The Literary Value of the Bible By Robert Allen Armstrong L.H.D. 1916
No one can claim to be well educated who is not fairly familiar with the history and literature found in the Bible. The English Bible has so shaped the ideas and ideals of the English-speaking people, has been so woven into all their literature that it has become the one supreme book in the English tongue. There is operative in the world a law which may be called the conservation of spiritual energy. The best vehicles for the transmission of this energy are the great books of the world. They transmit to the people of each succeeding generation this spiritual energy as a most important part of their race inheritance. The book with the greatest carrying power and the richest gifts is the Bible. Its original measure of inspired power has been enlarged by the absorption into its pages of the faith and trust of multitudes of devoted readers through the ages; and as it has passed down the centuries it has poured into the world, in days of darkness and doubt, a flood of the cleansing sunshine of righteousness. The life and culture of our time, or of any time, can not be complete without the transforming touch of this spiritual energy. For this reason and many others, it is abundantly worth while to study the Bible with thoroughness and seriousness. In this chapter seven reasons are given why it should be studied by literary methods and for its literary value.
1. The charge that it is sacrilegious to study the Bible as literature can not be sustained; such study may be wise and reverent.
2. A close and critical study will make its message clearer.
3. Such study will be profitable because the Bible is a great storehouse of good English which has been more powerful in shaping our language, both spoken and written, than any other influence whatsoever.
4. The specific study of its language, characters, and stories is profitable because in our everyday speech, and secular literature there are multitudes of verbal forms and illustrations drawn from the Bible, whose full meaning and force are understood only by those who are familiar with the original sources.
5. It furnishes interesting reading and has a rich and satisfying variety.
6. It is profitable to study the Bible because in it are found the best examples of great literature, in diction, form, and feeling.
7. Its study is worth while because it is a literature of power. It has shaped the thought and morals of the best nations of the world.
1. George Eliot makes Adam Bede say: “I prefer to read the Apocrypha rather than the Bible for in reading the Apocrypha I can use my own reason.” But it is not really sacrilegious to apply to the Bible the same standards of excellence and the same canons of good taste that are applied as a matter of course to any other book. A man who affected to despise learning one time said, “I love flowers but I hate botany.” Suppose a botanist, a rare reader of God in nature, goes forth into the fields in search of flowers. He finds a beautiful flower and at once proceeds to pick it to pieces. “Alas, you irreverent man!” you cry, "you are destroying one of God’s beautiful works. What right have you to tear apart those petals that make a thing of such exquisite loveliness?" But the botanist is not animated by a spirit of ruthless destruction; he is filled with a spirit of loving appreciation. He knows that the only way to understand the flower completely is to pick it to pieces; that only in this way can he comprehend the wonderful organism, the splendid beauty, the real significance of the flower. And just as botany conduces to a greater love for flowers, so should a close, careful, critical study of the Bible lead us to a greater and more reverent love for the truth that it teaches. Of course it should be remembered that while we study its literary forms very much as we study other books, we should not for a moment forget that the truly wonderful thing about this sacred literature is the divine spirit which animates it, the everlasting purpose which lies back of it all. But while this is true, we should not fall into the error of believing that it is sacrilegious to study it in a careful, critical way. It has for us “apples of gold in baskets of silver,” and it is not sacrilegious to examine the baskets of silver.
2. A study of the Bible as literature will aid in understanding its message. Language does not give forth its message with unvarying exactness. It is never easy to know just how much meaning or how little a writer intends to convey by a word or a phrase. One must have abundant knowledge of the way in which men have thought and spoken, a large experience in interpreting the thoughts and feelings of men from their words, to be at all sure that he is getting what an author intended he should get. In secular literature no one is bold enough to set himself up as an interpreter of masterpieces unless he brings to the interpretation a mind trained to understand and appreciate the force of words and literary forms, and a method of study and interpretation which has stood the test of years of application.
Of course there are things about this great Book that are so simple that even a child can understand and appreciate them; but there are things profound enough to puzzle the philosopher, and these the reader can not hope to understand unless he has prepared himself for the task of weighing and considering. The man of little experience in interpreting men’s thoughts and feelings from their written words must fail to get at the heart of many a passage. He should be able to read between the lines, to discern where he ought to rest his full weight and press out the fullest meaning, and where he ought to press lightly. The man of no range in his reading, with no experience in interpretation, must be inclined inevitably to treat all parts alike, to make one word just as emphatic, just as literal as another.
