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! SPIRIT OF THE HEBREW

POETRY.

ISAAC TAYLOR.
WITH A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OP THE ATJTHOE
AND A
CATALOGUE OF Ills WRITINGS.

NEW YORK:
WILLIAM GO WANS,

1862,

SU-tc.

CONTEN T S .

YXC.F.
Preface. .  v
CHAPTER I.
1 he Relation of the Hebrew Poetry to the Religious Purposes
it Subserves.  11
CHAPTER II.
Commixture of the Divine and the Human Elements in the
Hebrew Poetic Scriptures  31
CHAPTER III.
Artificial Structure of the Hebrew Poetry, as related to its
Purposes.  46
CHAPTER IT.
The Ancient Palestine — the Birthplace of Poetry. . . .63
CHAPTER V.
The Tradition of a Paradise is the Germ of Poetry. ... 94
CHAPTER VI.
Biblical Idea of Patriarchal Life. . *  101
CHAPTER VII.
The Israelite of the Exodus, and the Theocracy. . . .109

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VIII.
Poetry in the Book of Job  . . 128
CHAPTER IX.
Poetry in the Psalms  .136
CHAPTER X.
Solomon, and the Sorig of Songs  16 j
CHAPTER XI.
The Poetry of tho Earlier Hebrew Prophets. .... 178
CHAPTER XII.
Culmination of the Hebrew Poetry and Prophecy in Isaiah. . 194
CHAPTER XIII,
Tlie Later Prophets, and the Disappearance of the roetic Ele
ment in the Hebrew Scriptures. . . . . 212
CHAPTER XIV.
Tho Millennium of the Hebrew Poetry, and the Principle
which Pervades it.  229
CHAPTER XV.
The Hebrew Literature, and other Literatures .... 241
CHAPTER XVI.
Tlie Hebrew Poetry, arid the Divine Legation of tlie Prophets. . 255
CHAPTER XVII.
Continuance of tlie Hebrew Poetry and Prophecy to the
World's End. .  273
Noies. Biographic \l Sketch. Catalogue of Writings.

PREFACE.

The title of this volume is the same as that of a course
of lectures which I delivered at Edinburgh, and after
wards at Glasgow, in the winter of 1S52. At the time
I was asked to publish these lectures ; but as in the pre
paration of them I hnd not been able to command much
leisure, I felt no inclination to bring them forward, such
as they were when delivered.
But in looking at the notes of those lectures, once and
again in the course of these ten years, they seemed to
contain some germs of thought which might be brought
to bear upon the great biblical argument that has lately
awakened the attention of the religious community.
This biblical argument which, as to its substance, is still
in progress, gives a new meaning, ov an enhanced im
portance, to most ofthe questions that come within the
range of Christian belief, or of biblical criticism ; and it
follows therefore that what might be said or written ten
years ago, on any of these subjects, will need to be
reconsidered, and, in fact, re-written, at the present
time. So it has been that, in preparing this volume for

VI PREFACE.
the press — with the notes of the lectures before me — a
few passages only have seemed to me entirely available
for my purpose. I have indeed adopted the title of the
lectures as the title of the volume ; and as much perhaps
as the quantity of three of the following chapters has
been transferred from those notes to these pages. This
explanation is due from me to any readers of the book
who, by chance, might have been among the hearers of
the lectures, either at Edinburgh, or at Glasgow, in the
November of 1852.
A momentous argument indeed it is that has lately
moved the religious mind in England. So far as this
controversy has had the character of an agitation, it
must, in the course of things, soon cease to engage
popular regard : — agitations subside, and the public
mind — too quickly perhaps —returns to its point of
equipoise, where it rests until it is moved anew in some
other manner. It would, however, be an error to sup
pose that the agitation will not have brought about
some permanent changes in religious thought; and,
moreover, if a supposition of this kind would be an
error, something worse than simply an error would be
implied if any should indulge a wish that things might
be allowed to collapse into their anterior position,
unchanged and unbencfited, by the recent controversy.
A wish of this sort would indicate at once extreme
ignorance as to the cause and the nature of the arjm-
ment, and moreover a culpable indifference in relation

PREFACE. Vii
to the progress and the re-establishment of Christian
belief. Animated, or — it may be — passionate, religious con
troversies are hurricanes in the world of thought,
ordained of God for effecting purposes which would not
be effected otherwise than by the violence of storms ;
and let this figure serve us a step further. — The same
hurricane which clears the atmosphere, and which sweeps
away noxious accumulations from the surface of the
earth, serves a not less important purpose in bringing
into view the fissures, the settlements, the forgotten
rents in the structures we inhabit. It is Heaven's own
work thus to purify the atmosphere ; but it is man's
work to look anew to his own house — after a storm, and
to repair its dilapidations. To rejoice gratefully in a
health-giving atmosphere, and a clear sky, is what is
due to piety ; but it is also due to piety to effect, in
time, needed repairs at home.
As to the recent out-speak of unbelief, it is of that
kind which must, in the nature of things, be recurrent,
at intervals, longer or shorter. The very conditions of
a Revelation that has been consigned to various records
in the course of thirty centuries involve a liability to the
renewal of exceptive argumentation, which easily finds
points of lodgment upon so large a surface. But this
periodic atheistic epilepsy (unbelief within the pale of
Christianity never fails to become atheistic) will not
occasion alarm to those who indeed know on what

PREFACE.
ground they stand on the side of religious belief. This
ground has not, and will not, be shaken.
Looking inwards upon our Christianity — looking
Churchward — there may indeed be reason for uneasi
ness. This recent agitation could not fail to bring into
view, in the sight of all men — the religious, and the
irreligious — alike, a defect, a want of understanding, a
flaw, or a fault, in that mass of opinion concerning the
Scriptures, as inspired books, which we have inherited
from our remote ancestors. N"o one, at this time, well
knows what it is which he believes, as to this great
question ; or what it is which he ought to believe con
cerning those conditions — literary and historical — sub
ject to which the Revelation we accept as from God,
and which is attested as such, by miracles, and by the
Divine pra3-notation of events, has been embodied in the
books of the Canon.
There are indeed many who, not only will reject any
such intimation of obscurity or doubtfulness on this
ground, but who will show a hasty resentment of what
they will denounce as au insidious assault upon the
faith. The feelings, or say — the prejudices, of persons
of this class ought to be respected, and their inconside-
rateness should be kindly allowed for ; their fears and
their jealousies are — for the truth ; nor should we im
pute to good men any but the best motives, even when
their want of temper appears to be commensurate with
their want of intelligence. But after showing all for-

P R E F A C K . IX

bearance toward such worthy persons, there is a higher
duty which must not be evaded : — there is a duty to
ourselves, and there is a duty to our immediate succes
sors, and there is a duty to the mass of imperfectly
informed Christian persons, who, in due time, will be
seen insensibly to accept, as good and safe, modes of
thinking and speaking which, at one time, would have
seemed to them quite inadmissible and dangerous.
The remaining- defect or flaw in our scheme of belief
concerning the conveyance of a Supernatural Revelation
makes itself felt the most obtrusively in relation to the
Old Testament Scriptures. It is here, and it is on this
extensive field, that minds, negatively constituted, and
perhaps richly accomplished, but wanting in the grasp
and power of a healthful moral consciousness, and
wholly wanting in spiritual consciousness, find their
occasion. The surface over which a sophisticated reason
and a fastidious taste take their course is here very
large ; for the events of a people's history, and the mul
tifarious literature of many centuries, come to find a
place within its area. The very same extent of surface
from which a better reason, and a more healthful moral
feeling gather an irresistible conviction of the nearness
of God throughout it, furnishes, to an astute and frigid.
critical faculty, a thousand and one instances over which
to proclaim a petty triumph.
So must it ever be. There is here a contrariety
which is inherent in the nature of the case ; and which
1*

PREFACE.
the diverse temperaments of minds will never cease to
bring into collision with religious faith. "What is it then
which might be wished for to preclude the ill conse
quences that accrue from these periodic collisions ? Do
we need some new theory of inspiration ? Or ought
there to take place a stepping back, along the whole
line of religious belief? Or do we need to make a sur
render of certain articles of faith ? Or should we shelter
ourselves under evasions ? Or would it be well to quash
inquiry by authority, or to make a show of terrors for
intimidating assailants? None of these things are
needed ; nor, if resorted to, could they be of any per
manent service.
The requirement is this, as I humbly think — That, on
all hands, we should be willing to throw aside, as unau
thentic and unwarranted, a natural prejudice ; or, let it
rather be called — a spontaneous product of religious
feeling, which leads us to frame conditions, and to insist
upon requirements, that ought, as we imagine, to limit
the Divine wisdom in embodying the Divine will in a
written Revelation. Instead of insisting upon anv such
conditions, ought we not rather, in all humility, to
acknowledge that, in the Divine methods of proceeding
toward mankind — natural, providential, and superna
tural — we have everything to learn, and nothing to
premise ?
SANi-imn Rivers,
S^pl'-wher^ tsGl.

THE
SPIRIT OF THE HEBREW POETRY.

CHAPTER I.
THE RELATION OF THE HEBREW POETRY TO THE RELI
GIOUS PURPOSES IT SUISSERVES.
Whex the Scriptures of the Old Testament are
accepted, collectively, as an embodiment of First
Truths in Theology and Morals, three suppositions
concerning them are before us ; one of which, or a
part of each, we may believe ourselves at liberty to
adopt. The three suppositions are these : —
1. "We may grant that these writings — symbolic as
they are in their phraseology and style, and, to a
great extent, metrical in their structure, as well as
poetical in tone — were well suited to the purposes
of religious instruction among a people, such as we
suppose the Israelitish tribes to have been at the time
of their establishment in Palestine, and such as they
continued to be until some time after the return of the
remnant of the nation from Babylon.
2. More than this we may allow, namely, this — that
these same writings — the history and the poetry

12 THE SPIRIT OF THE

taken together, are also well adapt p-d to the uses and
ends of popular religious instruction in any country
and every age, where and when there are classes
of the community to be taught that are nearly on a
level, intellectually, with the ancient Hebrew race : —
that is to say, among those with whom philosophic
habits of thought have not been developed, and whose
religious notions and instincts are comparatively infan
tile. 3. But a, higher ground than this may be taken,
and it is the ground that is assumed throughout the
ensuing chapters; and it is in accordance with this
assumption, that whatever may be advanced therein
must be interpreted. It is affirmed then, that, not
less in relation to the most highly-cultured minds than
to the most rude — not less to minds disciplined in
abstract thought, than to such as are unused to gene
ralization of any kind— the Hebrew Scriptures, in
their metaphoric style, and their poetic diction, are
the fittest medium for conveying, what it is their pur
pose to convey, concerning the Divine Nature, and
concerning the spiritual life, and concerning the cor
respondence of man — the finite, with God — the Infi
nite. It is on this hypothesis concerning the Hebrew
Scriptures, and not otherwise, that the books of the
New Testament, take possession as consecutive to the
books of the Old Testament— the one being the com
plement ofthe other; and the two constituting a ho
mogeneous system. The Prophets (and they were
Poets) ofthe elder Revelation, having fulfilled' a func
tion which demanded the symbolic style, and which
could submit to no other conditions than those of this

HEBREW POETRY. 13
figurative utterance, the Evangelists and Apostles,
whose style is wholly of another order, do not lay
anew a foundation that was already well laid ; but
they build upou it whatever was peculiar to that later
Revelation of which they were the instruments. In
the Hebrew writings — poetic in form, as to a great
extent they are — we are to find, not a crude theology,
adapted to the gross conceptions of a rude people ; but
an ultimate theology — wanting that only which the
fulness of time was to add to it, and so rendering the
Two Collections — a One Revelation, adapted to the
use of all men, in all times, and under all conditions of
intellectual advancement.
If on subjects of the deepest concernment, and in
relation to which the human mind labours with its own
conceptions, and yearns to know whatever may be
known — Christ and His ministers are brief and allu
sive, they are so, not as if in rebuke of these desires ;
but because the limits of a divine conveyance of the
things of the spiritual world had already been reached
by the choir ofthe prophets. All that could be taught
had been taught " to them of old ;" and this sum of
the philosophy of heaven had been communicated in
those diverse modes and styles which had exhausted
the resources of human utterance to convey so much
as is conveyed.
To give reality to what had been foreshown in
shadows; to accomplish what had been predicted; to
expound, in a higher sense, whatever is universal and
eternal in morals ; to authenticate anew what might
have been called in question — these functions were
proper to the ministers of the L.ter Dispensation; and
the bcoks ofthe New Testament are the record of this

11 THE SPIRIT OF THE
work of completion, in its several kinds. Yet this is
the characteristic of the Christian writings, that they
abstain from the endeavour to throw into an abstract or
philosophic form those first truths of theology to which
the prophets of the Old Testament had given expres
sion in symbolic terms and in the figures of the He
brew poetry. The parables of Christ— symbolic as
they are, but not poetic — touch those things of the
new "kingdom of Heaven" which belong to the human
development of it ; or to the administration of the
Gospel on earth ; or within the consciousness of men
singly. Those who choose to do so may employ their time
in inquiring in what other modes than those which are
characteristic of the Hebrew Scriptures the highest
truths in theology might be embodied, and whether
these principles may not be, or might not have been,
subjected to the conditions of abstract generalization,
and so brought into order within the limits of a logical
and scientific arrangement. Let these philosophic
diversions be pursued, at leisure, until they reach a
result which might be reported of and accepted. Mean
time it is enough for us to know that no such result
has hitherto ever rewarded the labours, either of oriental
sages in the remotest periods, or of Grecian philoso
phers, or of the Alexandiian teachers, or of mediaeval
doctors, or of the great thinkers of the sixteenth cen
tury, or of those of the times in which we live. Meta
physial Theologies, except so far as they take up the
very terms and figures of the Hebrew Scriptures, have
hitherto shown a properly religious aspect in proportion
as they have been unintelligible: — when intelligible
they become — if not atheistic, yet tending in that

HEBREW POETRY, 15
direction. When this is affirmed the inference is not —
that a True Theology might not be embodied in ab
stract terms, in an upper world; but this, that the
terms and the modes of human reason are, and must
ever be, insufficient for purposes of this kind.
This failure, or this succession of failures, may indeed
affect the credit of Philosophy ; but in no degree does
it throw disadvantage upon the religious well-being of
those who are content to take their instruction and
their training from the Holy Scriptures. These writ
ings, age after age, have in fact met, and they have
satisfied the requirements of piety and of virtue in the
instance of millions of the humble and devout readers
of the Bible ; and it has been so as well among the most
highly cultured as among the unlearned ; and they have
imparted to such whatever it is needful and possible
for man to know concerning God, the Creator, the
Ruler, the Father, and concerning that life divine, the
end of which is — the life eternal.
The most obvious difference between the terms and
style of Speculative or Metaphysic Theology, and the
Theology of the Scriptures — of the Old Testament
especially — is this, that while the language of the one
is reduced to a condition as remote as possible from
the figurative mode of conveying thought, the language
ofthe other is, in every instance, purely figurative ;
and that it abstains absolutely, and always, from the
abstract or philosophic usage of the words it employs.
Yet this obvious difference between the two is not the
only dissimilarity ; nor perhaps is it that which is of
the highest importance to be kept in view, for these
two modes of theologie teaching have different inten
tions ; or, as we might say, the centre toward which

16 THE SPIRIT OF THE

the various materials of each system tends is proper to
each, and is exclusive of the other.
Scientific Theology professes to regard the Divine
Nature and attributes as its centre ; and from that
centre (supposed to be known) inferences in all direc
tions are logically derived. But the very contrary of
this is true of Biblical Theology; for the central area
of Biblical Theism is — the human spirit, in its actual
condition, its original powers, its necessary limitations,
its ever varying consciousness, its lapses, its sorrows, its
perils, its hopes, and its fears: — its misjudgments, its
faiths, its unbelief: — its brightness, its darkness : — what
ever is life-like in man, and whatever portends death.
Although the two systems possess in common whatever
is true concerning God, everything within each wears
an aspect widely unlike the aspect which it presents in
the other.
The instinctive tendency of the human miud (or of
a certain class of minds) to generalize, and to pursue,
to their end, the most abstract forms of thought, is not
in itself blameworthy, nor must it be charged with the
ill-consequences and the failures which often are its
fruit. Where there is no generalization there will be
no progress : where there is no endeavour to pass on
from the concrete to the abstract, men individually,
and nations, continue stationary in a rude civilization : —
there may be mind ; but it sleeps ; or it is impotent!)'
active : — it is busy, but it does not travel forward. Yet
it is only within the range of earth, or of things that
arc indeed cognizable by the human mind, that this
power of abstraction — the highest and the noblest of its
powers — can be productive of what must always be its
aim and purpose, namely, an absolute philosophy ; or a

HEBREW POETRY. 17
philosophy which shall be coherent in itself, and shall
be exempt from internal contradictions.
It is on this ground, then, that the Hebrew writers,
in their capacity as teachers of Theology, occupy a
position where they are broadly distinguished from all
other teachers with whom they might properly be com
pared, whether ancient or modern, oriental or western.
Philosophers, or founders of theologies, aiming and in
tending to promulgate a Divine Theory — a scheme
of theism — have spoken of God as the object, or as
the creation of human thought. But the Hebrew
writers, one and all, and with marvellous unanimity,
speak of God relatively oiily ; or as He is related to
the immediate religious purposes of this teaching. Or
if for a moment they utter what might have the aspect
of an abstract proposition, they bring it into contact,
at the nearest possible point, with the spiritual wants
of men, or with their actual moral condition ; as thus,
" Great is the Lord, and of great power, and His un
derstanding is infinite. He telleth the number of the
stars : He calleth them all by their names ;'' but this
Infinite and Almighty Being is He that " healeth the
broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds." It is
the human spirit always that is the central, or cohesive
principle of the Hebrew Theology. The theistic affir
mations that are scattered throughout the books of
the Old Testament are not susceptible of a synthetic
adjustment by any rule of logical distribution; and
although they are never contradictory one of another,
they may seem to be so, inasmuch as the principle
which would show their accordance stands remote
from human apprehension : — it must be so ; and to
suppose otherwise would be to affirm that the finite

18 THE SPIRIT OF THE
mind may grasp the Infinite. The several elements of
this Theism arc complementary one of another, only
in relation to the needs, and to the discipline of the
human mind ; — not so in relation to its modes of specu
lative thought, or to its own reason. Texts packed in
order will not build up a Theology, in a scientific sense;
what they will do is this — they meet the variable neces
sities of the spiritual life, in every mood, and in every
possible occasion of that life. Texts, metaphoric always
in their terms, take effect upon the religious life as
counteractive one of another ; or as remedial appli
ances, which, when rightly employed, preserve and
restore the spiritual health.
If we were to bring together the entire compass of
the figurative theology of the Scriptures (and this must
be the theology ofthe Old Testament) it would be casy
to arrange the whole in perifery around the human spirit,
as related to its manifold experiences; but a hopeless
task it would be to attempt to arrange the same passages
as if in circle around the hypothetic attributes of the
Absolute Being. The human reason fault ers at every
step in attempting so to interpret the Divine Nature ;
vet the quickened soul interprets for itself — and it does
so anew every day, those signal passages upon which the
fears, the hopes, the griefs, the consolations of years
gone by have set their mark.
The religious and spiritual life has its postulates, which
might be specified in order; and under each head they
are broadly distinguishable from what, on the same
ground, might lie named as the postulates of Speculative
Thought. Indispensable, for instance, to the healthful
energy of ihe religions life is an unsophisticated confi
dence in what is termed the omnipresence and omni-

