"An excellent habit to cultivate is the analytical study of the King James Bible. For simple yet rich and forceful English, this masterly production is hard to equal; and even though its Saxon vocabulary and poetic rhythm be unsuited to general composition, it is an invaluable model for writers on quaint or imaginative themes." ~Atheist Horror Writer H.P. Lovecraft
NEXT to the wonderful work which our English Bible has done in the home, in the Church, and in the nation, nothing is more remarkable than the way in which it has guided our English speech and inspired our English literature. There are few facts connected with literature regarding which there is more general agreement than that the Authorized Version is a masterpiece of English, and that it has exercised a great and beneficent influence on the development of the English language. As a mere literary monument, the English version of the Bible remains the noblest example of ‘the English tongue.’ Critics of all schools, who agree about hardly anything else, are agreed that it is the richest repository of thought and imagery, the best model of pure style, which the language possesses. It is a library rather than a book. It has something in it for every seeker; something for every pure taste. Its poetry reaches loftier heights and fathoms deeper depths than any other. Its history carries us further back, and takes us further into the secret place of the Most High than any other. It lets us see things from the standpoint of God, and sub specie aeternitatis.
Our English Bible must be more than literature, or it is nothing; but it is literature, and literature at its best. Whatever our list of ‘best books’ may be, the Bible must not only, be on it, but unquestionably first. It is God’s Book as no other book can be; profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness. But apart from that, for the noblest poetry and unique history, for practical wisdom and helpful guidance through the mazes of life, and for a portrait gallery of truly human men and women such as can be found nowhere else, it is the most wonderful combination the world of letters has ever seen. The moral qualities of the translators influenced their literary work all through. John Milton was no mean judge, and his testimony is that there are no songs to be compared with the songs of Zion; no orations equal to those of the prophets; and no politics like those which the Scriptures teach. In the very critical art of composition, it may be easily made appear over all kinds of lyrical poesy to be incomparable.
The place occupied by the English Bible in English literature is as unique as the place of the Bible itself in the literature of the race. As Caedmon’s paraphrases were the first true English poetry; as Bede, the translator of St. John, was the first writer of Old English prose; as Wiclif, who first gave the whole Bible to the English nation, may be regarded as the Father of modern English prose in virtue of the clear, homely English of his translation; and as Luther’s German version was the book which did most to fix the German language and guide it into the grooves in which it has moved ever since—so it has been both as regards language and literature with the Authorized Version. Ever since it appeared it has dominated, and in a sense hallowed, all English speech and writing. This is not the testimony of enthusiasts for the Bible only, but of literary and linguistic experts. As Professor Sweet says: The publication of Tindale’s translation of the New Testament, in 1525, paved the way for the Authorized Version of 1611, which made Early Modern English what it has ever since been . . . the sacred or liturgical language of the whole English-speaking race. Mr. Green, too, speaks eloquently of the conspicuous influence which from the first it exerted on ordinary speech. The mass of picturesque allusion and illustration which we borrow from a thousand books, our fathers were forced to borrow from one; and the borrowing was all the easier and the more natural that the range of the Hebrew literature fitted it for the expression of every phase of feeling. Even to common minds this familiarity with grand poetic imagery in prophet and apocalypse gave a loftiness and ardour of expression, that with all its tendency to exaggeration and bombast we may prefer to the slipshod vulgarisms of the shopkeeper of to-day.
On all hands it is agreed that throughout the more modern history of the Anglo-Saxon race no book has had so great an influence on the standard of English literature wherever the language prevails, and on the vocabulary and style of English writers generally, as the Authorized Version of the English Bible. It has gone with the emigrant to the ends of the earth, to fix the standard and preserve the purity of the language and the integrity of its literature in the Greater Britain beyond the seas. It went with the Pilgrim Fathers to New England, with the result that even when the great Republic of the West was sundered from the Empire, it remained loyal to the mother-tongue, and to all which that involves. Nowhere is there more enthusiasm for the English classics, or a greater determination to claim a share in the inheritance of letters, than among those who are furthest from the homeland, and nowhere is there a deeper interest in the English Bible than there. Nor can anyone enter with understanding and sympathy into the treasures of that vast and ever-growing inheritance; whether he dwells in the Old World or the New, beneath the Southern Cross, in the wheat-lands of Saskatchewan, or on the lonely South African veldt, unless he has some acquaintance with the English Bible, so much has it entered into the very texture of all that is best in our national literature in all its branches. It requires but a brief examination of authors so different as Shakespeare and Milton, Scott and Carlyle, Browning, Ruskin, and Tennyson, to show that it is not merely that Scripture is often quoted and alluded to, but that its words and images have entered into the very warp and woof of the cloth of gold which they have woven for the generations which follow after. To be ignorant of the Bible is to lack the key of the treasury alike in literature and grace.