The truths of the Bible are offered to us in the same words, phrases, and literary forms, that are used in all other literature; it ought to require no argument to prove that if the student is to get all that is bound up in these words, phrases, and forms, he should make diligent use of all his secular knowledge, of all his culture, of all his best methods of getting at the meaning and force of language, and of all his trained powers of interpreting literature.
3. The literary study of the Bible will be profitable because it is a great storehouse of good English which has been more powerful in shaping our language, both spoken and written, than any other influence whatsoever.
Dr. Cook of Yale says:
“From Caedmon’s time to the present the influence of Bible diction upon English speech has been virtually uninterrupted. The Bible has been an active force in English literature for over 1200 years, and during the whole period it has been molding the diction of representative thinkers and literary artists.”
Mr. Saintsbury in his history of English literature says:
“But great as are Bacon and Raleigh, they can not approach, as writers of prose, the company of scholarly divines who produced what is probably the greatest prose work in any language—the Authorized Version of the Bible in English.”
It has often been said that “The Pilgrim’s Progress” of Bunyan stands unrivaled as a model of plain, vigorous clear, pleasing English. The reason for this excellence is evident. Bunyan was fairly saturated not only with the spirit but with the language of the English Bible. Coleridge declared that intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar in point of style. And John Ruskin, who was doubtless the greatest master of pure, idiomatic, vigorous, and eloquent English prose that the last century produced, says that his mother required him in childhood to commit to memory and repeat to her over and over again, many passages of the Bible. We need not seek further for the secret of his admirable diction and perfect command of English phraseology.
4. “It is woven into the literature of the scholar and colors the talk of the street.” A familiar acquaintance with the words, phrases, stories, and characters of the Bible is valuable because our everyday speech and our secular literature have been enriched by the use of and by allusions to them. There are in our secular literature multitudes of allusions to the Bible. Again and again does a writer take advantage of the associations which cluster about a Bible phrase or incident and by a simple touch bring up in the mind of the understanding reader all the circumstances and sentiments connected with the original. Indeed no one who lays claim to any degree of culture can be ignorant of these incidents, phrases, and characters. They have been assimilated into the common speech. The most illiterate man understands, after a fashion, the phrases: “the widow’s mite,” “a Judas kiss,” “the flesh-pots of Egypt,” “a still small voice,” “a Jehu,” “a perfect babel,” “a Nimrod,” “bread upon the waters,” “a Daniel come to judgment,” “a Solomon,” “a Delila,” “a mother in Israel,” “a land flowing with milk and honey,” “the valley of decision,” and “the salt of the earth.” These have become the permanent possession of our every-day speech and convey a meaning not associated directly with their origin; but to those who are familiar with the origin and setting of these terms, they have a vigor and significance which others can not at all appreciate.
All our poets have enriched their pages with thoughts and images from this wonderful literary storehouse. If one wishes to know how frequently Tennyson drew out of this inexhaustible mine treasures both new and old, let him examine the appendix to Dr. Henry Van Dyke’s study of Tennyson; he will find listed there more than two hundred references. Among these are the phrases: “as manna in my wilderness”; “Pharaoh’s darkness”; “Ruth amid the fields of corn”; “stiff as Lot’s wife”; “I have flung thee pearls and find thee swine”; “and marked me even as Cain”; “the church on Peter’s rock”; “a whole Peter’s sheet”; “one was the Tishbite whom the ravens fed”; “who can call him friend that dips in the same dish.”
From Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes are selected the following allusions, a few from many that might be quoted: “We too who laugh at Israel’s golden calf”; “a cloud by day, by night a pillared flame”; “He who prayed the prayer of all mankind”; “Why did the choir of angels sing for joy”? “I thought of Judas and his bribe”; “They who gathered manna every morn”;
“Mountains are cleft before you
As the sea before the tribes of Israel’s wandering sons.”
“When Moab’s daughter homeless and forlorn,
Found Boaz slumbering by his heaps of corn.”
The space of many chapters would be required to set forth Shakespeare’s indebtedness to the Bible. The following are some of the most familiar allusions:
“Good name in man or woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their soul.”
“Samson, master, was a man of good carriage, great carriage; for he carried the town gates on his back like a porter.”
“You found his mote; the king your mote did see;
But I a beam do find in each of thee.”
“I am no great Nebuchadnezzar, sir. I have not much skill in grass.”
“It is hard to come as for a camel
To thread the postern of a needle’s eye.”
By the use of these allusions the poet may not only give completeness to his thought, force to his truth, and vividness to his imagery, but he may enrich his verse with a beauty and significance beyond his own power. He may write, “A little lower than angels”—and at once we hear added to the music of his lines,
“What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
And the son of man that thou visitest him?
