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Possibly when he comes to talk of the glories "laid up," this same preacher may find need for some new forms of expression. Perhaps he will not find it possible to speak with the old literalism of his predecessors. But the living core of the message is still his as it was theirs. The divine example, too, is before him every time he harks back to his Master's presence.
Russian literalism, like many early Christian heresies, interprets the prophets and the Apocalypse in a purely material sense. The mujik or artisan looks for the establishment of Christ's temporal kingdom, and anticipates the dominion promised to the saints. Such a belief opens the door to a trust in prophets, and to all the extravagances and rascalities that come in its train.
With provoking literalism he gave a critical glance at the bridle. "He's all right," he said, not caring much, in truth, whether the cob broke loose or not. So she followed him across the road into the lane, because it hardly seemed civil to let him go alone, and because he would not know what to do with the milk when he got to the yard. She did not, however, like this position.
And we find this: 'That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple. Let us examine this desire, And, first of all, we must free our minds from mere literalism. If we do not, we shall find in this desire many things that are not in it, and miss everything that is in it.
This was disputed by Dave, whom contact with an unfeeling World was hardening to a cruel literalism. Dave, when he was not scheming a display of recent Academical acquirements to Mrs. Prichard, dwelt a good deal on the bad faith of the postman, who had not brought him the two letters he certainly had a right to expect, one from each of his Grannies.
Since art is both truth and charm, record and poetry, there is a great satisfaction in watching the flowering of a positive talent, after the inevitable stages of literalism are passed, into the beauty of intelligent generalization.
Such an issue once resolutely forced would therewith collapse, for it would pit the qualitative standards against the quantitative, the imagination against literalism, the creative spirit in man against the machine in him. Here, then, is the difference between the naturalist's and the religionist's attitude toward Nature.
"They are satisfied, as the common people were, with a degraded literalism," she went on. "Nut was the Heavens, who spread herself across the earth in the form of a woman; Shu, the vastness of space; the ibis typified Thoth, and Hathor was the Patron of the Western Hills; Khonsu, the moon, was personified, as was the deity of the Nile.
It is almost inconceivable to us how so disgusting a cultus could have been joined with innocence of life; but as Priapus long maintained his place as a rustic deity we must suppose that the hideous literalism of his surroundings must have been got over by ingenious allegorising, or forgotten by rustic veneration. On the MS. of Petronius.
And now let us free our minds from the literalism of this promise and get a glimpse of its deeper application to our lives. The threshold of the home does not draw the truest division-line in life between the outward and the inward. Life is made up of thought and action, of the manifest things and the hidden things.
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