May Poets Lie?

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Jan 19, 1864

We have long been aware that certain liberties might be taken with speech on the authority of "poetical license;" but we have not known till of late that poets might lie outright, on the same rule. It seems however that orthodoxy is becoming willing to grant them even this privilege, if thereby it can make a shift to save its creed.

Job, the psalms, and some of Solomon's writings, contain some very plain declarations concerning the state of the dead. Job declares that till the heavens be no more, the dead shall not awake nor be raised out of their sleep. David says, that in the grave there is no remembrance of God and none giving him thanks; that the dead praise not the Lord, nor any that go down into silence; and that in the day of death even a man's thoughts perish. While Solomon declares that the dead know not anything, and that every emotion and passion with them has ceased.

But when we bring in these testimonies as evidence on the state of the dead, we are met with the declaration that these portions of scripture are poetry; that we must not be too literal in our interpretation of them; that there are certain figures of speech, allowable under a poetic license, which must not be held in too precise a manner.

But hold! all figurative language must harmonize with the literal. But if popular theology be true, these declarations are the direct opposites of the truth. And is it allowable even under the license of poetry, to thus contradict facts, and represent as true that which is positively false? Would it be admissible for a poet at the present day to represent as matter of fact, even under the most fiery figures, that water ran up hill; that the sun rose in the west, that trees grew with their roots in the air, and tops down; or that men walked on their hands? Neither is it allowable for the poets of the Bible to make equally glaring departures from matters of fact. But these declarations, consider them as figurative as we will, cannot be harmonized with the claims of modern theology, and hence the plea of poetry is here of no avail to the adherents of that theology.

Being thus called upon to decide between the now prevailing belief and the poets of the Bible, we go with the latter. If secular poets are required to be true to nature and to facts, we may be sure that the sacred poets do not inculcate lies.