Emerson writes: 

“The most original book in the world is the Bible.  This old collection of the ejaculations of love and dread, of the supreme desires and contritions of men, proceeding out of the region of the grand and eternal seems ... the alphabet of the nations, and all posterior writings, either the chronicles of facts under very inferior ideas, or when it rises to sentiment, the combinations, analogies, or degradation of this.  The elevation of this book may be measured by observing how certainly all observation of thought clothes itself in the words and forms of speech of that book....  Whatever is majestically thought in a great moral element, instantly approaches this old Sanscrit....  Shakspeare, the first literary genius of the world, the highest in whom the moral is not the predominating element, leans on the Bible; his poetry presupposes it.  If we examine this brilliant influence—­Shakspeare—­as it lies in our minds, we shall find it reverent, not only of the letter of this book, but of the whole frame of society which stood in Europe upon it, deeply indebted to the traditional morality, in short, compared with the tone of the Prophets, secondary....  People imagine that the place which the Bible holds in the world, it owes to miracles.  It owes it simply to the fact that it came out of a profounder depth of thought than any other book."[18]

Even what seem to us valueless books turn out, when studied naturally, most interesting and suggestive.

Jonah, that stone of stumbling and rock of offence to the modern youth, becomes, when rightly read, a noble writing, full of the very spirit of our age.  Around the tradition of Jonah, the son of Amittai, a prophet of whom we know nothing in other writings, some forgotten author has woven a story, to point a lofty moral.  Jonah feels himself called to go to Nineveh and cry against it, because of its wickedness.  Quite naturally he does not relish such an errand.

The prospect of a poor Jew’s reforming the gay and dissolute metropolis of the earth, which sat as a queen among the nations, singing to herself, “I will be a lady forever,” was not brilliant enough to fascinate him; and the prospect of the reward he would get from the luxurious people of pleasure, whose well-opiated consciences he should rudely rouse by calling their intrigues and carousals wickedness, was only too clear.  Jonah fled from his duty.  In his flight occurs the marvelous experience with the big fish, that has so troubled dear, pious people who have read as literal history what is plainly legendary.  After this fabulous episode, the story takes up its ethical thread.  Jonah finds that he cannot flee from the presence of the Lord, that he cannot decline a mission imposed from on high.  He goes to Nineveh; cries out against its sins, as God had told him; and, as God had not told him, predicts its overthrow in forty days, as a judgment on its crimes.  But,