For thou hast made him a little lower than angels,
And crowned him with glory and honor.”
Or the poet writes the phrase, “Solomon-shaming flowers,” and we at once hear the matchless lines:
“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;
They toil not, neither do they spin:
Yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory
Was not arrayed like one of these.”
5. There are many people who do not look upon the Bible as a readable book; yet its pages are full of unusual charm. It is a book full of marvelous incidents and engaging history, with sunny pictures of old world scenery, and charming and pathetic anecdotes of patriarchal times. Any one who wishes literature having unity, variety, beauty, strength, and interest, can find it in this volume of sixty-six books. He will there find law, folk-lore, tradition, official records, historical narrative, epic poetry, dramatic poetry, lyric poetry, proverbial philosophy, patriotic addresses, religious addresses, parables, prayers, prophecies, biographies, theology, circular letters, private letters, riddles, fables, dream literature, love songs, patriotic songs, and songs of praise. These writings were produced by probably thirty-one writers through a period of fifteen hundred years. Some of them lived in palaces and some in prisons; some were princes and some were peasants; some were scholars and some were illiterate men; some were philosophers and some herdsmen, fishermen, and mechanics. So it is a book appealing to the learned and the ignorant, to the prince and the peasant, the sage and the child, to all races, all nations, all classes, and it approaches all these in the way they can best be reached.
The place of the origin of the Bible should give it variety. It originated in a land which is a sort of epitome of the world. The configuration of Palestine, its immense variety of scenery, its vast range of climate, its extraordinary range of animal and vegetable life, reproduce, in a way, the features of the whole world. So the book is cosmopolitan in its atmosphere and imagery. It is full of the imagery of the sea and has in it also the quiet serenity of the secluded valley and lonely shore. It is filled with pastoral imagery. It tells of a God who is a Shepherd, of a king who came from the sheepfold. It is warm with the breath and brilliant with the light of the eastern clime: It tells of gardens and spices, of roses and lilies, of gold and jewels, of pomegranates and palms: its imagery is oriental in its richness. On the other hand it is also a book of mountains and snow and ice; its atmosphere is afiected by the winds from Lebanon and snow-capped Hermon, as well as by breezes from the City of Palm Trees.
6. The forms of literature found in the Bible are numerous and varied. Do you want biographies? Here you may find biographies which in directness of narrative, vigor of movement, interest, and in faithfulness to life are superior to any that were ever written—certainly more faithful in telling the truth and the whole truth. Or do you want to study love stories? Here you can find stories of such genuineness, naturalness, noble simplicity, and straightforward truthfulness that they put to shame the multitude of sickly, silly sentimental novels of to-day. Or do you want to read annals of war? Here your blood may be stirred with accounts of battles, sieges, deadly encounters, ignoble treachery, noble patriotism, galling defeats, glorious victories, and remarkable bravery, records not surpassed in the history of any nation. Or do you want to study law literature? Here you can find a system of jurisprudence to which the best countries of the civilized world must acknowledge themselves indebted; and these laws set forth in statutes so simple, so plain, and withal so unmistakable in their meaning that you will begin to feel pity for our own lawmakers who use vain repetitions as the heathen do, and write their statutes in language like Samson’s riddles.
Or do you want to study fiction? Here you will find the wonderfully effective parables, the instructive fables, and the warning dreams, all with a moral lesson so forcibly put that you need hardly ask why there should be fiction in the Bible, or why the imagination may not be inspired as Well as the reason and the judgment. Or do you want to read poetry? Here you may find poems of transcendent genius, some of the noblest poems of the world, poems breathing such lofty piety, such fervent devotion, such noble sentiments, and all expressed in imagery so beautiful and sublime that you can not choose but be entranced by their beauty and their power.
It is profitable to study the Bible because it contains the best forms of literature in satisfying perfection. The English historian James Anthony Froude wrote:
“The Bible thoroughly known is a literature of itself —the rarest and the richest in all departments of thought or imagination which exists.”
Dr. Robert South, the great English divine, says:
“In God’s word we have not only a body of religion, but also a system of the best rhetoric; and as the highest things require the highest expressions, so we shall find nothing in Scripture so sublime in itself, but it is reached and sometimes overtopped by the sublimity of the expression. So that he who said he would not read the Scripture for fear of spoiling his style showed himself as much a blockhead as an atheist, and to have as small a gust of the elegancies of expression as the sacredness of the matter.”
