The Great Poets As Religious Teachers (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Great Poets as Religious Teachers

Owing to instincts which are often safer guides than our most elaborate theories, the favorite stories and songs of children, and the folk-lore which has found its way everywhere into human hearts and homes, are made up from traditions which appeal most vividly to the imagination, and people the world with ideal, conceptions. Such are the books like 'bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, of which thousands upon thou sands of copies are demanded by each suc-r cessive generation. In accordance withthese same instincts, and for reasons which have commended themselves to wise and thoughtful men for many generations, the great poets have been recognized as august and effective teachers, and, at the head of those who have given the most perfect ex amples of literature, have had a leading place in the higher systems of education. It has been supposed that by studying them in their native tongues the young would become most thoroughly imbued with their mind and temper. Their sympathies would thus be refined and enlarged. Their higher faculties would be called into' ex ercisel Drawn into closer companionship with those great souls and sharing their highest thoughts, they would naturally rise with them into a higher sphere of life, and unconsciously become endowed with an in tellectual, aesthetlc, and moral dignity, re finement, and simplicity which would hard ly be reached so effectually in any other way.

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