Sacred writer

“ By inspiration we are to understand, that the sacred writers composed their works under so plenary and immediate an influence of the Holy Spirit, that God may be said to speak by those writers to man, and not merely that they spoke to men in the name of God, and by his authority; and there is a considerable difference between the two propositions. Each supposes an authentic revelation from God ”

“ But, as we have said, the great poet must perceive in things natural, in the beauty of the universe around him, in the sacred feelings of human emotion, a sacredness as worthy and as earnest, though less concentrated in character, as that which exists in the more direct function of religious worship. To the great poet, however he works, all things are sacred. ”

“ Yet while language is still living it may regain something of its old power beneath the poet's healing fingers, and now and again a master of words will recall for us some dying form of speech. A writer of power is needed, surely to win us back the older and wiser use of the word sacrament as a spiritual symbol, the revelation of the unseen through the visible, the unfolding of the unknown through the known. ”

“ We may affirm, then, that as human nature has been so greatly purified and elevated by the Christian Religion, Poetry, which deals with human nature in all its dearest and most intimate concerns, must have partaken of that purity and that elevation—and that it may now be a far holier and more sacred inspiration, than when it was fabled to be the gift of Apollo and the Muses. ”

“ The province of Art is not to present a specific message, but to impart a feeling. If we go home from the Lyceum hushed, treading on air, we have heard Oratory, even though we cannot recall a single sentence; and if we read a poem that brings the unbidden tears and makes the room seem a sacred chancel, we have read Literature. The Master has imparted to our spirits a tithe of his own sublimity of soul.
For the good old ladies who prick the Bible for a message I have a profound sympathy: the Sacred Page fits man’s every mood, and this is why it is immortal. ”

“ The doctrines of religion may indeed be defended in a didactic poem; and he, who has the happy power of arguing in verse, will not lose it because his subject is sacred. A poet may describe the beauty and the grandeur of nature, the flowers of the spring, and the harvests of autumn, the vicissitudes of the tide, and the revolutions of the sky, and praise the Maker for his works, in lines which no reader shall lay aside. The subject of the disputation is not piety, but the motives to piety; that of the description is not God, but the works of God. ”

“ It enhances the value of the sacred words themselves when we know, that during a life of three-score years and four, the conduct of the author harmonized with the theological opinions which he expressed in his poetry. ”

“ And Faith an anchor gained:—that holy Book is thine.
Behold the Book,—whose sacred truths to spread
Christ's heralds toil beneath a foreign sky,
Pouring its blessings o'er the heathen's head,
A martyr-courage kindling in their eye.
Wide o'er the globe its glorious light must shine,
As glows the arch of Heaven:—that holy Book is thine. ”

“ In the light thus obtained the sacred text has been transformed: out of the old chaos has come order; out of the old welter of hopelessly conflicting statements in religion and morals has come, in obedience to this new conception of development, the idea of a sacred literature which mirrors the most striking evolution of morals and religion in the history of our race. Of all the sacred writings of the world, it shows us our own as the most beautiful and the most precious ”

“ And when we find the Christian religion thus excluded from Poetry, otherwise as good as ever was produced by human genius, what are we to think of the Poet, and of the world of thought and feeling, fancy and imagination, in which he breathes, nor fears to declare to all men that he believes himself to be one of the order of the High Priests of nature? ”

“ We have no Instances to produce of any Writers that rise at all to the Majesty and Dignity of the Divine Attributes, except the Sacred Pen-Men. No less than Divine Inspiration could enable Men to write worthily of God, and none but the Spirit of God knew how to express His Greatness, and display His Glory: In Comparison of these Divine Writers, the greatest Genius's, and noblest Wits of the Heathen World are low and dull. ”

“ In the book of nature we have a faithful though imperfect image of God’s Wisdom, but in the Inspired Books the defects are remedied, and a more perfect representation is set before us, destined to kindle in our minds a manifold knowledge of the supernatural world. This purpose is attained by that sense and interpretation of Holy Writ, whereby we gather from the Sacred Text pious considerations and suggestions, not necessarily intended by the Holy Ghost in the precise form which they take in the reader’s mind, and yet not wholly arbitrary. ”

“ Our great body of sacred literature is thereby only made more and more valuable to us: more and more we see how long and patiently the forces in the universe which make for righteousness have been acting in and upon mankind through the only agencies fitted for such work in the earliest ages of the world—through myth, legend, parable, and poem. ”

“ For, whatever some sects may think of religion’s being a divine philosophy in the mind, the poet must exhibit man’s addresses to Heaven in ceremonies, and Heaven’s intervention by visible agency.”
So that the intermixture of religion, in every point of view, is not only agreeable, but necessary to the very genius of, at least, the highest class of poetry. Ancients and moderns 168 might therefore be led to the display of this sacred scenery, without affectation. ”

“ The inspiration of the writers is transferred to the books, the matter of which, so far as it forms the subject of the revelation, is received as true because divine, not merely regarded as divine because perceived to be true. The religion, together with the series of revelations of which it is the consummation, differs in kind from ethnic religions, and from human philosophy; and the sacred literature differs in kind from other books. Each is unique, a solitary miracle of its class in human history. ”

“ And so it is; every true poet is essentially a religious poet; his religion may not be Christianity, his views of the divine nature and attributes may be distorted, and he may be altogether ignorant of [xiii] the great truths of scripture revelation, yet there will ever be in minds of the greatest reach and capacity, a striving after that which is good and holy, and a knowledge, approximating to the truth, of the relationship between the Creator and the created ”

