the solid virtues which had helped that great nation," as he said, "in its unexampled advance in civilization and progress had been inspired and strengthened by this great book.” 1 The future of the book is, it would seem, the future of the language. If Shakespeare, and Milton, and Bunyan are to endure as long as our tongue endures, then more confidently still may this be predicted of the Bible. How much such an assertion means it would be hard for us at present to say. Borne upon the crest of this swelling tide, our English Bible will share an earthly immortality to which more largely than any other one work in our language it has itself contributed. Words which were only the extravagance of flattery when spoken of Egypt's dusky queen, are words of truth and soberness when used about this book : Age cannot wither it, nor custom stale To it alone will ultimately belong the magnificent eulogy of Daniel Webster upon the victorious power, "whose morning drumbeat following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain.” 1 "Times of India." August 25, 1805. "I am interested in the people who made the Bible, but I am more interested in the people whom the Bible makes, for they show me the fibre and genius of Scripture as no mental studiousness, or verbal exegesis can do."Dr. C. H. Parkhurst. CHAPTER XI. THE BIBLE AND THE NATION. So perfect is the form in which the message of God has come to us in our English Bible that we are sometimes tempted to speak of that form as though it were in itself of prime importance. We need remember that, while we can no longer separate the truths of Scripture from the language with which for now nearly three centuries they have been associated, yet the authority of the Bible dwells not in the language, but in the truths. As Wordsworth insisted, forms must be the incarnation of thought. The thought of the Scriptures might have been couched in other and inferior language, but it would still have proved itself quick and powerful. In common with other nations, the English and the American people have needed some external law by which to be guided. Without that the Briton would never have risen to an independent existence when the Roman left his shores; and the immigrant landing in this New World might have succumbed before the perils and hardships which, for many years, made his life so trying. The Bible has furnished this external authority, and the true grandeur of these two nations may be traced to the weight which it has from the beginning carried with it. 1. We glance in the first place at the civilizing influence which the Bible has exerted. In his day there was no single man who did so much to humanize the savage lives led by the Northumbrians as Bede, and it is equally true to affirm that no single man is more indissolubly associated than he with the work of teaching the truths of Scriptures and translating them into the vernacular of the people about him. In the ninth century, Alfred impressed himself upon his countrymen, not alone because of his splendid services in war and peace, nor chiefly because of his noble character, but because he was the victorious champion of Christianity against paganism. "Alfred was a Christian hero, and in his Christianity he found the force which bore him through calamity apparently hopeless, to victory and happiness." 1 A life of such tremendous activity as his afforded neither time nor taste for speculative studies. If he learned Latin, it was to popularize its literature with his people. If he translated Boethius, it was to occupy their mind and his own with themes worthy of a nation's most serious thought. If he founded schools, it was with the ambition that free-born English boys should read, with some measure, at least, of ease and accu 1 "Lectures and Essays," Prof. Goldwin Smith, p. 271. |