HEBREW POETRY. 19
science of God, the Father of spirits ; but on this ground,
where the Hebrew writers are clear, peremptory, unfal
tering, and unconscious of perplexity, Speculative
Thought stumbles at its first attempts to advance ; and
as to that faculty by aid of which we realize, in some
degree, an abstract principle, and bring it within range
of the imagination, it is here utterly baffled. The belief
iu this doctrine is simple ; — we may say it is natural : —
but as to an intellectual realization of it, this is impos
sible ; and as to a philosophic expression of such a
belief in words, the most acutely analytic minds have
lost their way in utter darkness; or they have landed
themselves in Pantheism ; or they have beguiled them
selves and their disciples with a compage of words with
out meaning. The power of the human mind to admit
simultaneously a consciousness of more than one object
is so limited, or it is so soon quite exhausted, that a doc
trine which we grant to be incontestably certain, refuses
more perhaps than any other, to submit itself to the
conditions of human thought : — it is never mastered.
Aware, as every one who thinks must be, of this insur
mountable difficulty, we ought not to except against
that mode of overleaping the obstruction which the
Hebrew writers offer to our acceptance.- — figurative in
phrase, and categorical in style, they affirm that — "The
eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil
and the good;" or thus again — "Thou knowest my
downsitting and mine uprising; Thou understandest
my thought afar off.''
The longer we labour, in scientific modes, at the ele
ments of Theism the deeper shall we plunge in an abyss ;
and we shall learn, perhaps too late, the wisdom of rest
ing in a devout acknowledgment to this effect—" Such

20 THE SPIRIT OF THE
knowledge (of God) is too wonderful forme: it is high,
I cannot attain unto it." But the Hebrew writers make
short work of philosophic stumbling-blocks ; and they
secure their religious intention, which is their sole inten
tion, in that one mode in which a belief which is indis
pensable to the religious life presents itself, on what
might be called its conceivable side. They affirm the
truth in the most absolute and unexecptive style, giving
it all the breadth it can have ; bnt in doing so, and in
the same breath, they affirm that which serves to lodge
it in the spiritual consciousness, as a caution, or as a
comfort ; they lodge the universal principle as near as
may be to the fears, and to the hopes, and to the devout
yearnings of the individual man. If we do not relish
this style and this method, we should think ourselves
bound to bring forward a better style, and to propound
a more approvable method. At any rate, we should
give a sample of some one style or method other than
this, and between which and the Biblical maimer we
might make a choice. No alternative that is at once
intelligible and admissible has ever yet been brouo-ht
forward. God may be known, and his attributes may be
discoursed of, as related to the needs of the human
spirit ; — but not otherwise : — not a span beyond this
limit has ever been attained.
" Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord. Can
an)' hide himself in secret places that I shall not see
him ? Am I a God nigh at hand, and not a God afar
off?" "We may read the I39th Psalm throughout, and
be convinced that what- is inconceivable as an abstrac
tion, or as an axiom in speculative theism, has, by the
Hebrew writers, been firmly lodged in the beliefs of men
in the only m<de in wl ich such a lodgment could be

HEBREW POETRY. 21
possible. This element ofthe Infinite finds a eoaleseent
surface — a point of adhesion in the individual conscious
ness ; a consciousness towards God which removes all
other beings from our view, and which leaves us, each
for himself, alone with his Creator and Judge.
In the place of interminable and abstruse definitions
— defining nothing, propounding doubts and solving
none — in the place of this laborious emptiness, the
writer of the ode above referred to so affirms the doc
trine of the omniscience and the omnipresence of God
as at once to expand our belief of it to the utmost, and
to concentrate it also upon the experiences of the spiri
tual life. God is everywhere present — in the vastness
of the tipper heavens — in the remotest recesses of Sheol
(not Gehenna) everywhere, to the utmost borders ofthe
material universe ; but these affirmations of a universal
truth are advanced in apposition to a truth which is
more affecting, or which is of more intimate concern
ment to the devout spirit : — this spirit, its faults, its ter
rors, its aspirations; and this animal frame, of which it
is the tenant, is in the hand of God, and is dependent
upon His bounty, and is cared for in whatever relates to
its precarious welfare ; and thus is so great a theme — •
the Divine Omniscience — brought home to its due cul
mination in an outburst of religious feeling : " How
precious also are thy thoughts^unto me, O God! how
great is the sum of them ! If I should count them,
they are more in number than the sand : when I awake,
I am still with Thee !"
A problem absolutely insoluble, as an abstraction,
and which in fact is not susceptible of any verbal
enunciation in a scientific form, is that of the Divine
Eternity; — or, as we arc wont to say — using terms to

22 THE SPIRIT OF THE
which perhaps an attenuated meaning may be attached
— the non-relationship of God to Time, and His exist
ence otherwise than through successive instants. This
is a belief which the human mind demands as a neces
sary condition of religious thought, and of which it
finds the need at every step of the way in systematic
theism, which yet is equally inconceivable, and inex
pressible. In the Mosaic Ode (the 90th Psalm) the
theistic axiom is so placed in apposition with the brevity
and the precarious tenure of human life that the incon
ceivable belief becomes, in a measure, conceivable, just
by help of its coalescence with an element of every
one's sense of the brevity and frailty of life. So it is
that the theology and the human consciousness are
made to constitute a one article of belief in that spiritual
economy under which man, as mortal, is in training for
immortality ; — as thus — " Before the mountains were
brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth
and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting,
Thou art God." But now, in the immediate context
of an affirmation which approaches the abstract style,
there is found what serves to bring the higher truth
into a near-at-hand bearing upon the vivid experiences
of our mortal condition. " Thou turnest man to de
struction, and sayest, Return, ye children of men ; for
a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday
when it is past, and as a watch in the night." Then
there is conjoined with this doctrine a cautionary pro
vision against the oriental error of so musing upon vast
theologie conceptions as that the individual man forgets
himself, and becomes unconscious of his own spiritual
condition. It is not so with the writer of this Psalm: — •
"Thou hast, set our iniquities before Thee; our secret

HEBREW POETRY.
sins in the light of Thy countenance  So teach
us to number our days that we may apply our hearts
unto wisdom."
For making sure of this amalgamation of theologie
elements with those emotions and sentiments that con
stitute the religious life there is found, in several of the
Psalms, a formal alternation of the two classes of utter
ances. An instance of this interchange occurs in the
147th Psalm just above referred to; for in this Psalm,
with its strophe and its antistrophe, there is first a
challenge to the worship of God, as a delightful employ
ment — then an evoking of religious national sentiment —
then a message of comfort and hope, addressed to the
destitute, the oppressed, the sorrowful ; and last, there
is the interwoven theologie element in affirmation of the
Providence, Power, and bounty of God ; for it is said
of Him who "• healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth
up their wounds," that " He telleth the number of the
stars, and calleth them all by their names ; for great is
our Lord, and of great power : — His understanding is
infinite." So it is throughout the devotional and poetic por
tions of the Hebrew Scriptures, that the theologie and
the emotional elements are counterpoised — not as if the
two diverse elements might be logically compacted into
a scheme of theism ; nor as if they were contradictory,
the one' of the other ; but they are so placed as to be
counteractive, the one of the other, in their influence
upon the human spirit. Lest the devout affections
should pass off into a feeble sentimentalism (as it is
their tendency to do) there is conjoined with the expres
sion of pious emotion some reference to those attributes
of the Divine Nature which inspire awe and fear ; and

24 THE SPIRIT OF THE
again, lest the meditation of infinite power and purity
should lead the way (as it has so often done) into pan
theistic mysticism, the worshipper is quickly reminded
of his individual frailty — his dependence and his unwor-
thiness. A structure, simple in its principle, and in its
intention, may be traced throughout these Scriptures
as a method that is always adhered to, whatever those
diversities of style may be which attach to the writer —
whether it be Moses, or David, or one of the later.
prophets. The reading and hearing of the Old Testament from
the earliest childhood — at home and in church — in these
Bible-reading lands, has brought us to imagine that the
belief of the Personality of God — God, the Creator, the
Father of Spirits — is a belief which all men, unless
argued out of it by sophistry, would accept spontane
ously. These early and continuous lessons in Bible
learning have imbued our minds with the conception
ofthe Infinite Being — the Creator of all things, who, in
making man in His own likeness, has opened for us a
ground of intercourse — warranting, on our part, the
assurance, that lie with whom we have to do is con
scious as we are conscious, and that — so far as the finite
may resemble the Infinite, lie is, as we are — is one with
us, is communionable, and is open to a correspondence
which is properly likened to that of a father with his
children. But now, whether we look abroad in antiquity —
Asiatic and European — or look to the now prevalent
beliefs of eastern races, or look near at hand to recent
schemes of metaphysic theism, we must admit it to be
true, in fact, that whatever the unsophisticated instincts
of the human mind (if such could anywhere be found)

HEBREW POETRY. 25
might prompt men to accept and profess, their actual
dispositions — perverted as these are — impel them to
put, in the place of this belief, either a sensuous and
debasing polytheism, or a vapid pantheism. So it has
been in all time past, and so at the moment now pass
ing : — so it has been among brutalized troglodytes ; —
and so is it among " the most advanced thinkers " of
modern literature.
Always, and now, it is true that the Hebrew writers
stand possessed of an unrivalled prerogative as the
Teachers — not merely of monotheism, but of the spirit-
stirring belief of God — as near to man by the nearness
or homogeneousness of the moral consciousness. Near
to us is He, not only because in Him " we live and
move and have our being,'' but because He — infinite in
power and intelligence — is in so true a sense one with
us that the unabated terms of human emotion are a
proper and genuine medium of intercourse between
Him and ourselves.
To remove this Bible belief to as great a distance as
possible from daily life and feeling, has been the inten
tion of all superstitions, whether gay or terrific ; and it
has been the aim also of abstract speculation, and, not
less so, of Art and of Poetry, with their manifold fas
cinations ; and therefore it is that the Hebrew Scriptures
are so specially distasteful to those whose convictions
they have not secured, and whose faith they do not
command. It is the clearness — it is the fulness — it is
the unfaltering decisiveness ofthe Hebrew writers, from
the earliest of them to the latest, on this ground, that
constitutes the broad characteristic of the Old Testa
ment Scriptures, when brought into comparison with
any other literature — ancient or modern. We may
2

26 THE SPIRIT OF THE
reject the anthropomorphic symbolism of these writings,
as repugnant to our abstract notions of the Divine
Nature ; but this we must grant to be their distinction
— namely, a uniform consistency in the use they make
of the vocabulary of human sentiment, passion, emo
tion, so as to bring the conception of the Personal God
into the nearest possible alliance with the human con
sciousness, on that side of it where a return to virtue, if
ever it is brought about, must take place. God is near
to man — and one with him for his recovery to wisdom
and goodness. The instances are trite ; — and they will
occur to the recollection of every Bible reader ; yet let
one or two be here adduced.
The Hebrew prophet, and poet, meets and satisfies
the first requirement of the awakened human spirit,
which is an assured communion with God on terms of
hopefulness and amity, as well as of the profoundest
awe, and of unaffected humiliation. And this assurance
is so conveyed as shall intimately blend the highest
theistic conceptions with the health-giving conscious
ness of unmerited favour. — " Thus saith the High and
Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is
Holy : I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also
that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the
spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the con
trite ones : for I will not contend for ever, neither will I
be always wrath ; for the spirit should fail before me,
and the souls which I have made."
The same conditions are observed — and they should
be noted — in this parallel passage — "Thus saith the
Lord, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my
footstool. Where is the house that ye build me? and
where is the place of my rest ? For all these things

HEBREW POETRY 27
hath my hand made ; and all these things have been,
saith the Lord : but to this man will I look, even to
him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trem
bleth at my word."
These familiar passages are illustrations, and they are
demonstrations, of that mode of teaching " the things
of God " which distinguishes the Hebrew Scriptures
from all other writings — professedly religious — ancient
or modern (those of course excepted which follow this
same guidance). The terms are symbolic, or figurative
purely ; and the Divine attributes are not otherwise
affirmed than in their bearing upon the spiritual welfare
of that one class of minds that needs, and that will
rightly avail itself of, this kind of teaching. To mincls
of the metaphysic class there is no conveyance of the
istic axioms : — to minds of the captious temperament
there is none : — to the sensual and sordid, or the contu
macious and impious, there is none. These passages
are as a stream of the effulgence of the upper heavens,
sent down through an aperture in a dense cloud, to rest
with a life-giving power of light and heat upon the
dwelling of the humble worshipper. Whether this
humble worshipper be one who turns the soil for his
daily bread, or be the occupant of a professor's chair, it
shall be the same theology that he hence derives : the
former will not think to ask — and the latter will be
better trained than to ask — how it is that the Omni
present can be said, either to be seated on a throne in
an upper heaven, or to make earth His footstool : —
neither the one nor the other will take offence at the
solecism of " inhabiting eternity." A solecism if it be ;
— nevertheless it is probable that no compact of words
coming within the range of language has better con-

28 THE SPIRIT OF THE
veyed than this does the inconceivable idea of the
Divine Existence — irrespective of Time.
Biblical utterances of the first truths in Theology
possess the grandeur of the loftiest poetry, as well as
a rhythmical or artificial structure ; and they hold off
from entanglement with metaphysic perplexities — was
it because the writers were men of a nation incapable
of abstract thought ? If this were granted, then, on
merely natural principles, we ought to find them some
times forgetful of their purpose as religious teachers,
while they wander forth, in oriental style, upon grounds
of gorgeous imagination. Never do they do this.
Poets as they were in soul, and in phrase too, they are
strictly mindful of their function as teachers of spiritual
and ethical principles. David says — as our version has
it — "The Lord is in His holy temple; the Lord's throne
is in heaven : His eyes behold, His eyelids try the
children of men." Four affirmations meet us within the
compass of these few words, and each of them has a
specific meaning — inviting the religious teacher to open
it out, and bring it to bear with effect upon the religious
life ; and in the third and the fourth of these clauses a
meaning of peculiar significance is conveyed, which,
instead of a vague averment of the Divine omniscience,
turns this doctrine in upon the conscience with a burning
intensity. No phrases could more vividly than do these,
give force to the conception of this critical observation
of the characters and conduct of men — singly ; for in
relation to a process of moral discipline, He who is the
Father of spirits " beholds the children of men, and
His eyelids try tliein." It is true of the Creator, that
He " knoweth all the fowls of the mountains, and the
wild beasts of the forest, and that the cattle upon a

HEBREW POETRY. 29
thousand hills are His ;" but it is a truth of another
order that is affirmed — it is a truth penetrative of the
conscience — it is a truth, not metaphysic or poetic, but
sternly ethical, that is here presented in metaphor. A
keen scrutiny of the concealed motives and of the
undeveloped tendencies ofthe heart on the part of One
who is firmly-purposed, and who is severely exact in his
observation of conduct is conveyed in these expressions :
— the dropping of the eyelid for the purpose of reflec
tive scrutiny indicates a determination to look through
disguises, and rightfully to interpret whatever may wear
a semblance of falseness. This is a truth to be thought
of by those who accustom themselves to repeat the
prayer, " Search me and try me, and see what evil
way there is in me :" it is a truth for those who sub
mit themselves willingly to the severest conditions of
the spiritual discipline. As for men of another class,
who desire no such schooling, it is said of them that —
"The Lord knoweth them afar off" — what they are it
needs no careful observation to discern.
Parallel instances are abundant in the Psalms, and
throughout the prophetic books ; but this is not all
that should be said, for instances of a contrary kind
nowhere occur. The Hebrew writers, in long series,
not only teach the same theology, but they teach it
always, and only so, in metaphorio terms; and more
than this — it is always- under the condition of con
necting their affirmations of the Divine attributes with
the purposes and the needs of the spiritual training of
the individual soul.
There is before us then a method — invariably adhered
to ; — there is a rule that is never violated ; but it is a
method and a rule of which we become cognizant only

30 THE SPIRIT OF THE
when we look back from the latest to the earliest of a
long series of writers, each of whom has his own manner,
his individual characteristic style. Not one in the series
gives evidence of his personal consciousness of the law
which, nevertheless, he is silently obeying ; and it is a
law which is far from obvious in itself, and it is by no
means such as would spontaneously offer itself, even to
minds of the highest order ; much less to the fervent
and the inartificial. We — of this late age — trained
as we are in, and familiar with, the habitudes and the
phrases of abstract thought, easily recognize the princi
ple which gives continuity to the writings of the Old
Testament ; and we are able to put an abstraction of
this kind into words. But it is certain that no such
enunciation of an occult law would have been intelligible
to the writers themselves, who nevertheless,- each in his
turn, implicitly and always conforms himself to it.
Here indeed — as throughout the material world — there
is Design — there is an intention which gives coherence
to a complicity of parts ; but it is — as in the material
world, so here — an intention which was unperceived
and unthought of, while it was in course of execution.

CHAPTER II.
COMMIXTURE OF THE DIVINE AND THE HUMAN ELEMENTS
IN THE HEBREW POETIC SCRIPTURES.
The mere use of any such phrase as this — The He
brew Poetry, or the speaking of the Prophets as Poets
— is likely to give alarm to Bible readers of a certain
class, who will think that, in bringing the inspired
writers under any such treatment as that which these
phrases seem to imply, we are forgetting their higher
claims, and thus disparage them as the Bearers of a mes
sage immediately from God to men.
Alarms of this kind arise, either from a misappre
hension of the facts before us ; or from absolute ignor
ance of those facts ; or, it may be, from some invete
rate confusion, attaching to our modes of thinking on
religious subjects. The remedy must be found in the
removal of this ignorance — in the clearing up of these
confusions, and especially — and most of all — in the
attainment of a thorough and deep-felt confidence in
the Divine origination and authority of the Canonical
writings. Those religious alarms or jealousies which
impede the free course of thought on this ground — if
they do not spring from stolid and incurable prejudices,
are yet the indication of a shaken and variable belief in
the Bible, as the medium of a supernatural Revelation.
It will be in no dread of the imputation of unbelief
that we enter upon the field now in view. A tremulous

32 THE SPIRIT OF THE
tread on this ground would be sure sign, either of incer
titude as to first principles, or of a treasonable coward
ice ; and probably of both: we here disclaim the one as
well as the other of these sinister restraints. If indeed
there be dangers on our pathway, let them be manfully
encountered, and they will disapjjear, as do always the
phantoms of superstition when boldly looked at. The
risks to faith that haunt this subject are factitious, and
have had their origin in an ill-judged modern eagerness
to conform our doctrine of Inspiration to the arbitrary
conditions of a logical or pseudo-scientific system. No
such attempt can ever be successful ; but the restless
and often renewed endeavour to effect a purpose of this
kind breeds perplexities — it feeds abootless controversy,
and it furnishes disbelief with its only effective weapons.
If unwarranted and unwarrantable modern schemes,
as to the nature and the extent of Inspiration, are put
out of view, and if interminable argumentation be cut
short, then the Bible will return to its place of power
and of benign authority, yielding to us daily its inesti
mable treasures of instruction, admonition, and comfort ;
but so long as we adhere to a theory of Inspiration,
whether it be of better quality or of worse, we shall be
open to disturbance from the inroads of textual and his
torical criticism, and shall be haunted by the grim suspi
cion that the Scriptures are confusedly constituted of
heterogeneous elements — some of which are purely
divine, while some are merely human : or we shall accept
the comfortless hypothesis that the divine substance in
Holy Scripture has become flawed or intergrained with
the grit and debris of human inadvertence, accident,
ignorance, or evil intention ; and that thus the Bible is
a conglomerate of materials, precious and worthless.

