Part 11

Fortunately, all these writers are so near, and their work is so familiar, that details regarding them are not needed. Two or three general words can be said. In the first place, observe the high moral tone of all these first-grade writers, and, indeed, of the others who may be spoken of as in second rank. There is not a meretricious or humiliating book in the whole collection. There is not one book which has lived in American literature which has the tone of Fielding's Tom Jones. Whether it is that the Puritan strain continues in us or not, it is true that the American literary public has not taken happily to stories that would bring a blush in public reading. Professor Richardson, of Dartmouth, gives some clue to the reason of that. He says that "since 1870 or 1880 in America there has been a marked increase of strength of theistic and spiritual belief and argument among scientific men, students of philosophy, religious 'radicals,' and others." He adds that while much contemporary American literature and thought is outside the accepted orthodox lines, yet "it is not hostile to Christianity; to the principles of its Founder it is for the most part sincerely attached. On the other hand, materialism has scarcely any hold upon it." Then follows a very notable sentence which is sustained by the facts: "Not an American book of the first class has ever been written by an atheist or denier of immortality." That sentence need not offend an admirer of Walt Whitman, for he "accepts both theism and the doctrine of the future life." American thought has remained loyal to the great Trinity, God, Freedom, and Immortality. So it comes about that while there are a number of these writers who could be put under the ban of the strongly orthodox in religion, every one of them shows the effect of early training in religion and in the Scripture.[1]

[1] This is fully worked out in Professor Richardson's American Literature, with ample illustration and argument.

Another thing to be said is that America has a unique history among great nations in that it has never been affected by any great religious influence except that which has issued from the Scriptures. No religion has ever been influential in America except Christianity. For many years there have been sporadic and spasmodic efforts to extend the influence of Buddhism or other Indian cults. They have never been successful, because the American spirit is practical, and not meditative. We are not an introspective people. We do not look within ourselves for our religion. Whatever moral and religious influence our literature shows gets back first or last to our Scriptures. The point of view of nature that is taken by our writers like Bryant and Thoreau is that of the Nineteenth Psalm. Moreover, we have been strongly under the English influence. Irving insisted that we ought to be, that we were a young nation, that we ought frankly to follow the leadership of more experienced writers. Longfellow thought we had gone too far that way, and that our poets, at least, ought to be more independent, ought to write in the spirit of America and not of traditional poetry. Whether we ought to have yielded to it or not, it is true that English influence has told very strongly upon us, and the writers who have influenced our writers most have been those whom we have named as being themselves under the Bible influence.

We need not go into detail about these writers, though they are most attractive. Bryant did for us what Wordsworth did for England. He made nature seem vocal. "Thanatopsis" is not a Christian poem in the narrow sense of the word, and yet it could hardly have been written except under Christian influence. His own genial, beautiful character was itself a tribute to Christian civilization, and his life, as critic and essayist, has left an impression which we shall not soon lose. Professor Richardson thinks that the three problematical characters in American literature are Emerson, Hawthorne, and Poe. The shrewdest estimate of Poe that has ever been given us is in Lowell's Fable for Critics:

"There comes Poe with his raven like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge, Who has written some things quite the best of their kind, But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind."

That says it exactly. Poe knew many horrible situations, but he did not know the way out; and of all our American writers laying claim to place in the first class Poe shows least influence of the Bible, and apparently needs it most.

Irving was the first American writer who stood high enough to be seen across the water. Thackeray's most beautiful essay is on Irving and Macaulay, who died just one month apart. In it he describes Irving as the best intermediary between the nations, telling us Americans that the English are still human, and assuring the English that Americans are already human. Irving was trained early and thoroughly in the Bible. All his life he was an old-fashioned Episcopalian with no concern for new religious ideas and with no rough edges anywhere. Charles Dudley Warner, speaking of Irving's moral quality, says: "I cannot bring myself to exclude it from a literary estimate, even in the face of the current gospel of art for art's sake."[1] Like Scott, he "recognized the abiding value in literature of integrity, sincerity, purity, charity, faith. These are beneficences, and Irving's literature, walk around it and measure it by whatever critical instruments you will, is a beneficent literature."

[1] American Men of Letters Series, Washington Irving, p. 302.