Sir William Jones testifies:
“I have carefully and regularly perused these holy Scriptures, and am of opinion that the volume independent of its divine origin, contains more sublimity, purer morality, more important history, and finer strains of eloquence, than can be collected from all other books in whatever language they may have been written.”
Do you ask for tenderness and devotion expressed in faultless rhetoric?
And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee, for whither thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.
Do you ask for pathos and elegant simplicity?
And Cushi said, Tidings, my lord the king; for the Lord hath avenged thee this day of all them that rose up against thee.
And the king said unto Cushi, Is the young man Absalom safe? And Cushi answered, The enemies of my lord the king, and all that rise against thee to do thee hurt, he as that young man is.
And the King was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my sonl
Do you want eloquence of appeal, gentleness of warning, depth of yearning, and glorious promise united with beauty of poetic form, pleasing imagery, and most picturesque metaphor? Hear Isaiah:
Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend your money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. . . . For ye shall go out with joy and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing; and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree; and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree, and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
Do you want the most practical wisdom set forth in sentences of the utmost vigor, terseness, and rhythmic beauty? .
My son, forget not my law; but let thy heart keep my commandments;
For length of days and long life and peace shall they add unto thee;
Let not mercy and truth forsake thee; bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart;
So shalt thou find favor and good understanding in the sight of God and man. . . .
Happy is the-man that findeth wisdom and the man that getteth understanding;
For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold.
She is more precious than rubies; and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.
Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left riches and honor.
Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.
She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her; and happy is every one that retaineth her.
7. The study of the literature of the Bible is worth while because it is a literature of power; it has shaped the thought and morals of the Christian world.
De Quincey divided literature into two classes, the literature of knowledge and the literature of power. The Bible belongs peculiarly to the literature of power. We know that it is the most powerful book that ever spoke to man. The literature of power is always the great literature; it is the only literature that has an unending lease of life. The literature of knowledge will live only until some one else embodies the old facts in a partially new form. Literature of power can never become obsolete because it deals with things eternally true; and the deeper and truer the message of a book, the more inevitable will be the form in which this message will state itself. The literature of the Bible is so surcharged with power that virtue goes out of it whenever it touches the people. This virtue influences their thoughts, forms their governments, frames their laws, shapes their morals, molds their characters, and fashions their lives. All modern thought, ethics, culture, art, law, literature, conduct, and the dull, common round of life, find here most of the materials out of which they are shaped, and by which they are inspired. Thought finds here its problems; ethics, its standards; culture, its rich materials; art, its most inspiring subjects; law, its fundamental ideas; literature, its spirit and ideals; conduct, its primary sanctions; and the multitude of common relations and activities of life find here those elements of mystery, hope, and exaltation which make them at all endurable.
Matthew Arnold, poet and critic, and profound student of the Bible, says:
“As well imagine a man with a sense for poetry not cultivating it by the help of Homer and Shakespeare, as a man with a sense for conduct not cultivating it by the help of the Bible.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, philosopher, and theelogian, says:
“For more than a thousand years the Bible collectively taken has gone hand in hand with civilization, science, law,—in short, with the moral and intellectual cultivation of the species, always supporting and often leading the way.”
Indeed almost an unlimited number of illustrations and opinions might be offered in evidence, but let a particular and concrete testimonial conclude the list. It is an account of the influence of the Bible on a particular nation at a particular time. In his “History of the English People,” John Richard Green says of the time when the English Bible so powerfully stirred the life and conscience of England:
“So far as the nation at large was concerned, no history, no romance, hardly any poetry save the little-known verse of Chaucer, existed in the English tongue when the Bible was ordered to be set up in the churches. Sunday after Sunday, day after day, the crowds that gathered around the Bible in the nave of St. Paul’s, or the family group that hung on its words in the devotional exercises at home, were leavened with a new literature. Legend and annal, war song and psalm, state roll and biography, the mighty voice of the prophets, the parables of evangelists, stories of mission journeys, or perils by the sea and among the heathen, philosophic arguments, apocalyptic visions, all were flung broadcast over minds unoccupied for the most part by any rival learning. But far greater than its effect on literature or social phrase was the effect of the Bible on the character of the people at large. The Bible was as yet the one book which was familiar to every Englishman; and everywhere its words as they fell on ears that custom had not deadened to their force and beauty, kindled a startling enthusiasm. The effect of the Bible however dispassionately we examine it, was simply amazing. The whole people became a church. The problem of life, and death, whose questionings found no answers in the higher minds of Shakespeare’s day pressed for an answer not only from noble and scholar, but from farmer and shopkeeper in the age that followed him.”
