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with great profit in teaching religious truth. But fiction may not
masquerade in the guise of history, if men are to be led by it or mastered
by it. If the way to be rid of difficulties in a narrative is to turn it into pious
fiction, there are other instances where it might be used for relief in
emergencies. The story of the crucifixion of Christ can be told so that it
sounds like fiction; why not call it fiction? Certainly the story of the
conversion of Paul can be made to sound like fiction; why not call it
fiction? And there is hardly any bit of narrative that can be made to sound
so like fiction as the landing of the Pilgrims; why not call that fiction? It is
the easy way out; the difficulties are all gone like Alice's cat, and there is
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left only the broad smile of some moral lesson to be learned from the
fiction. It is not, however, the courageous nor the perfectly square way out.
Violence has to be done to the plain narrative; historical statement has to
be made only a mask. And the only reason for it is that there are
difficulties not yet cleared. As for the characters involved, Charles Reade,
the novelist, calling himself "a veteran writer of fiction," declares that the
explanation of these characters, Jonah being one of them, by invention is
incredible and absurd: "Such a man [as himself] knows the artifices and
the elements of art. Here the artifices are absent, and the elements
surpassed." It is not uncommon for one who has found this easy way out
of difficulties to declare with a wave of his hand, that everybody now
knows that this or that book in the Bible is fiction, when, as a matter of
fact, that is not at all an admitted opinion. The Bible will never gain its
place and retain its authority while those who believe in it are spineless
and topple over at the first touch of some one's objection. It could not be a
great Book; it could not serve the purposes of a race if it presented no
problems of understanding and of belief, and all short and easy methods of
getting rid of those problems are certain to leave important elements of
them out of sight.
All this means that the changes of these times rather present additional
reason for a renewed hold on the Bible. It presents what the times
peculiarly need. Instead of making the influence of the Bible impossible,
these changes make the need for the Bible the greater and give it greater
opportunity.
Add three notable points at which these times feel and still need the
influence of the Bible. First, they have and still need its literary influence.
So far as its ideas and forces and words are interwoven in the great
literature of the past, it is essential still to the understanding of that
literature. It remains true that English literature, certainly of the past and
also of the present, cannot be understood without knowledge of the Bible.
The Yale professor of literature, quoted so often, says: "It would be worth
while to read the Bible carefully and repeatedly, if only as a key to modern
culture, for to those who are unfamiliar with its teachings and its diction
all that is best in English literature of the present century is as a sealed
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book."
From time to time there occur painful reminders of the fact that men
supposed to know literature do not understand it because they are not
familiar with the Bible. Some years ago a college president tested a class
of thirty-four men with a score of extracts from Tennyson, each of which
contained a Scriptural allusion, none of them obscure. The replies were
suggestive and quite appalling. Tennyson wrote, in the "Supposed
Confessions":
"My sin was a thorn among the thorns that girt Thy brow."
Of these thirty-four young men nine of them did not understand that
quotation. Tennyson wrote:
"Like Hezekiah's, backward runs The shadow of my days."
Thirty-two of the thirty-four did not know what that meant. The
meaning of the line,
"For I have flung thee pearls and find thee swine," was utterly
obscure to twenty-two of the thirty- four. One of them said it was a
reference to "good opportunities given but not improved." Another said it
was equivalent to the counsel "not to expect to find gold in a hay-stack."
Even the line,
"A Jonah's gourd Up in one night, and due to sudden
sun,"
was utterly baffling to twenty-eight of the thirty-four. One of them
spoke of it as an "allusion to the uncertainty of the length of life." Another
thought it was a reference to "the occasion of Jonah's being preserved by
the whale." Another counted it "an allusion to the emesis of Jonah by the
whale." Another considered it a reference to "the swallowing of Jonah by a
whale," and yet another considered that it referred to "things grand, but not
worthy of worship because they are perishable." It is amazing to read that
in response to Tennyson's lines,
"Follow Light and do the Right--for man can half control his
doom-- Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant
tomb,"
only sixteen were able to give an explanation of its meaning! The lines
from the "Holy Grail" were equally baffling:
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"Perhaps like Him of Cana in Holy Writ, Our Arthur kept his best
until the last."
Twenty-four of these thirty-four young men could not recall what that
meant. One said that the keeping of the best wine until the last meant
"waiting till the last moment to be baptized!"
All that may be solely the fault of these young men. Professor
Lounsbury once said that his experience in the class-room had taught him
the infinite capacity of the human mind to withstand the introduction of
knowledge. Very likely earnest effort had been made to teach these young
men the Bible; but it is manifest that they had successfully resisted the
efforts. If Tennyson were the only poet who could not be understood
without knowledge of the Bible, it might not matter so much, but no one
can read Browning nor Carlyle nor Macaulay nor Huxley with entire
intelligence without knowledge of the greater facts and forces of Scripture.
The value of the allusions can be shown by comparing them with those of
mythology. No one can read most of Shelley with entire satisfaction
without a knowledge of Greek mythology. That is one reason why Shelley
has so much passed out of popularity. We do not know Greek mythology,
and we have very largely lost Shelley from our literary possession. The
chief power of these other great writers will go from us when our
knowledge of the Scripture goes.
The danger is not simply with reference to the great literature of the
past. There is danger of losing appreciation of the more delicate touches of
current literature, sometimes of a complete missing of the meaning. An
orator describing present political and social conditions used a fine phrase,
that "it is time the nation camped for a season at the foot of the mount."
Only a knowledge of Bible history will bring as a flash before one the
nation in the desert at Sinai learning the meaning and power of law. Yet an
intelligent man, hearing that remark, said that he counted it a fine figure,
that he thought there did come in the life of every nation a time before it
began its ascent to the heights when it ought to pause and camp at the foot
of the mountain to get its breath! After Lincoln's assassination Garfield
stood on the steps in New York, and said: "Clouds and darkness are around
about him! God reigns and the government at Washington still lives!"
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Years after, some one referring to that, said that it was a beautiful sentence,
that the reference to "clouds and darkness" was a beautiful symbolism, but
that Garfield had a great knack in the building-up of fine phrases! He
lacked utterly the background of the great Psalm which was in Garfield's
mind, and which gives that phrase double meaning. If we go back to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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