Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 250, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 October 1914 — THE BIBLE’S INDIRECT INFLUENCE. [ARTICLE]

THE BIBLE’S INDIRECT INFLUENCE.

(By ROBERT STUART MACARTHUR. D. D., LL. D., President, Baptist World Alliance.) "When I ran across something In the poets that most deeply Impressed me, I have laid down the book and said: Now, where have I seen that In the Bible T '—Robert J. Burdette. The Bible has ennobled every language into which it has been translated. Its thoughts are so lofty that the moment they are embodied in human speech, whatever that speech may be, it is exalted, and glorified. When it came into the Greek and Latin languages it largely regenerated even the vehicle which communicated its thought It necessitated the creation of hew words; and it gave new and nobler meanings to old words. It is not too much to say that it almost created a new Greek and Latin tongue. It has given noble themes and thoughts to our greatest writers. Go through a library and count the dumber of the books which the Bible has suggested. You will at once put into the category Dante’s "Divine Comedy,” Tasso’s "Jerusalem Delivered." Spenser’s “Faerie Queene,’’ Miltdn’s "Paradise Lost” and "Paradise Regained." Pollok’s "Course of Time,” Pope’s “Messiah,” and many others of like character.

It has often given the idea of the characters which are the subjects of many books. In this way, we are indebted to it for striking features in Scott’s "Ivanboe,” Mrs. Stowe’s

"Uncle Tom’s Cabin," and for many characters in George Eliot, in Tennyson, in Byron, in Shakespeare, and in many other writers. It is said that the Red Cross Knight, in Spenser’s “Faerie Queene,” is but Paul’s armed Christian in the sixth chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians; that Pope’s “Messiah" is but a paraphrase of prophetic and seraphic passages in Isaiah; that the noblest strains c in Cowper’e "Task" drew their inspiration and part of their imagery from the same rapt

™ I ”’ prophet; that the "Thanatcpsis” el Bryant is bat the expansion of a passage in Job; that Wordsworth’s “Ode , on Immortality" could never have bees written but for Paul’s fifteenth chair ter of First Corinthians and the eighth chapter of Romans; that Shakespeare's conception of woman, of a Desdemona and of am, Ophelia, would have been impossible, had not his mind been permeated by a Bible ideal This suggestive thought could be much expanded, and these instructive Illustrations might be greatly multiplied/ The Bible gave all these men-*-working in different departments fit genius—their inspiration. Shall we ha so inconsistent $s to rejoice in the streams while we despise the fountain whence they flowed? The Bible to a light to the path and a lamp to the feet of the noblest literature. No man may claim tie honors of the highest culture If he is ignorant of the word of God. Let it sing itself through the soul giving clearness to the thought, wings to the imagination, enterprise in practical life, Inspiration to dally doty, hope in death, and glory In eternity.