De Quincey classified all writings as belonging either to the literature of knowledge, or the literature of power.  There are books to which we go for information.  They give us facts and ideas.  They constitute the literature of knowledge.  They teach us.  There are books to which we go for inspiration; to which we turn for joy and pleasure, for strength and courage, for patience and endurance, for purity and peace.  They constitute the literature of power.  They move us.  Herbert Spencer’s books belong to the literature of knowledge The “Imitation of Christ” belongs to the literature of power.

The literature of knowledge needs to be reissued every century or generation or decade, corrected up to date.  The literature of power is immortal; fresh to-day though born milleniums ago.  The problems of character and conduct face us much as they faced the Romans and Greeks, the Egyptians and Hindus.  The invisible in nature and in man touches us with the same feelings that it stirred in Persians, Chaldeans and Akkadians Even though the Spirit’s voice spake once in a language of the intellect which has now become obsolete, its utterances are not therefore obsolete.  How archaic is much of the thought of the “Imitation of Christ;” shot through and through as it is with the tissue of mediaeval Catholicism!  But we forget these archaisms in the spell of a holy soul, in love with wisdom, “intoxicated with God.”  No archaisms in Biblical thought destroy its spiritual power over us.  Nay, rather do they strengthen that power:  as in our devotions we naturally seek old and quaint forms, buildings unlike other structures, music which sounds from out the past, words that are mellow with the rich hues of age; as the archaisms of the language of our English Bible hold a power that is lost in the raw correctness of the revised version.

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In the literature of power the Bible ranks first.  Whatever in Christian literature has most searching ethical and spiritual energy radiates the reflected light of the Bible.  Augustine’s Confessions, The Imitation of Christ, Fenelon’s Spiritual Letters, The Saints’ Rest, The Pilgrim’s Progress, in their most appealing tones echo the voices of the Bible.  The hymns that feed the inner life are aromatic with the rich thoughts and feelings of this holy book.  Our poets betray, in the passages which are the favorites of earnest minds, the influence of these Scriptures.  From Paradise Lost to In Memoriam, from The Temple to the Christian Year, the poems which the devout delight in are either Biblical paraphrases or Biblical distillations.  Our masters of fiction could not have written the scenes which most rouse our moral nature, could not have conceived the characters which most inspire our devotional nature, without the Bible.  Take the Bible out of Adam Bede and Dinah Morris, out of Robert Falconer and M. Myriel the blessed Bishop of D., and what would be left of them?  The vibratory quality which most thrills our souls in the strains of Christian literature is due to the Bible material in it.  The Bible holds stored the ethical electricity on which Christendom has drawn, through centuries, exhaustless energy.