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.

Now the grand style is the breathing of a sense of greatness.
When it occurs you sense a mysterious importance lurking behind
the words. It is the accent of the eternal thing in man, the
Soul; and one of the many proofs of the Soul's existence. So
you cannot help being reminded by it of the greatness of the
soul. There are periods when the soul draws near its racial
vehicle, and the veils grow thin between it and