Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/78

58 But no appraisal of Poe's personality or of his relatedness to his age would be at all complete without some mention of his attitude to religion. Here again the poems and stories leave us in the dark; but there is abundant evidence from other sources that from childhood, when he went regularly to church with Mrs. Allan, to that last hour when he asked Mrs. Moran if she thought there was any hope for him hereafter, God and the Bible were fundamental in his thinking. It is equally evident that, though living in a sceptical age, an age in which science seemed to be weakening the foundations of long cherished beliefs, and being himself enamored of scientific hypothesis and speculative forecast, Poe remained untouched by current forms of unbelief. It is hard to understand what Mr. Woodberry means when he records the fact that Mrs. Moran read to the dying poet the fourteenth chapter of St. John's Gospel and adds: "It is the only mention of religion in his entire life." If the mere reading of the Bible to Poe, not by him, be construed as a "mention of religion" in his life, what shall be said of his own familiarity with the Bible, of his keen interest in biblical research, of his oft-expressed belief in the truth of the Bible, or of his final and impassioned defense, in Eureka, of the sovereignty of the God of the Bible?

Poe's intimate knowledge of the Bible might be traced in the many allusions that he makes to Bible history and Bible imagery, but more than mere knowledge is seen in the conscious and vivid imitation of