LITERARY ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE BIBLE.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

AMONG the multifarious causes which have helped to advance the progress of modern civilization, that will be admitted to be one of the greatest of which the three following facts may be affirmed: First, that it has pioneered the arts and letters by assisting their introduction into barbarous nations. Second, that it has promoted the arts and letters by assisting their advancement among civilized nations, where they had already gained a footing. Third, that it restored the arts and letters to Europe when it had fallen back into martial barbarism, and restored to Europe its intellectual vigor when it had lapsed into an effeminating superstition.

What then has been at once the pioneer, the promoter, and the restorer of literature and the arts? It will be our object to show that the history of modern civilization gives an explicit answer to this question; and that its answer is the Bible.

The mention of modern civilization in this connection suggests the instructive fact, how very few of the nations of antiquity which emerged from a state of barbarism have left any monuments of their literature or their arts. The little which time has

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spared of the history of the bulk of ancient nations is such as to occasion but small regret that oblivion has blotted out the rest; for while the annals of war and the calendar of crime are curtailed of some of their chapters, the history of literature or of philosophy has probably not lost a page.

We take it to be with nations as with individuals, that to make a figure in the world and leave a reputation for eminence, requires a certain innate force of character combined with natural talent. Hence we would conclude, that as from the want of these the great mass of mankind pass away almost unnoticed by their cotemporaries, and altogether unknown to posterity; so from the lack of the social capacity, or the aggregate natural talents, the great bulk of ancient nations have failed to perpetuate a reputation, except for their barbarities and their crimes, a species of posthumous fame which it does not require much genius to secure.

And if we might carry out the parallel somewhat farther, we would observe, that as in the case of individuals whom Nature may have endowed with superior parts, some have failed to reach distinction from not being placed in circumstances favorable to the cultivation of their peculiar gifts; so many nations, which had in them the germs of greatness, have missed becoming great, owing to adverse influences which nipped these germs in the bud. Though true genius is known to have surmounted the greatest difficulties by its own indomitable energy, yet

owing to poverty, to constitutional bashfulness, to the want of patronage, or still more of sympathy and appreciation, it doubtless will have happened that " some mute, inglorious Milton," with the fires of poetry in his soul, has sunk into the cold grave, where the lamp which under happier conditions might not much longer have been flameless, is quenched forever; and so we believe many an ancient nation might have been heard of with renown, had not the disasters of its fate prematurely overtaken it.

We would venture to carry out the parallel yet another step. There are few difficulties in the pursuit of knowledge which the poor scholar finds greater than the want of books. So with nations, this want may be reckoned among the causes which have prevented many of them from attaining to literary eminence; when deficient in the mental vigor and originality which are requisite to produce a native literature, they were also without the aid which an imported literature would have afforded. The Greeks seem to have been endowed by nature with that rare force of natural genius, which enabled them to strike out an original literature that was to become a model to succeeding ages. The Romans, less richly endowed with inventive genius, would probably never have ranked among classic nations, if they had not profited by the literature of Greece. If we take those nations which have been without the Bible, we may classify them into three groups.

The first, represented by Greece, were those very few which by the force of their native genius reared for themselves a native literature. The second, represented by Rome, includes those nations, also few, which, stimulated and assisted by a foreign literature, attained to literary distinction. The third, including the great mass of ancient nations, presents them as barely emerged from the darkness of barbarism, when they passed away without leaving a trace of polite learning or the fine arts behind them. How differently it might have fared with these had they possessed the Bible, will perhaps appear when we come to indicate the happier fate of modern nations, once as barbarous, which enjoy this best of all auxiliaries to civilization.

Before proceeding to illustrate the three great facts into which I have summarized the literary achievements of the Bible, it will be proper to take a glance at the literature and the arts of those nations which, though destitute of the sacred volume, have merited to be esteemed both literary and

artistic.

As representing classic antiquity I shall select its most polished nation-Greece. No one will hesitate to own, that the land "where burning Sappho loved and sung;" where Demosthenes won his ever immortal and still increasing fame as the prince of orators; where were born Praxiteles, an acknowledged master of the beautiful, and Phidias, of the grand in sculpture; where arose a bright succes

sion of poets, painters, sculptors, orators, and historians; who not only shone as a galaxy in the firmament when the literary stars of other lands were few, but who still continued to shine with as conspicuous a luster now when innumerable constel-. lations, each composed of stars of the first magnitude, have appeared elsewhere; no one, I say, will hesitate to own that this land has earned for itself the proud distinction of being the most classical of antiquity, or be surprised that it has left to succeeding lands models in oratory, in sculpture, in poetry, and in architecture; and yet Greece was without the Bible. It was therefore an exaggeration to affirm that the fostering influences of Revelation are indispensable to the growth of polite letters or high art; since in the isles of the Egean both these had attained very near to perfection before Christianity crossed its waters. Still, we venture to affirm that if the land of Homer, of Demosthenes, and of Phidias, had enjoyed that volume which is the sole divine interpreter of nature and of God, the truest expositor of truth, and the most beautiful embodiment of spiritual beauty, its arts and its literature might have been blameless of those faults, which its most ardent admirers must admit detract so materially from their singular merit.

Of Grecian poetry, who will deny the originality and wonderful invention, its rich fancy and creative imagination, its pathos, its descriptive power, its affluence of imagery, its varied numbers and its