Sometime last Century a Black Potentate from Africa visited
England, and was duly amazed at all he saw. Being a very
important person indeed, he was invited to pay his respects to
Queen Victoria. he told her of the many wonders he had seen;
and took occasion to ask her, as the supreme authority, how such
things came to be. What was 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