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
The difficulties of calling public schools to
this task appear at once. It would be monstrous
if they should be sectarian or proselytizing.
But the Bible is not a sectarian Book.
It is the Book of greatest literature. It is the
Book of mightiest morals. It is governing history.
It is affecting literature as nothing else
has done. A thousand pities that any petty
squabbling or differences of opinion should prevent
the young people in the schools from realizing
the grandeur and beauty of it!
But the final and most important agency.
which will magnify the influence of the Bible
must necessarily be the home. It will gather
up all its traits, religious, moral, and literary.
Here is the fundamental opportunity and the
fundamental obligation. Robert Burns was right
in finding the secret of Scotia's power in such
scenes as those of "The Cottar's Saturday Night."
One can almost see Carlyle going back to his
old home at Ecclefechan and standing outside
to hear his old mother making a prayer in his
behalf. A newspaper editorial of recent date
says this decay of literary allusion is traceable
in part to the gradual abandonment of family
prayers. Answering President Butler, it is
urged that it is not so important that the Bible
be in the public schools as that it get back again
into the homes. "Thorough acquaintance with
the Bible is desirable; it should be fostered.
The person who will have to foster it, though,"
says this writer, "is not the teacher, but the
parent. The parent is the person whom Dr.
Butler should try to convert." Well, while
there may be differences about the school, there
can be none about the place of the Bible in the
home. It needs to be bound up with the earliest
impressions and intertwined with those impressions
as they deepen and extend.
So, by the Church, which will accent its religious
value; by the press, which will accent its
moral power; by the school, which will spread
its literary influence; and by the home, which
will realize all three and make it seem a vital
concern from the beginning of life, the Bible
will be put and held in the place of power to-day
which it has had in the years that are gone, and
will steadily gain greater power.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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