The prison mirror. [volume] (Stillwater, Minn.) 1887-1894, 1891-09-03
Five Gents.
Literature.

What is literature? What do we do when
we study literature? Not mere language.
not mere words. but the heart of literature;
when we study Homer or Dante or a
Chaucer or a Shakspere or a Tennyson or
Browning?
what is your first remark" says Taine,
ION turning over the great leaves OF folio,
the yellow sheets of a manuscript. poem.
a code of laws. Ia confession of faith? This,
you say. did not come into existence alone.
This is but shell that lived and perished.
Under the shell there was an animal; be-
hind the document there was a man. Why
do you study the shell except to bring be-
fore you the animal? So you study the
document only to know the man. The
shell and the document are lifeless wrecks,
valuable only as clue to the living exist
ence. We must get hold of this existence
and endeavOr to re- create it. 1t is mistake
to study the document as if itwere isolated.
This were to treat things as simple
scholar. to fall into the error of the bibliO-
maniac"
We study nature that we may learn some-
thing of God; we study literature that we
may learn something of man. And it is
impossible to study literature with any
depth. with any genuineness, with any
thOroughness. and not learn the essential
unity of the human race. 1t is impossible
to gather together the literature of the ages
and not perceive behind every book man.
and behind the mass of men something
that unites every man to every other man.
The love of Ulysses for his wife. the pa
tient waiting of the wife in loyalty for the
return of her husband, is just that which
you may see to-day in America; the herOism
of the old Greeks is repeated in our own
Civil War; loyalty to the Eagles of Rome
repeats itself in the loyalty Of the Stars and
Stripes. Affection that binds men and
women together. faith that opens to them
the invisible world. hope that cheers and
beckons them on through the desert and the
wilderness-these are the same in all ages.
Not Israel alone has walked through the
desert led on by pillar of cloud by day and
pillar of fire by night; every great nation
that has ever wrought out noble achieve
ment in the world has been beckoned on its
course by divine hope flashing from the
face of pillar of fire by night and has been
shielded by pillar OF cloud by day.
Paul tells us that knowledge is transtOry;
our philosophers and our creeds change; we
prophecy in part we ministers, though we
try to present the whole truth, do present
but little fragments of it; but three things,
he says. abide. namely, faith. hope, and
love. Now turn to the pages of all litera-
ture and see whether he tells us the truth.
Y You see creeds altered, PHILOSOPHERS chang.
ed, but faith in the invisible, hope cheering
the soul in the darkest hours, and love
knitting together parent and child. husband
and wife. patriot and compatriot, friend and
friend. these you find the same to day that
they were when Isaac married Rebecca, or
Abraham gathered the children around the
family alter and prayed for the blessing of
God upon wife and child and slave If re-
ligion consists in faith and hope and charity
you cannot read literature with profound
reading and not have your religious life
deepened and strengthened and enriched
thereby.-Rev. Lyman Abbott, DID,, in
The Chautauquan.