As the result of his experience as an Inspector of primary schools, Mr. Matthew Arnold said that the English Bible introduces the only element of true poetry, the one elevating and inspiring element that enters into the education of multitudes in our land. The protest against excluding it from our schools has come from every quarter. It reaches every class, and influences all sorts and conditions of men, as nothing else in literature can. Books are the true levellers, and the Bible is the truest leveller of all; always levelling up, however, rather than down. Just as gunpowder put the man-at-arms in his leather jerkin on a level with the knight in his armour of steel, the printing-press has brought the Bible to the poor as well as to the rich, to the uncultured as well as to the learned. In its sacred simplicity and Divine depth it appeals to yearnings and satisfies needs which are common to every class. It is the great conciliatory, uniting force amid so much that makes for antagonism and disruption. It is to be found on the castle table and in the cottage of the working man ; and it speaks the same message to every home in which it is read. It is read by peasant and prince, by mill-girl and countess, in Eton and Harrow and in Board Schools, in the Universities and the Boys’ Brigade. Of the six thousand words in the Authorized Version, not more than two hundred and fifty are not in common use; and that is largely because it has set the standard, created the taste, and been as an Academy of Letters in the land.
All that this means is seldom seen to be as wonderful as it is, or even realized, because it has always been such an outstanding fact in our lives. The Bible as we have known it since ever we knew anything, speaks to the simplest as well as to the most thoughtful, to the busy worker and the student recluse, to those who are just setting out on the pathway of life and to those who are putting their armour off; and speaks to them all alike with authority, dignity, and power. The most profound cannot fathom its depths, while the simplehearted get all they need or can carry away; and however far-reaching its philosophy may be, it never ceases to be the book of the many, yea, of the all. It is said to be one of the most severe tests that can be applied to a book, that those who read it with enjoyment when they are young should be able to enjoy it as much when they are old. It often happens that when books are re-read in these circumstances, their readers are puzzled to think what they can ever have found in them, they now seem so superficial and commonplace. But not only does the Bible stand this test and even invite it, the witness of multitudes of the wisest and best, of all ranks and classes, is that they never read even those parts of it with which they are most familiar without discovering new beauties, coming under its power more than ever, and finding in their own blessed experience that the half had not been told of its wonders, and never can be told.
In other references to the worth of Scripture, we can,listen only to those for whom the Bible is more than literature, for the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him, and spiritual things are spiritually discerned; but in regard to its value for the language and for literature, the testimonies of ordinary men of letters may fairly be adduced; and these are very many and very varied in character. ‘I am heartily glad,’ said Landor, ‘to witness your veneration for a Book which, to say nothing of its holiness or authority, contains more specimens of genius and taste than any other volume in existence.’ ‘No translation our own country ever yet produced,’ said Swift, ‘hath come up to that of the Old and New Testaments; and I am persuaded that the translators of the Bible were masters of an English style much fitter for that work than any we see in our present writings; the which is owing to the simplicity which runs through the whole.’ ‘The most learned, acute, and diligent student,’ said Sir Walter Scott, ‘cannot, in the longest life obtain an entire knowledge of one volume. The more deeply he works the mine, the richer and more abundant he finds the ore; new light continually beams from this source of heavenly knowledge, to direct the conduct and illustrate the work of God and the ways of men; and he will at last leave the world confessing that the more he studied the Scriptures, the fuller conviction he had of his own ignorance, and of their inestimable value.’ When he was near the end of his life, Dr. Johnson said: ‘I hope to read the whole Bible once every year, as long as I live...I devoted this week to the perusal of the Bible, and have done little secular business.’ ‘The Bible throughly known,’ said Froude, ‘is a literature in itself . . . the rarest and richest in all departments of thought or imagination which exists.’ ‘At the time when that odious style,’ said Macaulay, ’which deforms the writings of Hall and Lord Bacon, was almost universal, appeared that stupendous work, the English Bible; . . . a book which if everything else in our language should perish, would alone sufiice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power. The respect which the translators felt for the original, prevented them from adding any of the hideous decorations then in fashion. The groundwork of the version, indeed, was of an earlier age.’
The Authorized Version has often been called a well of English undefiled, and much of its purity is due to the fact that its water was drawn from the ancient springs. It has the universal note which gives it a place among the immortals. It has the Divine touch, even in its diction, which lifts it above the limitations of locality and time, and makes it valid and living for all the ages. Like a rare jewel fitly set, the sacred truths of Scripture have found such suitable expression in it, that we can hardly doubt that they filled those who made it with reverence and awe, so that they, walked softly in the Holy Presence.
See also The King James Bible Companion: 100 Books on DVDrom
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