of the Bible
lies under the ban of school-masters, Boards of Studies, and all
who devise courses of reading and examinations in English
Literature: that among our `prescribed books' we find Chaucer's
"Prologue," we find "Hamlet," we find "Paradise Lost," we find
Pope's "Essay on Man," again and again, but "The Book of Job"
never; "The Vicar of Wakefield" and Gray's "Elegy" often, but
"Ruth" or "Isaiah," "Ecclesiasticus" or "Wisdom" never.

I propose this morning:

(1) to enquire into the reasons for this, so far as I can guess
and interpret them;

(2) to deal with such reasons as we can discover or surmise;

(3) to suggest to-day, some simple first aid: and in another
lecture, taking for experiment a single book from the Authorised
Version, some practical ways of including it in the ambit of our
new English Tripos. This will compel me to be definite: and as
definite proposals invite definite objections, by this method we
are likeliest to know where we are, and if the reform we seek be
realisable or illusory.

II

I shall ask you then, first, to assent with me, that the Authorised
Version of the Holy Bible is, as a literary achievement, one of the
greatest in our language; nay, with the possible exception of the
complete works of Shakespeare, the very greatest. You will
certainly not deny this.

As little, or less, will you deny that more deeply than any other
book--more deeply even than all the writings of Shakespeare--far
more deeply--it has influenced our literature. Here let me repeat
a short passage from a former lecture of mine (May 15, 1913, five
years ago). I had quoted some few glorious sentences such as:

Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty: they shall
behold the land that is very far off.

And a man shall be as an hiding-place from the wind, and a
covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place,
as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land....

So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption,
and this mortal shall have put on immortality ...

and having quoted these I went on:

When a nation has achieved this manner of diction, these
rhythms for its dearest beliefs, a literature is surely
established.... Wyclif, Tyndale, Coverdale and others before
the forty-seven had wrought. The Authorised Version, setting
a seal on all, set a seal on our national style.... It has
cadences homely and sublime, yet so harmonises them that
the voice is