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No one can claim to be well educated who is not fairly familiar with the history and literature found in the Bible. The English Bible has so shaped the ideas and ideals of the English-speaking people, has been so woven into all their literature that it has become the one supreme book in the English tongue. There is operative in the world a law which may be called the conservation of spiritual energy. The best vehicles for the transmission of this energy are the great books of the world. They transmit to the people of each succeeding generation this spiritual energy as a most important part of their race inheritance. The book with the greatest carrying power and the richest gifts is the Bible. Its original measure of inspired power has been enlarged by the absorption into its pages of the faith and trust of multitudes of devoted readers through the ages; and as it has passed down the centuries it has poured into the world, in days of darkness and doubt, a flood of the cleansing sunshine of righteousness. The life and culture of our time, or of any time, can not be complete without the transforming touch of this spiritual energy. For this reason and many others, it is abundantly worth while to study the Bible with thoroughness and seriousness. In this chapter seven reasons are given why it should be studied by literary methods and for its literary value.
1. The charge that it is sacrilegious to study the Bible as literature can not be sustained; such study may be wise and reverent.
2. A close and critical study will make its message clearer.
3. Such study will be profitable because the Bible is a great storehouse of good English which has been more powerful in shaping our language, both spoken and written, than any other influence whatsoever.
4. The specific study of its language, characters, and stories is profitable because in our everyday speech, and secular literature there are multitudes of verbal forms and illustrations drawn from the Bible, whose full meaning and force are understood only by those who are familiar with the original sources.
5. It furnishes interesting reading and has a rich and satisfying variety.
6. It is profitable to study the Bible because in it are found the best examples of great literature, in diction, form, and feeling.
7. Its study is worth while because it is a literature of power. It has shaped the thought and morals of the best nations of the world.
1. George Eliot makes Adam Bede say: “I prefer to read the Apocrypha rather than the Bible for in reading the Apocrypha I can use my own reason.” But it is not really sacrilegious to apply to the Bible the same standards of excellence and the same canons of good taste that are applied as a matter of course to any other book. A man who affected to despise learning one time said, “I love flowers but I hate botany.” Suppose a botanist, a rare reader of God in nature, goes forth into the fields in search of flowers. He finds a beautiful flower and at once proceeds to pick it to pieces. “Alas, you irreverent man!” you cry, "you are destroying one of God’s beautiful works. What right have you to tear apart those petals that make a thing of such exquisite loveliness?" But the botanist is not animated by a spirit of ruthless destruction; he is filled with a spirit of loving appreciation. He knows that the only way to understand the flower completely is to pick it to pieces; that only in this way can he comprehend the wonderful organism, the splendid beauty, the real significance of the flower. And just as botany conduces to a greater love for flowers, so should a close, careful, critical study of the Bible lead us to a greater and more reverent love for the truth that it teaches. Of course it should be remembered that while we study its literary forms very much as we study other books, we should not for a moment forget that the truly wonderful thing about this sacred literature is the divine spirit which animates it, the everlasting purpose which lies back of it all. But while this is true, we should not fall into the error of believing that it is sacrilegious to study it in a careful, critical way. It has for us “apples of gold in baskets of silver,” and it is not sacrilegious to examine the baskets of silver.
2. A study of the Bible as literature will aid in understanding its message. Language does not give forth its message with unvarying exactness. It is never easy to know just how much meaning or how little a writer intends to convey by a word or a phrase. One must have abundant knowledge of the way in which men have thought and spoken, a large experience in interpreting the thoughts and feelings of men from their words, to be at all sure that he is getting what an author intended he should get. In secular literature no one is bold enough to set himself up as an interpreter of masterpieces unless he brings to the interpretation a mind trained to understand and appreciate the force of words and literary forms, and a method of study and interpretation which has stood the test of years of application.
Of course there are things about this great Book that are so simple that even a child can understand and appreciate them; but there are things profound enough to puzzle the philosopher, and these the reader can not hope to understand unless he has prepared himself for the task of weighing and considering. The man of little experience in interpreting men’s thoughts and feelings from their written words must fail to get at the heart of many a passage. He should be able to read between the lines, to discern where he ought to rest his full weight and press out the fullest meaning, and where he ought to press lightly. The man of no range in his reading, with no experience in interpretation, must be inclined inevitably to treat all parts alike, to make one word just as emphatic, just as literal as another.
