The Man of Letters as a Man of Business

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ble, and we have dealt with the Law. But these are only the foundations and openings of the Bible as we know it. We come now t

hat wer

, a dramatic dialogue, a sort of novel in the Books of Ruth and Esther, and so forth. What would be our equi

would be the whole

ty or thirty thousand volumes? Such a vast Bible would defeat its own end. We want a Bible that everyone will k

to salvation." And then we have a collection of other books, the Apocrypha, the books set aside, books often admirable and beautiful, but not essential, good to be read for "example of life and instruction of manners," yet books that everyone need not read and know. Let us take this lead and let

class between the canonical books that everyone in our civilization ought to read and the outer Apocrypha that you may read or not as you choose. This intermediate class I would call the

aw and Righteousness and Wisdom that I have sketched out to you, and another Book of which I shall have something to say later, this canonical literature will constitute the intellectual and moral cement of the World Society, that intellectual and moral cement for the want of which our world falls into

umber of splendid passages from the Prophets. Should we include the Song of Songs? I am inclined to think that the compilers of a new Bible would hesitate at that. Should we include the Book of Job? That I think would be a very difficult question indeed for our compilers. The Book of Job is a very wonderful and beautiful discussion of the profound problem of evil in the world. It is a tremendous exercise to read and understand, but is it universally necessary? I am

ness, simplicity and beauty. They give a picture, they convey an atmosphere of supreme value to us all, incommunicable in any other form or language. Again there is a great wealth of material in the Epistles. It is, for example, inconceivable that such a passage

r modern Bible, all its inspiration a

about Shakespear? If you were to waylay almost any Englishman or American and put this project of a modern Bible before him,

ld he b

mmer-Night's Dream. But even these! Are they "generally necessary to salvation"? We run our minds through the treasures of Shakespear

to the Great Books, all of him; he joins the aristocracy of the Apocrypha. And, I believe, nearly all the great plays of the world would have to joi

we admit merely beautiful and delightful things, then I see an overwhelming inrush of jewels and flower

u did Ku

pleasure d

the sacre

erns measur

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banish the Song of Songs, and since I must put away Vanity Fair and the Shabby Genteel Story, I would also put away Esther and Ruth. And I find myself most reluctant to exclude not any novels written in English, but one or two great sweeping books by non-English writers. It seems to me that Tolstoi's War and Peace and Hamsun's Growth of the Soil are books on an almost Biblical scale, that they deal with li

cism of life and social order-and the Dialogues of Plato, full of light and inspiration. In these latter we might quarry for beautiful passages for our Canon, but I do not think we could take them in as whol

ally available. If it is too bulky for universal use it loses its primary function of a moral cement. We cannot include the Iliad, the Norse

an an Anthology or a group of Anthologies. Perhaps they might be gathered under separate heads, as the 'Book of Freedom,' the 'Book of Justice,' the 'Book of Charity.' And now having done no

e every man in the world to know them by heart and to repeat them. It

might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate-we cannot consecrate-we cannot hallow-this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who

nother short chapter in the same Book of Freedo

night tha

e pit from

hatever g

nconquer

clutch of

winced nor

ludgeonings

bloody bu

Place of wra

he Horror o

e Menace o

hall find m

not how str

ith punishmen

Master of

Captain o

urned up his volume of poems to copy out th

ath are soothi

ds of Death are

urch, the firesi

h-and strife and

ht descending

time's dust and

ath are soothi

ds of Death are

on, and note only the things that have struck upon my mind; but I quite understand that there must be many things of the same sort, but better, that I have never encountered, or that I have not heard

ondon and England. This London and England of which he boasts have broadened out as the idea of Jerusalem has broadened out, to world-wide comprehensions. Let no false modesty blind us to our great

Englishmen? I say, as His manner is, first to us, though we mark not the method of His counsels, and are unworthy. Behold now this vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion-house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with His protection; the shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers working, to fashion out the plates and instruments of

astic terrors of sect and schism, we wrong the earnest and zealous thirst after knowledge and understanding, which God hath stirred up in this city. What some lament of, we rather should rejoice at, should rather praise this pious forwardness among men, to reassume the ill-deputed care of their religion into their own hands again. A little generous prudence, a little forbearance of one another, and some grain of charity might win all these diligencies to join and unite into one general and brotherly search after truth; could we but forego this prelatical tradition

be many schisms and many dissections made in the quarry and in the timber ere the house of God can be built. And when every stone is laid artfully together, it cannot be united into a continuity, it can but be contiguous in this world: neither can every piece of

this world even tastes from that store. For most of mankind now that treasure is as if it had never been. Is it too much to suggest that we should make some organized attempt to gather up the quintessence of literature now, and make it accessible to the masses of our race? Why should we not on a la

To

the imagination of men, must close I think with a Book of Forecasts. We want to make our world think more than it does about the consequences of the lives it leads and the political deeds that it does and that it permits to be done. We want to turn the human imagination round again towards the future which our lives create. We want a collection and digest of forecasts and warnings to complete this modern Bible of ours. Now here I think you will say-and I admit with perfect reason-that I am floating away from any reasonable possibility at all. How can we have forec

o profess to guide our destinies. Wh

tesmen and the great European statesmen are making

e blundered into positions of power and honour with no idea of what they are doing to the world. But if they have an idea of wh

and alone in twenty-five years' time as they stand alone now? Or whether they think that there will be a greater United States-of all America-or of all the world? They must know their own will about that. And it is equally reasonable to ask the great political personages of the British Empire: what will Ireland be in

relations of industrial enterprise to the labour it employs are unsatisfactory. Ye

easonable and proper thing to ask our statesmen and politicians: what is going to happen to the world? What sort of better social order are you making for? What sort of world order are you creating? Let them open their minds to

ught all to possess and read. I know you will say that such a Book of Forecasts will be at first a preposterously insufficient book-that every year will show it up and mak

It will have been tested against realities. It will form

revised, it will be much

t of a community which lives as we do to-day, mere adventurers, without foresight, in a world of catastrophies and accidents and unexpected things. We shall be living again in a plan. Our live

To

would picture to you this modern Bible, perhaps two or th

Books with ma

of Conduct

Poetry and Literatu

ing the place of the P

of education in every school, the common platform of all discussion-just as in the past the old Bible used to be. I wo

would be new lights on health and conduct, there would be fresh additions to the anthologies, and there would be Forecasts that would have to be struck out because they were realized or because they

little row of four or five volumes in every house, in every life, throughout the world, holding the lives

, or is this a thing that could b

ty, it is a great and urgent need. Our education is, I think, pointless without it, a shell without a core. Our social life is aimless without it, we are a crowd without a com

fore, an urgently de

e world, could I think all be achieved by a few hundred resolute and capable people at a cost of thirty or forty million dollars. That is a less sum than that the United States

set you against the fundamental idea, that old creative idea of the Bohemian educationist who was the pupil of Bacon and the friend of Milton, the idea