No sooner had I taken my leave, than I was informed that an old lady of my acquaintance had summoned me in haste. She said she was much impressed by this extraordinary calamity. As, to my certain knowledge, she had never troubled the contents of the book, I was surprised that she had so taken to heart the loss of that which had, practically, been lost to her all her days. "Sir" said she, the moment I entered, "the Bible, the Bible." "Yes, madam," said I, "this is a very grievous and terrible visitation. I hope we may learn the lessons which it is calculated to teach us." "I am sure," answered she, "I am not likely to forget it for a while, for it has been a grievous loss to me." "I told her I was very glad." "Glad!" she rejoined. "Yes," I said, "I am glad to find that you think it so great a loss, for that loss may then be a gain indeed. There is, thanks be to God, enough left in our memories to carry us to heaven." "Ah! but," said she, "the hundred pounds and the villany of my maid-servant. Have you not heard?" This gave me some glimpse as to the secret of her sorrow. She told me that she had deposited several bank-notes in the leaves of her family Bible, thinking that, to be sure, nobody was likely to look there for them. "No sooner," said she, "were the Bibles made useless by this strange event, than my servant peeped into every copy in the house, and she now denies that she found any thing in my old family Bible, except two or three blank leaves of thin paper, which, she says, she destroyed; that, if any characters were ever on them, they must have been erased when those of the Bible were obliterated. But I am sure she lies; for who would believe that Heaven took the trouble to blot out my precious bank-notes. They were not God's word, I trow." It was clear that she considered the "promise to pay" better by far than any "promises" which the book contained. "I should not have cared so much about the Bible," she whined, hypocritically, "because, as you truly observe, our memories may retain enough to carry us to heaven,"—a little in that case would certainly go a great way, I thought to myself,—"and if not, there are those who can supply the loss. But who is to get my bank-notes back again? Other people have only lost their Bibles." It was, indeed, a case beyond my power of consolation.
The calamity not only strongly stirred the feelings of men, and upon the whole, I think, beneficially, but it immediately stimulated their ingenuity. It was wonderful to see the energy with which men discussed the subject, and the zeal, too, with which they ultimately exerted themselves to repair the loss. I could even hardly regret it, when I considered what a spectacle of intense activity, intellectual and moral, the visitation had occasioned. It was very early suggested, that the whole Bible had again and again been quoted piecemeal in one book or other; that it had impressed its own image on the surface of human literature, and had been reflected on its course as the stars on a steam. But, alas! on investigation, it was found as vain to expect that the gleam of starlight would still remain mirrored in the water when the clouds had veiled the stars themselves, as that the bright characters of the Bible would remain reflected in the books of man when had been erased from the Book of God. On inspection it was found that every text, every phrase which had been quoted, not only in the books of devotion and theology, but in those of poetry and fiction, had been remorselessly expunged. Never before had I had any adequate idea of the extent to which the Bible had moulded the intellectual and moral life of the last eighteen centuries, nor how intimately it had interfused itself with habits of thought and modes of expression; nor how naturally and extensively its comprehensive imagery and language had been introduced into human writings, and most of all where there had been most of genius. A vast portion of literature became instantly worthless, and was transformed into so much waste-paper. It was almost impossible to look into any book of any merit, and read ten pages together, without coming to some provoking erasures and mutilations, some "hiatus valde deflendi," which made whole passages perfectly unintelligible. Many of the sweetest passages of Shakspeare were converted into unmeaning nonsense, from the absence of those words which his own all but divine genius had appropriated from a still diviner source. As to Milton, he was nearly ruined, as might naturally be supposed. Walter Scott's novels were filled with perpetual lacunae. I hoped it might be otherwise with the philosophers, and so it was; but even here it was curious to see what strange ravages the visitation had wrought. Some of the most beautiful and comprehensive of Bacon's Aphorisms were reduced to enigmatical nonsense.