The truths of the Bible are offered to us in the same words, phrases, and literary forms, that are used in all other literature; it ought to require no argument to prove that if the student is to get all that is bound up in these words, phrases, and forms, he should make diligent use of all his secular knowledge, of all his culture, of all his best methods of getting at the meaning and force of language, and of all his trained powers of interpreting literature.
3. The literary study of the Bible will be profitable because it is a great storehouse of good English which has been more powerful in shaping our language, both spoken and written, than any other influence whatsoever.
Dr. Cook of Yale says:
“From Caedmon’s time to the present the influence of Bible diction upon English speech has been virtually uninterrupted. The Bible has been an active force in English literature for over 1200 years, and during the whole period it has been molding the diction of representative thinkers and literary artists.”
Mr. Saintsbury in his history of English literature says:
“But great as are Bacon and Raleigh, they can not approach, as writers of prose, the company of scholarly divines who produced what is probably the greatest prose work in any language—the Authorized Version of the Bible in English.”
It has often been said that “The Pilgrim’s Progress” of Bunyan stands unrivaled as a model of plain, vigorous clear, pleasing English. The reason for this excellence is evident. Bunyan was fairly saturated not only with the spirit but with the language of the English Bible. Coleridge declared that intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar in point of style. And John Ruskin, who was doubtless the greatest master of pure, idiomatic, vigorous, and eloquent English prose that the last century produced, says that his mother required him in childhood to commit to memory and repeat to her over and over again, many passages of the Bible. We need not seek further for the secret of his admirable diction and perfect command of English phraseology.
4. “It is woven into the literature of the scholar and colors the talk of the street.” A familiar acquaintance with the words, phrases, stories, and characters of the Bible is valuable because our everyday speech and our secular literature have been enriched by the use of and by allusions to them. There are in our secular literature multitudes of allusions to the Bible. Again and again does a writer take advantage of the associations which cluster about a Bible phrase or incident and by a simple touch bring up in the mind of the understanding reader all the circumstances and sentiments connected with the original. Indeed no one who lays claim to any degree of culture can be ignorant of these incidents, phrases, and characters. They have been assimilated into the common speech. The most illiterate man understands, after a fashion, the phrases: “the widow’s mite,” “a Judas kiss,” “the flesh-pots of Egypt,” “a still small voice,” “a Jehu,” “a perfect babel,” “a Nimrod,” “bread upon the waters,” “a Daniel come to judgment,” “a Solomon,” “a Delila,” “a mother in Israel,” “a land flowing with milk and honey,” “the valley of decision,” and “the salt of the earth.” These have become the permanent possession of our every-day speech and convey a meaning not associated directly with their origin; but to those who are familiar with the origin and setting of these terms, they have a vigor and significance which others can not at all appreciate.
All our poets have enriched their pages with thoughts and images from this wonderful literary storehouse. If one wishes to know how frequently Tennyson drew out of this inexhaustible mine treasures both new and old, let him examine the appendix to Dr. Henry Van Dyke’s study of Tennyson; he will find listed there more than two hundred references. Among these are the phrases: “as manna in my wilderness”; “Pharaoh’s darkness”; “Ruth amid the fields of corn”; “stiff as Lot’s wife”; “I have flung thee pearls and find thee swine”; “and marked me even as Cain”; “the church on Peter’s rock”; “a whole Peter’s sheet”; “one was the Tishbite whom the ravens fed”; “who can call him friend that dips in the same dish.”
From Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes are selected the following allusions, a few from many that might be quoted: “We too who laugh at Israel’s golden calf”; “a cloud by day, by night a pillared flame”; “He who prayed the prayer of all mankind”; “Why did the choir of angels sing for joy”? “I thought of Judas and his bribe”; “They who gathered manna every morn”;
“Mountains are cleft before you
As the sea before the tribes of Israel’s wandering sons.”
“When Moab’s daughter homeless and forlorn,
Found Boaz slumbering by his heaps of corn.”
The space of many chapters would be required to set forth Shakespeare’s indebtedness to the Bible. The following are some of the most familiar allusions:
“Good name in man or woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their soul.”
“Samson, master, was a man of good carriage, great carriage; for he carried the town gates on his back like a porter.”
“You found his mote; the king your mote did see;
But I a beam do find in each of thee.”
“I am no great Nebuchadnezzar, sir. I have not much skill in grass.”
“It is hard to come as for a camel
To thread the postern of a needle’s eye.”
By the use of these allusions the poet may not only give completeness to his thought, force to his truth, and vividness to his imagery, but he may enrich his verse with a beauty and significance beyond his own power. He may write, “A little lower than angels”—and at once we hear added to the music of his lines,
“What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
And the son of man that thou visitest him?
