he Koran of Mohammed are books
full of primeval wisdom and religious enthusiasm or at least of sound
and simple moral teaching, will be disappointed on consulting these
volumes.... I cannot help calling attention to the real mischief that
has been done, and is still being done, by the enthusiasm of those
pioneers who have opened the first avenues through the bewildering
forest of the sacred literature of the East. They have raised
expectations that cannot be fulfilled, fears also that, as will be
easily seen, are unfounded.... I confess it has been for many years a
problem to me, aye, and to a great extent is so still, how the Sacred
Books of the East should, by the side of so much that is fresh,
natural, simple, beautiful and true, contain so much that is not only
unmeaning, artificial and silly, but even hideous and repellant.[57]

Our own Bible, as I have frankly owned, holds the truth as the gold is
held in the ore. Truth nowhere exists "native" in human writings; but the
proportions of the "mineralizer" are vastly greater in all other Bibles
than in our own. There is no book known that can take its place on the
lecterns in our churches, or on the tables by which, in quiet hours, we
seat ourselves, a-hungered for the bread of life.

The pre-eminent excellence of Israel's writings in the literature of
power, is natural and necessary. Israel had little originality in any
science or art save the science and art of the soul, the knowledge and the
love of God. Nature is economic in her dowries. She does not shower all
the gifts of the fairies on any one race. She dowered Israel with the
highest of human powers, conscience, in an unequalled measure. Providence
nurtured and trained this faculty. This little nation became as
pre-eminently the people of ethical and spiritual religion as the states
of Greece became the people of art. Because of the natural aptitudes of
Israel, and of her providential education, we should turn to her
literature for our highest inspirations in ethical culture and religion.

I.

Wherein lies this commanding rank of the Bible in the literature of
ethical and spiritual power?

Speaking generally, I should say that the superiority of the Bible lies in
the fact that it is at once a literature of ethical power and a literature
of spiritual power. We have books of high ethical power that are weak
religiously. We have books of high religious power that