Article March 9, 1940 Issue

Signs of the Times

Topic: Reading The Bible

[From the Times, London, England]

The religious value of the Bible patently outweighs all its other qualities. Religion is the dominant note of the Bible itself, giving unity to what else must seem an almost bewidering variety of literature. Widely divergent as they are in date, in outlook, and in character, the history, poetry, drama philosophy, stories, and letters here brought together were all written with a definitely didactic purpose. They were designed to set forth, in very different degrees and ways, the relationship between God and man. . . .

The making of the Authorized Version was a literary achievement without parallel. Its profound influence upon subsequent English literature is a matter of common knowledge. It may be hoped that modern authors will not allow the influence to cease, because, as Coleridge remarked, "intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar in point of style." But it is not our literature alone which has gained from the Bible. Much of its vocabulary has passed into normal talk, and furnished it, to a degree which perhaps few people realize, with useful phrases, such as—to name a few only from scores—"broken reed," "clear as crystal," "hip and thigh," "a word in season." Probably many of those who use such saying colloquially would be startled to learn that they are quoted from the Bible.

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