The Golden Censer Part 35

THE STYLE OF THE BIBLE?

what poetry in its language and ideas!" and taking it down from the book-case he read, with his clear, manly voice, and in his most affecting manner, several of his favorite pa.s.sages; among others: "Thou shalt rise up before the h.o.a.ry head, and honor the face of an old man;"

and part of that most beautiful of Psalms, the 139th: "O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising; thou understandest my thoughts afar off. Thou compa.s.sest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in h.e.l.l, behold thou art there; if I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be light about me; yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night s.h.i.+neth as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike unto thee." And thus he would charm his hearers, visiting their ears, perhaps, with the first true knowledge of Biblical beauty which had ever sounded upon them. Listen to

THE MERITED EULOGY

of a Roman Catholic, in the Dublin _Review_, of June, 1853: "Who will say that the uncommon beauty and marvelous English of the Protestant Bible is not one of the strongholds of heresy in this country? It lives on the ear like music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church-bells, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be things rather than mere words. It is part of the national mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. Nay, it is wors.h.i.+ped with a positive idolatry, in extenuation of whose gross fanaticism its intrinsic beauty pleads availingly with the man of letters and the scholar. The memory of the dead pa.s.ses into it The potent traditions of childhood are

STEREOTYPED IN ITS PHRASES.

The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden beneath the words. It is the representative of his best moments; and all that there has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good, speaks to him forever out of his English Bible. It is his sacred thing, which doubt has never dimmed, and controversy never soiled. It has been to him all along as the silent, but oh! how intelligible voice of his guardian angel; and in the length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant with one spark of religiousness about him whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible."

WHAT A PANEGYRIC

from an avowed opponent of this translation! And to whom are we princ.i.p.ally indebted for this lovely poem of G.o.d? To William Tyndale.

Says Froude, the historian: "The peculiar genius, if such a word may be permitted, which breathes through the Bible, the mingled tenderness and majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the preternatural grandeur unequaled, unapproached, in the attempted improvements of modern scholars--all are here, and bear the impress of one man, and that man William Tyndale."

AND WHO WAS WILLIAM TYNDALE?

He was a gentle clergyman of great piety and learning. He was born in Gloucesters.h.i.+re, England, in 1477. He endured great persecution and was forced to quit England. He visited Luther in Germany. He printed his New Testament at Antwerp. Its beauties were at once recognized in England, although to read it was illegal and punishable with death. Cardinal Wolsely did his best to entice the translator to England, to destroy him. An a.s.sistant in the work, named John Frith, was lured back and burned to death. Finally Henry the Eighth of England procured Tyndale's arrest at Antwerp. He was given a "trial," at Vilvoorden, near Antwerp, and p.r.o.nounced guilty. In September, 1536,

THEY STRANGLED THIS INSPIRED SERVANT

of G.o.d, and then burned his body. At the stake he cried: "Lord, open the King of England's eyes!" Upon Tyndale's version of the Bible the King James translation is solidly based. "It is astonis.h.i.+ng," says Dr.

Geddes, a profound scholar, "how little obsolete the language of it is, even at this day; and, in point of perspicuity and n.o.ble simplicity, propriety of idiom, and purity of style, no English version has yet surpa.s.sed it." Of course our language has changed greatly in 400 years.

Yet

THE LORD'S PRAYER

does not contain, in Tyndale's exact language, one unrecognizable word.

It ran as follows: "Oure Father which arte in heven, halowed be thy name. Let thy kingdom come. Thy wyll be fulfilled, as well in erth, as. .h.i.t ys in heven. Geve vs this daye oure dayly breade. And forgeve vs oure treaspases, even as we forgeve them which treaspas vs. Leede vs not into temptacion, but delyvre vs from yvell. Amen."

THE MARKED POETICAL SUPERIORITY

of the Protestant over the Catholic Bible may be shown in the twenty-third Psalm, and elsewhere. The first says: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want;" the second: "The Lord ruleth me; and I shall want nothing." The first says: "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters; he restoreth my soul;"

the second: "He hath set me in a place of pasture; he hath brought me up on the water of refreshment; he hath converted my soul" (thus completely losing the original metaphor of the shepherd). The first says: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil;" the second: "For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils." In Job v. 7, the first says: "Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward;" the second: "Man is born to labor, and the bird to fly." In Job xiv. 1, the first says: "Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble;" the second: "Man born of a woman, living for a short time, is filled with many miseries." These examples will suffice to show the differences which pervade the two translations.

"INTENSE STUDY OF THE BIBLE

will keep any one from being vulgar in point of style," says Coleridge.

