Henry Van Dyke

“ The hunger for happiness which lies in every human heart can never be satisfied without righteousness; and the reason why the Bible reaches down so deep into the breast of man is because it brings news of a kingdom which is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. It brings this news not in the form of a dogma, a definition, a scientific statement, but in the form of literature, a living picture of experience, a perfect ideal embodied in a Character and a Life. And because it does this, it has inspiration for those who write in the service of truth and humanity. ”

“ The true lover of the Bible has an interest in all the elements of its life as an immortal book. He wishes to discern, and rightly to appreciate, the method of its history, the spirit of its philosophy, the significance of its fiction, the power of its eloquence, and the charm of its poetry. He wishes this all the more because he finds in it something which is not in any other book: a vision of God, a hope for man, and an inspiration to righteousness which seem to him divine. ”

“ Imagine that race moving through a long and varied experience under this powerful impression, now loyal to it, now rebelling against it, now misinterpreting it, now led by the voice of some prophet to understand it more fully and feel it more profoundly, but never wholly losing it for a single generation. Imagine the history of that race, its poetry, the biography of its famous men and women, the messages of its moral reformers, conceived and written in constant relation to that strongest factor of conscious life, the sense of the presence and power of the Eternal. ”

“ It is the spirit of revelation, the spirit of divine sympathy and laughter, the spirit of admiration, hope, and love—or better still, it is simply the spirit of life.
When I call this the essence of good enchantment I do not mean that it is unreal. I mean only that it is unrealistic, which is just the opposite of unreal. It is not in bondage to the beggarly elements of form and ceremony. It is not captive to names and appearances, though it revels in their delightful absurdity. It knows that an idol is nothing, and finds all the more laughter in its pompous pretence of being something. ”

“ Wordsworth regards joy as an actual potency of vision:
“With an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the heart of things.”
Joy is indeed the master-word of his poetry. The dancing daffodils enrich his heart with joy.
“They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.” The kitten playing with the fallen leaves charms him with pure merriment. The skylark’s song lifts him up into the clouds. ”

“ I like what Stevenson wrote to an old preacher, his father’s friend. “Yes, my father was a ‘distinctly religious man,’ but not a pious.... His sentiments were tragic; he was a tragic thinker. Now granted that life is tragic to the marrow, it seems the proper service of religion to make us accept and serve in that tragedy, as officers in that other and comparable one of war. Service is the word, active service in the military sense; and the religious man—I beg pardon, the pious man—is he who has a military joy in duty,—not he who weeps over the wounded.” ”

“ Agnes,” pure and passionate, surprizing us by its fine excess of colour and melody, sensuous in every line, yet free from the slightest taint of sensuality, is unforgettable and unsurpassable as the dream of first love. The poetry of Keats, small in bulk and slight in body as it seems at first sight to be, endures, and will endure, in English literature, because it is the embodiment of the spirit of immortal youth. ”

“ In this fourth class healthy-minded people and unprejudiced critics put the novels of Charles Dickens. For millions of readers they have fulfilled what Dr. Johnson called the purpose of good books, to teach us to enjoy life or help us to endure it. They have awakened laughter and tears. They have enlarged and enriched existence by revealing the hidden veins of humour and pathos beneath the surface of the every-day world, and by giving “the freedom of the city” to those poor prisoners who had thought of it only as the dwelling-place of so many hundred thousand inhabitants and no real persons. ”

“ It is this fact that gives the Bible its extraordinary force as literature and makes it great.
Born in the East and clothed in Oriental form and imagery, the Bible walks the ways of all the world with familiar feet and enters land after land to find its own everywhere. It has learned to speak in hundreds of languages to the heart of man. It comes into the palace to tell the monarch that he is a servant of the Most High, and into the cottage to assure the peasant that he is a son of God. ”

“ But when we have admitted these limitations, it remains true that no other English poet has penetrated so deeply into the springs of poetry which rise by every cottage door, or sung so nobly of the treasures which are hidden in the humblest human heart, as Wordsworth has. This is his merit, his incomparable merit, that he has done so much, amid the hard conditions, the broken dreams, and the cruel necessities of life, to remind us how rich we are in being simply human. ”

“ The very contrast between its serenity, its assurance, its disembodied passion, its radiant asceticism, and the mixed lights, the broken music, the fluctuating faith, the confused conflict of actual life, seems like a discouragement. It calls us to go into a retreat, that we may find ourselves and renew our power to live. But there are natures which do not easily adapt themselves to a retreat,—natures which crave stimulus more than consolation, and look for a solution of life’s problem that can be worked out while they are in motion. ”

“ Everything real in the world he recognized and accepted, even though he might not always like it. But the unreal people and things—the pretenders, the hypocrites, the shams, and the frauds (whether pious or impious) —he detested and scoffed away. Reality was his quest and his passion. He followed it with unfailing interest, penetration, and good temper. He found it, at least in humankind, always mixed and complicated, never altogether good nor altogether bad, no hero without a fault, and no villain [108] without a germ of virtue. Life is really made that way. ”

