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Rh Greek dialogues, the Book of Job, must stand not in our canon but in the great book section of our Apocrypha.

And next we have to consider all the great epics in the world. There, again, I am for exclusion. This Bible we are considering must be universally available. If it is too bulky for universal use it loses its primary function of a moral cement. We cannot include Iliad, Norse saga, Æneid or Paradise Lost in our canon. Let them swell the great sack of our Apocrypha, and let the children read them if they will.

When one glances in this fashion over the accumulated literary resources of mankind it becomes plain that our canonical books of literature in this modern Bible of ours can be little more than an anthology or a group of anthologies. Perhaps they might be gathered under separate heads, as the Book of Freedom, the Book of Justice, the Book of Charity. And now, having done nothing as yet but reject, let me begin to accept. Let me quote a few samples of the kind of thing that would best serve the purpose of our Bible and that should certainly be included.

ERE are words that every American knows by heart already—I would like every man in the world to know them by heart and to repeat them. It is Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and I will not spare you a word of it:

And here is something that might perhaps make another short chapter in the same Book of Freedom, but it deals with Freedom of a different sort:

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.

That, as you know, was Henley's, and as I turned up his volume of poems to copy out that poem I came again on these familiar lines:

There seems something in that also which I could spare only very reluctantly from a new Bible in the world. Yet I tender those lines very doubtfully. For I am not a very cultivated and well-read person, and note the things that have struck upon my mind, but I quite understand that there must be many things of the same sort, but better, that I have never encountered, or that I have not heard or read under circumstances that were favorable to their proper appreciation. I would rather say about what I am quoting in this section, not positively "this thing," but merely "this sort of thing."

And in the vein of "this sort of thing" let me quote you—again for the Book of Freedom—a passage from Milton, defending the ancient English tradition of free speech and free decision, and praising London and England. This London and England of which he boasts have broadened out, as the idea of Jerusalem has broadened out, to world-wide comprehensions. Let no false modesty blind us to our great tradition; you and I are still thinking in Milton's city; we continue, however unworthily, the great inheritance of the world-wide responsibility and service of his Englishmen. Here is my passage:

But I will not go on turning over the pages of books and reciting prose and poetry to you. I cannot even begin to remind you of the immense treasure of noble and ennobling prose and verse that this world has accumulated in the past three thousand years. Not one soul in ten thousand that is born into this world even tastes from that store. For most of mankind now that treasure is as if it had never been. Is it too much to suggest that we should make some organized attempt to gather up the quintessence of literature now and make it accessible to the masses of our race? Why should we not with a certain breadth and dignity set about compiling the Poetic Books, the Books of Inspiration for a renewed Bible, for a Bible of Civilization? It seems to me that such a book made universally accessible, made a basis of teaching everywhere, could set the key of the whole world's thought.

HERE remains one other element if we are to complete that parallelism of the old Bible and the new. The Christian Bible ends with a forecast, the book of Revelation; the Hebrew Bible ended also with forecasts, the Prophets. To that the old Bible owed much of its magic power over men's imaginations and the inspiration it gave them. It was not a dead record, not an accumulation of things finished and of songs sung. It pointed steadily and plainly to the days to come as the end and explanation of all that went before. So, too, our modern Bible, if it is to hold and rule the imaginations of men, must close, I think, with a Book of Forecasts.