HEBREW POETRY. 33
Under the influence of suppositions of this kind, and in
proportion to our personal candour and intelligence, we
shall be asking aid from any who can yield it, to inform
us, at every section, and verse, and line, what it is that
we may accept as " from above," and what it is that
should be rejected as "from men." A Bible-reading
method less cumbrous than this, and less comfortless too,
and less embarrassing, is surely attainable.
When we accept a mass of writings as a gift from
God, in a sense peculiar to themselves, and which is their
distinction, as compared with all other human composi
tions, we do so on grounds which we think to be suffi
cient and conclusive. Already therefore we have given
in our submission to the Book, or to the collection of
books, which we are willing to regard as rightfully
determinative of our religious belief, and as regulative
of our conduct and temper. If it be so, then no other,
or middle course can, consistently with undoubted facts,
be taken than this ; we must bring ourselves to think of
these writings as, in one sense, wholly human / and read
them as if they were nothing more than human ; and,
in another sense, as wholly divine ; and must read them
as if they were in no sense less than divine.
Endless confusions, interminable questionings, come
from the mitigative supposition — That, in any given
portion, page, or paragraph, certain expressions, or sepa
rate clauses, or single words — here five words, and there
seven words, are of human origination ; while other
five words, or seven, or other clauses or sentences or
paragraphs, are from heaven ; and that thus a perpetual
caution or marginal indication is needed, by aid of which
we may, from line to line, discriminate the one species
of writing from the other — sifting the particles of gold
2*

34 THE SPIRIT OF THE
from out of the sand and clay in the midst of which we
find them. It is manifest that the better instructed a
Bible reader may be, and the more intelligent and con
scientious he is, so much the deeper, and so much the
more frequent will be his perplexities, and so much the
less comfort and edification will he draw from his Bible
daily : it will be so if a notion of this kind has lodged
itself within him.
That in Holy Scripture which is from above is an
element over and beyond, and beside, the medium of its
conveyance to us, although never separated therefrom.
That which we find, and which " finds us" also, is not
the parchment and the ink, nor is it the writing, nor is
it the Hebrew vocables and phrases, nor is it the gram
matical modes of an ancient language ; nor is it this or
that style of writing, prosaic or poetic, or abstract or
symbolical ; for as to any of these incidents or modes of
conveyance, they might be exchanged for some other
mode, without detriment to the divine element — the
ulterior intention, which is so conveyed. We all readily
accept any, or several of these substitutions — and we
moderns necessarily do so — whenever we take into our
hands what we have reason to think is a trustworthy
translation. It is not even the most accomplished He
braist of modern times (whoever he may be) that is
exempted from the necessity of taking, from out of his
Hebrew Bible, a meaning — as to single words, and as to
combinations of words — which is only a substitute for
the primitive meaning intended to be conveyed by the
Hebrew writer to the men of his times. Thought,
embodied in words, or in other arbitrary signs, and
addressed by one human mind to another human mind,
or by the Divine miud to the human mind, is subjected

 *
HEBREW POETRY. 35
to conditions which belong to, or which spring from,
the limitations of the recipient mind. The question is
not of this sort, namely, whether Thought or Feeling
might not be conveyed from mind to mind with uncon
ditioned purity, in some occult mode of immediate spi
ritual communion. This may well be supposed, and, as
we are bound to believe it possible, it may be accepted
as a truth, and as a truth that has a deep meaning in
Religion. But the position now assumed is this — that Thought
or Feeling, when embodied in language, is, to its whole
extent of meaning, necessarily conditioned, as well by
the established laws of language, as by all those inciden
tal influences which affect its value and import, in
traversing the chasms of Time. Statements of this
kind are open to misapprehensions from various sources,
and will not fail to awaken debate. So far as such
misapprehensions may be precluded, this will best be
done in submitting actual instances to the leader's con
sideration. Take, as an instance — one among many that are
equally pertinent to our purpose, — the Twenty-third
Psalm. This is an ode which for beauty of sentiment
is not to be matched in the circuit of all literature.
In its way down through three thousand years, or
more, this Psalm has penetrated to the depths of mil
lions of hearts — it has gladdened homes of destitu
tion and discomfort — it has whispered hope and joy
amid tears to the utterly solitary and forsaken, whose
only refuge was in Heaven. Beyond all range of pro
bable calculation have these dozen lines imparted a
power of endurance under suffering, and strength in
feebleness, and have kept alive the flickering flame oi

36 THE SPIRIT OF THE
religious feeling in hearts that were nigh to despair.
The divine element herein embodied has given proof,
millions of times repeated, of its reality, and of its effi
cacy, as a formula, of tranquil trust in God, and of a
grateful sense of His goodness, which all who do trust
in Him may use for themselves, and use it until it has
become assimilated to their own habitual feelings. But
this process of assimilation can take place only on the
ground of certain assumptions, such as these — It is not
enough that we read, and often repeat this composition
approvingly ; or that we regard it as an utterance ot
proper religious sentiments : this is quite true ; but this
is not enough : this Psalm will not be available for its
intended purpose unless these expressions of trust in
the divine beneficence be accepted as warrantable.
May not this confident belief in God as the gracious
Shepherd of souls be a vain presumption, never real
ized ? — May it not be an illusion of self love ? Not so
¦ — for we have already accepted the Psalms, of which
this is one, as portions of that authentic Holy Scrip
ture which has been given us from above. Thus it
is, therefore, that throughout all time past, and all
time to come, this Psalm has possessed, and will pos
sess, a life-giving virtue toward those who receive it,
and whose own path in life is such as life's path most
often is.
Whoever has attained to, or has acquired this tho
rough persuasion of the reality of Holy Scripture, as
given of God, in a sense absolutely peculiar to itself,
will stand exempt — or he may so stand exempt, from
alarms and suspicions, as if criticism, whether textual
or historical, might rob him of his treasure, or might
diminish its value to him. In its relation to the reli-

HEBREW POETRY. 37
gious life, and to the health of the soul, this Psalm is
wholly divine ; and so every particle of it is fraught
with the life-giving energy ; nor need religious persons
— or more than one in ten thousand of such persons —
concern themselves in any way with any questionings
or considerations that attach to it as a human com
position. But the Psalm now in view is also wholly human,
as it is also wholly divine in another sense — every
particle of it being of the same stamp as other hu
man compositions ; and therefore it may be spoken of,
and it may be treated, and analysed, and commented
upon, with intelligent freedom, even as we treat, an:;-
lyse, and expound, whatever else has come down to us
of ancient literature. Let it be remembered that nei
ther in relation to classic literature, nor to sacred lite
rature, does free criticism include any right or power
to alter the text, or to amend it at our pleasure. The
text of ancient writings, when once duly ascertained,
is as fixed and as unalterable as are the constellations
of the heavens ; and so it is that the Canon of Scrip
ture, if it be compared with the inconstancy and va
riableness of any other embodiment of religious belief
or feeling, is a sure foundation — abiding the same
throughout all time to the world's end.
It is not only- the material writing — and the Hebrew
words and phrases of this Psalm, or of any other Psalm
— portions as they are of the colloquial medium of an
ancient people, that are liable to the ordinary condi
tions of written language; for further than this it must
be granted, that, as the metrical structure of the Ode is
highly artificial, those rules of construction to which it
conforms itself may be said to over-ride the pure con-

38 THE SPIRIT OF THE

veyance of the thought ; — metre ruling words and
syllables. It was by these artificial adaptations to the
ear and memory of the people to whom, at the first, the
composition was confided, it was rendered available, in
the best manner, for the purposes of the religious life.
Yet this is not all that needs to be said in taking this view
of the instance before us. Every phrase and allusion in
this ode is metaphoric — nothing is literal ; the Lord is —
the Shepherd of souls; and there are the green pastures —
the still waters — the paths of righteousness — the valley
of the shadow of death — the rod and the staff — the
table prepared — the anointing oil — the overfull cup —
and that House of the Lord which is an everlasting
abode. But figures and symbols are incidents of the
human mind — they are adaptations to its limits — they
are the best that can be done, in regard to the things of
the spiritual life. Let us speak with reverence — Divine
Thought is not conditioned in any manner ; certainly
not by metaphor or symbol.
There is yet a step further that should be taken in
considering this Psalm as a human composition — and it
is so with other Psalms, still more decisively than with
this, for it gives expression to religious sentiments which
belong to the earlier stage of a progressive development
of the spiritual life. The bright idea of earthly well-
being pervades the Old Testament Scriptures ; and this
worldly sunshine is their distinction, as compared with
the New Testament ; but then there are many cognate
ideas which properly come into their places, around
the terrestrial idea. If earthly weal — if an overrunning
cup — if security and continuance, belong to the centre-
thought, then, by necessity, the antithetic ideas — not
only of want and pain, but of whatever ill an enemy

HEBREW POETRY. 39
may do, or may intend — must come in, to encircle,
or beleaguer the tabernacle of those whom God has
blessed. Thus, therefore, does the Psalmist here give
expression to feelings which were proper, indeed, to
that time, but are less proper to this time : " Thou
preparest a table before me in the presence of my
enemies." A feeling is here indicated which was
of that age, and which was approvable then, although
it has been superseded since by sentiments of a higher
order, and which draw their reason from the substitu
tion of future for present good.
This separableness of the Divine element from the
human element throughout the Inspired writings, the
understanding of which is highly important, will make
itself perspicuous in giving attention to two or three
instances of different kinds.
Turn to the two astronomic Psalms — the eighth, and
the nineteenth (its exordium). Quite unmatched are
these Odes as human compositions : — the soul of the
loftiest poetry is in them. Figurative they are in
every phrase ; and they are so manifestly figurative iu
what is affirmed concerning the celestial framework that
they stand exempt, in the judgment of reasonable criti
cism, on the one hand from the childish literal render
ings of superstition ; and on the other hand from the
nugatory captiousness of rationalism. A magnificent
image is that of the sun coming forth refreshed each
morning anew from his pavilion, and rejoicing as a
strong man to run a race ! Frivolous is the superstition
which supposes that an astronomic verity is couched in
these figures, and that thus the warranty of Inspira
tion is pledged to what is untrue in nature. Equally
frivolous is the criticism which catches at this supersti-

40 THE SPIRIT OF THE
tion, and on the ground of it labours to prove that the
Bible takes part with the Ptolemaic theory, and rejects
the modern astronomy ! Be it so that David's own
conception of the celestial system might be of the
former sort, and that he would have marvelled at the
latter ; but, as an inspired writer, he no more affirms
the Ptolemaic astronomy, than he affirms that the sun
— a giant — comes forth from a tent every morning.
Look to the Eighth Psalm, and estimate its theologie
value — its inspired import — by reading it as a bold
contradiction of errors all around it — the dreams of
Buddhism — the fables of Brahminism — the Atheism
of the Greek Philosophy, and the malign Atheism of
our modern metaphysics. Within the compass of these
nine verses the celestial and the terrestrial systems, and
the human economy are not only poetically set forth ;
but they are truly reported of, as the three stand related
to Religious Belief, and to Religious Feeling. Grant
it, that when David the Poet brings into conjunction
"the moon and the stars," he thought of them, as to
their respective bulks and importance, not according to
the teaching of Galileo ; and yet, notwithstanding this
misconception, which itself has no bearing whatever
upon his function as an inspired writer, he so writes
concerning the Universe — material and immaterial, as
none but Hebrew prophets have ever written of either.
What arc the facts? The astronomies of Oriental sages
and of Grecian philosophers are well-nigh forgotten ;
but David's astronomy lives, and it will ever live ; for
it is true to all eternity.
A sample of another kind is presented in the Fiftieth
Psalm. This Ode, sublime in its imagery and its scenic
breadth of conception, is a canon of the relationship

HEBREW POETRY. 41
of men, as the professed worshippers of God, toward
Him who spurns from His altar the hypocrite and the
profligate and the malignant, but invites the sincere
and the humble to His presence, on terms of favour.
This Psalm is sternly moral in its tone": — it is anti-
ritualistic — if rites are thought of as substitutes for
virtue ; and moreover, by the singularity of its phrases
in three instances, it makes its way with anatomic
keenness through the surface to the conscience of those
who are easily content with themselves, so long as they
keep clear of overt acts of sin. The man who is here
threatened with a vengeance from which there will be
no escape (v. 22) is not himself perchance the thief;
but he is one whose moral consciousness is of the same
order, and who would do the same — opportunity favour
ing. He is not himself perchance the adulterer ; but
he is one who, being impure in heart, is ready for
guilt, and pleases himself with the thought of it. In
debted for his virtue entirely to external restraints, he
thinks himself free to give vent to censorious language,
and to shed the venom of his tongue upon those who
are nearest to him in blood. Here, then, there is not
merely a protest in behalf of virtue, but it is a deep-
going commixture of spiritual and ethical truth, with
a promise of grace for the condign ; it is a presentation
of justice and of favour : — it is a discrimination of
motives and characters also : — it is such that it vindi
cates its own Divine origination in the court of every
human conscience. In this Psalm it is the voice of God
we hear ; for man has never spoken in any such manner
as this to his fellows.
Let it be asked, then, in what manner the Divine
and the human elements, in this one instance, sustain

±2 THE SPIRIT OF THE

each other throughout all time ? In tens of thousands
of copies we possess this literary monument ; and it is
an imperishable and an unalterable document : it is
liable to no decay or damage ; and it may yet endure
ages more than can be numbered : nothing on earth's
surface is more safe from destruction : none can ever
pretend to have authority to substitute one word for
another word ; or to erase a letter. Here, then, we
take our hold upon a rock. Human opinion, in matters
of religion, sways this way and that way, from age
to age ; but it is ever and anew brought back to its
point of fixedness in the unalterable text of the He
brew Scriptures. Upon this Fiftieth Psalm Esra and
the Rabbis of his school commented at their best, in
that age when Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Thales, and
their disciples, were theorising to little purpose con
cerning "the Infinite;'' and were in debate on the
question whether it is matter or mind that is " the
eternal principle," and the cause of all things : — a ques
tion unsettled as yet among our " profoundest think
ers.'' Upon this Psalm, with its bold, outspoken, and
determinate morality, its grandeur and its power, the
Rabbi of a later and sophisticated time commented also,
weaving around it the fine silk of his casuistry, and
labouring hard in his work of screening the then-abused
conscience of his race from its force ; so " making
void the Word of God by his traditions." Upon this
Psalm the Christian theologues, in series, from the
Apostolic Fathers to Jerome and Augustine, in their
comments give evidence, each in his age, at once con
cerning those secular variations of religious and ethical
thought which mark the lapse of time ; and of what
we must call the restraining power of the canon of

HEBREW POETRY. 43
Scripture, which, from age to age, overrules these
variations — calling back each digressive mood of the
moment ; as if with a silent, yet irresistible gravitation
— a centripetal force.
" Thy word," says David, " is settled in Heaven ;"
— it is fixed as the constellations in the firmament ;
and if we would justly estimate what this undecaying
force of the canon of Scripture imports, in relation to
the ever-shifting variations of human thought and feel
ing, and in relation to the fluctuations of national man
ners and notions, from one fifty years to another, we
should take in hand some portion of the Old Testa
ment Scriptures — say such a portion as is this sublime
Psalm — and trace its exegetical history through the
long line of commentators — from the Rabbis, onward
to Origen, Tertullian, Basil, Chrysostom, Jerome,
Augustine, the Schoolmen, and Bernard of Clairvaux ;
then the pre-reformation Romanists ; the Reformers,
the Jesuits, the Jansenists, the Puritans of England
and Scotland, the English Methodists ; and so on till
we reach these last times of great religious animation,
and of little religious depth —times of sedulous ex
actitude in scholarship, and of feeble consciousness as
toward the unseen future and the eternal ; — times in
which whatever is of boundless dimensions in Holy
Scripture has passed beyond our range of vision, while
our spectacled eyes are intent upon iotas.*
But the Psalms of David, and of Moses, and of
others, shall live on, undamaged, to the times that are
next ensuing; and far beyond those times. Our Bibles
shall come into the hands of our sons, and of our
* See Note.

44 THE SPIRIT OF THE
grandsons, who, reading Hebrew as correctly as the
most learned of their sires have read it, shall do so in
a season of religious depth, and of religious conscien
tiousness, and who, in such a season, shall look back
with grief, and shame, aud amazement, when they see
how nugatory were the difficulties which are making
so many among us to stumble, and to fall. Human
opinion has its fashion, and it shifts its ground with
each generation ; — a thirty or forty years is the ut
most date of any one clearly definable mood or style
of religious feeling and opinion: each of such ephemeral
fashions being a departure, upon a radius, from the
central authority — the Canon of Scripture, accepted
as from God.
But the imperishable fixedness of Holy Scripture —
first, in a purely literary sense, as an ascertained an
cient text, which none may now alter ; and next, as
the vehicle or depository of the Divine Will toward
mankind, does not imply or necessitate, either a
superstitious and blind regard to the letter of Scripture,
as if it were not human, or an enchainment to the
words, as if the Divine element therein coutained, and
thereby conveyed, might not have been otherwise word
ed, and diffused among the people in other forms of lan
guage than in this one — to which, as a fixed stand
ard, all must in fact return. Not only is the Divine,
in Scripture, greater than the human, but it has an
intrinsic power and vitality which renders it largely
independent of its embodiment in this or that form of
language. There is no version of the Psalms — ancient
or modern (or none which comes within the cognizance
of a European reader) — which does not competently
convey the theology and the ethical majesty, and the

HEBREW POETRY. 45
juridical grandeur, of the one Psalm that has here been
referred to. In no version, even the most fault}- —
whichever that may be — does an awakened conscience
fail to catch the distant sound of that thunder which
— in a day future — shall shake, not the earth only,
but heaven. In no such version does the contrite spirit
fail to hear in it that message which carries peace to
the humble in heart.
If indeed the Hebrew text had perished ages ago
— say at the time of the breaking up of the Jewish
religious state — and if, consequently, we could now
make an appeal to nothing more authentic than to
ancient versions, believed to be, on the whole, trust
worthy, then the constant tendency toward deflection
and aberration, in human opinion, could have received
no effective check. In each age, the rise of schemes of
opinion — sometimes superstitious and fanatical, some
times philosophical and negative — would have pro
duced successive vitiations of those unauthentic docu
ments, until even these had lost their cohesive princi
ple, and would have ceased to be thought of. This
is not our position ; and therefore versions and com
mentaries, some critical and exact, some popular and
paraphrastic; comments wise, and comments unwise,
sceptical, or imbecile, may all take their course — they
may severally win favour for a day, or may retain it
for a century ; — all are harmless as toward the Rock
¦ — the imperishable Hebrew text, which abides —
diro tov atCivog xai euj rou aiuvoj — and until the human
family shall havg finished its term of discipline on
earth.

