THE BOOK OF BOOKS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22100, 4 May 1935, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE BOOK OF BOOKS

"BIBLE SUNDAY" BY H. 11. DRIVER At the first blush it might seem odd that any one book should be singled out from the mass of books that the world contains and made the theme of innumerable sermons and literary articles whenever Bible Sunday falls. "Why should such unique honour be paid to this particular volume? Our libraries contain many productions of human genius which have acquired undying fame, which have commanded the admiration of multitudes of readers in many lands and influenced the thought and conduct of men to an amazing degree, yet to none of these is similar prominence given. What is it in the book we call par excellence "the Bible" that entitles it to have a day set apart on which its superiority shall be affirmed, its unique qualities expounded, its studious jK-rusnl recommended, -and funds for its still wider diffusion solicited? There must be worthy reasons assigned to justify tho position of lonely eminence to which this one favoured volume is elevated. Nor are the reasons far to seek. For one thing, the very fact that the ancient documents that compose the volume have been preserved through so many centuries and have survived so many perils invests them with peculiar importance. They cover a vast period of the early history of the world. They deal with the destinies of nations that have passed into oblivion. They contain the foundation principles upon which great civilisations have been built. They trace the origin and career of the Hebrew , race, which more than any other, at any rate in the sphere of religion, has swayed the minds of men. They embrace the earliest records of the Christian faith which supplanted the polytheism of the Roman Empire and became the dominant power in European lands. A Vast Influence The influence of the book among the principal nations of the _ West during the past nineteen centuries cannot be exaggerated. It has moulded human thought in an immeasurable manner. It has set a standard of ethics that has had 110 rival. It lifts inspired architecture and art, music and poetry, as no other volume has ever done. It has directed the policies of rulers and statesmen,- and influenced the behaviour of their people to an extent beyond all telling. All impartial historians admit this great fact. Whatever other influences have helped to shape the destinies of the great nations of Europe a supreme place must bo assigned to the Bible. Its interpreters and exponents have at times admittedly made a malign use of its teaching and endeavoured to vindicate their iniquities and persecutions by a perverse appeal to its pages. But we should not allow any misuse of the book to obscure for us the marvellous benefits it has conferred upon the nations wherever it has been freely circulated and intelligently interpreted. The late Dr. Rutherford Waddell, whose exquisite taste in literature delighted many readers for a long series of years, wrote —The Bible has been a quarry for sculptors, a gallery for painters, a text-book for orators, a standard for poets, and a dictionary of quotation for everybody. It was a fountain of melody to Handel, to Mendelssohn, to Haydn, a field of phantasmagoria to Dante, a spectrum of human life to Goethe, a consecrating oil to Shakespeare, a window in heaven and a light upon earth to Bunyan, a mystery of mysteries to Byron, and a pocket companion to Walter Scott." A volume that has appealed to such a variety of the finest intellects of our race, and furnished them with inspiration for the works upon which their fame securely rests, assuredly merits special reference. Wide Distribution 'The amazing distribution of the volume is another mark of its popularity and power which justifies the observance of Bible Sunday, ior long centuries the documents of the Jewish race were locked up in the Hebrew tongue. They gained a much wider diffusion when they were translated into Greek. Our Christian documents were, of course, at first Aramaic and Greek. They were later translated, together with the Hebrew Scriptures, into Latin, and in that noble tongue were for long years the authoritative text to which scholars and preachers appealed. Gradually they were transmuted into the mother tongue of various peoples. Luther produced the German version which has ever since been regarded as the greatest literary treasure of that nation. Wiclif, Tyndale, Coverdale and other produced our famous Authorised Person. Within the last one hundred and thirty years the British and Foreign Bible Society has issued the saored volume in nearly seven hundred languages, and it is adding new versions every year. No other book has ever been transferred into so many tongues. The only book to come near it is Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress," and that numbers only a hundred and sixty. No other book has lent itself to such facile translation as the Bible. Missionaries have often had to reduce to writing the speech of the people whom they sought to benefit befoje they could give • them the Scriptures in their native tongue, but when they have mastered even uncouth languages they have found it possible to express in them the teaching of psalmists and prophets, evangelists and apostles. It is quite remarkable that a group of ancient writings produced in an insignificant Eastern country, supplemented by documents compilea in Syria and Greece, should have been so readily translated into other tongues and made accessible to well nigh all tho nations of the earth. The number of Bibles circulated in these diversified tongues is prodigious. It is estimated that during last year the various societies founded for the diffusion of the Bible issued more than twenty-three million copies. Of these the British and Foreign Bible Society issued over ten millions. Since its inception in 1804 it has issued over four hundred million copies—a perfectly bewildering number. Unique Importance Thero must be some singular quality in this ancient literature to account for its world-wide popularity. The religions of other lands have their sacred books, but they are distinctly limited in their range. India has the vast literature of Hinduism and Buddhism; the multitudinous Mohammedans _ have their Arabic Koran; China has its classics of Confucius, but none of these revered and venerable books are widely known beyond the nations for which they have long had special authoritv. But the Bible seems, as Arthur H. Hallam said, to fit into every fold of the human heart; or, as Samuel Taylor Coleridge said, to find men at lower depths of their nature than any other book. It is hard to account otherwise for the reception that the book receives from people of all countries and climes, and of all degrees of culture, from the ripe scholar to the untutored savage. It must have in it a message that elicits a response from the inmost heart of man. It is superfluous to say that the influence of the Bible in our own beloved Empire fully' entitles it to the prominence that Bible Sunday accords it. It has exerted an incomparable influence in our national history. It has been interwoven into the rich fabric of our national literature. It has lain at the very foundation of our legislation, and been the inspiration of our manifold philanthropies.