“ In these furious days when the hysteria of world-problems vexes us, it is good to have some subjects on which we can dispute without ranting or raving.
For my part, I find Vanity Fair the strongest, Pendennis the most intimate, The Newcomes the richest and in parts the most lovable, and Henry Esmond the most admirable and satisfying, among Thackeray’s novels. But they all have this in common: they represent a reaction from certain false fashions in fiction which prevailed at that time. ”

“ The fountain-head of the power of the Bible in literature lies in its nearness to the very springs and sources of human life—life taken seriously, earnestly, intensely; life in its broadest meaning, including the inward as well as the outward; life interpreted in its relation to universal laws and eternal values. It is this vital quality in the narratives, the poems, the allegories, the meditations, the discourses, the letters, gathered in this book, that gives it first place among the books of the world not only for currency, but also for greatness. ”

“ There is an evident sympathy between the art of these painters, which insisted that every detail in a picture is precious and should be painted with truthful care for its beauty, and the poetry of Keats, which is filled, and even overfilled, with minute and loving touches of exquisite elaboration.
But it must be remembered that in poetry, as well as in painting, the spirit of picturesqueness has its dangers. The details may be multiplied until the original design is lost. The harmony and lucidity of a poem may be destroyed by innumerable digressions and descriptions. ”

“ The most essential thing in the appreciation of the poetry in the Psalms is the recognition of the three great spiritual qualities which distinguish them.
The first of these is the deep and genuine love of nature. The psalmists delight in the vision of the world, and their joy quickens their senses to read both the larger hieroglyphs of glory written in the stars and the delicate tracings of transient beauty on leaf and flower ”

“ Ah, master of the good enchantment, you have given us hours of ease and joy, and we thank you for them. But there is a greater gift than that. You have made us more willing to go cheerfully and companionably along the strange, crowded, winding way of human life, because you have deepened our faith that there is something of the divine on earth, and something of the human in heaven. ”

“ The teaching of his fiction is like that of life, diffused through the course of events and embodied in the development of characters. But as the story unfolds we are never in doubt as to the feelings of the narrator,—his pity for the unfortunate; his scorn for the mean, the selfish, the hypocritical; his admiration for the brave, the kind, the loyal and cheerful servants of duty. Never at his lightest and gayest does he make us think of life as a silly farce ”

“ The glory of man lies in his power to realize this process in his mind and to fling himself into it with all his will. If he tries to satisfy himself with things as they are, like the world-wedded soul in Easter Eve, he fails. If he tries to crowd the infinite into the finite, like Paracelsus, he fails. He must make his dissatisfaction his strength. He must accept the limitations of his life, not in the sense of submitting to them, but as Jacob wrestled with the angel, in order to win, through conflict, a new power, a larger blessing. ”

“ In the body of that tree is the sap of life that was from the beginning; the leaves of it are full of healing; its flowers never fail, and its fruitage is the joy of every season. The roots of the tree shall go down to the springs of deep waters; and wherever its pollen is drifted by the wind or borne by the bees, the gardens shall put on new beauty; and wherever its seed is carried by the fowls of the air, the orchards shall yield a richer harvest. ”

“ They do not wish, perhaps they are not able, to withdraw themselves from active life even for the sake of seeing it more clearly.
Wordsworth’s world seems to them too bare, too still, too monotonous. The rugged and unpopulous [238] mountains, the lonely lakes, the secluded vales, do not attract them as much as the fertile plain with its luxuriant vegetation, the whirling city, the crowded highways of trade and pleasure. Simplicity is strange to them; complexity is their native element. They want music, but they want it to go with them in the march, the parade, the festal procession. ”

“ This is the point of view from which Stevenson writes as a novelist; you can feel it even in a romance as romantic as Prince Otto; and in his essays, where he speaks directly and in the first person, this way of taking life as an adventure for the valourous and faithful comes out yet more distinctly. The grace and vigour of his diction, the pointed quality of his style, the wit of his comment on men and books, add to the persuasiveness of his teaching. I can see no reason why morality should be drab and dull. ”

“ The third quality of the poetry of the Psalms is their intense joy in God. No lover ever poured out the longings of his heart toward his mistress more eagerly than the Psalmist voices his desire and thirst for God. No conqueror ever sang of victory more exultantly than the Psalmist rejoices in the Lord, who is his light and his salvation, the strength of his life and his portion forever. ”

“ From them, also, he caught the tone of material comfort which characterizes his visions of the reward of virtue. Having known cold and hunger, he simply could not resist the desire to make his favourite characters—if they stayed on earth till the end of the book—warm and “comfy,” and to give them plenty to eat and drink. This may not have been artistic, but it was intensely human.
The same personal quality may be noted in his ardour as a reformer. No writer of fiction has ever done more to better the world than Charles Dickens. ”

“ Following the path still backward, we come to something altogether different. Romola is a historical romance on the grand scale. In the central background is the heroic figure of Savonarola, saintly but not impeccable; in the middle distance, a crowd of Renaissance people immersed in the rich and bloody turmoil of that age; in the foreground, the sharp contrast of two epic personalities—Tito Melema, the incarnation of smooth, easy-going selfishness which never refuses a pleasure nor accepts a duty; and Romola, the splendid embodiment of pure love in self-surrendering womanhood. ”