Some Religious Helps to a Literary Style

ANY

NY one in chase of a writer's rainbow, who seeks to find the pot of gold at its end, and would fain secure for himself that uncertain and indefinite prize known as a literary style, may perhaps discover herein some guide-posts to point him toward his way. If there is no royal road to learning, neither is there any short-cut; but it may be that the garb of thought and form and fashion of expression which characterize certain religious books may prove the longest way round and yet the shortest way home to the acquiring for our present uses of a purer, simpler, and more dignified language.

A child cannot run until it has learned to walk; no more can a man write until he has read. What then is the "reading, which maketh a full man," so that out of his very fullness of reading he shall express his ideas in a clear and limpid stream of thought? Surely this is not to be had from the current literature of the day. This question has been asked concerning the

present flood of books: "Is it not better that a hundred unnecessary volumes should be published, rather than that one that is good and useful should be lost?" Scriptural authority, if nothing else, would compel us to answer this in the affirmative, unless we stop to consider that the ninety-and-nine of the worthless books not only choke the single worthy one, but also tend to crowd out of life and usefulness the best books of the past.

The visible result of our over-production of books is that, because we are hopelessly unable to read everything, we read nothing. And we read nothing, absolutely, literally, so far as mental discipline is concerned, because the best of our average reading is in the better class of the magazines, and the worst of it-alas! for our habits-is in the newspapers. And this custom of our reading is not because of any lack of books among us, nor good books, moreover; for, as has been truly said, "Books are rarely destroyed. They go to the attic or the second-hand dealer, but for the most part they are preserved and accumulate rapidly." It has been estimated by good authority, that there are now in the United States 700,000,000 vol

umes, or about nine books per capita. In Europe the accumulation has been going on for centuries, and the total number of books for the whole world is figured at 3,200,000,000, or two books each for every inhabitant, old or young, wise or illiterate, heathen or Hottentot. And most of these are old books, and of them it is a faithful saying that "like proverbs, they receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages, through which they have passed."

No "Doctor of Literature" could make a better prescription for the modern reader, suffering from periodical and current newspaper indigestion and dyspepsia, than to advise a course of tonical old books. This might begin with Montaigne and his quaint and pungent philosophy. It should include many of the good old formulas contained in that storehouse of learning, "Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy." Passages from Young's "Night Thoughts" might be soothing, and bits of Rochefoucauld leave a gentle, pleasant bitter taste upon the tongue.

But of course the pharmacopoeia is inexhaustible: let us consider a little more at length what benefits may come from the religious writers.

The "Imitation of Christ" by Thomas à Kempis is the most popular religious work in Christendom; and fifty years ago it was a fact that, of all popular books, popular in the best sense, and widely spread in the fullest, it stood first. Dr. Johnson said of it that it had gone through more editions than there had been months since its publication, and the first edition was printed in 1472. "The priceless sentences of Thomas à Kempis," as Charles Kingsley called them, have been read in a Babel of sixty different languages, so often have they been translated. That its authorship is still in doubt, and as to whether Gersen, Gerson, or à Kempis wrote it matters no more than the spelling of Shakespeare's name. "Thousands upon thousands have forgotten their sorrows and dried their tears over its earnest pages," and hundreds of thousands have found in it rest for the soul and "the peace of God which passeth all understanding." George Eliot said of its contents that "they are inspired utterances, speaking to every soul and to every age.'

But regardless altogether of the religious comfort which this book has given, and of its wonderful influence and power for good among

Protestants and Roman Catholics alike, it is surely not read to-day as it was fifty years ago, and our literature is by so much the worse. In the current English translation of it the diction is musical, sonorous, terse, dignified, and expressive in every way, and no writing outside of the Bible is more beautifully pleading, plausible, and persuasive to sanctity.

There is another religious work much more important than the "Imitation of Christ," which is, if not religiously neglected, at least regrettably ignored by the literary student. This is "The Book of Common Prayer of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America." Of course this is essentially the same as the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, but to those who are familiar with the American form many of its beauties are enhanced by virtue of our very familiarity with them and by the softening of some early crudities in the English version. In Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations" some twenty-five or more passages from the Prayer Book are thought well-known enough to be included, as against three from Thomas à Kempis. The more honor to the Prayer Book!