CHAPTER III.
ARTIFICIAL STRUCTURE OF THE HEBREW POETRY, AS
RELATED TO ITS PURPOSES.
The attempt to bring the Poetry of the Hebrew
Scriptures into metrical analogy with that of Greece
and Rome has not been successful. This would
demand a better knowledge ofthe quantity of syllables
when the language was spoken, and of the number of
syllables in words, and of its rhythm, than is actually
possessed by Modern Hebraists. But that a people so
pre-eminently musical by constitution should have failed
to perceive, or should not have brought under rule,
the rhythm of words and sentences could not easily
be believed ; yet to what extent this was done by them,
or on what principles, it would now be hopeless to
inquire. There is, however, a metrical structure, artificial and
elaborate, which gives evidence of itself, even in a
translation : it does not affect the cadence, or musical
adjustment of words; but it does affect the choice of
words and the structure of sentences. To treat the
Hebrew Poetry in any technical sense does not come
within the purpose of the present work, nor indeed the
qualifications of the Author. What we are concerned
with is — the spirit, not the body, the soul, not the form.
Yet weighty inferences are derivable from the fact that
religious principles were conveyed to the Hebrew people,

HEBREW POETRY. 47
and through these have reached other nations, in a
mode that conforms itself to arbitrary rules of compo
sition, which determine the choice of words, the struc
ture of sentences, and the collocation of members of
sentences, and the framework of entire Odes. Even in
passages which breathe the soul of the loftiest and the
most impassioned poetry, a highly artificial apposition
and balancing of terms and clauses prevails ; — as if the
Form were, in the estimation of the writer, of so much
importance that it should give law even to the thought
itself. This subject stands full in our path, and demands to
be considered before we pass on : it is a subject that
touches, not merely the Hebrew Poetry, but also the
belief we should hold to concerning the Divine origina
tion of Holy Scripture.
The conveyance of thought through the medium of
language is a conditioned expression of a speaker's or a
writer's inmost meaning — more or less so. In a strict
sense the embodiment of thought at all, in words and
combinations of words, and in sentences, is— a con
ditioned, as well as an imperfect conveyance of it ; for
words have only a more or less determinate value,
which may be accepted by the hearer — especially when
involved sentences are uttered, in a sense varying from
that of the speaker by many shades of difference.
Thought, symbolised in words, is subjected, first, to
those conditions that attach to language from the uni
versal ambiguity, or the convertible import of language ;
and then to the indistinctness of the speaker's concep
tions, and of the hearer's also. Yet when a perfectly
intelligible and familiar fact is affirmed in words that
are intended to be understood in their literal, or primi-

48 THE SPIRIT OF THE
tive sense, we may loosely say that such utterances are
unconditioned ; as thus — Brutus stabbed Coesar in the
senate-house at Rome. Julius Caesar, with his legions,
landed in Britain. William of Normandy did the like
with his Normans centuries later.
It is otherwise in affirmations such as the following —
The main principles of political economy, as taught
by Adam Smith, rest upon a rock, and will never be
overthrown. The great principles of religious liberty,
as embodied in Locke's First Letter on Toleration, have
hitherto, and will ever defy the utmost efforts of into
lerant hierarchies to shake them. The aristocracy of
England is the pillar of the British monarchy: — the
throne and the aristocracy must stand or fall together.
In affirmations of this kind the Thought of the speaker
or -writer — that is to say, his ultimate intention — is
conditioned by its conveyance in terms that are wholly
figurative, and which therefore must await, if it be only
an instant, the result of a mental process in the mind
of the hearer, who — unconsciously perhaps — renders
them into their well-known prosaic values. Such as
they are when they meet the ear, they convey no mean
ing that is intelligible in relation to the subject. Un
conditioned thought may be still further conditioned,
if I employ, not merely figurative terms, but such as are
suggested at the moment of speaking by vivid emotions,
or by stormy passions; as if, in addressing a political
meeting from a platform, I should affirm what I intend
to say in a declamatory style, as thus — "The deadly
miasma of republican doctrines, rising from the swamps
of popular ignorance, is e\'en now encircling the British
polity: — year by year is it insidiously advancing toward
the very centre ofthe State ; nor can the time be distant

HEBREW POETRY. 49
when it shall have destroyed all life within the sacred
enclosures of our ancient institutions." In this instance,
not only are the words and phrases figurative, and are
such therefore as need to be rendered into their literal
equivalents, but they are such also as indicate an
excited state of feeling in tho speaker, which a calm
philosophic mood will not approve ; and the exuberances
of which may well bear much retrenchment. Neverthe
less, thus far, this conditioning of thought — as well of the
impassioned style, as of that which is simply figurative
— may properly be called natural ; for it is natural to
the human mind to utter itself in figures ; and also to
indulge in that fervid style which is prompted by pow
erful emotions.
Beyond this stage, and quite of another sort, is that
conditioning of Thought which we must designate as
technical, and which is maixiiy factitious, or arbitrary;
as, for instance ; — let us take tvp the above example
of political ill-augury, and bring — if not the very same
words, yet their nearest equivalents, — into cadence, as
blank verse : in this case some of the words must by
necessity be rejected as unfit altogether for a place in
verse ; and substitutes must be found for others, because
they are not easily reduced to cadence. Moreover,
the position of every word must be determined by a
rule which, in relation to the requirements of uncondi
tioned thought, is arbitrary and artificial ; the passage
might thus run —
E'en now this poison of the people's error
Creeps on insidious, and from day to day
Invades yet more the precincts of the state.
Not long to wait, alas ! All life — all soul,
Shall cease and die within these regal courts I

50 THE SPIRIT OF THE
Thought, in this form, submits itself to the require
ments of quantity and rhythm, by means of several sub
stitutions of word for word ; and also by deflections from
the simpler and the more natural order of the words.
A still further yielding of the original thought to the
requirements of art would be needed if, in addition to
cadence, we should demand rhyme; for in that case not
only must another law of cadence be complied with ; but
also the fortuitous law of a jingle in the last syllable of
each line must prevail. On these conditions the same
meaning might thus be conveyed —
Now while we speak comes on the noisome death —
Birth of the swamps — it poisons every breath.
Doctrine delusive 1 creeps it o'er the state,
And dooms its ancient glories to their fate.
Soon shall we mourn, in desolated halls,
Departed greatness — where an Empire falls.
For any purposes of political instruction, or of warn
ing, the Thought, whether it be that of the platform
speaker, or that of a philosophical writer, may be fully
expressed, either when made to conform itself to the
laws of cadence, or when subjected to the still more
technical necessities of rhyme. Nevertheless it must be
granted, that, if the utterance of the orator — figurative
and impassioned as it is — be the fittest possible for con
veying his meaning, and if the words he uses, and the
order in which he arranges these words, be the best
possible, then the reduction of these same thoughts to
the rules of blank verse, and, still more, their reduction
to the conditions of rhyme, involve a disadvantage which
must be of more or less consequence.
There are, however, instances in which Thought, em-

HEBREW POETRY. 51
bodied in the language of symbols, and of material im
ages, is of a kind which sustains no damage under these
conditions ; in truth, the poetic style may be the very
fittest for giving utterance to feelings, or to moods of
mind ; or, as already affirmed, to truths or principles to
which no abstract terms or combinations of terms can
ever be adequate.
Yet there are some purely technical conditions in sub
mitting to which the spontaneous language of feeling, or
the severe utterances of abstract truth, can hardly be
granted to stand wholly exempt from a real disadvan
tage. There may, indeed, be approvable reasons, war
ranting the employment of such artificial means — albeit
they do involve a disadvantage ; nevertheless, where we
find it existing, it must be accepted as it is — it is a con
ditioning of Thought which, when it is admitted on
occasions the most serious, indicates the extent of that
adaptation of the Divine to the human of which we
can never lose sight without falling into perplexities.
With the exception of two or three lines — cited by
St. Paul from the Greek poets — the Scriptures of the
New Testament are everywhere prosaic in form : — the
intention of the writer or speaker is conveyed always in
the most direct manner which the rules of language
admit of — figurative terms are employed where none
other are available. Thought is here unconditioned, so
far as it can be— the subject-matter, considered. Not
so in the Scriptures of the Old Testament. Nearly a
half bf the entire mass, or in the proportion of twenty-
two to twenty-five, the Hebrew writings are not merely
poetic, as to their diction, but they are metrical in
form ;— or we should better say — the Thought of the
writer is subjected to rules of structure that are in the

52 THE SPIRIT OF THE
highest degree artificial. This fact— well understood as
now it is — escapes the notice of the reader of modern
versions ; albeit, when once it has been explained to a
reader of ordinary intelligence, he easily perceives it —
wherever it is actually found.
We have here named what is about the proportion of
prose to verse throughout the Old Testament ; but, in
truth, if those parts of the historical books are set off
from the account which are genealogical merely, and
those also which are repetitive or redundant, and those,
moreover, which barely, if at all, convey an}- religious
meaning, then it will appear that very much more than
a half of the Canon of Scripture in the Hebrew takes
this latter form ; or, as we say, is conditioned in con
formity with artificial rules of structure.
Of this structure, which of late has been carefully set
forth, and illustrated, even in popular works, there can
be no need in this place to give any account in detail.
The fact of its existence is all we have to do with ; and
this, briefly stated, is this— that each separate utter
ance of religious thought — theological, ethical, or de
votional — is thrown into an antithetical form, so mak
ing up a couplet, or a triplet ; or an integral verse in
four, five, or six measured lines. The second line of
the two is often a repetition only of the first, in other
terms :— often it is an antithetic utterance of the same
thought :— sometimes it is an illustrative supplement
to it: — sometimes an exceptive caution; yet eveiy-
where the ode or lyrical composition, regarded as a
whole, is thus built up of members — limbs — apposed,
one to the other — balancing one the other, and finding
their reason, not simply in the requirements of Thought
— uttered in the prosaic form — but, beyond this, in the

HEBREW POETRY. 53
rules or the usages of an arbitrary system of composi
tion. Then, besides this kind of structure, many of the
odes of the Hebrew Scriptures obey a law of allitera
tion — which is still more arbitrary, inasmuch as it re
quires the first word of each verse, in a certain number
of verses, to begin with the same letter, and these
in alphabetic order. Any one who will try for himself
a few experiments, in English, will find that, in yield
ing obedience to requirements of this kind, Thought
must take a turn, or must very greatly mould itself to a
fashion which it would not otherwise have chosen.
Thought submits to a process of conditioning which inti
mately affects it, if not in substance, yet in its modes of
utterance. The second verse in Milton's Christmas
Hymn stands thus :—
Only with speeches fair
She woos the gentle air
To hide her guilty front with innocent snow ;
And on her naked shame,
Pollute with sinful blame,
The saintly veil of maiden white to throw,
Confounded, that her Maker's eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.
Now let the requirement be this — that, without dis
placing the rhyme, or greatly altering the sense, every
line of the eight shall begin with the same letter —
shall it be W ?
With only speeches fair
Woos she the gentle air,
Wistful to hide her front with innocent snow;
Wide on her naked shame,

54 THE SPIRIT OF THE
Wasted with sinful blame
White, as a saintly maiden veil to throw:
Woe were it, that her Muker's eyes,
Wrathful, should look upon her foul deformities.
We should never accept this, or any other alliterative
form of the verse, as if it were in itself preferable to
its original form, constrained only by the lawTs of me
tre, and by the rhyme. Nevertheless, the sentiment,
or final meaning of the original, is conveyed, with
little, if any damage, in the more constrained form that
is demanded by the rule of alliteration : — the injury
inflicted in this instance is technical, more than it is
substantial. It may easily be admitted, that, if a com
position of great length were intended to subserve pur
poses of popular instruction, the alliterative form might
be chosen for the sake of the aid it affords to the mem
ory, and thus tending to secure a faultless transmission
of the whole, from father to son, or, rather, from the
religious mother to her children. It will be our part
hereafter to show that the religious intention of the In
spired writings is securely conveyed under all forms,
however arbitrary they maybe as to their literary struc
ture. As to the several species of the Hebrew7 Poetry, it can
only be in an accommodated sense that we could ap
ply to it any of those terms that belong to the Poetry
of Greece, and which had their origin in the artistic
intelligence of its people. There would be little mean
ing in the words if we spoke of Odes, Lyrics, or Epics,
in this case. The Hebrew Poetry has its kinds ; but they
are peculiar to itself: it has originated species of Poetry :
it has conformed itself to no models : it has sprung

HEBREW POETRY. 55
from nothing earlier than itself; or nothing that is
extant : — it has had no cognates among contemporary
literatures. Through the medium of innumerable
versions the Biblical literature has combined itself in
an intimate manner with the intellectual existence of
modern (civilized) nations. Every people has made its
wealth their own : in truth, itself drawing its force from
the deepest and most universal principles of human
nature, the Hebrew Scriptures, when once they have
thoroughly permeated the popular mind, become an
undistinguishable element, not only of the religious and
the moral life of the people, but, to a great extent, of
their intellectual life also. With ourselves — the British
people — the Inspired writings of the Old Testament
have become to us the milk of infancy and childhood,
and the nourishment of manhood in its most robust
stage. It is to these books that we owe whatever in
our literature possesses most of simple majesty and
force ; whatever is the most fully fraught with feeling ;
whatever is the most true to nature, when nature is
truest to virtue, and to wisdom. Whatever it is that
enters, as by right, the moral consciousness ; — whatever
it is that the most effectively draws the soul away from
its cleaving to the dust, and lifts the thoughts towards a
brighter sphere — all such elements of our English lite
rature, whether avowedly so or not, must trace their
rise, directly or indirectly, to the Hebrew Scriptures,
and especially to those portions of them that are, in
spirit and in form, poetic.
If we were to affirm that certain portions of this
Poetry are descriptive, or moral, or pastoral, this would
be to misunderstand the purport of the samples we might
adduce of these kinds. Vividly conscious as these

56 THE SPIRIT OF THE
writers, or most of them, are to what is sublime and
beautiful in the visible world, they are thus conscious
toward the things around them in one sense only —
namely, as parts of God's creation. The Hebrew poet
attempts no local description : — he does not dwell upon
the picturesque ; — albeit our modern sense of the pic
turesque has sprung from tastes and habits that have
had their rise in the Hebrew Scriptures ; nor do they at
any time stop on their way to bring before us the scenic
characteristics of their country. None of them has
leisure to paint particular scenes, as do our Thomson,
or Burns, or Cowper. It is a glance only that they
take of Nature, and it is such a glance as, from its
vividness and breadth, is so much the more intelligible
in all lands.
The Hebrew Poetry — artificial in structure — is not
artistic in its purpose or intention. A work may be
designated as artistic which, as the production of genius,
manifestly lias no higher aim than that of giving plea
sure, and of exhibiting the artist's power to achieve this
one purpose. But the Poets of the Bible not only have
in view always another, and a far higher object than
that of the delectation of their hearers, or the display
of their personal ability ; for, in every instance, they are
intent upon acquitting themselves of a weighty respon
sibility ; — they are charged with a message : — they are
bearing a testimony : — they are promising blessings: —
they are threatening and predicting woes. Therefore
it is that those several species of composition to which
the taste and genius of the Persians, or of the Greeks,
have given a definite form, do not make their appearance
within the compass of the Inspired writings.
It is not to win admiration by the opulence of his

HEBREW POETRY
imagination — it is not to charm a listening multitude
by the soft graces of song, or by its sublimities, that
the Hebrew bard ever utters himself. We ought not
to say that a scorn of popular favour betrays itself — as
if subaudite — in these deliverances of a message from
the Almighty ; yet it is almost so. We should here
keep in view the distinction between the genius which
contents itself with its own triumphs, in achieving an
excellent work, and the ability which executes, in the
best manner, a work the aim of which is loftier than
that of commanding applause. It might not be easy to
adduce single instances in which this important distinc
tion obtrudes itself upon notice in a manner beyond
dispute ; nevertheless a comparison at large of the
Hebrew literature, with the literature of other nations,
would not fail to make its reality unquestionable.
So it is, as we shall see, that, although Pa'estine, such
as then it was, abounded with aspects of nature that
might well tempt description, and had many points of
scenic effect, nothing of this sort is extant within the
compass of the Scriptures. Why might not spots in
Lebanon have been brought in picture before us ? — why
not the luxuriance of Ccelo-Syria, where the Jordan
springs to light from an Eden of beauty ? — why not the
flowery plain of Esdraelon ? — why not the rugged ma
jesty of the district bordering upon the Dead Sea ?
Alive to every form of natural beauty and sublimity,
and quick to seize his images from among them, the
Hebrew Poet never lingers in such scenes : he uses the
wealth of the visible world for his purposes : — Nature
he commands ; but she commands not him.
It may be said that the earliest born of the poetic
styles in every land has this same characteristic— name
s'

58 THE SPIRIT OF THE
ly, that of having a fixed purpose — an intention ; but
then, in the course of things this archaic directness, this
primitive seriousness, gives place, in the following age,
to the elaborate or artistic style — to those modes of
composition that find their beginning and their end in
the Poet's personal ambition. This process goes on
until a national literature (of the imaginative class) which
was wholly genuine in its earliest era, has become
wholly factitious towards its close. Yet it is not so in
the instance with which now we are concerned: — the
Hebrew Poetry, in the course of a thousand years,
passed through no stages of artistic sophistication. Take
the instance of those of the Psalms which, on probable
grounds of criticism, are of a date as early as the
exodus of Israel from Egypt — compare them with those
which, by their allusion to the events of a much later
time, must be dated toward the years of the sealing of
the prophetic dispensation : the same avoidance of
whatever the Poet's own ambition might have dictated
is observable throughout this lapse of ages.
Do we find an exceptive instance in that one compo
sition which stands by itself in the canonical collection
— the Canticle of Solomon ? This instance may yield a
confirmation of our doctrine, rather than a contradic
tion of it; but the anomalous character of this match
less poem, as well as its singular beaut}-, demands a
distinct consideration of it — or, we might say, a criticism
— apart.
Then, again, the Hebrew literature has no Drama ;
nor has it an Epic ; and the reasons why it has neither
of these are such as demand attention. It would be
to put upon the word Drama a very forced meaning
to apply it to the Book of Job ; — and, in so doing, to

HEBREW POETRY. 59
allow place for a notable exception to what we here
allege. These writers treat human nature in no superficial
manner ; — they touch it to the quick ; but they do not
undertake to picture forth separately its elements, its
passions, its affections, or its individual characteristics.
To do this, either in the mode of the Drama, or in the
mode of an Epic, would imply invention, or fiction,
in a sense of which no instances whatever occur with
in the compass of the Canonical Scriptures. The apoph
thegm is not a fiction, for it puts not on the historic
guise : — the allegory is no fiction, for it is never mis
understood as a truthful narrative of events. No
concatenation of actual events, no course of incidents
in real life, ever brings out separate passions, or senti
ments, in dramatic style, or with a unison of meaning.
The dramatic unity, as to the elements of human
nature, must be culled, and put together, with much
selective care — with artistic skill. A composition of
this order must be a work of genius — like a group of
figures in sculpture.
No actual man, no real person of history, has ever
been always a hero, or has ever done and said the
things that may be fitting to an Epic. Therefore it is
that an Epic Poem must be an invention ; it must be
an artistic achievement : the Poem may be quite true in
human nature generically ; but it is never true as a real
narrative : — it borrows a something from history ; but
it creates ten times more than it borrows. Scarcely
then need we say why it is that the Hebrew literature
possesses neither Drama nor Epic : the reasons, as we
shall presently see, are distinctly two.
The Epic — which is history transmuted into fiction —