“ Whatever made a great Poet but the inspiration of delight and love in himself, and an empassioned desire to communicate them to the wide spirit of kindred existence? Poetry, like Religion, must be free from all grovelling feelings; and above all, from jealousy, envy, and uncharitableness. And the true Poet, like the Preacher of the true religion, will seek to win unto himself and his Faith, a belief whose foundation is in the depths of love, and whose pillars are the noblest passions of humanity. ”

“ THOMAS KEN, D.D., A SKETCH.
There is a soothing as well as a saving influence in religion; and when godliness finds appropriate utterance in poetry, no matter how modest and simple those utterances may be, doctrines find their way to the heart so readily, and sympathy and affection are so easily awakened and secured, it is not wonderful that so many devout persons should have embodied their religious hopes and fears, their opinions and sentiments, as well as their experience, in sacred song. ”

“ Thus, to the poet who sang a “higher wisdom,” who lived a holier life than words alone of any creed can enjoin, to him in the world’s imperative need of holiness to endure and of inspiration to conquer in the stress and strain of the life of today we turn for glimpses of his inspiration. ”

“ In the true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness: he is the light of the world; the world's Priest;—guiding it, like a sacred Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of Time. ”

“ Side by side with formulæ embodying superstitions common to barbaric folk all the world over, we find penitential psalms, appeals to the great gods, and spiritual utterances, some of which are on a plane with Hebrew sacred poetry. All this body of literature, secular and sacred, made up the vast store of books in the libraries whose interpretation is one of the brilliant successes of modern scholarship, and whose contents bring home to us the priceless value of the art of writing to mankind. ”

“ But the poet, in order to realize his grand idea, should be gifted not only with the highest poetical genius in order to represent the philosophical principles of Christianity in the peculiar characters and types of Christian art, and give them a new, independent, and majestic appearance; but he should be also possessed, on the one hand, of a clear and perfect knowledge of Christian doctrine and ethics, and a deep and extensive knowledge of philosophy and theology ”

“ The books of Holy Scripture are sacred and canonical because they are the Written Word of God, and have God for their Author, the human writers to whom they are ascribed being merely the instruments of the Holy Ghost, Who enlightened their minds and moved their wills, and to a certain extent directed them as an author directs his secretary. ”

“ Thus when we call a writer of the New Testament 'inspired' we must mean at least this: that the same divine Spirit who put the message of God in the hearts of the prophets of old, and who worked His perfect work without let and hindrance in the manhood of Christ, is here so working upon the will and imagination, the memory and intelligence, of one of Christ's commissioned witnesses as that he shall interpret and not misinterpret the mind and person of his Master. ”

“ Looking attentively at this definition of Scriptural inspiration, a number of questions arise at once in our minds. God moves the will, enlightens the mind, and points out the subject-matter which the inspired writer commits to paper. Is the writer under the influence of the divine impulsion so possessed by the inspired virtue that he acts without any freedom, either as regards the manner of his expression or the use of previously acquired knowledge concerning the subject of which he writes? ”

“ The poet and the true Christian have alike a hidden life. Worship is the vital element of each. Poetry has in it that kind of utility which good men find in their Bible, rather than such convenience as bad men often profess to draw from it. ”

“ For it is well known that the sacred writings contain many rhetorical figures, the spiritual meaning of which will be readily apprehended only by those who have been instructed in the study of letters. And let those men be chosen for this work who are able and willing to learn and who have the desire to teach others. ”

“ Throughout the New Testament, patristic literature, and the records of ecclesiastical miracles, although we have narratives of countless wonderful works performed by others than the writer, and abundant assertion of the possession of miraculous power by the Church, there is no instance whatever, that we can remember, in which a writer claims to have himself performed a miracle. ”

“ Every part of the sacred writings has an importance, a dignity, and a spirituality, becoming their divine author—and they are designed by God the Holy Ghost, to exhibit the glorious character of God our Father, as engaged in a covenant of redemption with his dear Son—Likewise, to hold forth the precious Person and finished work of God our Redeemer, as the only foundation and joy of poor guilty men, convinced p. 6of sin, and seeking his salvation. ”

“ What inspiration has not done in these various particulars is manifest to every one who studies the sacred writings. What it has done is scarcely less manifest, and is certainly much more generally recognized. It has produced writings which are absolutely [396] without a parallel in the literature of the world. Even as regards literary merits they have few rivals. ”

“ The spirit of poetry, which bade him follow on in spite of discouragement, touched all on which it hovered with a mystic light, "moving him to melody". It was the soul of religion, binding the spirit of man to nature and to "human faces" in themselves, and to the Supreme, in whom all is One. ”

“ All arguments, or rather objections to, sacred poetry, dissolve as you internally look at them, like unabiding mist-shapes, or rather like imagined mirage where no mirage is, but the mind itself makes ocular deceptions for its own amusement. By sacred poetry is mostly meant Scriptural; but there are, and always have been, conceited and callous critics, who would exclude all religious feelings from poetry, and indeed from prose too, compendiously calling them all cant. Had such criticasters been right, all great nations would not have so gloried in their great bards. ”

“ But, though poetry did not confer that higher state, poetry may nevertheless, in some measure and to some degree, breathe audibly some of the emotions which constitute its blessedness; poetry may even help the soul to ascend to those celestial heights; because poetry may prepare it, and dispose it to expand itself, and open itself out to the highest and holiest influences of religion; for poetry there may be inspired directly from the word of God, using the language and strong in the spirit of that word—unexistent but for the Old and the New Testament. ”

“ No holy religionist, no man of any description as a literary character, could have come up, in the one instance, to the pure sentiments of morality, or in the other, to the variety of knowledge, force of imagination, propriety and vivacity of allusion, beauty and elegance of diction, and strength of expression, to which they had that day listened. ”