BIBLE AND ENGLAND

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 June 1928, Page 2

BIBLE AND ENGLAND

WHAT IT HAS DONE

At the same time as the Prime Minister’s eulogy on our English Bible, delivered at the annual meeting of the British and Foreign Bible Society, comes the statement that its sales are declining; and most of us would probably agree that, whether or not it is being bought by the younger people and given a/place on their shelves, it is read by a smaller proportion of the population to-day than at any period in the last hundred years. Be we orthodox or unorthodox, we must deplore this as both spiritual and literary loss (wrote Ernest Raymond in the London “Sunday Times” on May 13). But )s not the truth ust this : that we are standing at a moment in our history when the Bible is changing its road of approach to our consciousness; when it is ceasing to come to us as the great compulsory lesson-book of tihe churches and is suing us instead, slowly but very winningly, by its own intrinsic and unaided glories, as the sublimest record of man’s spiritual adventures ; when it is sloughing of all that macle it suspect to a generation that delights in intellectual liberty, and is trying its wings as the noblest book for all doubting, searching, lonely men ; when, in brief, it is recoiling to leap again I wonder if it will be more powerful or less in its new approach? There was undoubtedly a great advantage in hearing it week by week in the Church’s lectons, and day by day in the famous prayers, but was there not, perhaps, a disadvantage too? The edge of those mighty words was dulled by familiarity; custom had robbed them of their disruptive force; the repetitive inoculation had immunised us against that explosion in the soul, which, as the Prime Minister’ told us, they are so potent to create; we were slowly charred instead of suddenly ignited' by the Divine fire. One sometimes feels that it must be rather wonderful to lie as dry tinder near that amazing threat; to know the experience (which can never come to those who have the Bible by heart) of meeting for the first time, in a thrilling shock of discovery, the Sermon on the Mount, St. Paul’s great Hymn of Love, the Parables, and the Epistle to the Hebrews ;or, better still, to discover the whole Bible from its first word to its last, to follow in a gathering excitement the march of the loftiest argument that ever spread its pageantry before the eyes of men ; and then, the last page turned down, to survey the whole experience in a silence more pregnant than the silence oi stout Cortez when he overlooked the Pacific, and to know that neither the outer world nor one’s inner soul can ever be the same again For consider what the experience is. By that which has been justly called “the miracle of 1611,” the translators and compilers of the Authorised Version, some forty-seven men, of all views and parties, succeeded, not only in transmuting old Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English versions into a language so fresh and lovely that litterateurs of all countries have ever since laboured at our tongue to come at it, but also gave, by a unity of atmosphere and light, to the motley collection of cidcuments (which the Bible is) —a. collection covering nearly all the human moods —the unity, the wholeness, the harmony of one single and supreme work of art. j A MAJESTIC EXORDIUM. ’

The first words of the yast Eiblestory achieve a surpassing beauty, and never again will such a majestic exordium be possible to man ; it has been done once and done for ever. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void ; and darkness was upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light.” Now turn to the last words and see if they echo these first; if that trumpet-sound “Let there be light” has been justified of what followed ; and if the same voice is speaking: “I am Alpha and Omega, Hi? beginning and the end, the first and tihe last. . . He which testilieth of these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen ; even so come, Lord Jesus. The grace af our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.” And between this opening and this close lies the thunder of nations coming and going, the whole history of the martyrdom of the Jews, the legalism of priests, the spiritualism of prophets, the paeans of Isaiah, the despairs of Jeremi.ilh, the sorrows and the exultation »f the Psalmists, the savagery of Malachi, the white dawn of Jesus, the Divine and awful tragedy with its exquisite revelation, and the dispersal of the Messengers—all these contrasting moods and histories melted and merged together into one perfect ,iind harmonious Book. It beggars admiration. It will win us again, as all excellence must. With one other it has been tihe

most powerful formative influence in our English destiny during the last three hundred years, and it must take up its power again Without generalising too sweepingly, it is possible to show that the forces which have played the greatest part in shaping our history are two in number, and the first of them is our geographical position, with its climate, and tihe second is our Bible —the one terrestrial and the other celestial. To these two we owe our strange blend of individualism and socialism, of humour and seriousness, of hard practical sense and incorrigible idealism. And since no single book can ever now transcend, or even approach, the Bible in excellence, it must abide with its partner in their old dominion ; it must 'remain our foster-father, even as our mother is the sea.