Then there is Emerson, a son of the manse and once a minister himself. He was, therefore, perfectly familiar with the English Bible. He did not accept it in all its religious teaching. Indeed, we have never had a more marked individualist in our American public life than Emerson. At every point he was simply himself. There is very little quotation in his writing, very little visible influence of any one else. He was not a follower of Carlyle, though he was his friend. If there is any precedent for the construction of his sentences, and even of his essays, it is to be found in the Hebrew prophets. As some one puts it, "he uttered sayings." In many of his essays there is no particular reason why the paragraphs should run one, two, three, and not three, two, one, or two, one, three, or in any other order. But Mr. Emerson was just himself. It is yet true that "his value for the world at large lies in the fact that after all he is incurably religious." It is true that he could not see any importance in forms, or in ordinary declarations of faith. "He would fight no battle for prelacy, nor for the Westminster confession, nor for the Trinity, but as against atheism, pessimism, and materialism, he was an ally of Christianity." The influence of the Bible on Emerson is more marked in his spirit than in anything else. Once in a while, as in that familiar address at Concord (1873), you run across Scripture phrases: "Shall not they who receive the largest streams spread abroad the healing waters?" That figure appears in literature only in the Bible, and there are others like it in his writings.

As for Longfellow, he is shot through with Scripture. No man who did not know Scripture in more than a passing way could have written such a sentence as this: "There are times when the grasshopper is a burden, and thirsty with the heat of labor the spirit longs for the waters of Shiloah, that go softly." There are two strikingly beautiful expressions from Scripture. Take another familiar saying in the same essay when he says the prospect for poetry is brightening, since but a short time ago not a poet "moved the wing or opened the mouth or peeped." He did not run across that in general current writing. He got that directly from the Bible. In his poems is an amazing amount of reference to the Bible. One would expect much in the "Courtship of Miles Standish," for that is a story of the Puritans, and they spoke, naturally, in terms of the Bible; yet, of course, they could not do it in Longfellow's poem, if Longfellow did not know the language of the Bible very well. One might not expect to find it so much in "Evangeline," but it is there from beginning to end. In "Acadia," the cock crowed

"With the self-same Voice that in ages of old had startled the penitent Peter."

And, "Wild with the winds of September, Wrestled the trees of the forest, as Jacob of old with the angel."

Evangeline saw the moon pass

Forth from the folds of the cloud, and one star followed her footsteps, As out of Abraham's tent young Ishmael Wandered with Hagar."

There is a great deal of that sort of thing in his writing. He has done for many what he did for Lowell one day. Discouraged in settling the form of a new edition of his own poems, Lowell took up a volume of Longfellow just to see the type, and presently found that he had been reading two hours. He wrote Longfellow he could understand his popularity, saying: "You sang me out of all my worries." That is a great thing to do, and Longfellow learned from the Scripture how to do that in the "Psalm of Life" and all his other poems.

We need only a word about Lowell himself. He was the son of a minister, and so knew the Bible from his infancy. He belonged to the Brahman caste himself, but a good deal of the ruggedness of the Old Testament got into his writing. It is in "The Vision of Sir Launfal." It is in his plea for international copyright where the familiar lines occur:

"In vain we call old notions fudge, And bend our conscience to our dealing, The Ten Commandments will not budge, And stealing will continue stealing."

There is hint of it in his quizzical lines about himself in the Fable for Critics. He says that he is in danger of rattling away

"Until he is as old as Methusalem, At the head of the march to the last New Jerusalem."

Whittier needs no words of ours. His hymns are part of our religious equipment. "Snowbound" and all the rest of the beautiful, quiet, Quaker-like writing of this beloved poet are among our national assets. We join in his sorrow as he writes the doom of Webster and his fame, and we do not wonder that he chose for it the Scriptural title "Ichabod."

Whatever is to be said about an individual here or there, it is true that great American literature shows the influence of the Bible. Like everything else in America, it has been founded on a religious purpose. Writers in all lines have been trained in the Bible. If they feel any religious influence at all, it is the Bible influence.

This has been a long journey from Shakespeare to Whittier, and it leaves untouched the great field of present-day writers. Let the unstarred names wait their time. Among them are many who can say in their way what Hall Caine has said of himself: "I think I know my Bible as few literary men know it. There is no book in the world like it, and the finest novels ever written fall far short in interest of any one of the stories it tells. Whatever strong situations I have in my books are not of my creation, but are taken from the Bible. The Deemster is a story of the Prodigal Son. The Bondman is the story of Esau and Jacob. The Scapegoat is the story of Eli and his sons, but with Samuel as a little girl; and The Manxman is the story of David and Uriah." Take up any of the novels of the day, even the poorer ones, but notably the better ones, and see how uniformly they show the Scriptural influence in material, in idea, and in spirit. What the literature of the future will be no one can say. This much is as sure as any fact in literary history, that the English Bible is part of the very fiber of great literature from the day it first appeared in our tongue to this hour.

