Page images
PDF
EPUB

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THIS book contains a large number of quotations from poets, novelists, essayists, and orators. It is impossible to make specific acknowledgment for every individual quotation, but where they have been extensively used permission has been granted by the pub lishers.

The Houghton Miflin Company have given permission for the use of quotations, from The Life and Literature of the Ancient Hebrews, by Dr. Lyman Abbott; for the use of quotations from Bayard Taylor's translation of Faust; and for miscellaneous quotations from the Cambridge Edition of the poets.

D. C. Heath & Company have permitted us to make extracts from Moulton's The Literary Study of the Bible; and from Professor Cook's The Bible and Eng. lish Prose Style.

The Funk & Wagnalls Company have given us permission to make quotations from their book, The World's Famous Orations, by W. J. Bryan.

To these publishers we make grateful acknowledg ment for extending these courtesies.

y

INTRODUCTION

AT the outset of a course such as is outlined in these pages one is confronted with two difficulties which would not exist in connection with the study of any other book than the Bible. In the first place there is an obvious feeling of sensitiveness on the part of young people regarding Bible study. A young man or woman who would feel no hesitation in carrying a volume of Shakespeare or Goethe across the college campus would experience a certain degree of embarrassment if for these were substituted the English Bible. This point .of view does not indicate any lack of appreciation of the Bible, but it is a psychological condition resulting probably from the association of the Bible with services which are related to the concerns of life, which young men and women do not care to discuss publicly.

Another difficulty in our approach lies in an exag gerated reverence for the Bible which in some cases amounts almost to a superstition. When we read, for example, that Senator Beveridge gives it as his opinion that the three greatest orations ever delivered were the Sermon on the Mount by Jesus Christ, the Address on Mars' Hill by Saint Paul, and the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln, we are conscious of a distinct shock in our religious sensibilities, It is on account of this that the book of Job, which is universally accorded a very high place in literature, was practically a sealed book for many centuries. Since it is a fact that we have in the King James version of the English Bible a collection of pieces of literature which are unsurpassed, it becomes necessary for us to lay aside whatever scruples we may have concerning its study from any other than a religious point of view. It does not detract

from the ethical value of the Sermon on the Mount to study the marvelous skill used by Jesus in setting forth his teachings. That the story of the prodigal son is called by many critics the best short story ever writ ten should add to its value as a teacher of the Fatherhood of God.

It should be said that the first prerequisite for a course of study like this should be a profound cultural reverence. There are peculiar reasons why the Bible should be held in higher reverence than other books, but no one can go very far in the study of literature unless he takes with him a reverence for the things which in the highest sense minister to his culture. A college student who recently made a parody on the Twenty-third Psalm was properly rebuked by the editor of one of our daily newspapers, who stated that this student might be witty, but he hoped that some time he would gain wisdom. Cultured people experience a similar shock when they read parodies on Tennyson's "Crossing of the Bar" or Wordsworth's “Ode on the Intimations of Immortality"-two of the most per fect poems in the English language.

It should not be necessary to make a plea for the study of the English Bible as a piece of literature on the ground that it is the most frequently quoted book in existence. No one can read literature intelligently to whom the biblical allusions are meaningless. Mr. E. V. Lucas, in an essay in The Outlook, writes of the rich who decree a palace dome-a rather senseless expression to one who has not read "Kubla Khan." In a simi lar manner one would fail to understand his statement that the throwing of the tea into Boston Harbor was the most momentous act of jettison since Jonah, unless he had read the Bible. The statement made during the Great War that Belgium's mighty neighbor coveted her vineyard, while more intelligible, is lacking in literary charm to one who is ignorant of the setting.

« PreviousContinue »