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 he
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."[55] 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.
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 and 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."[56] 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.
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."[57] 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.
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 phrases 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."[58]
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.
FOOTNOTES:
[52] Jefferson, _Things Fundamental_, p. 90.
[53] _New International Encyclopedia_, art. on English Literature.
[54] _Current Events_, January 12, 1912.
[55] _Autobiography_, p. 252.
[56] Speer, _Light of the World_, iv.
[57] _Autobiography_, vol. ii, p. 570.
[58] _Literary Study of the Bible_, passim.
THE END
* * * * *
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
Occasional missing punctuation marks have been inserted.
The variant forms non-conformity (p. 50) and non-conforming (pp. 227, 229)
appear in this text.
On p. 71, "Illustrate with one instance" should perhaps read "I'll
illustrate with one instance" but has been left unchanged.
The following amendments have been made to the text:
On p. 36 "Crammer" amended to "Cranmer".
On p. 109 "eighty two" amended to "eighty-two".
On p. 112 "Waverly" amended to "Waverley".
On p. 117 "(verse 51,)" amended to "(verse 51),".
On p. 133 "Edgar Allen Poe" amended to "Edgar Allan Poe".
On p. 141 "exile of ths scholars" amended to "exile of the scholars".
On p. 142 "Capel Lloft" amended to "Capel Lofft".
On p. 157 footnote, "English Literature" italicised as "_English
Literature_".
On p. 161 "Tintern Abbay" amended to "Tintern Abbey".
On p. 170 "'Drama of Exile" amended to "Drama of Exile".
On p. 174 "every growing courtier" amended to "every grinning courtier".
On p. 232 "democracry" amended to "democracy".
On p. 234 "Just that it did" amended to "Just what it did"; and "pleasure
Sabbath" amended to "pleasure of Sabbath".
On p. 243 "Khayyàm" amended to "Khayyám"; and "in more marked way" amended
to "in a more marked way".
On p. 254 "is authority" amended to "is the authority".
On p. 281 "phases" amended to "phrases".