60 THE SPIRIT OF THE
for a foregone purpose, or in regard to a final cause,
has stood foremost in the esteem of every people that
has risen above the rudest barbarism — of every people
— one only excepted ; and this one is a people whose
literature, mainly poetic as it is, has taken hold of the
sympathies of mankind more extensively, and more per
manently, than any other. Reasons drawn from a con
sideration of the social condition of this one people
might perhaps be brought forward in explanation of
this unique fact ; and there would then be room for
much ingenuity in showing how w_e may solve the pro
blem — in some way short of an admission which those
who distaste the true reason will labour to exclude.
But we take it otherwise.
This series of writers, through the many centuries of
their continuous testimony, spoke not, wrote not, as if
they possessed a liberty of discursive choice — now scat
tering the decorations of fiction over realities ; and now
striving to impart to fiction, in as high a degree as pos
sible, the verisimilitude of truth. They spoke and
wrote with a consciousness of their obligation to abso
lute Truth, and with a stern fixedness of purpose as
toward an authority above them : among no other
writers do we find a parallel instance of determinate
2mrpose. But whether distinctly conscious of their
mission, or not so ; or only imperfectly conscious of it,
yet they spoke as they were moved by Him who is the
d-^evSrig ©eos — the " truthful God." Solemnly regardful
were these " holy men of God " of the sovereignty of
Truth — Truth dogmatic or theological — Truth ethical,
and Truth historical. Utterly averse, therefore, were
they — abhorrent, let us say — not merely as toward fal
sification, but as toward fabrication, or any approach

HEBREW POETRY. 61
toward that sort of commingling of the real with the
unreal which might engender falseness ; or might give
rise to a dangerous confounding- of the two. The
Hebrew Scriptures, as compared with any other national
literature, are pre-eminently — they are characteristically
— they, and they alone, are throughout truthful in tone,
style, and structure. Need we ask, then, why they
contain neither the Drama nor an Epic ? Not from the
want of fitting subjects — not from poverty of materials;
but as ministers of Heaven to whom a task had been
assigned, did these men of genius — and they were such
— fail to display their skill in the creation of romances ;
and it was not because they could not do it, that they
have not attempted to immortalize themselves, and the
heroes of their national history, in producing an Orien
tal Iliad, or Odyssey, or JEneid. . To have clone this
would have been to introduce among their people an
element of confusion and of ambiguity, which would
have interfered with the purpose of the separation of
this race from all other races.
And yet this is not all that should be said ; and the
second reason would be by itself sufficient in solving
the problem ; and, not less than the first, is it conclu
sively demonstrative of the Divine origination of these
writings. Because they are Inspired — foitrvevtfra — and
teach the things of God, and enjoin the worship of God,
therefore do the writers abstain from themes which give
licence to the worship of man: — they take no account
of heroes ; and yet it was not so that an ambitious poet,
who might be thirsting for the applause of his country
men, could find no subject' in the national history
adapted to his purpose. Why not, in this manner,
undertake to immortalize Moses, Samuel, David, Solo-

62 THE SPIRIT OF THE
mon ? Why not ? It was because the Hebrew Scrip
tures, dictated from above, are constantly and sternly
truthful ; — and they are so whether the great men of
the Hebrew polity were as faultless as national fondness
would have painted them ; or were indeed as faulty as
men at the best ever are.
It has been the ambition — and a noble ambition, of
the most highly gifted minds, in every cultured people,
to give expression to a perfect ideal of humanity — to
picture a godlike virtue, wisdom, valour, self-control,
and temperance, according to the national conception
of what these qualities should be. Among the thou
sand themes of poetry, this one— the imaging of a god
like magnanimity and virtue — has held the highest place.
The Hebrew literature gives the several elements of
virtue and piety in precept ; but nowhere is it presented
in the concrete. In place of the dazzling Ideal — the
romance of humanity — we find only the real human
nature of history — vouched for as such by the presence
of those conditions of human frailty which the Idealist
would have taken care to exclude. A circumstance full
of meaning it is, that, in these writings, all that we
learn of the acts, and of the personal qualities of the
prominent persons of the national history, is found in
the narrative and prosaic books> or portions of books: —
none of it appears in the poetic books, or in those pas
sages the style of which is figurative and impassioned ;
and which, as to its form, is metrical. What then is
the import of these facts, which have no parallels in the
national poetry of other countries ? It is this, that
whenever the individual man comes forward in these
writings — whenever it is he who draws upon himself
the eyes of his fellows, whether chief or prophet, he

HEBREW POETRY. 63
must do so — such as he is: — if his virtue, his wisdom,
his valour, are to attract notice, so do his sins, his weak
nesses, his falls, in the moments of severest trial ; all
these things make their appearance also, and proclaim
the veraciousness of the record.
Greatly do we often miscalculate the relative credibi
lity or incredibility of passages in ancient writings. No
logic — or no sound logic — can make it appear incredible
that God should raise the dead ; or that He should
make the waters of the sea to stand up as a heap ; or
that, in any other mode, the Almighty should show
All Might. But utterly incredible would be the pre
tension that any congeries of events, such as are usually
packed together by a poet with a definite artistic inten
tion, has ever actually had existence in the current of
the world's affairs. Utterly beyond the limits of rea
sonable belief would be the supposition that a man — ¦
even one of ourselves — has ever acted and spoken, from
year to year, throughout his course, with unfailing con
sistency, or in that style of dramatic coherence which
the contriver of a Romance, or of an Epic, figures for
his hero. No such embodiment of the Ideal has ever,
we may be sure, broken in upon the vulgar realities of
human existence ; — there have been good men, and
brave men, and wise men, often ; but there have been
no living sculptures after the fashion of Phidias, no he
roes after the manner of Homer or Virgil.
Then there comes before us another balancing of the
incredible and the credible : — as thus. The Hebrew
Poets — it is not one or two of them, but all of them in
long series — have abstained from those idealizings of
humanity at large upon which the poets of other nations
have chosen to expend their powers. How is it that

61 THE SPIRIT OF THE
they should have been thus abstinent — should thus have
held off from ground which tempts every aspiring mind?
We shall find no admissible answer to this question,
except this, that this series of writers followed, not the
impulses of their individual genius, but each of them
wrote as he was inspired from above. Nothing in any
degree approaching to a worshipping of man — nothing
of that sort which elsewhere has been so common —
nothing which could have given a warrant to the unwise
extravagances of the saint-and-martyr worship of the
Church in the third century, anywhere makes its ap
pearance within the Canonical Scriptures of the Old
Testament. On the contrary — as well by solemn in
junction, as by their uniform example — the Inspired
writers, historians, prophets, poets, repeat the warning
— as to the rendering of worship to man, or to any
creature — " See thou do it not; worship God."

CHAPTER IV.
THE ANCIENT PALESTINE — THE BIRTH-PLACE OF
POETRY.
Poetry will never disown its relationship to the
beautiful and the sublime in the visible world; in fact it
has always proved its dependence upon influences of
this order. Born and nurtured, not at hazard on any
spot, but only in chosen regions, it finds at hand, for
giving utterance to the mysteries of the inner life, an
abundance of material symbols — fit for purposes of this
kind — among the objects of sense. It is the function of
Poetry to effect such an assimilation of the material with
the immaterial as shall produce one world of thought
and of emotion — the visible and the invisible, intimately
commingled. Poetry, nursed on the lap of Nature, will have its
preferences — it must make its selection ; and this, not
merely as to the exterior decorations of its abode, but
even as to the solid framework of the country which it
favours ; there must be, not only a soil, and a climate, and
a various vegetation, favourable to its training ; but a
preparation must have been made for it in the remotest
geological eras. The requirements of a land that is des
tined to be the home of poetry have in all instances been
very peculiar : — it has sprung up and thriven on coun
tries of very limited extent — upon areas ribbed and
walled about by ranges of mountains, or girdled and cut

66 THE SPIRIT OF THE
into by seas. These — the duly prepared birth-places of
poetry — have been marked by abrupt inequalities of
surface — by upheavings and extrusions of the primasval
crust ofthe earth : — these selected lands have glistened
with many rills — they have sparkled with fountains —
they have been clothed with ancient forests, as well as
decked, each spring anew, with flowers. Moreover a
wayward climate, made so by its inequalities of surface,
has broken up the wearisome monotony of the year —
such as it is in tropical and in arctic regions — by irregu
lar shiftings of the aerial aspect of all things ; and there
has been, in such countries, a corresponding variety in
the animal and vegetable kingdoms ; there has thus been
a large store in the Poet's treasury of material symbols.
A land such as this is — or was, three thousand years
ago — the country in which the Hebrew Poetry had its
birth, and where it reached its maturity, and where it
ceased to breathe ; nor has it been under conditions very
different from these that Poetry has ever sprung up and
flourished. It has not been a native of Tartarian steppes,
nor of savannahs, or interminable prairies, nor of track
less swamps, nor of irrigated rice-levels, nor of leagues
on leagues of open corn-land, nor of Saharas. Poetry
has not weathered the tempests, nor confronted the ter
rors of the Atlas ranges : — it has not sported on the
flanks of Caucasus, or on the steeps of the Andes, or the
Himalayas ; nor has it breathed on the rugged vertebrae
of the North American continent. In none of those
regions has it appeared which oppress the spirit by a
dreary sameness, or by shapeless magnitudes, or feature
less sublimity. Poetry has had its birth, and it has
sported its childhood, and it has attained its manhood,
and has blended itself with the national life in coun-

HEBREW POETRY. 67
tries such as Greece, with its rugged hills, and its myrtle
groves, and its sparkling rills ; but not in Egypt : — in
Italy ; but not on the dead levels of Northern Europe.
Poetry was born and reared in Palestine — but not in
Mesopotamia : — in Persia — but not in India. Pre-emi
nently has Poetry found its home among the rural graces
of England, and amid the glens of Scotland ; and there,
rather than in those neighboring countries which are
not inferior to the British Islands in any other products
of intellect or of taste.
Exceptions — apparent only, or of a very partial kind
— might be adduced in contradiction of these general
affirmations. Exceptions there will be to any generali
zation that touches human nature ; for in a true sense
the human mind is superior to all exterior conditions ;
and its individual forces are such as to refuse to be abso
lutely subjected to any formal requirements : greater is
the individual man than circumstances of any sort ; and
greater is he far than materialists would report him to
be — according to system. A Poet there may be, wher
ever Nature shall call him forth ; but there will not be
Poetry among a people that is not favoured by Nature,
as to its home : — the imaginative tastes and the creative
genius have been, as to the mass of the people, indige
nous to Greece ; but not to Egypt : to Italy ; but not to
France : to the British Islands ; but not to Holland.
And thus too, it was the ancient people of Palestine,
pre-eminently, that possessed a poetry which was quite
its own. But then we must be looking back a three
thousand years, as to the people ; and we must be thiuk-
ing of the country, such as it was in the morning hours
of Biblical time. In later ages— the people fallen ! and
the land — mourning its hopeless desolation ! ;_

68 THE SPIRIT OF THE
Palestine, rather than any other country that might
be named, demands the presence, and needs the indus
try of man, for maintaining its fertility. Capable, as it
has been, of supporting millions of people, those millions
must actually be there ; and then only will it justify its
repute as a " very good land." A scanty population
will starve, where a dense population would fatten. On
this land, emphatically, is the truth exemplified — that
" the hand ofthe diligent maketh rich :"— it is here that,
if man fails of his duty, or if he misunderstands his own
welfare, the very soil disappears under his feet. So has
it been now through many dreary centuries ; and here
has been accomplished the warning — that the sins of the
fathers are visited, not only upon the children to the
third and fourth generation ; but upon their remotest
descendants, and to their successors, who may be mas
ters of the land.
The desolations of Palestine have been sensibly increas
ed, even within the memory of man ; — and unquestion
ably so within periods that are authentically known to
history. Those who have visited Palestine, at inter
vals of fifteen or twenty years, have forcibly received
this impression from the aspect of its surface, as well as
from the appearance of the people, that decay is still in
progress : a ruthless and rapacious rule, dreading and
hating reform, withers the industry — such as it might
be — of the people, and makes the laud a fit roaming
ground for the Bedouin marauder. A ten years of Bri
tish rule, and a million or two of British capital, might
yet make this land " blossom as the rose :" the wilder
ness and parched land how should they be made glad
for such a visitation !
Yet beside the social and political causes of decay,

HEBREW POETRY. 69
some purely physical influences have been taking effect
upon Palestine, as upon all the countries that skirt the
eastern end of the Mediterranean. Within the lapse of
what is called historic time, Libyan wastes have become
far more arid than once they were, and, in consequence,
they have acquired a higher mean temperature. North
Africa is much less abundant in corn, and is less graced
with tropical vegetation, than in ancient times it was.
In the course of two or three thousand years the sand
hurricanes of Libya, and of the Sahara, in sweeping
over the valley ofthe Nile, have not only sepulchred its
sepulchres, and entombed its temples and palaces in a
ten, or twenty, or thirty feet of deposit — narrowing con
tinually the green bordering of the Nile ; but they have
given dryness for moisture to the neighbouring countries.
Dense forests once shed coolness and humidity over
large tracts of northern Arabia. The countless millions
of people that were subjected to the Assyrian, the Ba
bylonian, the Median despotisms, flourished upon the
fatness of the Mesopotamian corn-lands, and by their
industry and their water-courses not only preserved the
fertility which they created, but rendered the climate
itself as temperate as its latitude should make it. Under
differing conditions the same course of physical change
has affected Asia Minor — once more populous, in a ten
fold proportion, than in modern times these regions have
been ; for then, population, fertility, mildness of climate,
sustained each other.
Those countries of Europe which formed the back
ground of the ancient civilization have, in the course of
twenty centuries, been denuded of their forests; — and
this is, no doubt, a beneficial change ; but this clearance
has had great influence in affecting the climate and the

70 THE SPIRIT OF THE

productions of Greece, of Italy, of France, and of
Spain. As to Palestine, the ruins which now crown almost
every one of its hill-tops, and the very significant fact
of the remains of spacious theatres in districts where
now human habitations are scarcely seen, afford incon
testable evidence ofthe existence of a dense population
in times that are not more remote than the Christian
era. Galilee, at that time, and Decapolis, and the rich
pasture-lands beyond Jordan, the Hauran, and Gerash,
and Bosrah, as well as all the towns of the coast, teem
ed then with the millions of a population which mainly,
if not entirely, was fed from the home soil. At the time
of the return of the people from Babylon, and for the
three centuries following, every acre supported its com
plement of souls ; and the country, according to its
quality, returned a full recompence to the husbandman,
in every species proper to the latitude : — abundant it
was in its dates, its olives, its vines, and its figs ; in its
cereals, its herds, with their milk and butter ; and, not
of least account, its honey. These are facts of which
the evidence meets us on every page of ancient litera
ture where this garden-land is named.
It is most of all in the hill-country of Judea, through
out which the bare limestone basement of the land now
frowns upon the sky, that the negligence of the people
and the misrule of their masters have wrought the great
est mischief. Throughout that region which, by its ele
vation as well as by its latitude, should be temperate,
there was a luxuriant growth on all sides in those times
when the Hebrew Poetry breathed its first notes. In
that age every slope was carefully terraced, and the vis
cid soil was husbanded : — every swell of the land gave

HEBREW POETRY. 71
delight to the eye in the weeks of spring, and of an
early summer, in which it was laden with a double
harvest. By the multitude of its springs, and the
abundance of its rains — well conserved in tanks (such
as the Pools of Solomon) — drought was seldom known,
or was mitigated when it occurred ; and a mantle of
opulence clothed the country where now a stern deso
lation triumphs.
Still to be traced are the vestiges of the ancient wealth,
the margin of the Dead Sea only excepted. Through
out Judea human industry reaped its reward; and in
the south — as about Hebron, and in Galilee, and in
Samaria, and in the plains of Jericho, and on the flanks
of Lebanon, and round about Banias, and throughout
the east country — the Hauran and Bashan — the fer
tility of the soil was as great as in any country known
to us. An easy industry was enough to render a sen
suous existence as pleasurable as the lot of man allows.
In truth, within this circuit there were spots upon
which, if only they were secure from the violence of
their fellows, men might have ceased to sigh for a lost
Paradise. But that Paradise was forfeited, as well as
the first, and now a doleful monotony, and a deathlike
silence have established their dominion, as if for ever !
As to the wealth of the hills, it has slid down into the
ravines: — wintry torrents, heavy with a booty wasted,
have raged through the wadys, and have left despair to
the starving few that wander upon the surface.
But now this Palestine — which five English counties,
Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Lin
colnshire, would more than cover — brings within its
narrow limits more varieties of surface, and of aspect,
and of temperature, and of produce, than elsewhere

72 THE SPIRIT OF THE
may be found in countries that have ten times its area.
Palestine, in the age of its wealth, was a samplar of the
world : — it was a museum country — many lands in
one : the tread of the camel, in two or three hours, may
now give the traveller a recollection of his own — come
whence he may, from any country between the torrid
zone and our northern latitudes. Not in England, not
in Switzerland, nor in Greece — in no country known to
us — may there be looked at, and experienced, so much
of difference in all those external things of nature which
affect the bodily sensations — the conditions of life, and
in what quickens the imagination ; — and all upon an
area the whole of which may be seen from three of its
elevations, or from four. Thus it was, therefore, that
the Hebrew Poet found, always near at hand, those
materials of his art which the poets of other lands had
to seek for in distant travel. Imagery, gay or grave,
was around him everywhere; and these materials
included contrasts the most extreme : then these diver
sities of scenery, so near at hand, must have made the
deeper impression upon, minds sensible of 'such impres
sions, inasmuch as this same land was bordered on every
side by mountain ranges, or by the boundless table-land
desert, eastward and southward; and by the Great Sea
in front. Palestine was as a picture of many and bright
colours, set in a broad and dull frame.
In other lands, as in a few spots in England and at
rare moments — in Greece, and its islands, often — in
Italy, at a few points, and in many of the Paradisaical
islets of the Eastern Ocean, and of the Pacific, there
may be seen that which the eye rests upon with so
much pleasure in a sultry summer's day — the deep
blue or purple of the sleeping ocean, serving to give

HEBREW POETRY, 73
brighter splendour to a foreground of luxurious foliage,
and of gay flowers. Trees, shrubs, festooning climbers
—garden, a"nd wild flowers, then most recommend
themselves to the painter's eye when the background is
of that deep colour — the like to which there is nothing
on earth — the purple of a profound sea, shone upon by
a fervent sun, under a cloudless sky. But then in none
of those countries or islands do splendid landscapes of
this order present themselves in contrast with stony
deserts, dismal as the land of death ! But in Palestine
— such as it was of old — the soft graces of a rural scene
— the vine-covered slopes — the plains, brilliant with
flowers, the wooded glens and knolls — sparkling with
springs, and where the warbling of birds invites men to
tranquil enjoyment — in Palestine there is, or there was,
ever at hand those material symbols of unearthly good
which should serve to remind man of his destination to
a world better and brighter than this.
From the lofty battlements of most of the walled
towns the ancient inhabitant of Palestine looked west
ward upon what was to him an untraversed world of
waters : the " Great Sea'' was to him the image of the
infinite. He believed, or he might believe, that the
waves which fell in endless murmurs upon those shores,
had come on — there to end a course which had begun
— between the two firmaments — where the sun sinks
nightly to his rest. From the opposite turrets of the
same fenced city he watched for the morning, and
thence beheld the celestial bridegroom coming forth
from his chambers anew — rejoicing as a strong man
to run a race ! To those who now, for an hour, will
forget our modern astronomy, the Syrian sun-rising
well answers to the imaginative rendering of it by the
4

