guarded lest they deprive it of power and concern

in the things which are peculiar to its own

life and which it and it alone can contribute to

the public good. The Church needs to develop

for itself far better methods of instruction in

the Bible, so that it may as far as possible drill

those who come under its influence in the knowledge

of the Bible for its distinctive religious

value. This is neither the time nor the place

for a full statement of that responsibility. It is

enough to see how the very logic of the life of

the Church requires that it return with renewed

energy to its magnifying and teaching of the

Bible.

The second agency which may be called upon

is the press. The accent of the press will be

on the moral value of the Bible, the service which

its teaching renders to the national and personal

life. There seems to be a hopeful returning

tendency to allusions to the Scripture in newspaper

and magazine publications. It is rare to

find among the higher-level newspapers an

editorial page, where the most thoughtful writing

appears, in which on any day there do not

appear Scripture allusions or references. When

that is seriously done, when Scripture is used

for some other purpose than to point a jest, it

helps to restore the Bible to its place in public

thought. In recent years there has been a

noticeable return of the greater magazines to

consideration of the moral phases of the Scripture.

That has been inevitably connected with

the development of a social sense which condemns

men for their evil courses because of

their damage to society. The Old Testament

prophets are living their lives again in these

days, and the more thoughtful men are being

driven back to them for the great principles on

which they may live safely.

The third agency which needs to magnify the

Bible is the school. The accent which it will

choose will naturally be the literary value of the

Bible, though it will not overlook its moral

value as well. Incidental references heretofore

have suggested the importance of religion in a

democracy. But there are none of the great

branches of the teaching of the schools, public

or private, which do not involve the Bible. It

is impossible to teach history fairly and fully

without a frank recognition of the influence of

the Bible. Study the Reformation, the Puritan

movement, the Pilgrim journeys, the whole of

early American history! We can leave the Bible

out only by trifling with the facts. Certainly

literature cannot be taught without it. And if it

is the purpose of the schools to develop character

and moral life, then there is high authority for

saying that the Bible ought to have place.

Forty years ago Mr. Huxley, in his essay on

"The School Boards: What They Can Do, and

What They May Do," laid a broad foundation

for thinking at this point, and his words bear

quoting at some length: "I have always been

strongly in favor of secular education, in the

sense of education without theology; but I must

confess I have been no less seriously perplexed to

know by what practical measures the religious

feeling, which is the essential basis of conduct,

was to be kept up, in the present utterly chaotic

state of opinion on these matters, without the

use of the Bible. The pagan moralists lack life

and color, and even the noble stoic, Marcus

Aurelius Antoninus, is too high and refined for

an ordinary child. Take the Bible as a whole;

make the severest deductions which fair criticism

can dictate for shortcomings and positive

errors; eliminate, as a sensible lay teacher would

do if left to himself, all that is not desirable

for children to occupy themselves with; and there

still remains in this old literature a vast residuum

of moral beauty and grandeur. And then consider

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 become the national epic of Britain,

and is as familiar to noble and simple, from

John-o'-Groat's House to Land's End, as Dante

and Tasso once were to the Italians; that it is

written in the noblest and purest English, and

abounds in exquisite beauties of mere 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 nations of the

world. By the study of what other book could

children 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 interval between two eternities;

and earns the blessings or the curses of all time,

according to its effort to do good and hate evil,

even as they also are earning their payment for

their work? On the whole, then, I am in favor

of reading the Bible, with such grammatical,

geographical, and historical explanations by a lay

teacher as may be needful, with rigid exclusion

of any further theological teaching than that contained

in the Bible itself." Mr. Huxley is an Englishman,

though, as Professor Moulton says, "We

divide him between England and America." But

Professor Moulton himself is very urgent in this

same matter. If the classics of Greece and Rome

are in the nature of ancestral literature, an equal

position belongs to the literature of the Bible.

"If our intellect and imagination have been

formed by Greece, have we not in similar fashion

drawn our moral and emotional training

from Hebrew thought?" It is one of the curiosities

of our civilization that we are content

to go for our liberal education to literatures

which morally are at opposite poles from ourselves;

literatures in which the most exalted

tone is often an apotheosis of the sensuous,

which degrade divinity, not only to the human

level, but to the lowest level of humanity. "It

is surely good that our youth during the formative

period should have displayed to them, in a literary

dress as brilliant as that of Greek literature,

a people dominated by an utter passion for

righteousness, a people whose ideas of purity,

of infinite good, of universal order, of faith in

the irresistible downfall of moral evil, moved

to a poetic passion as fervid and speech as

musical as when Sappho sang of love or Eschylus

thundered his deep notes of destiny."[1]

[1] Literary Study of the Bible, passim.

But there is a leading American voice which

will speak in that behalf, in President Nicholas

Murray Butler, of Columbia University. In his

address as President of the National Educational

Association, President Butler makes strong plea

for the reading of the Bible even in public schools.

"His reason had no connection with religion. It

was based on altogether different ground. He

regarded an acquaintance with the Bible as absolutely

indispensable to the proper understanding

of English literature." It is unfortunate in the

extreme, he thought, that so many young men

are growing up without that knowledge of the

Bible which every one must have if he means

to be capable of the greatest literary pleasure

and appreciation of the literature of his own

people. Not only the allusions, but the whole

tone and bias of many English authors will become

to one who is ignorant of the Bible most

difficult and even impossible of comprehension.

The difficulties of calling public schools to

this task appear at once. It would be monstrous

if they should be sectarian or proselytizing.

But the Bible is not a sectarian Book.

It is the Book of greatest literature. It is the

Book of mightiest morals. It is governing history.

It is affecting literature as nothing else

has done. A thousand pities that any petty

squabbling or differences of opinion should prevent

the young people in the schools from realizing

the grandeur and beauty of it!

But the final and most important agency.

which will magnify the influence of the Bible

must necessarily be the home. It will gather

up all its traits, religious, moral, and literary.

Here is the fundamental opportunity and the

fundamental obligation. Robert Burns was right

in finding the secret of Scotia's power in such

scenes as those of "The Cottar's Saturday Night."

One can almost see Carlyle going back to his

old home at Ecclefechan and standing outside

to hear his old mother making a prayer in his

behalf. A newspaper editorial of recent date

says this decay of literary allusion is traceable

in part to the gradual abandonment of family

prayers. Answering President Butler, it is

urged that it is not so important that the Bible

be in the public schools as that it get back again

into the homes. "Thorough acquaintance with

the Bible is desirable; it should be fostered.

The person who will have to foster it, though,"

says this writer, "is not the teacher, but the

parent. The parent is the person whom Dr.

Butler should try to convert." Well, while

there may be differences about the school, there

can be none about the place of the Bible in the

home. It needs to be bound up with the earliest

impressions and intertwined with those impressions

as they deepen and extend.

So, by the Church, which will accent its religious

value; by the press, which will accent its

moral power; by the school, which will spread

its literary influence; and by the home, which

will realize all three and make it seem a vital

concern from the beginning of life, the Bible

will be put and held in the place of power to-day

which it has had in the years that are gone, and

will steadily gain greater power.