Those who held large stocks of books knew not what to do. Ruin stared them in the face; their value fell seventy or eighty per cent. All branches of theology, in particular, were a drug. One fellow said, that he should not so much have minded if the miracle had sponged out what was human as well as what was divine, for in that case he would at least have had so many thousand volumes of fair blank paper, which was as much as many of them were worth before. A wag answered, that it was not usual, in despoiling a house, to carry away any thing except the valuables. Meantime, millions of blank Bibles filled the shelves of stationers, to be sold for day-books and ledgers, so that there seemed to be no more employment for the paper-makers in that direction for many years to come. A friend, who used to mourn over the thought of palimpsest manuscripts,—of portions of Livy and Cicero erased to make way for the nonsense of some old monkish chronicler, —exclaimed, as he saw a tradesman trudging off with a handsome morocco-bound quarto for a day-book, "Only think of the pages once filled with the poetry of Isaiah, and the parables of Christ, sponged clean to make way for orders for silks and satins, muslins, cheese, and bacon!" The old authors, of course, were left to their mutilations; there was no way in which the confusion could be remedied. But the living began to prepare new editions of their works, in which they endeavored to give a new turn to the thoughts which had been mutilated by erasure, and I was nor a little amused to see that many, having stolen from writers whose compositions were as much mutilated as their own, could not tell the meaning of their own pages.
It seemed at first to be a not unnatural impression, that even those who could recall the erased texts as they perused the injured books, —who could mentally full up the imperfect clauses,—were not at liberty to inscribe them; they seemed to fear that, if they did so, the characters would be as if written in invisible ink, or would surely fade away. It was with trembling that some at length made the attempt, and to their unspeakable joy found the impression durable. Day after day passed; still the characters remained; and the people length came to the conclusion, that God left them at liberty, if they could, to reconstruct the Bible for themselves out of their collective remembrances of its divine contents. This led again to some curious results, all of them singularly indicative of the good and ill that is in human nature. It was with incredible joy that men came to the conclusion that the book might be thus recovered nearly entire, and nearly in the very words of the original, by the combined effort of human memories. Some of the obscurest of the species, who had studied nothing else but the Bible, but who had well studied that, came to be objects of reverence among Christians and booksellers; and the various texts they quoted were taken down with the utmost care. He who could fill up a chasm by the restoration of words which were only partially remembered, or could contribute the least text that had been forgotten, was regarded as a sort of public benefactor. At length, a great public movement amongst the divines of all denominations was projected, to collate the results of these partial recoveries of the sacred text. It was curious, again, to see in how various ways human passions and prejudices came into play. It was found that the several parties who had furnished from memory the same portions of the sacred texts had fallen into a great variety of different readings; and though most of them were of as little importance in themselves as the bulk of those which are paraded in the critical recensions of Mill, Griesbach, or Tischendorf, they became, from the obstinacy and folly of the men who contended about them, important differences, merely because they were differences. Two reverend men of the synod, I remember, had a rather tough dispute as to whether it was twelve baskets full of fragments of the five loaves which the five thousand left, and seven baskets full of the seven loaves which the four thousand had left, or vice versa: as also whether the words in John vi. 19 were "about twenty or five and twenty," or "about thirty or five and thirty furlongs."
To do the assembly justice, however, there was found an intense general earnestness and sincerity befitting the occasion, and an equally intense desire to obtain, as nearly as possible, the very words of the lost volume; only (as was also, alas! natural) vanity in some; in others, confidence in their strong impressions and in the accuracy of their memory; obstinacy and pertinacity in many more (all aggravated as usual by controversy),—caused many odd embarrassments before the final adjustment was effected.