74 THE SPIRIT OF THE

Poet : — the sun, as it flares up from behind the moun
tain-wall of Edom, seems well to bear out whatever
may be conceived of it, as to its daily course through
the heavens.
Again, the ranges of Lebanon might be called a sam
ple of the aspects of an Alpine region — a specimen of
sublimities, elsewhere found far apart. The loftier sum
mits — the crown of Jebel-es-Sheikh — is little lower
than the level of perpetual snow : in truth, Hermon, in
most years, retains throughout the summer its almond-
blossom splendour ; — and as to the lower ranges, they
overhang slopes, and glades, and ravines, and narrow
plains, that are unrivalled on earth for wild luxuriant
beauty. In ancient times these rich valleys were man
tled with cedar forests ; and the cedar, in its perfection,
is as the lion among the beasts, and as the eagle among
the birds. This majestic tree, compared with any
others of its class, has more of altitude and of volume
than any of them : it has more of umbrageous ampli
tude, and especially it has that tranquil aspect of vene
rable continuance through centuries which so greatly
recommends natural objects to the speculative and
meditative tastes. The cedar of Lebanon, graceful and
serviceable while it lives, has the merit of preparing in
its solids, a perfume which commends it, when dead, to
the noblest uses : — this wood invites the workman's
tool for every ingenious device ; and its odoriferous
substance is such as to make it grateful alike in palaces
and in temples.
It is only in these last times — at the end of thirty
centuries — that a river, which has no fellow on earth — •
which has poured its waters down to their rest near at
hand to the civilized world, and has been crossed at many

HEBREW POETRY. 75

points — it is only now that it has come to be understood ;
and the mystery of its seventy miles of course opened up.
Why it was not understood long ago is itself a mystery.
The brevity of ancient authors, who touch for a moment
only upon subjects the most exciting to modern curiosity,
is indeed an exercise of patience to those who, for the
first time, come to acquaint themselves with the morti
fying fact that where pages of description are eagerly
looked for — five words, or, at the most, as many lines, are
what we must be content to accept at their hands. Why
did not Herodotus describe to us the Al-Kuds — the
Holy city which he visited ? Why not tell us something
of the secluded people and their singular worship ? So
it is as to Diodorus, and Strabo, and Pliny; and so, in
many instances, is it with the prolix Josephus : who
gives us so often more than we care to read ; but fails to
impart the very information which we are in need of, on
points of importance. The Jordan — which, physically
and historically alike, is the most remarkable river in the
world — is mentioned by ancient authors only in the
most cursory manner, as dividing the countries on its
right and left bank — or as emptying itself into the
Asphaltic Lake. Even the Biblical writers, although
the river is mentioned by them very often, say little that
implies their acquaintance with the facts of its physical
peculiarities. And yet, unconscious as they seem to
have been of these facts, they drew from this source
very many of their images. Has there ever been poetry
where there is not a river ? This Jordan — rich in
aspects alternately of gloom, and of gay luxuriance,
sometimes leaping adown rapids, and then spreading
itself quietly into basins — reaches a prison-house whence
there is no escape for its waters but — upward to the

76 THE SPIRIT OF THE
skies ! Within a less direct distance than is measured
by the Thames from Oxford to the Nore, or by the
Severn from Shrewsbury to the Estuary of the Bristol
Channel, or by the Humber, or the Trent, or the Tweed,
in their main breadths, the waters of the Jordan break
themselves away from the arctic glaciers of Hermon, and
within the compass of one degree of latitude give a tro
pical verdure to the plains of Jericho, where the sum
mer's heat is more intense than anywhere else on earth
¦ — unless it be Aden. To conceive of these extraordi
nary facts aright, we should imagine a parallel instance,
as if it were so that, in the midland counties — or be
tween London and Litchfield— perpetual snow sur
rounded the one, while the valley of the Thames should
be a forest of palm-trees, with an African climate !
When the traveller crosses the Ghor, and ascends
the wall of the Eastern table-land, that illimitable
desert spreads itself out before him in traversing which
meditative minds indulge in thoughts that break away
from earth, and converse with whatever is great and
unchanging in an upper world. If we retrace our steps
in returning from the Eastern desert, and recross the
Jordan, travelling southward, we come upon that region
of bladeless desolation which constitutes the wall of the
Asphaltic Lake, on its western side ; yet from this land
of gloom a few hours' journey suffices to bring into
contrast the vineyards, the olive-groves, the orangeries,
of a luxuriant district — and a theatre of peaks, ravines,
gorges, and broken precipices, within the circle of
which the summers and the winters of all time have
effected no change : it is now, as it was thousands of
years ago, tho land of the Shadow of Death — a land
where the lot of man presents itself under the saddest

HEBREW POETRY 77
aspects ; — for the Earth is there a prison-house, and the
sun overhead is the inflict er of torment.
Yet, near to the abodes of a people among whom
powerful emotions are to find symbols for their utter
ance, there is found one other natural prodigy, and such
as is unmatched upon the surface of the Earth ; — for
nowhere else is there a hollow so deep as is this hollow :
there is no expanse of water that sends its exhalations
into the open sky, resembling at all this lake of bitumen
and sulphur. And what might that chasm show itself
to be, if the caldron were quite emptied out, or if the
waters of the Jordan could be turned aside for a while
into the Great Sea, leaving evaporation to go on until
the lowest rent were exposed to view ! Unfathomed,
unfathomable, is this lake at its southern end : — its
mysteries, be they what they may, are veiled by these
dense waters : — but the traveller, conscious as now he is
of the actual depth of the surface — so far below the level
ofthe busy world as it is — needs little aid of the imagi
nation to persuade himself that a plunge beneath the
surface would bring him upon the very roofing of Sheol.
It is the wild flowers of a land that outlive its de
vastations : — it is these that outlive the disasters or the
extermination of its people: — it is these that outlive
misrule, and that survive the desolations of war. It is
these " witnesses for God " — low of stature as they
are, and bright, and gay, and odoriferous — that, because
they are infructuous, are spared by marauding bands.
These gems of the plain and of the hill-side outlast the
loftiest trees of a country : — they live on to witness the
disappearance of gigantic forests: — they live to see the
extinction ofthe cedar, and ofthe palm, and ofthe ilex,
and ofthe terebinth, and ofthe olive, and ofthe acacia,

78 THE SPIRIT OF THE
and of the vine, and of the fig-tree, and of the myrtle :
— they live, to see fulfilled, in themselves, the word —
" every high thing shall be brought low ; and the
humble shall rejoice." So has it been in Palestine :
once it was a land of dense timber growths, and of fre
quent graceful clusters of smaller trees, and of orchards,
and of vineyards, which retains now, only here and
there, a remnant of these adornments. Meanwhile, the
alluvial plains of the land, and its hill sides, are gay,
every spring, with the embroidery of flowers — the
resplendent crocus, the scented hyacinth, the anemone,
the narcissus, the daffodil, the florid poppy, and the
ranunculus, the tulip, the lily, and the rose. These
jewels of the spring morning — these children of the
dew — bedded as they are in spontaneous profusion
upon soft cushions of heather, and divans of sweet
thyme — invite millions of bees, and of the most showy
of the insect orders : — flowers, perfumes, butterflies,
birds of song, all things humble and beautiful, hero
flourish, and are safe — for man seldom intrudes upon
the smiling wilderness !
Nevertheless, skirting the flowery plains of Palestine,
in a few spots, there are yet to be found secluded
glades, in which the cypress and the acacia maintain
the rights of their order to live ; and where, as of old,
" the birds sing among the branches." And so live
still, on spots, the fruit-bearing trees — the apricot, the
peach, the pear, the plum, the fig, the orange, the cit
ron, the date, the melon, the tamarisk, and — noblest of
all fruits— the grape, " that maketh glad man's heart :"
all still exist, as if in demonstration of what God has
heretofore done for this sample laud of all lands, and
may do again.

HEBREW POETRY. 79
A sample land, in every sense, was the ancient Pales
tine to be, and therefore it was so in its climate. The
round ofthe seasons here exhibits a greater compass of
meteorologic changes — there are greater intensities of
cold and of heat — there is more of vehemence in wind,
rain, hail, thunder, lightning, not to say earthquake,
than elsewhere in any country between the same paral
lels of latitude, and within limits so narrow. Alto
gether unlike to this condition of aerial unquietness are
the neighbouring countries — Egypt, Arabia, Persia, or
Mesopotamia. To find the climate of Palestine in win
ter, or in summer, we must include a fifteen degrees of
latitude, northward and southward of its own.
Already we have adverted to those physical changes
in the surrounding countries which, in the course of
thirty centuries, have very materially affected the cli
mate of Palestine : the reality of such changes can
hardly be doubted. Throughout the Psalms, the Book
of Job, and the Prophets, there are many passages,
relating to variations of temperature, and the like, which
agree much rather with our experience in England, than
they do with what is now common to Syria. This is
certain that throughout the ages during which the Bib
lical literature was produced, the climate of Palestine
was such as to render its allusions to the external world
easily intelligible to the people of all lands, excepting
only those of the arctic circle. How much more intel
ligible, in this respect, are those books, than they would
have been if the Poets and Prophets of the Bible had
been dwellers in Mesopotamia, or in Egypt, or in
Nubia, or in Libya, or in Thrace, or in Southern Tar-
tary, or in Northern Europe, or in North, or in South
America, or in any ofthe scattered islets ofthe Eastern

80 THE SPIRIT OF THE
Ocean! Palestine, situated at the juncture of conti
nents, at the head of seas, at the centre of travel by
camel or ship, is, or it was at the time in question, as to
its Fauna and its Flora, a museum land ; — as to its cli
mate, it was the congener of all climates — as it was
also in its adaptation to modes of life, and to the means
of subsistence. Palestine was favourable to the habits
ofthe hunter, the herdsman, the agriculturalist, the gar
dener, the vinedresser, and to them that cultivate the
fig, and the olive, and the date-palm. Palestine, if man
be there to do his part with his hoe, and his knife, and
his plough, is at once an Asiatic country, and it is
European. It has its counterpart in Greece, in Italy,
in France, in England, as to what is the most peculiar
to each ; and so it is that the Scriptures of the Old
Testament are intelligible (in those allusions to Nature
with which they abound) to the greater number of the
dwellers on earth ; and that the countries in which these
allusions might not be understood are as few as they
could be.
It is not possible to determine how far changes of
climate throughout the surrounding countries have had
influence in giving to the aerial aspect of Palestine that
clear, sharp, and unpictorial visibility which is now its
characteristic. This clearness does not fail to attract
the eye of the traveller who visits the Holy Land, with
the aerial phenomena of his own landscape scenery in
his recollection: striking is the contrast that presents
itself in this respect. The hill country of Judea — itself
now bare, and almost treeless — is seen through a me
dium which throws upon its hills and rocky surfaces an
aspect of hardness and poverty : so it is that the home
of sacred mysteries is itself shrouded in no mystery.

HEBREW POETRY. 81
In England, a distance of twenty or thirty miles is
enough to impart to mountain ranges the pictorial
charms of many delicate tints, and these always chang
ing ; and to give even to objects less remote a sort of
unreality, grateful to the eye of the poet and the
painter. But it is not so in Palestine, where, under
ordinary conditions of the heavens, a range of hills,
which may be forty or fifty miles distant, shows itself to
be — what it is, and nothing more ! Illusions of the
atmosphere do not lend the distance any unreal charms.
Bring together from the stores of our modern English
Poetry those passages which borrow their rich colouring
from our fitful atmosphere and its humidity : — the soft
and golden glozings of sunrise and sunset, and the pearly
distances at noon, and the outbursts of sunbeam, and
the sudden overshadowings, and the blendings of tints
upon all distances of two or three miles : it is these
atmospheric illusions, characteristic of a climate that is
humid, and yet warm, which have given to the English
taste in landscape its peculiarity, and which shows itself
equally in the national poetry, and landscape-painting.
That sense of the picturesque, which is so eminently
English, must, in part, at least, be traced to those aerial
illusions which we willingly admit, as compensation for
the discomforts of a variable climate.
If the English temper be moody, and if its tastes are
largely inclusive of the melancholic element, much of
this sombreness of feeling, and its tenderness, is no doubt
attributable to a climate, an atmosphere, a sky, that are
too little cheered by the sun : and the national poetic
feeling, with its wistfulness, and its retrospective depths
of feeling, is in accordance with this want of settled fer
vent effulgence. Among the deeper shadows, and richer

82 THE SPIRIT OF THE

colours, and the mysteriousness ofthe latest autumn, the
Poetry of England takes its tone.
But the English traveller, with his recollections of a
home landscape — its grey gentleness of tints, and its
mysteries of shadow — should prepare himself for dis
appointment in making his way on such a route as that
from Jaffa to Jerusalem : no shadowy illusions are
there ! It is naked reality that surrounds him far and
near in this arid land. The feeling that is due on this
surface must be challenged to come where we know it
ought to come : and it is not what he sees, but what he
thinks of, that gives excitement to his journey. Enchant
ment has been dispelled ; let then the gravest thoughts
take the place of agreeable illusions ! If English land
scape be a painting in oils, the Syrian landscape is a
painting in fresco : each line of hills cuts its hard out
line — one range in front of another — and the most
remote come upon the sky with a too rigid distinctness.
At an early hour the sun drinks up all moisture from the
earth's surface ; and thenceforward all things are seen
through a medium that is perfectly translucent. In
Palestine, as now it is, Nature exhibits herself as a
marble statue — colourless and motionless : — whereas at
home we are used to see her less fixed in her attire, and
making her toilette anew from hour to hour. Has it
always been so in Palestine as now it is ? No certain
answer can be given to this question ; yet it may be
believed that, in the times of David and of Isaiah, not
only was the land itself everywhere richly clad, but the
atmosphere had a changeful aspect, almost as much so
as with ourselves.
And yet if the transparent atmosphere of Syria, under
a fervent sun, gives too much of naked reality to the

HEBREW POETRY. 83
landscape, vast is the advantage which is its compensa
tion, when the sparkling magnificence of the starry
heavens takes its turn, instead ofthe things of earth, to
engage the meditative eye. Grant it that the day there
(now at least it is so) offers a spectacle less rich than
in our latitude of mists : — but then the Night, upon the
mountains of Israel, opens a scene incomparably more
sublime than we are used to witness. There — it seems
so — bearing clown upon our heads with power are the
steadfast splendours of that midnight sky ! Those only
who have gazed upon the starry heavens through a per
fectly transparent atmosphere can understand the great
ness of the disadvantage that is thrown over the celestial
field by an atmosphere that is never well purged of the
exhalations of earth. In a latitude so high as ours, and
which yet has a mean temperature higher than its
degrees should give it, the chill of the night serves only
to shed fog or mist upon the lower stratum of air ; but
in warmer climates, — and in no country is it more so
than in Syria, — the vast burden ofthe watery element
whieh the fervour of day has raised aloft becomes,
quickly after sunset, a prodigious dew, breaking clown
upon the earth, as a mighty, yet noiseless deluge : — the
aerial load is suddenly thrown off upon the lap of
earth, and so it is that, almost in a moment, the veil
is drawn aside from the starry fields.
The planets, and the stars upon which the shepherds
of Palestine were used to gaze, and which to them were
guiding lights, do not seem as if they were fain to go
out from moment to moment ; but each burns in its
socket, as a lamp that is well fed with oil. We, in this
latitude, have borrowed — for technical purposes in our
Astronomy — the Chaldean groupings of the stars into

84 THE SPIRIT OF THE
contours of monsters and demi-gods ; but, unless we
had so borrowed these celestial romances, we should
never have imagined them for ourselves. The nightly
heavens in warmer climates show the celestial giants
with a bold distinctness ; and under those skies these
imputed forms of the astral clusters look down upon the
earth as if they were real beings, and as if each glowing
cluster — Pleiades, Orion, Mazzaroth, and Arcturus, and
their companions — were possessed of a conscious life.
The pastoral usages of Palestine greatly favoured a
meditative and religious contemplation of the starry
heavens ; and throughout long periods of the Hebrew
national life in which the land had its rest from war,
and when the shepherd's enemy was not his fellow-man,
but the wolf only, and the lion, and the bear : the shep
herd — whose own the sheep were — passed his night
abroad, taking his rest upon the hill-side ; and these
shepherds were often of a mood that led them to " con
sider the heavens," the work of the Creative hand ; and
to gather from those fields the genuine fruits of the
highest philosophy — which is — a fervent piety. The
Palestinian shepherd of that age did indeed misinterpret
the starry heavens in a sense ; — or, we should say, he
was at fault in his measurement ofthe distance between
the celestial roofing above him, and the earth on which
he trod ; yet, notwithstanding this error, much nearer
did he come to the firmament of universal truth than
does the modern atheist astronomer, who, after he has
found, by parallax, the distance of the nearest of the
stars, professes to see no glory in the heavens, but that
ofthe inventors of his astronomic tools! The ladder
which rested its foot upon earth, and lodged its upper
most round upon the pavement of heaven, was indeed

HEBREW POETRY. 85
of far greater height than the Syrian shepherd imagined
it to be; nevertheless it was to him a firm ladder of
truth ; aud upon it have passed those who have kept
alive the intercourse between man and his Maker
through many centuries.
Always with some high prospect in view, and most
often when he had a message of rebuke to deliver, the
Hebrew prophet drew many of his symbols from those
meteorologic violences which, as we have said, are of
frequent occurrence in Palestine. Thus it was that in
predicting the overthrow of empires, the fall of tyrants,
the destruction of cities, the scattering of nations — the
messenger of God found, ready for his use, a figurative
dialect which had a colloquial import among the people ;
besides these deluges of rain, and these awful thunder-
ings and lightnings, and these cataracts of hail, the peo
ple had experience of the terrors of earthquake — if not
of volcanic eruptions.
It was thus, therefore, that, within limits so narrow
as those of the land occupied by the Hebrew people,
provision had been made (may we not use this phrase ?)
at once for supplying to its Poets, in the greatest abun
dance and variety, the material imagery they would
need ; and for bringing within the daily experiences of
the people every condition of the material world which
could be made available for the purposes of a figura
tive literature. In these adjustments of the country to
the people, and of both to, the ulterior intention of A
Revelation for the world, we need not hesitate to
recognize the Divine Wisdom, making preparation, in a
marked manner, for so great and peculiar a work.
Other provisions, having the same meaning, will meet
us as we go on. Yet at this point there is an inference

86 THE SPIRIT OF THE
that should be noted — namely, this — That the mode
or style of a communication of the Will of God to the
human family was to be symbolical, or figurative ; and
that by consequence it should not be scientific or phi
losophic — -or such as could be interpretable in an abstract,
or an absolute sense.
A question now meets us, an answer to which is im
portant to our present line of argument. The ancient
Palestine, we have said, was rich in its material garni
ture, as related to the needs and purposes of a figura
tive literature. And so are, and have been, other
lands ; but those who have trod the soil and tilled it
may have had little or no tasteful consciousness toward
the aspects of Nature, as beautiful or sublime. Poetry
has not had its birth among them : the language of the
people has reflected only the primitive intention of a
colloquial medium ; and therefore it has been poor in its
vocabulary as to the specific differences of objects, and
as to less obtrusive distinctions among objects of the
same class.
In these respects, then, how was it with the Hebrew
people ? Writers of a certain class have allowed them
selves to repeat, a thousand times, the unsustained alle
gation that this people was — " a rude and barbarous
horde." Do we find it to be such? We possess por
tions of the people's literature ; and, more than this,
we have in our hands their language ; or, at least, so
much of it as suffices for putting us in position, on sure
grounds of analogy, for filling in some of the chasms,
and for safely presuming what this language must have
been, in its eutireness, when it was the daily utterance
ofthe people.
A difference should here be noted, as to the inferences