LECTURE V

THE KING JAMES VERSION--ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH AND AMERICAN HISTORY

THE King James version of the Bible is only a book. What can a book do in history? Well, whatever the reason, books have played a large part in the movements of men, specially of modern men.

They have markedly influenced the opinion of men about the past. It is commonly said that Hume's History of England, defective as it is, has yet "by its method revolutionized the writing of history," and that is true. Nearer our own time, Carlyle's Life of Cromwell reversed the judgment of history on Cromwell, gave all readers of history a new conception of him and his times and of the movement of which he was the life. After the Restoration none were so poor as to do Cromwell reverence until Carlyle's BOOK gave him anew to the world.

There are instances squarely in our own time by which their mighty influence may be tested. They are of books of almost ephemeral value save for the student of history. As literature they will be quickly forgotten; but as FORCES they must be reckoned with. There is Uncle Tom's Cabin. It would be absurd to say that it brought the American Civil War, or freed the negroes, or saved the Union. It did none of those great things. Yet it is not at all absurd to name it among the potent powers in all three. It is not to our purpose whether it is true or not as a statement of the whole fact. Doubtless it was not true of the general and common circumstances of Southern slavery; but everything in it was possible, and even frequent enough so that it could not be questioned. It pretended no more. But its influence was simply tremendous. In book form it became available in 1852, and within three years, 1855, it was common property of English-speaking people. No other book ever produced so extraordinary an effect so quickly in the public mind.[1] It held up slavery to judgment. It crystallized the thoughts of common people. The work of those strenuous years in the '60's could not have been done without the result of that book. It made history. Come nearer our own day. We could not be long in London without feeling the concern of the better people for conditions in the East End. A new social impulse has seized them. To be sure, it lacks much yet of success; but more has been done than most people realize. The new movement, the awakening of that social sense, traces back to the book of Gen. William Booth, In Darkest England (1890). It has helped to change the life of a large part of London.

[1] Rhodes, History of the United States, vol. i, pp. 185-303.

On this side, the new concern for city conditions dates from the book of a newspaper reporter, Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives. It thrust the Other Half into such prominence that it has never been possible to forget it. Marked advance in all American cities, in legislation and life, goes straight back to it. Name one other book still in the field of social service, even so unpleasant, so terrible, so obnoxious a book as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. It started and sustained movements which have unsettled business and political life ever since it appeared. It made some conditions vivid, unescapable.

Do not misunderstand the argument. No man can tell what will be said in the histories a century from now about these lesser books. We can never go beyond guesses as to the whole cause of any chain of events.[1] As time passes, incidental elements in the causes gradually sink out of sight and a few great forces take the whole horizon. Whatever the histories a century from now say about the relative place of such books as we have named, it is certain that they have influenced the movements mightily. The literary histories will say nothing at all about them. They are not great literature, but they were born of a passion of the times and voiced and aroused it anew.

[1] MacPhail, Essays on Puritanism, p. 278.

When, therefore, it is urged that the English Bible has influenced history, it is not making an undue claim for it. When it is further urged that of all books in English literature it has been most influential, it has most made history, it has most determined great movements, the argument only claims for it the highest place among books.

And it would not be surprising if it should have such influence. It is the one great piece of English literature which is universal property. Since the day it was published it has been kept available for everybody. No other book has ever had its chance. English-speaking people have always been essentially religious. They have always had a profound regard for the terms, the institutions, the purposes of religion. Partly that has been maintained by the Bible; but the Bible in its turn has been maintained by it. So it has come about that English-speaking people, though they have many books, are essentially people of one Book. Wherever they are, the Bible is. Queen Victoria has it near by when the messenger from the Orient appears, and lays her hand upon it to say that this is the foundation of the prosperity of England. But the poor housewife in the cottage, with only a crust for food, stays her soul with it. The Puritan creeps into hiding with the Book, while his brother sails away to the new land with the Book. The settler may have his Shakespeare; he will surely have his Bible. As the long wagon-train creeps across the plain to seek the Western shore, there may be no other book in all the train; but the Bible will be there. Find any settlement of men who speak the English tongue, wherever they make their home, and the Bible is among them. When did any book have such a chance to influence men? It is the one undisturbed heritage of all who speak the English tongue. It binds the daughter and the mother country together, and gathers into the same bond the scattered remnants of the English-speaking race the world around. Its language is the one speech they all understand. Strange it would be if it had not a profound influence upon history!

