The Greatest English Classic: A Study of the King James Version of the Bible and Its Influence on Life and LiteratureMcAfee, Cleland Boyd
Religion
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
each man holds himself independent of his fellows only in the sense that
he will claim the right to hold such relation to God and his duty as he
himself may apprehend.
In these times, also, the development of temporal and material prosperity
with the intellectual mood which is involved in that affects the attitude
of the age toward the Bible. Sometimes it is spoken of as a scientific age
over against the earlier philosophical ages. Perhaps that will do for a
rough statement of the facts. It is the age of experiment, of trying
things out, and there naturally works into men a feeling that the things
that will yield to the most material scientific experimentation are the
things about which they can be certain and which are of real value. That
naturally involves a good deal of appreciation of the present, and calls
for the improvement of the conditions of present life first of all. It
looks more important to see that a man is well fed, well housed, well
clothed, and well educated than that he should have the interests of
eternity pressed on his attention. That is a comparatively late feeling.
It issues partly from the fact that this is a scientific age, when science
has had its attention turned to the needs of humanity.
Another result of our scientific age is the magnifying of the natural,
while the Bible frankly asserts the supernatural. No effort to get the
supernatural out of the Bible, in order to make it entirely acceptable to
the man who scouts the supernatural, has thus far proved successful. Of
course, the supernatural can be taken out of the Bible; but it will
destroy the Bible. Nor is there much gain in playing with words and
insisting that everything is supernatural or that everything is natural.
There is a difference between the two, and in an age which insists upon
nature or natural laws or forces or events as all-sufficient it is almost
inevitable that the Bible should lose its hold, at least temporarily.
Regarding all this there are some things that need to be said. For one
thing, this, too, is a passing condition. As a matter of fact, men are not
creatures of time. They actually have eternal connections, and the great
outstanding facts which have always made eternity of importance continue.
The fact is that men continue to die, and that the men who are left
behind cannot avoid the sense of mystery and awe which is involved in
that fact. The fact also is that the human emotions cannot be explained on
the lower basis, and the only reason men think they can be is because they
have in the back of their minds the old explanations which they cast into
the lower forms, deceiving themselves into thinking they are new ideas
when they are not.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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