Carlyle, Arnold, and Ruskin all make extensive use of such complex echoes of Scripture. In fact, as Susan Hardy Aiken has demonstrated, even unbelievers like John Stuart Mill employed biblical patterns for rhetorical effect. Such allusions to the Bible and to the interpretive traditions by which it was commonly understood play a role in virtually all the sage's other techniques. They appear, for example, throughout various portions of prophetic pattern, especially in the sage's announcement of his interpretative project and in his visionary close, both of which frequently employ allusions to prophetic texts.

Furthermore, although not all symbolical grotesques can accommodate scriptural allusions, those of Carlyle, who often alludes to the brazen serpent and the pillars of cloud and fire, often make elaborate, witty use of them. For example, in constructing a symbolical grotesque from the never-built monument that provides the subject of "Hudson's Statue," rings many changes on the central conceit that modern worship commercial success is a poison from which we can be saved only having the subject of our faith held up before us (as was the brass image of the serpent in Numbers 21:8). Finally, the use of tone and technique drawn from contemporary sermons, like the frequent citation of Scripture and commonplace scriptural exegetics, struck just the right note for many portions of the Victorian audience. Carlylean zeal, like that of Ruskin and Thoreau, proved effective here, as on occasion did Arnoldian urbanity.