Beauties of Bible Language.
By Prof. Chadbourne
If we need a higher illustration, not only of the power of natural objects to adorn language and gratify taste, but proof that here we find the highest conceivable beauty, we would appeal at once to the Bible. Those most opposed to its teachings have acknowledged the beauty of its language, and this is mainly due to the exquisite use of natural objects for illustration. It does, indeed, draw from every field. But when the emotional nature was to be appealed to, the reference was at once to natural objects; and throughout all its books, the stars and flowers, and gems are prominent as illustrations of the beauties of religion and the glories of the church. “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.” “The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you in singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fig tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree.” The power and beauty of the same objects appear in the Saviour’s teachings. The fig and the olive, the sparrow and the lily of the field, give peculiar force and beauty to the great truths they were used to illustrate. The Bible throughout is remarkable in this respect. It is a collection of books written by authors far removed from each other, in time and place, and mental culture, but throughout the whole, nature is exalted as a revelation of God. Its beauty and sublimity are appealed to, to arouse the emotions, to reach the moral and religious nature. This element of unity runs through all the books where reference to nature can be made. One of the adaptations of the Bible to the nature of man is found in the sublime and perfect representation of the natural world, by which nature is ever made to proclaim the character and perfection of God. No language can be written that so perfectly sets forth the grand and terrible in nature and its forces as we hear when God answered Job out of the whirlwind. No higher appreciation of the beautiful, and of God as the author of beauty, was ever expressed than when our Saviour said of the lilies of the field, “I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these;” and then adds, “If God so clothed the grass of the field”—ascribing the element of beauty in every leaf and opening bud to the Creator’s skill and power.—Prof. Chadbourne.