something like the marvel of this tale may be read in the history of the bible. no other book in the world has had such a strange vitality, such an outgoing power of influence and inspiration. not only has it brought to the countries in whose heart it has been set new ideals of civilization, new models of character, new conceptions of virtue and hopes of happiness; but it has also given new impulse and form to the shaping imagination of man, and begotten beauty in literature and the other arts.
suppose, for example, that it were possible to dissolve away all the works of art which clearly owe their being to thoughts, emotions, or visions derived from the bible,—all sculpture like donatello’s “david” and michelangelo’s “moses”; all painting like raphael’s “sistine madonna” and murillo’s “holy family”; all music like bach’s “passion” and handel’s “messiah”; all poetry like dante’s “divine comedy” and milton’s “paradise lost,”—how it would impoverish the world!
the literary influence of the bible appears the
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more wonderful when we consider that it is the work of a race not otherwise potent or famous in literature. we do not know, of course, what other books may have come from the jewish nation and vanished with whatever of power or beauty they possessed; but in those that remain there is little of exceptional force or charm for readers outside of the hebrew race. they have no broad human appeal, no universal significance, not even any signal excellence of form and imagery. josephus is a fairly good historian, sometimes entertaining, but not comparable to herodotus or thucydides or tacitus or gibbon. the talmuds are vast storehouses of things new and old, where a careful searcher may now and then find a legendary gem or a quaint fragment of moral tapestry. in histories of mediæval literature, ibn ezra of toledo and rashi of lunel are spoken of with respect. in modern letters, works as far apart as the philosophical treatises of spinoza and the lyrics of heinrich heine have distinction in their kind. no one thinks that the hebrews are lacking in great and varied talents; but how is it that in world-literature their only contribution
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that counts is the bible? and how is it that it counts so immensely?
it is possible to answer by saying that in the old testament we have a happily made collection of the best things in the ancient literature of the jews, and in the new testament we have another anthology of the finest of the narratives and letters which were produced by certain writers of the same race under a new and exceedingly powerful spiritual impulse. the bible is excellent because it contains the cream of hebrew thought. but this answer explains nothing. it only restates the facts in another form. how did the cream rise? how did such a collection come to be made? what gives it unity and coherence underneath all its diversity? how is it that, as a clear critic has well said, “these sixty books, with all their varieties of age, authorship, literary form, are, when properly arranged, felt to draw together with a unity like the connectedness of a dramatic plot?”
there is an answer, which if it be accepted, carries with it a solution of the problem.
suppose a race chosen by some process of selection
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(which need not now be discussed or defined) to develop in its strongest and most absolute form that one of man’s faculties which is called the religious sense, to receive most clearly and deeply the impression of the unity, spirituality, and righteousness of a supreme being present in the world. imagine that race moving through a long and varied experience under this powerful impression, now loyal to it, now rebelling against it, now misinterpreting it, now led by the voice of some prophet to understand it more fully and feel it more profoundly, but never wholly losing it for a single generation. imagine the history of that race, its poetry, the biography of its famous men and women, the messages of its moral reformers, conceived and written in constant relation to that strongest factor of conscious life, the sense of the presence and power of the eternal.
suppose, now, in a time of darkness and humiliation, that there rises within that race a prophet who declares that a new era of spiritual light has come, preaches a new revelation of the eternal, and claims in his own person to fulfil the ancient hopes and
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promises of a divine deliverer and redeemer. imagine his followers, few in number, accepting his message slowly and dimly at first, guided by companionship with him into a clearer understanding and a stronger belief, until at last they are convinced that his claims are true, and that he is the saviour not only of the chosen people, but also of the whole world, the revealer of the eternal to mankind. imagine these disciples setting out with incredible courage to carry this message to all nations, so deeply impressed with its truth that they are supremely happy to suffer and die for it, so filled with the passion of its meaning that they dare attempt to remodel the life of the world with it. suppose a human story like this underneath the writing of the books which are gathered in the bible, and you have an explanation—it seems to me the only reasonable explanation—of their surpassing quality and their strange unity.
this story is not a mere supposition: its general outline, stated in these terms, belongs to the realm of facts which cannot reasonably be questioned. what more is needed to account for the story itself,
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what potent and irresistible reality is involved in this record of experience, i do not now ask. this is not an estimate of the religious authority of the bible, nor of its inspiration in the theological sense of that word, but only of something less important, though no less real—its literary influence.