HEBREW POETRY. 87
that are warrantably derivable, on the one hand, from
certain literary remains of an ancient people, and, on tho
other hand, from their language, so far as this may be
known by means of these remains. Among a rude peo
ple there may have been instances, one in a century, of
Nature's gifted spirits : — individual minds, rich and pro
ductive, working the wonders of genius in solitary self-
sufficient force. In such instances — rare indeed they are
— the tools, the materials of genius are wanting : — it
was not a rich and copious language that was at the
poet's command ; for the " horde " were as indigent in
thought as they were rude in their modes of life. How
was it then with the ancient people of Palestine ?
A people's language is the veracious record of its
entire consciousness — intellectual, moral, domestic, civil,
political, and technical. The people's glossary is the
reflection — whether clear or confused, exact or inexact
— first, of the notice it took of Nature, and of the
material world ; and then of its own inner life of pas
sion, affection, emotion ; and then it is the voucher for
the people's rate of civilization, and of its daily observ
ances, its occupations, and the customary accidents of
these. Whatever is in the language is now, or once
was, in the mind and the life of the people. The single
words of the language, and its congested phrases, are
tokens, or they are checks with which some correspond
ing reality duly tallied, whether or not any extant his
tory has given it a place on its pages. Exceptive
instances might here be adduced ; but they are not such
as would interfere with our argument in this case.
Races that have fallen, in the course of ages, from a
higher to a lower stage of intellectual and social advance-
ment, may, to some extent, have retained, as an inheri-

88 THE SPIRIT OF THE
tance which they do not occupy, the copious glossary
of their remote ancestors.
As to the extent and the richness of the Hebrew
tongue at the time when it was the language of common
life, or during the twelve centuries from the Exodus to
the Captivity, there must be some uncertainty ; not
merely because the extant remains of the Hebrew lite
rature is of limited extent, but because these remains
are of two or three kinds only, and — whatever may be
their kind — they have one and the same intention.
The writers, whether historians, moralists, poets, pro
phets, are none of them discursive on the fields of
thought: not one of them allows himself the liberty to
wander at leisure over the regions of fancy, or of specu
lation. Each of them has received his instructions, and
is the bearer of a message ; and he hastens onward to
acquit himself of his task. Inasmuch as the message
should command all attention from those to whom it is
delivered, so it must seem to command the whole mind
of the messenger, and to rule, and to overrule, his
delivery of it. Thus it is that copiousness and variety
should not be looked for within the compass of books
which not only have all of them a religious purpose, but
which speak also in the prescribed terms of au author
ity. Such writings are likely to take up much less
of the colloquial medium than would be found in the
miscellaneous and unconstrained productions of writers
whose purpose it was to entertain the idle hours of their
contemporaries. Unless the botanies of Solomon were an exception, it
might be that the Hebrew people had no literatnre
beside their religious annalists, and their prophets. Yet
we may believe that the talk of common life, through-

HEBREW POETRY
out the ancient Palestine, contained a large amount of
words and phrases which have found no place in the
extant Hebrew books : — these books have immortalized
for our Lexicons perhaps not more than a third part of
the spoken tongue. If, therefore, it were affirmed that
the Hebrew language is not copious, or rich in syno
nyms, what might be understood is this (if, indeed, this
be true, which it is not) that its extant sacred literature
is not rich in words. But even if this were allowed,
then the question would return upon us — whether the
popular mind was not vividly conscious toward the two
wTorlds — the material, and the immaterial — toward the
outer and the inner life ? There is evidence that it was
so : there is evidence in contradiction of modern nuga
tory assertions concerning " the rude and barbarous
horde." A people is not rude that notes all diversities
in the visible world ; nor is it barbarous if its languag'e
abounds in phrases that are the need of the social, the
domestic, and the benign emotions.
Proof conclusive to this effect is contained, by neces
sary implication, in the fact that the Hebrew people
were addressed ordinarily by their Teachers in a mode
which (as to its structure) is subjected to the difficult
conditions of elaborate metrical rules, and in the style
of that fervid and figurative phraseology which is evi
dence of the existence among the people of an imagina
tive consciousness, and of an emotional sensibility, far
more acute than that of the contemporary nations of
whom we have any knowledge. The Prophets and
Poets of this people use the material imagery — the bold
metonyms, the transmuted phrases — of the imaginative
and emotional style with an ease and a naturalness
which indicates the existence of corresponding intellec-

90 THE SPIRIT OF THE
tual habitudes in the popular mind. As was the Prophet,
such, no doubt, were the Prophet's hearers — obdurate
and gainsaying often ; nevertheless they were accessible
always to those modes of address which are intelligible,
even to the most obdurate, when they have belonged to
the discipline and economy of every man's earliest years.
Every man's better recollections were of a kind that put
liim in correspondence with the Prophet's style, when
he rebuked the vices, and denounced the wrong-doings
of later life.
The crowds assembling in the courts of the Temple,
where the Inspired man took his seat, and the promis
cuous clusters that surrounded the pillars whereupon the
Prophet's message was placarded, found the language
of these remonstrances to be familiar to their ears. The
terms and the style went home to the conscience of the
hearer : — these utterances did not miss their aim by a
too lofty upshot: they took the level of the popular
intellect ; and so it was that, as well the luxurious
princes of the people as the wayfaring man, though of
the idiotic class, might read and understand the Divine
monition. Inasmuch as the poetic and symbolic style draws its
materials from the objects of sense, it is implied that the
popular mind has a vivid consciousness of these objects,
and is observant ofthe specific diversities ofthe natural
world. This discriminative consciousness undoubtedly
belonged to the popular Hebrew mind. The proof is
this — that if we take as an instance any one class of
natural objects — earth, air, water, the animal orders, or
the vegetable world — wre shall find, in the Hebrew Glos
sary, as large a number — as good a choice — of distinc
tive terms, thereto belonging, as is furnished in the

HEBREW POETRY. 91

vocabularies of other tongues, one or two only excepted.
We may easily bring our affirmation to the test of a sort
of comparative estimate, as thus : —
England is a sea-girt land, and it is a land of rivers,
and streams, and springs, and brooks, and lakes, and
pools, and ponds, and canals, and ditches ; it is also a
land in which rural employments and out-of-doors habi
tudes prevail : it is a country in which the mass of the
people has lived much abroad, and has dwelt amidst
humidity. Nevertheless fifty or sixty words exhaust
the vocabulary of the English tongue in this watery
department. More than this number are not easily
producible, either from our writers, or from colloquial
usage. With this number our poets have contented
themselves, from Chaucer to these times. France is also
a sea-girt land, and it is well watered ; but its vocables
of this class are not more in number than our own.
But now, although a portion only of the language of the
Plebrew people has come down to us in the canonical
books, this portion brings to our knowledge as many as
fifty words of this one class : it is not to be doubted
that in the colloquial parlance of the people many more
words had place ; — as many, probably, as would fully
sustain our affirmation as to the comparative copiousness
of this tongue. In allowing sixty words of this class to
the English language, many are included which are
technical or geographical, rather than natural or collo
quial, and which are rarely oceurrent in literature — sel
dom, if ever, in religious writings. Such are the words
— Roadstead, Estuary, Watershed (American), Lock,
Canal, Drain, Bight.
There is yet another ground of comparison on which
an estimate may be formed of the relative copiousness

92 THE SPIRIT OF THE
of languages. It is that which is afforded by collating
a translation with the original — in this manner — to
take as an instance the class of words already referred
to. The Hebrew Lexicon, as we have said, gives us as
many as fifty words or phrases which are representative
of natural objects of this one class; and each of these
terms has — if we may take the testimony of lexicogra
phers — a well-defined meaning of its own. We have
then to inquire by howr many words are these fifty repre
sented in the Authorized English version. We find in
this version twenty-five words answering for the fifty of
the Hebrew — apparently because the English language,
at the date of this version, did not furnish a better
choice. In very many places the same English word
does duty for five, six, or seven Hebrew words — each of
which has a noticeable significance of its own, and might
fairly claim to be represented in a translation. As for
instance the three words River, Brook, Spring, are
employed as a sufficient rendering of eight or ten He
brew words, each of which conveyed its proper sense to
the Hebrew ear, and might not well have given place to
a more generic, or less distinctive term.
A collation ofthe Greek ofthe Septuagint — say, in any
one ofthe descriptive Psalms — will give a result equally
significant, we think more so, as evidence of what may
be called the picturesque or the poetic copiousness of
this ancient language ; and in a note at the end of the
volume the reader who may wish to pursue the sugges
tions here thrown out will find some further aid in
doing so.
The conclusion with which we are here concerned is
this— That, whereas the ancient Palestine was a land
richly furnished with the materials of a metaphoric and

HEBREW POETRY. 93
poetic literature, so were the people of a temperament
and of habitudes such as made them vividly conscious
ofthe distinctive features ofthe material world, as these
were presented to them in their every-day life abroad.
As proof sufficient of these averments we appeal, first,
to the obvious characteristics of their extant literature ;
and then, to the fact of the richness, and the copious
ness, and the picturesque distinctiveness of their lan
guage, which in these respects well bears comparison
with other languages, ancient or modern

CHAPTEE V.
the tradition of a paradise is the germ of poetry,
The golden conception of a Paradise is the Poet's guid
ing thought. This bright Idea, which has suffused itself
among the traditions of Eastern and of Western nations
in many mythical forms, presents itself in the Mosaic
books in the form of substantial history ; and the concep
tion, as such, is entirely Biblical. Genuine Poetry follows
where a true Theology leads the way ; and the one as
well as the other must have — Truth in History — as its
teacher and companion. It is in the style and mode of
a true history that we receive the theologie principle of
a Creation which was faultless, at the first. The begin
ning of history thus coincides with that first axiom of
Religion which affirms all things to be of God, and all
perfect. A morning hour of the human system there
was when man — male and female — unconscious of evil,
and unlearned in suffering, was inheritor of immortality.
In this belief Piety takes its rise ; and in this conception
of the tranquil plenitude of earthly good — a summer's
day of hours unnumbered and unclouded — Poetry has
its source ; and toward this Idea — retained as a dim
hope — it is ever prone to revert. The true Poet is the
man in whose constitution the tendency so to revert to
this Idea is an instinct born with him, and with whom it
has become a habit, and an inspiration.
Whatever it may be, within the compass of Poetry,

HEBREW POETRY. 95
that is the most resplendent, and whatever it is that
awakens the profoundest emotions — whether they be
joyful or sorrowful — whatever it is that breathes ten
derness, as well as whatever kindles hope — draws its
power so to touch the springs of feeling from the same
latent conception of a perfectness and a happiness pos
sible to man, and which, when it is set forth in words,
presents itself as a tradition of Paradise. Poetry, of
any class, would take but a feeble hold of the human
mind — distracted as it is with cares, broken as it is with
toils, sorrowing in recollection of yesterday, and in fear
as to to-morrow — if it did not find there a shadowy
belief, like an almost forgotten dream, of a world where
once all things were bright, gay, pure, and blessed in
love. The Poet comes to us in our troubled mood, pro
fessing himself to be one who is qualified to put before
us, in the vivid colours of reality, these conceptions of a
felicity -which we vaguely imagine, and think of as lost
to humanity ; and which yet, perhaps, is recoverable.
We turn with distaste — even with contempt or resent
ment — from the false professor of the noblest of arts
whose creations contain no recognition, explicit or tacit,
of this proper element and germ of true Poetry.
Whether or not a belief of this kind may have obtained
a place in our Creed, the feeling is deep in every human
spirit, to this effect — That, at some time — we know not
when — in some world, or region — we know not where — ¦
the brightest of those thiugs which the Poet imagines
were realized in the lot of man. But is, then, this
conception an illusion ? Is it a myth that has had
no warrant ? It is not so, nor may we so think of it.
If there had been no such reality, there could have been
no such imagination. If there had been no Garden of

96 THE SPIRIT OF THE
Eden, as a first page in human history, never should the
soothings of Poetry have come in to cheer the gloom of
common life, or to temper its griefs ; — never should its
aspirations have challenged men to admit other thoughts
than those of a sensual or a sordid course.
Four words — each of them full of meaning — comprise
the conceptions which we attribute to the Paradisaical
state. They are these— Innocence, Love, Rural Life,
Piety ; and it is toward these conditions of earthly hap
piness that the human mind reverts, as often as it turns,
sickened and disappointed from the pursuit of whatever
else it may ever have laboured to acquire. The Inno
cence which we here think of is not virtue, recovered: —
it is not virtue that has passed through its season of trial ;
but it is Moral Perfectness, darkened by no thought or
knowledge of the contrary. This Paradisaical Love is
conjugal fondness, free from sensuous taint. This Rural
Life is the constant flow of summer days — spent in gar
dens and a-field — exempt from exacted toil. This Piety
of Paradise is the grateful approach of the finite being
to the Infinite — a correspondence that is neither
clouded, nor is apprehensive of a cloud.
It was in the fruition of each of these elements of
good that the days, or the years, or the centuries, of
the Paradisaical era were passed ; and it was then that
those things which to their descendants are Poetry, to
these — the parents of Mankind — were realities. Each
of these conditions of earthly well-being was indispen
sable to the presence and preservation of the others ;
for there could be no Paradise if any one of them were
supposed to be wanting or impaired. Without inno
cence earthly good is a debasing sensuality : — without
love it is selfishness and war : — without piety earthly

HEBREW POETRY. 97
good, at the very best, is the dream of a day in prospect
of an eternal night ; and to imagine a Paradise planted
in the heart of cities is a conception that is almost
inconceivable. In like manner as there could be no Paradise in the
absence of these, its four elements, so neither can there
be Poetry where these are not its inspiration, its theme,
or its intention : or if not, we put it away as either a
mockery of the sadness of human life, or as a vilifying
slander. Love must be the soul of poetry : Purity must
be its purpose and aim : — Nature abroad must be its
desire, and its chosen enjoyment, and Piety must be its
aspiration. From Poetry that has no correspondence
with these conditions of a Paradise we turn in dull des
pair to resume the heavy task of life ; for if so, then
beyond its austere conditions there is nothing in pros
pect of humanity : — the path we tread must be a con
tinuity of care in sullen progress to the grave.
We take, then, the Mosaic Paradise as the germ of all
Poetry ; and unless this first chapter of human history
be regarded as real — as true — it could stand in no rela
tionship to those deep-seated instincts — those slumbering
beliefs of possible felicity, which this tradition has fed
and conserved in the human soul. If this first chapter
be a fable, then we reject this belief also as a delusion.
But it is not a delusion; and as often as a group of
children, with ruddy cheek and glistening eye, is seen
sporting in a meadow, filling their chubby hands with
cowslips — laughing in sunshine — instinct with blameless
glee — then and there, if we will see it, we may find a
voucher for the reality of a Paradise which has left an
imprint of itself in the depth of every heart : the same
truth is attested with the emphasis of a contrast when
5

THE SPIRIT OF THE
—infancy, and childhood, sporting and merry at the
entrance of a city den, and still snatching from the pave
ment a faded handful of flowers, speaks of this instinct,
and exhibits the pertinacity of a belief which no pres
sure of actual wretchedness can entirely dispel.
Man in the garden of God, accepting, as the gift of
his Creator, the plenitude of earthly good, combined in
his lot Poetry and reality, which in the experience of
his descendants are always severed ; and yet the first of
these is not lost, although it stands aloof. In ten
thousand ordinary minds there is an element latent
which, in the one in ten thousand, quickens and becomes
productive. The musings and the yearnings of millions
of souls are so many inarticulate utterances of a dream
like conception of innocence, love, ease, leafy fragrant
bowers, and shining skies, which those who have never
found these things in their lot, nevertheless persist in
thinking have been wanting in it only through adverse
accidents and their evil stars ! So long as sorrows,
regrets, remorses, broken promises, broken hopes, con
tinue to call forth sighs, and to moisten cheeks with
tears — so long as blighted, or wounded, or wasted affec
tions eat as a canker into sensitive hearts, so long as
the bereaved, and the friendless, and the homeless, and
the lost, continue to think themselves unblessed, though
they might have been blessed, then will these many
sufferers be dreaming of a lot which can never be theirs,
wherein the bright conditions of a lost Paradise should
have been represented, if not fully realized.
Refine these yearning beliefs — train them in artistic
expression, and then the product is — Poetry; and how
elaborate soever this product may be, it has had its rise
in what was once as real, as are now its contraries. If

HEBREW POETRY. 99
it had not long ago been real it would have had no
power to generate the tinreal, which has ever floated
before the imagination of mankind : — there are no
dreams where there have been no substances.
Let it be so now that we listen to the exceptions
of a captious and gratuitous criticism, and that, at its
instance, we consent to remove from the book of
Genesis its initial portions ! Let it be that two, three,
or more chapters of this book are rejected as " not
historical." If so, then that which has rooted itself in
human nature has itself no root ! If it be so, then
dreams have sprung of dreams in endless series: —
if so, and if Poetry takes no rise in History, then
must a deeper darkness spread itself as a pall over the
abounding evils, sorrows, pains, and terrors that attend
humanity. Thenceforward let it be — for who shall dare
to gainsay Satan the Antiquarian ! — let it be so that not
only pain and toil, want, care, and grief, but also cruelty,
wrong, violence, and war, shall proclaim an eternal
triumph ! The monster henceforward takes a firmer
grasp of his victim : — if it be so — then, for aught we
know, the rights of this tyranny are immemorially
ancient: — they are as old as "the human period'' of
Geology : — for aught we know, the kingdom of Evil is
from everlasting, and it shall be everlasting.
It shall not be so. Give me back that which a
genuine criticism allows me to retain — the initial chap
ters of the Mosaic record. Give me — not as a myth,
but as a history — the beginning of the human family in
its Eden, and then a darkness is dispelled : then hope
and peace are still mine (and Poetry also), for if this
Proem of human history may stand approved, then on
the skirts of the thickest gloom a brightness lingers.

100 THE SPIRIT OF THE
If there was once a Paradise on earth, then I know how
to see and acknowledge, as the gifts of God, whatever
is good and fair in my actual lot, and whatever is
graceful; and whatever is in nature beautiful, and what
ever it is which art elaborates, and which genius exalts.
In all these graces of life I see so many vouchers for
the fact that this Earth once had a Paradise.
And this is not all — for, with the same Mosaic belief
as my ground of speculation — my turret of observa
tion, I may look upwards and around me upon the
sparkling fields of the infinite, and then am free to
surmise, what I have reason to infer from an actual
instance ; and thus I may assuredly believe that, upon
millions of worlds, there are now, and will be, gardens
of God, where all is fair and good.

CHAPTER VI.
BIBLICAL IDEA OF PATRIARCHAL LIFE.
Paradise was lost ! Nevertheless, in accordance
with the primaeval Biblical Idea, the religious man — ¦
the chief of a family — was permitted to enjoy, through
a long term of years, a terrestrial lot in which were
conserved the rudiments, at least, of the forfeited feli
city, and thus through the lapse of centuries a concep
tion of Life on Earth was authenticated, in meditation
upon which Piety might re-assure its confidence in the
Divine wisdom and goodness.
The Patriarchal Idea is Oriental, not European ; it
excludes the energy, the individual development, the
progress, that are characteristic of the Western races :
— it is — Repose, and the fruition of unambitious well-
being. The Patriarchal life, in part nomadic, in part
precariously dependent upon the chase, in part agricul
tural and of the vine culture ; — the life of the tent,
more than of strongholds and walls, combines those
conditions of earthly existence which are the most
favourable to religious contemplative tranquillity, and
under which the sanctities of the domestic relation
ships should be reverentially conserved. Within the
precincts of this economy of unwritten obligation
and of traditional veneration, piety toward God —
the Invisible — was a higher species of that filial regard
of which the senior and the chief was the visible centre.

