The Worlds Best Poetry, Volume 4 | Page 2

of religion and poetry
may now be discussed with no fear of misunderstandings. These
relations are close and vital. Poetry is indebted to religion for its largest
and loftiest inspirations, and religion is indebted to poetry for its
subtlest and most luminous interpretations.
Religion is related to poetry as life is related to art. Religion is life, the
life of God in the soul of man--the response of man's spirit to the
attractions of the divine Spirit. Poetry is an interpretation of life.
Religious poetry endeavors to express, in beautiful forms, the facts of
the religious life. There is poetry that is not religious; poetry which
deals only with that which is purely sensuous, poetry which does not
hint at spiritual facts, or divine relations; and there is religion which has
but little to do with poetry: but the highest religious thoughts and
feelings are greatly served by putting them into poetic forms; and the
greatest poetry is always that which sets forth the facts of the religious
life. "Without love to man and love to God," says Dr. Strong, "the
greatest poetry is impossible. Mere human love to God is not enough to
stir the deepest chords either in the poet or in his readers. It is the
connection of human love with the divine love that gives it permanence
and security."[A]
If, then, religion is the supreme experience of the human spirit, and that
experience finds its most perfect literary expression in poetry, the
present volume ought to contain a precious collection of the best
literature. And any one who wished to give to a friend a volume which
would convey to him the essential elements of religion would probably
be safe to choose this volume rather than any prose treatise upon
theology ever printed. He who reads this book through will get a clearer
and truer idea of what the religious life is than any philosophical
discussion could give him. For this poetry is an attempt to express life,
not to explain it. It offers pictures or reports rather than analyses of
religious experience. It gives utterance to the real life of religion in the
individual soul, and is not a generalization of religious thoughts and

feelings.
The sources from which this collection has been drawn are abundant
and varied. The psalmody and hymnology of the church furnish a vast
preserve, the exploration of which would be a large undertaking. It
must be confessed that the pious people who had in their hands some of
the ancient hymn-books were justified in feeling that religion and
poetry were not closely related, for many of the hymns they were wont
to sing were guiltless of any poetic character. It was too often evident
that the hymn-writer had been more intent on giving metrical form to
proper theological concepts than on giving utterance to his own
religious life. But the feeling has been growing that in hymns, at any
rate, life is more than dogma; and we have now some collections of
hymns that come pretty near being books of poetry. The improvement
in this department of literature within the past twenty-five years has
been marked. There is still, indeed, in many hymnals, and especially in
hymnals for Sunday schools and social meetings, much doggerel; but
large recent contributions of hymns which are true poetry, many of the
best of them from American sources, have made it possible to furnish
our congregations with admirable manuals of praise.
The indebtedness of religion to poetry which is thus expressed in the
hymnology of the church is very large. Probably many of us are
indebted for definite and permanent religious conceptions and
impressions quite as much to felicitous phrases of hymns as to any
words of sermon or catechism. Our most positive convictions of
religious truth are apt to come to us in some line or stanza that tells the
whole story. The rhythm and the rhyme have helped to fix it and hold it
in the memory.
This is true not only of the hymns of the church but of many poems that
are not suitable for singing. English poetry is especially rich in
meditative and devotional elements, and of no period has this been
more true than of the nineteenth century. Cowper, Wordsworth,
Coleridge, the Brownings, Tennyson and Matthew Arnold, on the other
side of the sea, with Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, Whittier, Lowell,
Holmes, Lanier, Sill and Gilder on this side--these and many

others--have made most precious additions to our store of religious
poetry. The century has been one of great perturbations in religious
thought; the advent of the evolutionary philosophy threatened all the
theological foundations, and there was need of a thorough revision of
the dogmas which were based on a mechanical theology, and of a
reinterpretation of the life of the