p. 98 | The Bible in England

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 14, 1871

The Bible in England.

The readiest way for a mediocre man to gain notoriety is, as we all know, for him to proclaim himself infidel and attack the Bible. His blows may be as feeble as a hen’s pecking; but they are sure to attract notice because of the holy and tender regard in which the object that he assails is held by the noblest part of our race. We are always sorry, however, when a man of natural ability is driven to such straits as these to produce a sensation and draw notice to himself; and were especially sorry to find so much of this blue-light stage-thunder in the book just issued by Mr. Conway in England, in which he professes to give a resume of this philosophy or religion which life has taught him.

Mr. Conway is an American, and known to many of us as a clever contributor to some of the magazines, and a well-meaning man, whose anxiety for bold expression, however, very much outruns his thought or judgment. It has noticeably done so in this instance. He informs us that in his teens he had made Christian’s journey from the City of Destruction to Zion, and reached the feet of Christ. He found (which will, to all other Christians, appear a remarkable experience) that he had nothing further to do but to praise him in words and call himself a miserable sinner; but, learning that better work was done in the City of Destruction, he set out on the back track. Of course there can be nothing new in the ideas he advances; the jeers at Christianity are the old and well-worn campaigners with which we are all familiar; but we confess ourselves surprised at the want of policy and taste in their manner. Writing for earnest men, Mr. Conway should have known that an earnest doubter, to command attention, would not turn to the gravest subject which the human soul can approach with the quips and cheap ribaldry of a clown. “The myths of the New Testament,” he tells us, “are but a rehash of the Old and those of Greece; and Jesus wears the old clothes which have served Moses and Zoroaster in their turn.”

It is over the children who are permitted to read the Bible that he lifts up his voice in shrillest lamentation. “They are no more capable of comprehending what is pure in its pages than they are Kant’s metaphysics, while they learn from its scandals which are without a name. Millions of childish hearts and minds first soiled by contact with these obscene pages are offered each year as a holocaust,” etc. Mr. Conway has been unfortunate in his childish reminiscences. The boy or girl who would dig among Levitical laws for obscure uncleanness, must have an exceptionally keen scent for nastiness.

There is an effort, however, of more weight making in England to restrict the use of the Old Testament as a common school-book; the argument urged by Catholics (apart from sectarian differences) being that the Jewish patriarchs, addicted, as they were, to cheating, murder, and concubinage, are hardly the proper models upon which to mold the youthful English minds. There would be some force in this if any English boy is really dull enough to suppose that David or Jacob is offered as an example for his wholesale imitation, which we are loth to suppose is the case. It is not probable that any part of the Bible will be withdrawn from use in England. Intelligent Christians are keen enough to see that the doctrinal portions of the Scriptures are singularly adapted by divine inspiration, both in their form and wording, to the minds of children. The textbooks of every other religion are accumulations of recondite maxims meant for the research of adults; but the parables and words of Jesus linger with the homely simplicity of an old friend in the child’s mind until his eyes are opened, as age and knowledge come to him, and he finds that he has entertained a god unawares. Neither will the merely historical books, we think, ever give place in English education, as is suggested, to Shakespeare or Milton. It is quite true that the ways of God with men could be as plainly taught in the history of any nation as in that of the Jews; but it is equally true that they are not so taught in any book or by any nation. The Hebrews, avaricious and stiff-necked though they were, had always an overwhelming sense of the divine presence, equaled only by that of the Scotch Covenanter. They wrote down unflinchingly David a murderer, and Solomon an adulterer, thereby to show more clearly the avenging Justice that pursued them. There is no history, and probably never will be one, where God and man are brought face to face with such inexorable fidelity to fact in the narrative, such dramatic force of description, or expression so lofty and pure. It will be long before the English will give up the dullest books in the Hebraic history as a wholesome and pure regimen for their children.—N. Y. Tribune.