The Greatest English Classic: A Study of the King James Version of the Bible and Its Influence on Life and LiteratureMcAfee, Cleland Boyd
History
The Greatest English Classic: A Study of the King James Version of the Bible and Its Influence on Life and Literature
McAfee, Cleland Boyd
Bible -- History; Bible -- Influence; Bible and literature; Bible. English -- Versions -- Authorized
down? Not Charles II.--you shall look in
vain for him. Not George Monk, who brought
back the King--you shall not find him there.
The one statue which England has cared to plant
beside its Parliament buildings is that of Oliver
Cromwell, its Lord Protector. There he stands,
warning kings in the interests of liberty. John
Morley makes no ideal of him. He thinks he
rather closed the medieval period than opened
the modern period; but he will not have Cromwell
compared to Frederick the Great, who
spoke with a sneer of mankind. Cromwell "belonged
to the rarer and nobler type of governing
men, who see the golden side, who count faith,
piety, hope among the counsels of practical
wisdom, and who for political power must ever
seek a moral base." That is a rare and noble
type of men, whether they govern or not. But
no man of that type governs without red blood
in his veins; and the iron that made this man's
blood run red came from the English Bible.
It is a far cry from Oliver Cromwell to Abraham
Lincoln--far in years, far in deeds, far in
methods, but not far in spirit. Great men are
kindred, generations over. We pass from the
Old Testament into the New when we pass from
Cromwell to Lincoln; but we still feel the spirit
of liberty. From the days of the Puritans, the
Quakers and the Dutch, history had been preparing
for this time. Benjamin Franklin had
done his great work for human liberty; he had
summed up his hope for the nation in his memorable
address in 1787, when he stood eighty-
one years old, before the convention assembled to
frame a constitution for the new government. He
reminded them that at the beginning of the contest
with the British they had had daily prayers
in that room in Philadelphia for the Divine protection,
and said: "I have lived for a long time,
and the longer I live the more convincing proof
I see of this truth, that God governs in the
affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall
to the ground without His notice, is it probable
that an empire can rise without His aid? We
have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings,
that 'Except the Lord build the house, they labor
in vain that build it.' I firmly believe this, and
I also believe that without His concurring aid
we shall proceed in this political building no
better than the builders of Babel. I therefore
beg leave to move that, henceforth, prayers imploring
the assistance of Heaven and its blessing
on our deliberation be held in this assembly
every morning before we proceed to business,
and that one or more of the clergy of this city
be requested to officiate in that service."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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