"There are no songs," says Milton, "comparable to the songs of Zion, no orations equal to those of the prophets, and no politics like those which the scriptures teach." "The pure and n.o.ble, the graceful and dignified simplicity of language," says Pope, "is nowhere in such perfection as in the Scriptures. The whole book of Job, with regard both to sublimity of thought and morality, exceeds, beyond all comparison, the most n.o.ble parts of Homer." "I use the Scriptures," says Boyle, "not as an a.r.s.enal to be resorted to only for arms and weapons, but as

A MATCHLESS TEMPLE,

where I delight to contemplate the beauty, the symmetry, and the magnificence of the structure, and to increase my awe and excite my devotion to the Deity there preached and adored." "There never was found, in any age of the world," says Bacon, "either religion or law that did so highly exalt the public good as the Bible." "It is the window in this prison of hope," says Dwight, "through which we look into eternity." "How admirable and beautiful," says Racine, "is the simplicity of the Evangelists! They never speak injuriously of the enemies of Jesus Christ, of his judges, nor of his executioners. They speak the facts without a single reflection. They comment neither on their Master's mildness, nor on his constancy in the hour of his ignominious death, which they thus describe: 'And they crucified Jesus.'" "Men cannot be well educated without the Bible," says Dr. Nott.

"It ought, therefore, to hold a chief place in every situation of learning throughout Christendom." "I am of the opinion," says Sir William Jones, "that the Bible contains more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, more pure morality, more important history, and finer strains of poetry and eloquence, than can be collected from all other books, in whatever age or language they have been written." "I will answer for it," says Romaine,

"THE LONGER YOU READ THE BIBLE

the more you will like it; it will grow sweeter and sweeter; and the more you get into the spirit of it, the more you will get into the spirit of Christ." "The greatest pleasures the imagination can be entertained with," says Sir Richard Steele, "are to be found in the Bible; and even the style of the Scriptures is more than human."

THE BIBLE IS AUTHENTIC.

It is old. It is beautiful. It is the only hope we have. If we cast it away we become as the brutes of the field, both in spirit and in body.

The strong take from the weak and perish into nothing--this is all that is offered us by those who reject and revile the Bible. Such have exceeding deep ignorance, exceeding ill manners, exceeding bad taste, and exceeding great folly. "I find more sure marks of the authenticity of the Bible," says Sir Isaac Newton, "than in any profane history whatever." We use the word "secular" nowadays where "profane" was formerly written. "Profane" meant "before" or "outside" the "fane," or "temple."

THE BOOK OF JOB

is older than any other writing on earth. It antedates the Chinese Empire. It is lost in the mist of years. The histories of Moses are as old as the pyramids, and the pyramids and obelisks proclaim the integrity of the Hebrew leader and chronicler. So let us prize this greatest gift of G.o.d to man. Let us humbly thank Him for the liberties and comforts it has brought us--for even the Atheist himself refrains from robbing us of our property through the influence of the Christian religion. Let us thank G.o.d for the schools, and the hospitals, and the charities which have

THE BIBLE AT THEIR FOUNDATION,

and which, without it, it is fair to say, would not be in existence to-day. Those who are the best are guided by its precepts. Those who are the wisest have implicit confidence in it. Those who are the most eloquent have studied it intensely. Those who are powerful in narration of events have imitated its divine simplicity. Have it at your bedside.

Your mind will broaden faster under its influence than under that of the daily newspaper. If you have not time to read both, sacrifice the paper.

The paper is trash. The Bible is solid gold. If you fill your mind with grand thoughts, your mind will be n.o.ble. You will have principle.

WHERE CAN YOU FIND AS GRAND LANGUAGE

in any politician's speech?--"The voice of the Lord is upon the waters; the G.o.d of glory thundereth; deep calleth unto deep; the voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness." Where can you find as graceful speech?--"He shall come down as rain upon the mown gra.s.s; mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other." The day is now dawning in this Western world when taste and poetic feeling are to flourish. We have got the dollars. We must now get something for the dollars. Now will the Bible, as ever at such epochs in the past, s.h.i.+ne out anew, the criterion, not only of the soul, but of the sentiments--the book that is first under the scholar's lamp and alone in his bedchamber.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

THE EVENING OF LIFE.

Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die, Nor leave thee when gray hairs are nigh A melancholy slave; But an old age serene and bright, And lovely as a Lapland night, Shall lead thee to thy grave.--Wordsworth.

Age is the outer sh.o.r.e against which dashes an eternity.

The mysterious ocean is either tempestuous or tranquil, just as we view it. If we look hard down the cliff of death we are appalled with the force of the waves; we are frightened by the din and shock of collision.

But if we gaze afar off we see no great disturbance. All is moving with the true poetry of motion, in the fitness of G.o.d's plan, even as viewed by one of His works. "The more we sink into the infirmities of age,"