MR RUSKIN ON BIBLE READING.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 117, 19 May 1877, Page 4

MR RUSKIN ON BIBLE READING.

Mr Raskin writing on this subject says: — How much I owe to my mother for having so exercised me in the Scriptures as to make me grasp them in what my correspondent would call their "concrete whole," and, above all, taught me to reverence them as transcending all thought, and adorning all conduct! This she effected not by her own sayings or personal authority, but simply by compelling me to read the book for myself. As soon as I was able to read with fluency she began a course of Bible work with me which never ceased till I went to Oxford. She read alternate verses with me, watching at first every intonation of my voice, and correcting the false ones, till she made me understand the verse, it within my reach, rightly and energetically. It might be beyond me altogether; that she did notcara about; but she made sure that as soon us I got hold of it at all I should get hold of it by the right end. In this way she began with the first verse of Genesis, and went straight through to the last verse of the Apocalypse — hard names, numbers, Levitical law, and all; and began again at Genesis, next day. If a name was hard, the better the exercise in pronunciation; if a chapter was tiresome the better the lesson in patience; if loathsome, the better the lesson in faith that there was some use in its being so outspoken. After our chapters (from two to three a day, according to their length, the first thing after breakfast and no interruption from servants allowed— none from visitors, who either joined in the reading or had to stay up etairB — and none from any vißitiogs or excursions, except real travelling) I had to learn a few verses by heart, or repeat to make sure I had not lost something already known; and with the chapters above enumerated, I had to learn the whole body of the fine old Scottish Paraphrases, which are good, melodious, and forceful verse, and to which, together with the Bible itself, I owe the first cultivation of my ear in sound. It is strange that, of all the pieces of the Bible which my mother thus taught me, that which cost me most to learn, and which was to my child's mind chiefly repulsive the one hundred and nineteenth Psalmhas now become of all the most precious to me in its overflowing and glorious passion, of love for the law of God.