I was particularly struck with the varieties of reading which mere prejudices in favor of certain systems of theology occasioned in the several partisans of each. No doubt the worthy men were generally unconscious of the influence of these prejudices; yet, somehow, the memory was seldom so dear in relation to those texts which told against them as in relation to those which told for them. A certain Quaker had an impression that the words instituting the Eucharist were preceded by a qualifying expression, "And Jesus said to the twelve, Do this in remembrance of me"; while he could not exactly recollect whether or not the formula of "baptism" was expressed in the general terms some maintained it was. Several Unitarians had a clear recollection, that in several places the authority of manuscripts, as estimated in Griesbaeh's recension, was decidedly against the common reading; while the Trinitarians maintained that Griesbaeb's recension in those instances had left that reading undisturbed. An Episcopalian began to bare his doubts whether the usage in favor of the interchange of the words "bishop" and "presbyter" was so uniform as the Presbyterian and Independent maintained, and whether there was not a passage in which Timothy and Titus were expressly called "bishops." The Presbyterian and Independent had similar biases; and one gentleman, who was a strenuous advocate of the system of the latter, enforced one equivocal remembrance by saying, he could, as it were, distinctly see the very spot on the page before his mind's eye. Such tricks will imagination play with the memory, when preconception plays tricks with the imagination! In like manner; it was seen that, while the Calvinist was very distinct in his recollection of the ninth chapter of Romans, his memory was very faint as respects the exact wording of some of the verses in the Epistle of James; and though the Arminian had a most vivacious impression of all those passages which spoke of the claims of the law, he was in some doubt whether the Apostle Paul's sentiments respecting human depravity, and justification by faith alone, had not been a little exaggerated. In short, it very dearly appeared that tradition was no safe guide; that if, even while she was hardly a month old; she could play such freaks with the memories of honest people, there was but a sorry prospect of the secure transmission of truth for eighteen hundred years. From each man's memory seemed to glide something or other which he was not inclined to retain there, and each seemed to substitute in its stead something that he liked better.
Though the assembly was in the main most anxious to come to a right decision, and really advanced an immense way towards completing a true and faithful copy of the lost original, the disputes which arose, on almost every point of theology, promised the world an abundant crop of new sects and schisms. Already there had sprung up several whose names had never been heard of in the world, but for this calamity. Amongst them were two who were called the "Long Memories" and the "Short Memories." Their general tendencies coincided pretty much with those of the orthodox and the rationalists.
It was curious to see by what odd associations, sometimes of contrast, sometimes of resemblance, obscure texts were recovered, though they were verified, when once mentioned, by the consciousness of hundreds. One old gentleman, a miser, contributed (and it was all he did contribute) a maxim of prudence, which he recollected, principally from having systematically abused it. All the ethical maxims, indeed, were soon collected; for though, as usual, no one recollected his own peculiar duties or infirmities, every one, as usual, kindly remembered those of his neighbors. Husbands remembered what was due from their wives, and wives what was due from their husbands. The unpleasant sayings about "better to dwell on the house-top" and "the perpetual dropping on a very rainy day" were called to mind by thousands. Almost the whole of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes were contributed, in the merest fragments, in this way. As for Solomon's "times for every thing," few could remember them all, but every body remembered some. Undertakers said there was a "time to mourn," and comedians that there was a "time to laugh"; young ladies innumerable remembered that there was a "time to love," and people of all kinds that there was a "time to hate"; every body knew there was a "time to speak," but a worthy Quaker reminded them that there was also a "time to keep silence."
Some dry parts of the laws of Moses were recovered by the memory of jurists, who seemed to have no knowledge whatever of any other parts of the sacred volume; while in like manner one or two antiquarians supplied some very difficult genealogical and chronological matters, in equal ignorance of the moral and spiritual contents of the Scriptures.
As people became accustomed to the phenomenon, the perverse humors of mankind displayed themselves in a variety of ways. The efforts of the pious assembly were abundantly laughed at; but I must, in justice, add, without driving them from their purpose. Some profane wags suggested there was now a good opportunity of realizing the scheme taking "not" out of the Commandments and inserting it in the Creed. But they were sarcastically told, that the old objection to the plan would still apply; that they would not sin with equal relish if they were expressly commanded to do so, nor take such pleasure in infidelity if infidelity became a duty. Others said that, if the world must wait till the synod had concluded its labors, the prophecies of the New Testament would not be written till some time after their fulfilment; and that, if all the conjectures of the learned divines were inserted in the new edition of the Bible, the declaration in John would be literally verified, and that "the world itself would not contain all the books which would be written."