For thou hast made him a little lower than angels,
And crowned him with glory and honor.”
Or the poet writes the phrase, “Solomon-shaming flowers,” and we at once hear the matchless lines:
“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;
They toil not, neither do they spin:
Yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory
Was not arrayed like one of these.”
5. There are many people who do not look upon the Bible as a readable book; yet its pages are full of unusual charm. It is a book full of marvelous incidents and engaging history, with sunny pictures of old world scenery, and charming and pathetic anecdotes of patriarchal times. Any one who wishes literature having unity, variety, beauty, strength, and interest, can find it in this volume of sixty-six books. He will there find law, folk-lore, tradition, official records, historical narrative, epic poetry, dramatic poetry, lyric poetry, proverbial philosophy, patriotic addresses, religious addresses, parables, prayers, prophecies, biographies, theology, circular letters, private letters, riddles, fables, dream literature, love songs, patriotic songs, and songs of praise. These writings were produced by probably thirty-one writers through a period of fifteen hundred years. Some of them lived in palaces and some in prisons; some were princes and some were peasants; some were scholars and some were illiterate men; some were philosophers and some herdsmen, fishermen, and mechanics. So it is a book appealing to the learned and the ignorant, to the prince and the peasant, the sage and the child, to all races, all nations, all classes, and it approaches all these in the way they can best be reached.
The place of the origin of the Bible should give it variety. It originated in a land which is a sort of epitome of the world. The configuration of Palestine, its immense variety of scenery, its vast range of climate, its extraordinary range of animal and vegetable life, reproduce, in a way, the features of the whole world. So the book is cosmopolitan in its atmosphere and imagery. It is full of the imagery of the sea and has in it also the quiet serenity of the secluded valley and lonely shore. It is filled with pastoral imagery. It tells of a God who is a Shepherd, of a king who came from the sheepfold. It is warm with the breath and brilliant with the light of the eastern clime: It tells of gardens and spices, of roses and lilies, of gold and jewels, of pomegranates and palms: its imagery is oriental in its richness. On the other hand it is also a book of mountains and snow and ice; its atmosphere is afiected by the winds from Lebanon and snow-capped Hermon, as well as by breezes from the City of Palm Trees.
6. The forms of literature found in the Bible are numerous and varied. Do you want biographies? Here you may find biographies which in directness of narrative, vigor of movement, interest, and in faithfulness to life are superior to any that were ever written—certainly more faithful in telling the truth and the whole truth. Or do you want to study love stories? Here you can find stories of such genuineness, naturalness, noble simplicity, and straightforward truthfulness that they put to shame the multitude of sickly, silly sentimental novels of to-day. Or do you want to read annals of war? Here your blood may be stirred with accounts of battles, sieges, deadly encounters, ignoble treachery, noble patriotism, galling defeats, glorious victories, and remarkable bravery, records not surpassed in the history of any nation. Or do you want to study law literature? Here you can find a system of jurisprudence to which the best countries of the civilized world must acknowledge themselves indebted; and these laws set forth in statutes so simple, so plain, and withal so unmistakable in their meaning that you will begin to feel pity for our own lawmakers who use vain repetitions as the heathen do, and write their statutes in language like Samson’s riddles.
Or do you want to study fiction? Here you will find the wonderfully effective parables, the instructive fables, and the warning dreams, all with a moral lesson so forcibly put that you need hardly ask why there should be fiction in the Bible, or why the imagination may not be inspired as Well as the reason and the judgment. Or do you want to read poetry? Here you may find poems of transcendent genius, some of the noblest poems of the world, poems breathing such lofty piety, such fervent devotion, such noble sentiments, and all expressed in imagery so beautiful and sublime that you can not choose but be entranced by their beauty and their power.
It is profitable to study the Bible because it contains the best forms of literature in satisfying perfection. The English historian James Anthony Froude wrote:
“The Bible thoroughly known is a literature of itself —the rarest and the richest in all departments of thought or imagination which exists.”
Dr. Robert South, the great English divine, says:
“In God’s word we have not only a body of religion, but also a system of the best rhetoric; and as the highest things require the highest expressions, so we shall find nothing in Scripture so sublime in itself, but it is reached and sometimes overtopped by the sublimity of the expression. So that he who said he would not read the Scripture for fear of spoiling his style showed himself as much a blockhead as an atheist, and to have as small a gust of the elegancies of expression as the sacredness of the matter.”
