The Bible as Literature of Power
By Charles Dudley Warner
THE Bible is the best illustration of the literature of power, for it always concerns itself with life; it touches it at all points, and this is the test of any piece of literature, its universal appeal to human nature. When I consider the narrow limitations of the Pilgrim households, I can feel what the Bible must have been to them. It was an open door into a world where emotion is expressed, where imagination can range, where love and longing find a language, where imagery is given to every noble and suppressed passion of the soul, where every aspiration finds wings. It was history; it was the romance of real life; it was entertainment unfailing; the wonder-book of childhood; the volume of sweet sentiment to the shy maiden; the sword to the soldier; the inciter of youth to heroism; the refuge of the aged. Perhaps nowhere can a better illustration be found of the true relation of literature to life than in this example.—Charles Dudley Warner.