Dr. Henry W. Coray of Goleta, California is a retired minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and an author. THE OUTLOOK greatly appreciates his readiness to comply with the request that he write this article on “Apples of Gold.” This topic was assigned to him because of his outstanding and recognized literary ability, as seen, for example, in his brilliant novel, Rebel Prince, based on the story of Absalom and published by Fleming H. Revell Company. The title, “Apples of Gold” is from Proverbs 25:11: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.”
One of the reasons that should induce men to entertain a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scriptures, suggests the Westminster Confession of Faith, is “the majesty of the style.” In view of the avalanche of what the late Dr. J. Gresham Machen used to label “these jazzed-up versions” (of which the so-called Living Bible is the disaster of disasters) the question that naturally arises is, “what has become of the majesty of the style?” In its place is substituted newspaper language. It is, alas, bad newspaper language at that. With what result? The gullible Christian community, instead of being enriched in all utterance and in all knowledge, is becoming pauperized in all utterance and in all knowledge.
One is reminded of Borowitz scathing denunciation of certain modern writers: “Their conversational style is cleverly designed to avoid genuine communication. The reason is simple. They are so impoverished themselves that they have nothing to give the other person.”
With keen and fine penetration Martin Luther saw the deterioration of Christian theology with the decline and fall of proper phraseology. “I am persuaded,” he said, “that without the knowledge of literature theology cannot at all endure, just as heretofore when letters have declined and lain prostrate; nay. I see that there has never been a great revelation of the Word of God unless God has first prepared the way by the rise and prosperity of language and letters, as though they were John the Baptists.”
Luther’s thesis is supported by history. It is not without significance that the Renaissance, the revival of art, literature, and broad learning, originating in Italy and then spreading throughout all of Europe and extending roughly from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, laid a cultural foundation for the Reformation and pressed forward hand-in-hand with that mighty movement.
Or take a lesson from the American scene. Literary critics are agreed that jonathan Edwards rates as one of the most gifted of our country’s early writers. And he, together with George Whitefield, a product of Oxford University and a brilliant wordsmith in his own right, was used of God to spearhead the Great Awakening.
It was true in Paul’s day, as in our own, that relatively “not many wise, not many noble, not many mighty are called.” “Not many” ought not to be construed as “not all.” Paul’s scalped–like mind undoubtedly ranks with that of Plato and Aristotle in its profundity.
The same could be said of Augustine. The writings of the Bishop of Hippo are indeed “apples of gold in pictures of silver.” Who can read passages like the following without feeling stirred to the recesses of his soul?
“. . . O Thou Most highest, most good, most potent, most omnipotent; most merciful, yet most just; most hidden, yet most present; fairest, yet most strong; firm fixed, yet incomprehensible; who changest not, yet changest all things; never new, never old; yet who makest all things new, and ‘Bringest age upon the proud, and they know it not’; ever working, ever at rest; that gatherest, yet lackest nothing; that bearest, and fillest, and coverest; that createst, and nourishest, and makest perfect; that seekest, and yet possessest all things. Thou dost love without passion; Thou art jealous, without anxiety; Thou repentest without grief; Thou art angry without disquiet; Thou changest thy works, without changing Thy purpose.”
Another illustration of the way Luther‘s proposition works out is—you’ve probably guessed it—Calvin‘s Institutes. The Dedication of that monumental work—who can measure its influence? – “To His Most Christian Majesty, King of the French” is characteristic of his writing. Here is an excerpt:
“But our doctrine must stand, exalted above all the glory, and invincible by all the powers of the world; because it is not ours, but the doctrine of the living God, and of His Christ, whom the Father hath constituted King, that He may have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth, and that He may rule in such a manner that the whole earth, with its strength of iron and with its splendor of gold and silver, smitten by the rod of His mouth, may be broken to pieces like a potter’s vessel; for thus do the prophets foretell the magnificance of His Kingdom:
“How forcible,” said job, “are right words!” John Calvin‘s expressions as well as his thoughts are full of freshness and vigor. john Allen applauds the Dedication as “one of the most masterly compositions of modern times. The purity, elegance, and energy of style, the bold, yet respectful, freedom of address . . . will surely permit no reader of taste or piety to withhold his concurrence from the general admiration which it has received.”
Our Lord was quick to catch the mood of His day. “Whereunto shall I liken the men of this generation?” He asked. “And to what are they like? They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling to one another, and saying, ‘We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept.’” It was another way of charging His contemporaries with acting like spoiled children, sullen, petulant, impossible to please.
If we Christians have a modicum of discernment we will realize that culturally our ear has fallen on evil days. In the cinema, in the novel, and on the tube cynicism, obscenity, blasphemy, and vulgarity are enjoying enormous popularity. There is a philosophical reason for this. Literary criitic Edmund Fuller has rightly analyzed it. “I believe that in the curdled disillusionment of the worship of the creature instead of the Creator we find the source of the ugliest, most loveless and despairing, veins of modern writing.”
Now it ought to be admitted that all talent, whether in the sphere of common grace or special grace—all talent comes from the Spirit of God. “What hast thou that thou didst not receive?” It is possible that some have not had the opportunity to move into higher education or graduate schooling and yet have been blessed with a sharp imagination, an unusual insight into the complex machinery of the human spirit, and a latent gift of expression. Take courage. Charles Haddon Spurgeon never attended college or seminary. Yet he became “the prince of preachers” and a marvelous writer. Oh yes, he was a ten-talent man. He was also a tireless worker. He read Shakespeare’s plays once a year. So familiar did he become with the Puritan scholars that he could go into his study at night and without a light pick out any commentary in his library!
John Bunyan’s Pilgrim‘s Progress has been published in more languages than any other book in the world, the Bible excepted. Bunyan was an “unlearned and ignorant man,” according to the standards of intellectual snobs. I hope I may be pardoned for quoting a eulogy in my monograph on him in A Treasure of Evangelical Writings:
“The secret of his fantastic success was probably above everything else his use of the English language. It is sheer wizardry. He stuck to the principle of economy, never inserting a word unless he had to. There are no purple patches of rhetoric. Each word has its proper place, like a gem in a coronet. He shunned the abstract, always chose the concrete. Like his divine Master, he taught in parables. And his diction has the pure strain of the King James Version, in which he was steeped. This is the key to his universality. Little children can understand him, and learned adults too. ‘A diamond,’ says Bacon, ‘is best plain set.’”
And Froude says of the Tinker of Bedford: “the Holy War would have entitled Bunyan to a place among the masters of English literature.”
It is my conviction that out there in the region of thinking men and women are aliens separated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise who need to be and indeed can be, God. willing, moved toward Zion through the written page as well as the spoken word. The great Abraham Kuyper confessed that it was the reading of a novel that contributed to his awakening to righteousness.
I wonder if Christian adults ever think to plead with our Heavenly Father to endow young people with tongues of fire and pens of ready writers to project the truth of God, sometimes in unconventional ways, to a desperately needy world.