From time to time there occur painful reminders of the fact that men supposed to know literature do not understand it because they are not familiar with the Bible. Some years ago a college president tested a class of thirty-four men with a score of extracts from Tennyson, each of which contained a Scriptural allusion, none of them obscure. The replies were suggestive and quite appalling. Tennyson wrote, in the "Supposed Confessions":
"My sin was a thorn among the thorns that girt Thy brow."
Of these thirty-four young men nine of them did not understand that quotation. Tennyson wrote:
"Like Hezekiah's, backward runs The shadow of my days."
Thirty-two of the thirty-four did not know what that meant. The meaning of the line,
"For I have flung thee pearls and find thee swine,"
was utterly obscure to twenty-two of the thirty- four. One of them said it was a reference to "good opportunities given but not improved." Another said it was equivalent to the counsel "not to expect to find gold in a hay-stack." Even the line,
"A Jonah's gourd Up in one night, and due to sudden sun,"
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