No. 44.— 1893.] KNOX'S "CEYLON." 



25 



He describes in a passage, which is too long to quote, how 

 he fell in with an English Bible, and it is evident that this, 

 too, he read so often that he had it almost by heart. He is 

 steeped in the style of the Bible, which has become his 

 natural language, and his pages teem with direct and apposite 

 Biblical allusions. Of the Kandyan king he says : — 



Like Rehoboam he added yet more to the people's yoke. ... he daily 

 ■contriveth and buildeth in his Palace like Nebuchadnezzar. 



Of himself, when forced to leave his quarters owing to an 

 incursion by the Dutch, he says : — 



This called to my remembrance the words of Job : " Naked came I 

 into this world and naked shall I return." 



In one passage he likens himself to Elijah under the 

 juniper tree, and in another to the captive Jews. The ele- 

 phants he met in the woods in the course of his flight to 

 Mannar he looked upon as a help to him in his flight, and 

 compared them to the darkness which came between Israel 

 and the Egyptians. Not only does Knox thus continually 

 use illustrations drawn from the Bible, but he has acquired a 

 Biblical tone of phraseology. The offerings of the Sinhalese 

 are " arms and oblations." He says — 



God gave us favour in the sight of this people. God was pleased by 

 their grief and heaviness to move these heathen to pity. 



Temple offerings he calls " sacrifices offered to idols, " and 

 he speaks of " the famine of God's word and sacrifices." It 

 would be tedious to multiply examples: the perusal of a page 

 of the personal narrative will show that Knox was simply 

 saturated with the Biblical style. 



The following specimen will show what I mean. Speaking 

 of himself after the death of his father he says : — 



Thus was I left Desolate, Sick, and in Captivity, having no earthly 

 Comforter, none but only He who looks down from Heaven to hear the 

 groaning of the Prisoners and to show himself a Father of the Father- 

 less, and a present help to them that have no helper. 



To leave this branch of the subject, I should now like to 

 give some instances of Knox's aptness of diction, a curiosa 



