imaginations and its language."* This is a testimony from the side of French materialism as to the relation of the English Bible to the inner spirit of our language and nothing more could be desired. This influence is ingrained. It has so become a part of our vernacular that no line of demarcation can be safely drawn between the secular and the scriptural. Enough has been said to show that the historical development of English speech has run parallel to that of our English Bible, that the language in its vocabulary, structure, and spirit is what it is in purity, simplicity, strength, and ethical character mainly because of its biblical basis and elements. Whatever our debt may be to our standard English writers or to the English Prayerbook of early Elizabethan days, our greatest indebtedness is to that long succession of English versions of God's Word which began with Bede and ends in Victorian days. We read in our studies as to the origin of language that some have traced it to the gods, regarding it as a divine gift or continuous miracle. The Brahmins so conceived it. Plato viewed it as inspired from above. At the other extreme, we are told that language is purely material and earthly; that it has no higher source than in the imitation of the cries of animals. Between these two extremes of superstition and infidelity, there lies the safeguard of language-origin in the divine-human element. It is the gift of God for man's development and use-a divine ability to be humanly applied. There is a spiritual element in all speech, rising in its expression, as man rises in the scale of moral being. It is one of the factors in Max Müller's large influence in modern philology that he has seen fit to assume this high ground. He goes so far as to say that the science of language is due to Christianity and that its most valuable materials in every age have been the translations of the Scriptures. It is at this point. that the subject before us assumes new interest. Whatever the supernatural or spiritual element in any speech may be, it finds its best expression in the sacred books of that language. Whatever this element in English may be, its home is the English Bible, from which as a spiritual centre issue those influences which are to hold the language loyally to its high origin and to be a constant protest against undue secularization.

* Taine's Eng. Literature, p. 176.

The attitude of modern English philology to the Bible as an English-Language book must in all justice be a deferential one. The effort to reduce such a speech to a purely physiological basis so as to make its study merely that of the vocal organs, is as unscientific as it is immoral. In the face of the history of our Bible and our tongue, such a procedure must be condemned. Essential factors cannot thus be omitted. It has been the pleasant duty of such English scholars as Müller, Bosworth, Angus, and Marsh to emphasize this inter-dependence. It is a matter of no small moment that while in many of the schools of modern Europe, the current philosophy of materialism has succeeded in controlling the study of language, English philology is still studied by the great body of English scholars as biblical and ethical in its groundwork.

From this fruitful topic, as discussed, two or three suggestions of interest arise:

1. English and American literature, as they stand related to the English Bible, may justly be expected to be biblical in basis and spirit. The student who for the first time approaches these literatures, should approach them with such an expectation. Such an element is to be sought as naturally in Eng. lish letters as its absence is to be anticipated in French and Spanish letters. English literature is written in a language saturated with Bible terms, Bible ideas and sentiments, and must partake of such characteristics. Nor are we to be disappointed. Despite the immoral excesses of the Restoration Period, and the skeptical teachings of later times, the underlying tone has been evangelic and healthful. No school of merely literary criticism, at the present day, can rationally ignore this element. Though we are told that literature "should teach nothing and believe in nothing,"* this book of books has been so impressed upon the national speech, and life, that when our writers have written they have voluntarily, or perforce, taught something and believed in something distinctively germane to morality. It is true that the language of our Bible is not meant to be, and is not the strictly literary language of English. It is a sacred dialect, covering an area of its own. Nevertheless, its literary influence is a potent one, so that no Shakespeariana, Feb., 1885.

