10 Colorado College Studies. 



After "Mother Goose" Mr. Scudder suggests simple poems 

 of Whittier, Longfellow, Blake, Wordsworth. In prose every 

 teacher, as well as every parent, knows there is no book for 

 young, as well as old, students of literature like the Bible. 

 In the Bible we have imagination and emotion; we have sim- 

 plicity combined with exquisite purity of thought and style; 

 we are dealing with what has endured the test of time; we 

 are introducing the child to what is of permanent value, to 

 that which alone can unlock much of what is best in English 

 literature. Macaulay's remark that he who aspires to be a 

 critic of English literature must have the Bible at his finger's 

 ends has received another iteration in a recently published 

 utterance of the professor of the English language and litera- 

 ture in Yale University (in a paper upon Nineteenth Century 

 literature) that "it would be worth while to read the Bible 

 carefully and repeatedly if only as a key to modern culture, 

 for to those who are unfamiliar with its teachings and diction 

 much that is best in the English literature of the present 

 century is as a sealed book." 



Mrs. Wesley, it will be remembered, the day her children 

 were five years old, set them to learning the alphabet. The 

 second day she put them to reading in the first chapter of 

 Genesis, and made the Bible thereafter their text-book. Such 

 training produced not merely the superb energy of John 

 Wesley, but also the rare poetic power of his equally gifted 

 brother, Charles. 



It is almost a truism to quote John Ruskin's experience, 

 but to omit his testimony is to fail to call to the stand the best 

 witness of the influence of the Bible as literature. He tells 

 the story in the early part of "Praeterita": "I have next with 

 deeper gratitude to chronicle what I owed to my mother for 

 the resolutely consistent lessons which so exercised me in the 

 Scriptures as to make every word of them familiar to my ear 

 in habitual music, — yet in that familiarity reverenced, as trans- 

 cending all thought, and ordaining all conduct. Tiiis she 

 effected, not by her own sayings or personal authority, but 

 simply by compelling me to read the book thoroughly, for 

 myself. As soon as I was able to read with fluency, she be- 

 gan a course of Bible work with me, which never ceased till 



