第30章

"The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing; the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon; they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God.Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees.Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompense; He will come and save you.Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.And a highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there: and the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away."That can be set to music as it stands.You catch the same form in the familiar 13th chapter of I Corinthians, the chapter on Charity.It could be almost sung throughout.This musical element is in sharp contrast with much else in the Scripture, where necessity does not permit that literary form.For example, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is argumentative throughout, there is no part except its quotations which has ever been setto music for uses in Christian worship.It is rugged and protracted in its form, and has no musical element about it.The contrast within the Scripture of the musical and the unmusical is a very marked one.

Add to the thought of the earnestness and variety of the Scripture a word about the simplicity of its literary expression.There is nothing meretricious in its style.There is no effort to say a thing finely.The translators have avoided all temptation to grow dramatic in reproducing the original.Contrast the actual English Bible with the narratives or other literary works that have been built up out of it.Read all that the Bible tells about the loss of Paradise, and then read Milton's "Paradise Lost." Nearly all of the conceptions of Milton's greatest poem are built up from brief Scripture references.But Milton becomes subtle in his analysis of motives; he enlarges greatly on events.Scripture never does that.It gives us very few analyses of motive from first to last.That is not the method nor the purpose of Scripture.It tells the story in terms that move on the middle level of speech and the middle level of understanding, while Milton labors with it, complicates it, entangling it with countlessdetails which are to the Scripture unimportant.It goes straight to the simple and fundamental elements in the account.Take a more modern illustration.Probably the finest poem of its length in the English language is Browning's "Saul." It is built out of one incident and a single expression in the Bible story of Saul and David.The incident is David's being called from his sheep to play his harp and to sing before Saul in the fits of gloom which overcome him; the expression is the single saying that David loved Saul.Taking that incident and that expression, Browning writes a beautiful poem with many decorative details, with keen analysis of motive, with long accounts of the way David felt when he rendered his service, and how his heart leaped or sang.Imagine finding Browning's familiar phrases in Scripture: "The lilies we twine round the harp-chords, lest they snap neath the stress of the noontide-- those sunbeams like swords"; "Oh, the wild joy of living!" "Spring's arrowy summons," going "straight to the aim." That is very well for Browning, but it is not the Scripture way; it is too complicated.All that the Bible says can be said anywhere; Browning's "Saul" could not possibly be reproduced in other languages.It would needa glossary or a commentary to make it intelligible.It is beautiful English, and great because it has taken a great idea and clothed it in worthy expression.But the simplicity of the Bible narrative appears in sharp contrast with it.In my childhood my father used to tell of a man who preached on the creation, and with great detail and much elaboration and decoration told the story of creation as it is suggested in the first chapter of Genesis.When it was over he asked an old listener what he thought of his effort, and the only comment was, "You can't beat Moses!" Well, it would be difficult to surpass these Bible writers in simplicity, in going straight to the point, and making that plain and leaving it.Where the Bible takes a hundred words to tell the whole story Browning takes several hundred lines to tell it.