The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-04-13

1t is a difficult task to study the
English Bible as literature quite apart
from the moral authority and spiritual
significance of the book as the ethical
guide of the world. 1t goes unchal-
! lenged that one may not long tarry by
its purling brooks and olive-clad hill
tops, its trimming springs flashing
crystal, and its green valleys delight
some for dalliance, without catching
the note of the eternal compulsion it
holds for all souls.
But just for a little hour one may
thing rewardingly of it as a book among
books, and in its sheer literary charac-
ter and merit find delight
Quite apart from all other consider
ations, the Bible, and particularly the
| King James version, holds a primacy
in the field of English literature that
is not i'm any sense ever likely to be
| imperiled.
Sweeping through it's pages are NOR
al ideas, related and balanced, in alb
stract splendor and in the concrete
mass of history wildly red with life.
couched in verbiage whose dignity and
beauty are such that their repetition
never wearies, their refrain grows not
old, and in the English Bible we find
them, as Professor Gardiner of Har-
ward has we'll said, translated into a
language of unsurpassed and unfaded
vigor." It's style is in its limpid clear
ness and single majesty a thing unique,
because perfect, and 1T is the one canon
by which all the literary creations of
our English speech find judgment.
| The action, the history, the philoso-
/ ply, the poetry have the freshness of
the elder world, a native power inner
ent in the infinite things they hold, a
beauty of metaphor and a vividness of
/ summation, and in the English of the
King James version little if aught of
/ the literary possibilities of all the body
of the narrative, of all the poetry, have
been lost.
| DR.. Moulton has pointed out in one
of his admirable volumes in the Read
/ er's series one of the great reasons
! for the marvellous grip and freshness
/ of the narrative.
Smiles That Charm.
In the scope of a brief paper such
as this one cannot go back of the liter
airy form of the English Bible. but if
one remembers the sweep of the age
/ is in it, and that from beginning to end
/ the moral question of the centuries is
| in it, there will be suggested one source
/ of its power. And DR.. Mouiton has
I StOWI liidl Ill lil6 lIl1hliiS u the IttOIN
we owe a great debt to the limited vO-
cabulary of the times in which the
/ book was written which compelled the
use and development of the marvellous
SMILES and Oriental figures that add
abiding charm to all the body of the
message. So, in the translation into
our own tongue, the coincidence of the
/ work with a time in which a similar
condition largely obtained lent to this
version a freshness and vigOr unknown
/ in any other narrative of the language
| The English literature, rich and full
/ of power and beauty, has nothing
which, even as literature, can APP
| proach the Bible.
In dignity and charm, in rythm and
music, in vitality and age-wide appeal
/ it is clothed in power.
| It's style is matChless, its spiritual
/ message finds fit vehicle in the stately
phrases and sonorous beauty of its
rhythm, and a singular felicity is the
attendant of its narrative, prophecy
and poetry,