Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1864-06-15
The English Bible.

The following forcible remarks upon
the influence of the English Bible in con
serving the English language. are the con-
clusiOn of DIR. Hart's little work on"The
Bible "a an Educational Power" which
we noticed in our columns recently:
That version of the Scriptures, which
has become the common heir loom of all
English -peaking Protestants, is by COM
mon consent the noblest ornament of our
mother tongue. The English Bible is
the accepted standard of the English Ian
guage It has done, and it is doing, more
to keep the language to its moorings
than all other causes combined. If, in
the startling rush and progression of new
ideas, the language do not drift entirely
from its moorings, so that Bacon, and
Milton, and Sheakespear, will have to be
read by our descendants, with the help
of a Lexicon and a Commentary, as ma
tive Greeks have now to read Pluto and
Demosthenes, it will be because, through
all coming generations, every English
speaking lip shall be trained from infan-
cY to the golden accents of the English
Bible. OF the more than seventy millions
who now speak this wonderful tongue
there is not one whose dearest household
words are not drawn from the priceless
depository. The writer or the speaker
among us. who wishes to utter his
thoughts in words which shall have pow
er to stir the public heart to its lowest
deptha and its widest circumference,
should give his days and nights to the
study of the English Bible He who
wishes merely to enrich his own mind
should allow it to be stepped, as it were,
IN the very words of that marvellous book.
If any one would appreciate fairly the
influence of the English Bible, in keep
ing the language from drifting away from
its standards, let him reflect that, in this
respect, now, at the end of two cent turies
and half,we are not farther from Shakes
peare, whose writings were contempora-
neous with King James Version, who
was only some twenty years his predeces-
sor. The change in two hundred and ff-
ty years since the publication of the En-
glish Bible, has not been as great as it
was before in less than a single genera
ton. Had it not been for the influence of
this marvellous book, Shakespeare might
even now be TO us the almost sealed book
that Chaucer is: and Dryden's translation
of Chaucer would itself need not be again
translated into more modern English, In
fact, down to the time of James |, the
language was in constant state of hux.
The authors of one generation became
obsolescent to the next generation and
obsolete to the third. But, all at once,
this onward and downward ten
dency was arrested. This wander
ing island became fixed, a solid and
enduring continent in mid ocean. receiY-
ing from all quarters increments and ad-
ditions. enriched and enlarged by contri-
buttons from every cline, but retaining,
in its centre and heart, all its primeYal
elements, towards which every wander
ing bark might safely direct its course,
as to haven of rest. s.,.-r..r,
To this benign result, there can be no
doubt that our English Bible has contrib
uted more than all other causes combined.
1t has done for the English what no soci
eties of the learned, no autocracy of let
tiers, or of science has been able to do for
any other tongue. 1t has given to our
language fixed point, immovable as the
everlasting hills, solid, granitic forma-
tion of rude, homely, elemental Saxon.
No floods of change can ever disintegrate
or wear away this enduring mass. There
it stands, like the upbeaVed form of our
own Alleghenies, with no more depress-
ion of its height, no more detection of
its line, than when the rude savage still
hunted at its base. Whether our race
shall survive for two centuries or for twen-
ty centuries, the great back bone of the
language, the central stock of its elements,
its household words, all the grand old
terms by which the heart still continues
to tell its joys and sorrows, will still be
the same that you and now use, and
that our forefathersd an foremathers have
used for more than ten generations. No
legislation, civil or ecclesiastical, can ever
weed out from the heart, or Danish from
the tongue. of the English speaking race
the words of its English Bible. While
infancy still continues to learn at its
mothers knee, in its first lisping accents,
to say, Our Father who art in Heaven;"
or old age with its last expiring breath
shall say, wfth Simeon, NOW lettest thou
thy servant depart in peace, =. for mine
eyes have seen thy sslvation;p while the
lyric pathos of David, the lamenting wall
of Jeremiah, the trumpet notes of Paul.
or the subdued majesty of John the Di-
vine, shall find an echo in the devout be-
levers heart, the words to which these
glorious thoughts have been welded, shall
live, and shall be a common medium of
thought to all the unborn millions who
shall speak this dear English tongue of
ours to the end of time. t