Sir William Jones testifies:
“I have carefully and regularly perused these holy Scriptures, and am of opinion that the volume independent of its divine origin, contains more sublimity, purer morality, more important history, and finer strains of eloquence, than can be collected from all other books in whatever language they may have been written.”
Do you ask for tenderness and devotion expressed in faultless rhetoric?
And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee, for whither thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.
Do you ask for pathos and elegant simplicity?
And Cushi said, Tidings, my lord the king; for the Lord hath avenged thee this day of all them that rose up against thee.
And the king said unto Cushi, Is the young man Absalom safe? And Cushi answered, The enemies of my lord the king, and all that rise against thee to do thee hurt, he as that young man is.
And the King was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my sonl
Do you want eloquence of appeal, gentleness of warning, depth of yearning, and glorious promise united with beauty of poetic form, pleasing imagery, and most picturesque metaphor? Hear Isaiah:
Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend your money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. . . . For ye shall go out with joy and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing; and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree; and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree, and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
Do you want the most practical wisdom set forth in sentences of the utmost vigor, terseness, and rhythmic beauty? .
My son, forget not my law; but let thy heart keep my commandments;
For length of days and long life and peace shall they add unto thee;
Let not mercy and truth forsake thee; bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart;
So shalt thou find favor and good understanding in the sight of God and man. . . .
Happy is the-man that findeth wisdom and the man that getteth understanding;
For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold.
She is more precious than rubies; and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.
Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left riches and honor.
Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.
She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her; and happy is every one that retaineth her.
7. The study of the literature of the Bible is worth while because it is a literature of power; it has shaped the thought and morals of the Christian world.
De Quincey divided literature into two classes, the literature of knowledge and the literature of power. The Bible belongs peculiarly to the literature of power. We know that it is the most powerful book that ever spoke to man. The literature of power is always the great literature; it is the only literature that has an unending lease of life. The literature of knowledge will live only until some one else embodies the old facts in a partially new form. Literature of power can never become obsolete because it deals with things eternally true; and the deeper and truer the message of a book, the more inevitable will be the form in which this message will state itself. The literature of the Bible is so surcharged with power that virtue goes out of it whenever it touches the people. This virtue influences their thoughts, forms their governments, frames their laws, shapes their morals, molds their characters, and fashions their lives. All modern thought, ethics, culture, art, law, literature, conduct, and the dull, common round of life, find here most of the materials out of which they are shaped, and by which they are inspired. Thought finds here its problems; ethics, its standards; culture, its rich materials; art, its most inspiring subjects; law, its fundamental ideas; literature, its spirit and ideals; conduct, its primary sanctions; and the multitude of common relations and activities of life find here those elements of mystery, hope, and exaltation which make them at all endurable.
Matthew Arnold, poet and critic, and profound student of the Bible, says:
“As well imagine a man with a sense for poetry not cultivating it by the help of Homer and Shakespeare, as a man with a sense for conduct not cultivating it by the help of the Bible.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, philosopher, and theelogian, says:
“For more than a thousand years the Bible collectively taken has gone hand in hand with civilization, science, law,—in short, with the moral and intellectual cultivation of the species, always supporting and often leading the way.”
Indeed almost an unlimited number of illustrations and opinions might be offered in evidence, but let a particular and concrete testimonial conclude the list. It is an account of the influence of the Bible on a particular nation at a particular time. In his “History of the English People,” John Richard Green says of the time when the English Bible so powerfully stirred the life and conscience of England:
“So far as the nation at large was concerned, no history, no romance, hardly any poetry save the little-known verse of Chaucer, existed in the English tongue when the Bible was ordered to be set up in the churches. Sunday after Sunday, day after day, the crowds that gathered around the Bible in the nave of St. Paul’s, or the family group that hung on its words in the devotional exercises at home, were leavened with a new literature. Legend and annal, war song and psalm, state roll and biography, the mighty voice of the prophets, the parables of evangelists, stories of mission journeys, or perils by the sea and among the heathen, philosophic arguments, apocalyptic visions, all were flung broadcast over minds unoccupied for the most part by any rival learning. But far greater than its effect on literature or social phrase was the effect of the Bible on the character of the people at large. The Bible was as yet the one book which was familiar to every Englishman; and everywhere its words as they fell on ears that custom had not deadened to their force and beauty, kindled a startling enthusiasm. The effect of the Bible however dispassionately we examine it, was simply amazing. The whole people became a church. The problem of life, and death, whose questionings found no answers in the higher minds of Shakespeare’s day pressed for an answer not only from noble and scholar, but from farmer and shopkeeper in the age that followed him.”
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