*

writer, from Bacon to Carlyle, has failed to feel the force and restraint of it. The best of our authors have been the first to acknowledge and utilize it. It is only in the face of history, and with the same promise of failure, that some of our existing schools of letters are aiming to ignore it. He who now writes on "Literature and Dogma," must also write on-God and The Bible. They must be conjointly viewed by the English critic. In a former article (Pres. Rev., July, '81) we have shown the presence of this scriptural element in our earliest literature, from Bede to Bacon. "Shakespeare and the Bible," said Dr. Sharp, "have made me Archbishop of York."* Who can compute the influence of the English Bible of Elizabethan times upon England's greatest dramatist! A recent writerin the nineteenth century-has written ably on the Bible and Elizabethan poets. In Shakespeare, most of all, is this influence visible. "He treats the Scriptures," says the writer, as if they belonged to him. He is steeped in the language and spirit of the Bible."+ All students of English are familiar with the results reached in this direction by Bishop Wordsworth, in his suggestive volume, Shakespeare and The Bible, where the contents of a separate treatise are required to contain the large variety of references which the illustrious poet makes to the English Bible. Dr. Wordsworth writes, of “more than five hundred and fifty biblical allusions, and not one of his thirty-seven plays is without a scriptural reference." It is, indeed, difficult to explain, in the light of such facts, how the poet's religious beliefs could have been any other than evangelical. A recent article (Pres. Rev., July, '84) on the Religious Beliefs of Shakespeare fully substantiates this view. The dramatist's writings, containing as they do, eighty-five per cent. of English words, are a striking testimony to the influence of the Elizabethan versions. So, to a marked degree, this biblical bias of English authorship is noticeable all along the line of development, in prose and poetry; in fiction and journalism; in song and satire, there is this same pervading presence of the "big book" to which the cynical Frenchman refers. That vast body of distinctively religious literature *Education, May, June, 1882.

+ Quoted in Shakespeariana, Feb., 1885.

which is found in English in the form of sacred poetry and of moral and devotional treatises, is based directly on the English Bible, while in the broader domain of secular letters, from Spenser to Tennyson, English literary art has been purified and sweetened by the same holy influence.

2. The Common Speech of England and America may justly be expected to be of a comparatively high ethical and verbal order, to be pure and vigorous in proportion to the circulation of the Scriptures among the masses. There may be said to exist in these countries three distinct forms of the language, the biblical or religious, the literary and professional, and the popu lar. In the conjoint action of these forms, the literary will refine the popular just to the degree in which the standard authors become current and influential. In a still higher sense, it is the function and natural effect of the biblical to refine and strengthen popular English, and this it will do to the degree in which it has currency and acceptance. As Mr. Marsh has stated: "We have had from the very dawn of our literature a sacred and a profane dialect; the one native, idiomatic, and permanent; the other, composite, irregular, and conventional,"* to which, it may be added, that from the very beginning this sacred dialect has been more and more modifying the secular dialect, the folk speech, until among the middle classes of English-speaking countries its force is widely and deeply felt. No nation, Germany excepted, has felt such an uplifting influence more pervasively. It is a matter of no small moment and surprise that despite the large number of influences making directly toward the corruption of the common speech, popular English is as good as it is. Were it not for the counter agency of the lower forms of American and English journalism, it would be far better than it now is. Next to the influence of the English Bible on colloquial and industrial diction is that of the press. There is danger at times, lest the latter supersede the former. A more distinctive ethical element in modern journalism would be a blessing to the language, as well as to the morals of the people. The English of the Bible is not strictly the popular English of the shop and market and street, still its effect upon such uses of the language is so vital and *History of English Language.

constant as to make it incumbent on every lover of the vernacular to bring the Bible to bear upon it in all its phases and functions. English philological societies could do no better. work in behalf of the native tongue, in its general use, than to encourage the efforts of English Bible societies to scatter the Scriptures broadcast over the land. In America, especially, where by excessive immigration the Bibles of various languages are brought to counteract in a measure the influence of the English Bible, it is especially important that the Word of God in the vernacular should find a place in every household. If this be so, no serious alarm need be felt as to the purity and perpetuity of the common speech. The "profane dialect " would come scripturalized.

3. The Protestant pulpit of England and America may justly be expected to present an exceptionally high type of English speech and style. It is with this "big book," and with this "good book" that the clergy have specially to do in the secret meditations of the study and in the public administration of religion. By daily contact with it as a book, they would naturally become imbued with its teachings and spirit so as to avoid "big swelling words" in their preference for " great plainness of speech." In a sense applicable to no other class of men their professional and daily language should be conspicuously clean and clear, and cogent, because steeped in Bible influences. They may thus be presumed to be an accepted standard in the use of the vernacular to all other professions, and to the public to whom they minister. Certainly, no body of men are in a more favorable and responsible position relative to the use of their native tongue. Through the medium of their academic, collegiate, and theological training they have learned the distinctively literary use of English. By their official and personal relations to the public, they must perforce learn the language of every day life, while, in addition to all this, they enjoy the peculiar advantages arising from the ministry of that Word, whose sacred dialect becomes their common speech. The clerical profession, as any other technical profession-legal or medical-has a special vocabulary of its own, with this remarkable anomaly, however, that the Bible as the basis of that vocabulary has a larger element of idiomatic