Not only was Ruskin well trained in the Bible, but he was a great teacher of it.In his preface to the Crown of Wild Olives he answers his critics by saying he has used the Book for some forty years."My endeavor has been uniformly to make men read it more deeply than they do; trust it, not in their own favorite verses only, but in the sum of it all; treat it not as a fetish or a talisman which they are to be saved by daily repetition of, but as a Captain's order, to be held and obeyed at their peril." In the introduction to the Seven Lamps of Architecture he urges that we are in no danger of too much use of the Bible."We use it most reverently when most habitually." Many of Ruskin's most striking titles come straight out of the Scripture.Crown of Wild Olives, Seven Lamps, Unto this Last--all these are suggested by the Bible.
It is almost superfluous to speak of Robert Louis Stevenson.John Kelman has written a whole book on the religion of Stevenson, and it is available for all readers.He was raised by Cummy, his nurse, whose library was chiefly the Bible, the shorter catechism, and the Life of Robert Murray McCheyne.He said that the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah was his special chapter, because it so repudiated cant and demanded a self-denying beneficence.He loved Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress; but "the Bible most stood him in hand." Every great story or essay shows its influence.He was not critical with it; he did not understand it; he did not interpret it fairly; but he felt it.His Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde is only his way of putting into modern speech Paul's old distinction between the two men who abide in each of us.They told him he ought not to work in Samoa, and he replied that he could not otherwise be true to the great Book by which he and all men who meant to do great work must live.Over the shoulder of our beloved Robert Louis Stevenson you can see the great characters of Scripture pressing him forward to his best work.
Not so much can be said of Swinburne.There was a strong infusion of acid in his nature, which no influence entirely destroyed.He is apt to liveas a literary critic and essayist, though he supposed himself chiefly a poet.His own thought of poetry can be seen in his protest in behalf of Meredith.When he had been accused of writing on a subject on which he had no conviction to express ("Modern Love"), Swinburne denied that poets ought to preach anyway."There are pulpits enough for all preachers of prose, and the business of verse writing is hardly to express convictions." Yet it is impossible to forget Milton and his purpose to "assert Eternal Providence, and justify the ways of God to men." Naturally, most poets do preach and preach well.Wordsworth declared be wanted to be considered a teacher or nothing.Mrs.Browning thought that poets were the only truth-tellers left to God.But Swinburne could not help a little preaching at any rate.His "Masque on Queen Bersaba" is an old miracle play of David and Nathan.His "Christmas Antiphones" are hardly Christian, though they are abundant in their allusions to Scripture.The first is a prayer for peace and rest in the coming of the new day of the birth of Christ.The second is a protest that neither God nor man has befriended man as he should, and the third is an assurance that men will do for man even if God will not.Now, that is not Christian, but the Bible phrases are all through it.So when he writes his poem bemoaning Poland, he needs must head it "Rizpah." At the same time it must be said that Swinburne shows less of the influence of the Bible in his style and in his spirit than any other of our great English writers.
