the fountain-head of the power of the bible in literature lies in its nearness to the very springs and sources of human life—life taken seriously, earnestly, intensely; life in its broadest meaning, including the inward as well as the outward; life interpreted in its relation to universal laws and eternal values. it is this vital quality in the narratives, the poems, the allegories, the meditations, the discourses, the letters, gathered in this book, that gives it first place among the books of the world not only for currency, but also for greatness.
for the currency of literature depends in the long run upon the breadth and vividness of its human appeal. and the greatness of literature depends upon the intensive significance of those portions of
[11]
life which it depicts and interprets. now, there is no other book which reflects so many sides and aspects of human experience as the bible, and this fact alone would suffice to give it a world-wide interest and make it popular. but it mirrors them all, whether they belong to the chronicles of kings and conquerors, or to the obscure records of the lowliest of labourers and sufferers, in the light of a conviction that they are all related to the will and purpose of the eternal. this illuminates every figure with a divine distinction, and raises every event to the nth power of meaning. it is this fact that gives the bible its extraordinary force as literature and makes it great.
born in the east and clothed in oriental form and imagery, the bible walks the ways of all the world with familiar feet and enters land after land to find its own everywhere. it has learned to speak in hundreds of languages to the heart of man. it comes into the palace to tell the monarch that he is a servant of the most high, and into the cottage to assure the peasant that he is a son of god. children listen to its stories with wonder and delight, and wise men ponder them as
[12]
parables of life. it has a word of peace for the time of peril, a word of comfort for the day of calamity, a word of light for the hour of darkness. its oracles are repeated in the assembly of the people, and its counsels whispered in the ear of the lonely. the wicked and the proud tremble at its warning, but to the wounded and the penitent it has a mother’s voice. the wilderness and the solitary place have been made glad by it, and the fire on the hearth has lit the reading of its well-worn page. it has woven itself into our deepest affections and coloured our dearest dreams; so that love and friendship, sympathy and devotion, memory and hope, put on the beautiful garments of its treasured speech, breathing of frankincense and myrrh.
above the cradle and beside the grave its great words come to us uncalled. they fill our prayers with power larger than we know, and the beauty of them lingers on our ear long after the sermons which they adorned have been forgotten. they return to us swiftly and quietly, like doves flying from far away. they surprise us with new meanings, like springs of water breaking forth from the mountain beside a long-trodden path. they grow richer, as pearls do when they are worn near the heart.
[13]
no man is poor or desolate who has this treasure for his own. when the landscape darkens and the trembling pilgrim comes to the valley named of the shadow, he is not afraid to enter: he takes the rod and staff of scripture in his hand; he says to friend and comrade, “good-by; we shall meet again”; and comforted by that support, he goes toward the lonely pass as one who walks through darkness into light.
it would be strange indeed if a book which has played such a part in human life had not exercised an extraordinary influence upon literature. as a matter of fact, the bible has called into existence tens of thousands of other books devoted to the exposition of its meaning, the defense and illustration of its doctrine, the application of its teaching, or the record of its history. the learned fabricius, in the early part of the eighteenth century, published a catalogue raisonné of such books, filling seven hundred quarto pages.[1] since that time the length of the list has probably more than trebled. in addition, we must reckon the many books of hostile criticism and contrary argument which the bible has evoked, and which are an evidence of
[14]
revolt against the might of its influence. all this tangle of biblical literature has grown up around it like a vast wood full of all manner of trees, great and small, useful and worthless, fruit-trees, timber-trees, berry-bushes, briers, and poison-vines. but all of them, even the most beautiful and tall, look like undergrowth, when we compare them with the mighty oak of scripture, towering in perennial grandeur, the father of the forest.
among the patristic writers there were some of great genius like origen and chrysostom and augustine. the mediæval schools of theology produced men of philosophic power, like anselm and thomas aquinas; of spiritual insight, like the author of the imitatio christi. the eloquence of france reached its height in the discourses of bossuet, bourdaloue, and massillon. german became one of the potent tongues of literature when martin luther used it in his tracts and sermons, and herder’s geist der hebräischen poesie is one of the great books in criticism. in english, to mention such names as hooker and fuller and jeremy taylor is to recall the dignity, force, and splendour of prose at its best.
[15]
yet none of these authors has produced anything to rival the book from which they drew their common inspiration.
in the other camp, though there have been many brilliant assailants, not one has surpassed, or even equalled, in the estimation of the world, the literary excellence of the book which they attacked. the mordant wit of voltaire, the lucid and melancholy charm of renan, have not availed to drive or draw the world away from the bible; and the effect of all assaults has been to leave it more widely read, better understood, and more intelligently admired than ever before.
now it must be admitted that the same thing is true, at least in some degree, of other books which are held to be sacred or quasi-sacred: they are superior to the distinctively theological literature which has grown up about them. i suppose nothing of the mussulmans is as great as the “koran,” nothing of the hindus as great as the “vedas”; and though the effect of the confucian classics, from the literary point of view, may not have been altogether good, their supremacy in the religious library
[16]
of the chinese is unquestioned. but the singular and noteworthy thing about the influence of the bible is the extent to which it has permeated general literature, the mark which it has made in all forms of belles-lettres. to treat this subject adequately one would need to write volumes. in this chapter i can touch but briefly on a few points of the outline as they come out in english literature.
