E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle,

“And then we came forth to behold again the Stars;” and who came from his ascent through purifying Purgatory with

     Rifatto si, come piante novelle
     Rinnovellate di novella fronda,
     Puro e disposto a salire alle stelle—­

“So made anew, like young plants in spring with fresh foliage, I was pure and disposed to come forth among the Stars;”—­and who must end his Paradiso and his life-work announcing

     L’amor che muove il sole e le altre stelle,

“The Love that moves the sun and the other Stars.”  Ah, glory to this Dante!  Glory to the man who would end nothing but with the stars!

III.  GREEKS AND PERSIANS

Now to consider what this Blind Maeonides did for Greece.  Sometime last Century a Black Potentate from Africa visited England, and was duly amazed at all he saw.  Being a very important person indeed, he was invited to pay his respects to Queen Victoria. he told her of the many wonders he had seen; and took occasion to ask her, as the supreme authority, how such things came to be.  What was the secret of England’s greatness?  —­She rose to it magnificently, and did precisely what a large section of her subjects would have expected of her.  She solemnly handed him a copy of the Bible, and told him he should find his answer in that.

She was thinking, no doubt, of the influence of Christian teaching; if called on for the exact passage that had worked the wonder, very likely she would have turned to the Sermon on the Mount.  Well; very few empires have founded their material greatness on such texts, as The meek shall inherit the earth. They take a shorter road to it.  If a man ask of thee thy coat, and thou give him thy cloak also, thou dost not (generally) build thyself a world-wide commerce.  When he smiteth thee on they left cheek, and thou turnest to him thy right for the complementary buffet, thou dost not (as a rule) become shortly possessed of his territories.  Queen Victoria lived in an age when people did not notice these little discrepancies; so did Mr. Podsnap.  And yet there was much more truth in her answer than you might think.

King James’s Bible is a monument of mighty literary style; and one that generations of Englishmen have regarded as divine, a message from the Ruler of the Stars.  They have been reading it, and hearing it read in the churches, for three hundred years.  Its language has been far more familiar to them than that of any other book whatsoever; more common quotations come from it, probably, than from all other sources combined.  The Puritans of old, like the Nonconformists now, completely identified themselves with the folk it tells about:  Cromwell’s armies saw in the hands of their great captain “the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.”  When the Roundhead went into battle, or when the Revivalist goes to prayer meeting, he heard and hears the command of Jehovah to “go up to Ramoth Gilead and prosper”; to “smite Amalek hip and thigh.”  Phrases from the Old Testament are in the mouths of millions daily; and they are phrases couched in the grand literary style.