Another fact that has helped to give the Bible its great influence is the power of the preaching it has inspired. The periods of greatest preaching have always been the periods of freest access to the Bible. No one can overlook the immense power of the sermons of history. There have been poor, inept, banal expositors, doubtless; but even they turned men's minds to the Bible. Reading the Bible makes men thinkers, and so makes preachers inevitably. Witness the Scotch. James was raised in Scotland and believed in the power of preaching. At one time he wanted to settle endowments for the maintenance of preaching under government control. But Archbishop Whitgift convinced him that much preaching was "an innovation and dangerous," since it is quite impossible to control a man's mouth once it is given a public chance. Under Charles I. the sermon was mighty in the service of the Puritans until it was suppressed or restricted. Then men became lecturers and expounded the Bible or taught religious truth in public or private. Rich men engaged private chaplains since public meetings could not be held. Somehow they taught the Bible still. Archbishop Laud forbade both. Yet the leaven worked the more for its restriction. At least one good cook I know says that if you want your dough to rise and the yeast to work, you must cover it. Laud did not want it to rise, but he made the mistake of covering it.

There has never been a book which has provoked such incessant preaching and discussion as has the Bible. The believers in the Koran teach it as it is, word for word. Believers in the Bible have never stopped with that. They have always tried to come together and hear it expounded. Such gatherings and such constant pressure of the Book on groups of hearers would inevitably give the Bible great influence. When it is remembered that in America alone there are each week approximately four hundred thousand gatherings of people which have for their avowed purpose instruction or inspiration in religion, and that the instruction and inspiration are professedly and openly drawn from the Bible, that more than three hundred thousand sermons are preached every week from it and passages of it read in all the gatherings, it appears that the Bible had and still has such a chance to influence life as no other book has had. President Schurman traces a large part of our own stronger American life to the educative power of our Sundays. But central in the education of those days is now, and has been from the first of our national history, the English Bible.

The influence of the Bible comes also from the fact that it makes its chief appeal to the deeper elements in life. "Human history in its real character is not an account of kings and of wars; it is the unfolding of the moral, the political, the artistic, the social, and the spiritual progress of the human family. The time will yet come when the names of dynasties and of battles shall not form the titles of its chapters. The truths revealed in the Bible have been the touchstone which has tried men's spirits."[1]

[1] H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, p. 54.

Those words go to the heart of the fact. The influence of the English Bible on English- speaking history for the last three hundred years is only the influence of its fundamental truths. It has moved with tremendous impact on the wills of men. It has made the great human ideals clear and definite; it has made them beautiful and attractive; but that has not been enough. It has reached also the springs of action. It has given men a sense of need and also a sense of strength, a sense of outrage and a sense of power to correct the wrong. There it has differed from most books. Frederick Robertson said that he read only books with iron in them, and, as he read, their atoms of iron entered the blood, and it ran more red for them. There is iron in this Book, and it has entered the blood of the human race. Where it has entered most freely, the red has deepened; and nowhere has it deepened more than in our English-speaking races. The iron of our blood is from this King James version.

Bismarck explained the victories of the Germans over the French by the fact that from childhood the Germans had been trained in the sense of duty, as the French had not been trained, and as soldiers had learned to feel that nothing could escape the Eye which ever watched their course. They learned that, Bismarck said, from the religion which they had been taught. There is no mistaking the power of religion in rousing and sharpening the sense of duty. Webster spoke for the English-speaking races, and found his phrases in the Bible, when he said that this sense "pursues us ever. It is omnipresent like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us. We cannot escape from their power or fly from their presence." It is religion which makes that sense of duty keen; and, whatever religion has done among English-speaking races, the English Bible has done, for it has been the text-book and the final authority of those races in the moving things of their faith.

It would be easiest in making the argument to single out here and there the striking events in which the Bible has figured and let them stand for the whole. There are many such events, and they are attractive.