102 THE SPIRIT OF THE

The Patriarchal Idea is wholly Biblical, and as such
it has suffused itself through the poetry of modern na
tions. And there is much in the mild domestic usages
and sentiments of modern nations that is to be traced
up to its rise in this conception. It is Liblical, not
merely because it is monotheistic in doctrine ; but be
cause also it gives a most decisive prominence to the
belief of tlie near-at-hand providence of God — of Heu
that immediately orders and appoints and controls all
events affecting the individual man. This ever-present
Almighty — Righteous and Benign — the Hearer of
prayer — the Giver of all good — the Avenger of wrong
— is held forth, and is vividly brought within range of
human conceptions in the incidents of the Patriarchal
history. Far away from the interference of futile spe
culative questionings, these religious beliefs, as exem
plified in the life of the servants of God, received at
once an historic warranty, and a dramatic — or, it might
be said, even a picturesque — realization, in the records
of this era.
The Paradisaical elements are conserved in the Patri
archal life — each of them attempered by blending itself
with whatever in the actual lot of man has become sad
dened by his sins and frailty — by his pains, his toils,
his cares; and it thenceforward presents itself as if in
shining fragments, commingled with the ruins of pur
poses frustrated— hopes shattered.
Within and around the patriarchal encampment, near
to the springs and the palms of the sultry wilderness,
we are to find — in the place of Innocence — Virtue —
put to the proof, and not always triumphant in its con
flict with temptation. Within this enclosure, instead
of unsullied, uncontradicted Love, there are yet heard

HEBREW POETRY. 103
the deep yearnings of domestic affection, rendered in
tense by tearful sympathies ; perhaps by resentments,
that strike into the very roots of human feeling.
Around this enclosure are assembled, not the wild ani
mal orders in awe of their lord — doing homage to man ;
but flocks and herds, the product of his provident and
laborious care. Instead of a garden, wildly luxuriant in
flowers and fruits, there are trim enclosures of esculent
plants — flowers and perfumes giving way to roots and
fruits : — there may be heard the singing of birds ; — yet
this is less heeded than the lowing of kine. Human
existence is in its state of transition — conserving as
much of its primaeval felicity as shall be the solace and
excitement of a life which still may be happy, if man
be wise ; and the wisdom, which is to ensure his wel
fare, is that to which the patriarchal altar gave its sanc
tion. The Divine favour is there pledged to the obedient
and devout ; but it is pledged under conditions which
are, in the simplest mode, ritual, and which, while they
assure the worshipper in his approach to God, restrict
him also.
The Patriarchal man knew that he had forfeited ter
restrial immortality, and that his years on earth were
numbered ; and yet, in the place of a now-undesirable
endless life, there was given him — longevity ; and beyond
it, a far more distinct vision of the future life than mo
dern Sadducean criticism has been willing to allow.
This length of years — a stipulated reward of piety —
and this more than a glimmer of the life eternal, im
parted a dignity to the modes of thinking, and to the
demeanour and carriage of those " Sons of God " who,
each in Ms place, stood, toward all around him, as
Chief, and Prophet, and Priest. Life under these con-

104 THE SPIRIT OF THE
ditions — beneath the heavens — a life, inartificial and
yet regal — a course abhorrent of sordidness, and thrift,
so realized itself during a lapse of centuries, as to have
become a Pattern Idea, the presence and influence of
which are conspicuous in the cherished sentiments and
in the literature of modern and western nations.
To its rise in the Patriarchal era may be traced that
one conception, which might be called the Ruling
Thought, as well of Art, as of Poetry — the Idea of
Repose. Order, symmetry, beauty, security, conscious
right and power, are the constituents of this Idea.
When embodied, or symbolized in Art or in Poetry, it
is this repose which is the silent voucher for whatever
shall be its consummation in a higher sphere — even
for " the Rest that remaiueth." It contradicts, and
refuses to be consorted with, the ambition, the discon
tent, the adventure, the turmoil, the changeful fortunes,
the pressure, and the progress, of that lower life which
knows nothing ofthe past, and is mindless ofthe remote
future. The first man had lived — for whatever term — in the
fruition of the happiness which springs from the sponta
neous development of every faculty — bodily and mental.
The man — wise and good in his degree — under the
patriarchal scheme, enjoyed as much of the things of
life as were allowed to him — individually — under the
conditions of a providential scheme, divinely established
and administered, in a manner which rendered the Pro
vidential Hand and Eye all but visible: the Patriarch —
religious in mood and habit, and thus cared for by Him
whose Name was a promise— the Patriarch eschewed
ambition, he dreaded change in the modes of life — he
contented himself with those simple conditions of com-

HEBREW POETRY l()f)
mon life which, in a warm and equable climate, are
more agreeable — more sufficing, than are the far more
elaborate provisions of a higher civilization in a more
austere climate. Especially did this patriarchal nomad
life — this following of pasturage where it might be
found — greatly favour that meditative mood in which
piety delights itself — entertaining the idea of terres
trial life as a pilgrimage, under tents, always onward
bound towards a future, where security and repose shall
be — not precarious, but perpetual.
Toward this model Idea, embodied as it has been in
the early history of the human family, and authenticated
as good for its time, by the apostolic recognition of it,
religious feeling in all times has constantly shewn itself
to be tending. At times and in places when and where
the patriarchal well-being has been wholly unattainable,
there came, in the room of it, or as its best substitute,
the earlier and the less fanatical form of the monastic
life — the anchoretic — not the conventual — the senti
mental and mystical, rather than the ascetic ; and it is
observable that this milder style of the wandering pil
grimage life over the ruggedness of earth to heaven
drew itself as near as it could to the scenes of its patri-
achal archetype. The commendation of this primaeval
piety may be this : — that it was in place as a prepara
tion for a more advanced stage of the religious training
ofthe human family; — but the condemnation of the
later mood — in itself innocent, was this, that it was out
of place — out of date, after the ultimate Revelation had
been promulgated. The ascetic had forgotten evangelic
principles : — the anchoret had retreated from evangelic
obligations. The Patriarchal life was the foreshadowing
of a future, wherein communion with God being the
5*

106 THE SPIRIT OF THE
high end or intention of existence, whatever else is done
will be regarded only as a means conducive to that end.
In accordance with its intention and its external con
ditions, the piety of the Patriarchal era was individual,
not congregative ; — it was domestic, not ecclesiastical ;
— it was genuine and affectionate, not formal or choral,
or liturgical : — it did not emulate, or even desire, the
excitements of a throng of worshippers, assembling to
" keep holy day," and making the air ring with their
acclamations: — more of depth was there in this ancient
piety ; and it may be believed that the worshipper drew
much nearer to the throne of the Majesty on high than
did the promiscuous crowd that, in after times, assem
bled to celebrate festivals and to observe national ordi
nances. On these conditions, namely — the renouncing
of worldly ambition, and the restless imagining of a
something better, supposed to be attainable by thought
and labour; then the Patriarchal repose took its rest
upon the hope and promise of a land — unseen — the land
of souls, whereinto the servants of God are gathered,
each in his turn as he fails from his place on earth.
How desirable a lot might we now think this, if only its
material conditions might be secured ! — but they may
not — this is not possible ; for man is summoned to work,
and to suffer ; and the piety of meditative repose, and
of conscious transit to the paradise of spirits, must give
way to a piety that needs to bo strenuous, self-denying,
and martyr-like ; and that must win its crown, after a
conflict. Nevertheless, this enviable lot having once been real
ized in the remoteness of ages, it still lives in the imagi
nations of men, and toward it, not poets only, but the
most prosaic of the order of thrift arc seen to be tend-

HEBREW POETRY. 107

ing. Toil and turmoil through sixty years are endured,
if only these may purchase a closing decade of rest —
rural occupation — security — or, in a word, a sort of
suburban resemblance of the leisure and the dignity
that was long ago realized in the desert, by them of old.
The Poetry of all nations has conserved more or less
of these elements of the primaeval repose; and in fact
we find them conserved also, and represented, in that
modern feeling — the love of, and the taste for — the
Picturesque. Modern, undoubtedly, is this taste, which
has not developed itself otherwise than in connection
with pictorial Art, in the department of landscape.
What is the picturesque ? A question not easily an
swered ; yet this is certain, that any attempt that may
be made to find an answer to it must bring us into con
tact with the very elements which already have been
named ; and which are assembled in the Ideal of the
Patriarchal Repose. The picturesque could not belong
to Paradise ; for it finds its gratification in those forms
of decay and disorder which bespeak damage and inac
tion. The picturesque is not simply — beauty in Nature ;
— it is not luxuriance ; it is not amplitude or vastness ;
it is not copiousness ; it is not the fruit of man's inter
ference: but rather is it the consequence of an indolent
acquiescence on his part, in things — as they are, or —
as they have become. The picturesque belongs to the
foreground always ; or to the stage next beyond the
foreground ; — never does it take its range upon the
horizon. The picturesque claims as its own the che
rished and delicious ideas of deep seclusion, of length
ened, undisturbed continuance, and of the absence, afar-
off, of those industrial energies which mark their pre
sence by renovations, by removals, and by a better

108 THE SPIRI.T OF THE
ordering of things, and by signs of busy industry, and
of thriftiness and order.
Within the sacred precincts of the picturesque, the
trees must be such as have outlived the winters of centu
ries, and been green through the scorching heats of un
recorded sultry summers: they stoop, and yet hold up
gnarled giant branches, leafy at the extreme sprays ;
and their twistings are such as to look supernatural,
seen against an autumnal evening sky. The fences
that skirt the homestead of the picturesque must have
done their office through the occupancy of three or four
generations. The dwellings of man must declare them
selves to be such as have sheltered the hoary quietude
of sires long ago gone to their graves. Inasmuch as
the picturesque abjures change, it rejects improvement;
it abhors the square, the perpendicular, the horizontal ;
and it likes rather all forms that now are other than at
first they were, and that lean this way and that way,
and that threaten to fall ; but so did the same building
threaten a fall a century ago ! In a word, the pictur
esque is the Conservatism of Landscape Beauty. It is
where the picturesque holds undisputed sway that we
shall find — or shall expect to find — secure and placid
longevity — domestic sanctity and reverence ; together
with a piety that holds more communion with the past
than correspondence with the busy and philanthropic
present. Give me only the picturesque, and I shall be
well content never to gaze upon tropical luxuriance, or
upon Alpine sublimities; nor shall ever wish to tread
the broad walks that surround palaces ; shall never be
taxed for my admiration of those things which wealth
and pride have superadded to Nature.

CHAPTER VII.
THE ISRAELITE OF THE EXODUS AND THE THEOCRACY.
It was upon no such bright themes as those of the
Paradisaical era — it was upon no subjects so well
adapted to the purposes of Poetry as those of the
Patriarchal era — that the Hebrew Prophets employed
themselves. It was far otherwise : leaving subjects of
this order open and unoccupied to the genius of distant
ages, these witness-bearing men, in long succession, ad
dressed the men of their times upon matters of more
immediate concernment, and in a mood and style
adapted to the people with whom they had to do. If it
be so — and on this point there can be no reasonable
question — then it must be true in this instance, as in
every similar instance, that a correct notion of the people
who were so addressed, as to their degree of culture, as
to their moral condition, and their social advancement,
and as to their comparative intelligence, may with cer
tainty be gathered from these remains of their litera
ture : — the literature being regarded as the mirror of
the national mind. Yet if we so regard it, and so use
it, this safe method of induction may perhaps lead the
way to conclusions that materially differ from those,
which, on the one side, as well as on the other side, of
a controversy concerning the Old Testament History,
have been advanced, and have been tacitly assented to.
To defame, by all means, the ancient Israelitish peo-

110 THE SPIRIT OF THE
pic, as a " horde of barbarians," has been the purpose
of a certain class of writers ; and on the other side a
mistaken timidity has beguiled writers into the error of
supposing that, in admitting this imputed barbarism, an
extenuation, or a palliation might be found for those
events and those courses of action in the history of the
people which most offend our modern tastes, or which
stand condemned by Christian principles. What has
been wanting, and the want of which has shed confu
sion upon the subject, has been — we need not say — can
dour and truthfulness on the one side ; but more of intel
lectual and moral courage on the other side of this
modern argument.
The ancient Israelite had no peer among his contem
poraries ; nor do we find analogous instances on any
side that might render aid in solving the problem of
this race, either in its earlier or its later history. In
truth, there is as much need of an admission of the super
natural element for understanding the national character,
as there is for understanding the narrative of its fortunes
and its misfortunes— the catastrophes that have over
whelmed it, and the fact of its survivance of each of
them in turn. The Jew — such as we now meet him in
the crowded ways of European cities — is indeed a mys
tery insoluble, unless we are willing to accept the Bibli
cal explication of the problem. So understood, we do
indeed yield credence to the supernatural ; but then, in
not yielding it, the alternative is a congeries of perplex
ities that are utterly offensive to reason.
Taken on the ground of ordinary historical reasoning,
the earliest literary remains of the Israelitish people give
evidence of a far higher range of the moral and religious
consciousness than is anywhere else presented iu the

HEBREW POETRY. Ill
circle of ancient literature. The inference hence deriva
ble is not abated in its meaning by the anomalous and
remarkable fact — a fact which has no parallel — that these
writings, through a great extent of them, take a form
of remonstrant antagonism toward the people — toward
the masses, and toward their princes and rulers. Those
who take upon themselves the unwelcome and danger
ous office of administering national rebuke, and of utter
ing denunciations, are not wont to attribute to their
hearers more of intelligence and of right feeling than
they find among them. We may believe, then, that
there was, in fact, with these hearers that measure of
mind and of virtue, the existence of which is fairly to
be inferred from the language of these public censors,
whose often-recurring phrases are of this order — " Ye
are a stiff-necked people — a foolish nation : — as were
your fathers, so are ye."
As was the country, so the people : — the country,
geographically, was embraced within the circuit of the
East ; nevertheless, in climate and productions it was
European more than it was Asiatic. And so the people
— Orientals by origin, by physiognomy, by usages, and
yet in many points of mental constitution, and by its
restless energy, it was more EurojJean than Oriental.
Toward the trans-Euphratean races — the ultra-Orientals
— the Israelite showed a decisive contrariety or aliena
tion : he refused his sympathies toward the sun-rising ;
or, if in some instances amalgamation in that direction
took place, the sure and speedy consequence was loss of
nationality in every sense — physical, ritual, social. The
captive tribes, when carried eastward, forgot their insti
tutions — forgot their very name.
But toward the people of the "Islands ofthe sea" —

112 THE SPIRIT OF THE
the European races — the Jew, while maintaining a sul
len antagonism, and continuing to rebut scorn with
scorn, has done so in a manner that gave proof of his
consciousness of what might be called — intellectual and
moral consanguinity. By his sympathies, by his intel
lectual range, by his moral intensity, by his religious
depth, and even by his tastes, the Jew has made good
his claim to be numbered with those that constitute the
commonwealth of western civilization. Intimately con
sorted with European nations, this integrate people has
repelled commixture, as if it might serve as an alloy ;
but it has shown its quality, in this way, that if the
Western nations, like the perfect metals, are fusible, and
malleable, and ductile, and apt for all purposes of art,
this race also — unlike the Oriental races — fully partakes
of the same original qualities, and is apt also toward the
highest civilization. Not so those races that are pro
perly Oriental, and which, like the imperfect metals,
show a sparkling surface, but are stereote in thought, in
usages, -in political structure — the same from the begin
ning to the end of millenniums. As the Jew of modern
times is our equal, intellectually and morally, so has lie
been from the first ; — such was the Israelite ofthe Exo
dus, and of the next following centuries.
Orientals — those who are such by destiny — have
always, as now they do, surrendered themselves inertly
to despotisms of vast geographical extent. Not so the
Israelite, either of the remotest times, or of later ages.
Often trampled upon and loaded with chains, he has
never ceased to resent Ids bonds, or to vex and trouble
his oppressor. Always, and notoriously, has he been a
dangerous and turbulent subject. The Romans, great
masters of the art of governing dependencies, learned

HEBREW POETRY 113
at length this lesson — that the Jew must be indulged ;
¦ — or, if not indulged, then exterminated. It is true
that the kinsman of the Israelite — the Arab, has defied
subjugation; — but he has done so as the roaming man
of a trackless desert, whereupon he may flit until
his pursuers are weary of the chase. The resistance
and persistence of the Israelite, and of the Jew, has
implied loftier qualities, and deeper sentiments ; for it
has been maintained under the far more trying condi
tions of city life. It is one thing to scoff the tyrant
from afar upon scorched illimitable sands : it is another,
to maintain moral courage, and to transmit the same
spirit of heroism to sons and daughters, while buffeted
and mocked in every villanous crowd of a city ! So
has the Jew held his own, and he has done this as the
true descendant of the men with whom Jephtha, and
Deborah, and Samuel, and David, had to do. The
same man — man indeed we find him, in conflict with
Antiochus, and when led and' ruled by the Asmonean
princes. Such did he show himself to the Roman pro
consuls; — such was he as the problem of the imperial
rule ; — such toward the barbarian barons of mediaeval
Europe — such, from first to last {last we must not say
of the Jewish people) the man — firmer always in princi
ple and in passive courage than that the iron and the
fire should break his resolution.
The Israelite ofthe earliest period — the ages elapsing
from the settlement in Palestine to the establishment of
the monarchy, and onward — may be regarded as the
genuine representative of constitutional social order ;
for his rule is — submission up to a limit, and resistance
at all risks beyond that limit. He had no taste for
anarchy ; his inmost feeling was quiescent, for it arose

114 THE SPIRIT OF THE
from his vividly domestic, and his praedial habits and
sentiments. The patriarchal ancestry of the nation had
given him a tradition of quietude and enjoyment — under
the vine and fig tree — his wife as a fruitful vine and his
children as olive plants round about his table; and thus
he was not the turbulent brawling citizen, maohinatiug
revolution : — he was the sturdy yeoman, and the true
conservative. A soldier, and always brave if there be
need to fight — if there be an enemy on the border; but
he was never ambitious or aggressive.
Enough has become known concerning the common
arts of life, as practised among the Egyptians in the
times of the Pharaohs, to secure for them an advanced
position on the scale of material civilization : they un
derstood, and successfully practised, as well the second
ary as the primary arts which minister to the subsidiary,
as well as to the more imperative requirements of the
social economy. During their long sojourn in the
near neighbourhood of the Egyptian civilization, the
Hebrew people — slaves during the latter portion only
of this period — had largely partaken of this advance
ment. The evidences of this culture are incidental and
conclusive, as we gather them from the narrative of
the forty years' wandering in the Sinaitic peninsula.
The mechanic and the decorative arts were at the com
mand of the people : there were among them skilled
artificers in all lines : they possessed also a formed lan
guage,— and they had the free use and habit of a written
language. If, then, wc go on to inquire concerning the intellec
tual and moral and social condition of the thousands of
the people, the warrantable method, available for the pur
poses of such an inquiry, is that of seeking the indica-

HEBREW POETRY. 115
tions of this condition, inferentially, in the remains of
the literature of the people ; — not, it may be, iu trea
tises on abstruse subjects, composed by the learned for
the learned : but in writings of whatever sort which
were adapted to popular use, and in which — for this is
their mark, as so intended — the mass of the people is
challenged to listen and to respond, and is invited and
provoked to contradict — if in any instance there be room
for a contrary averment. Such was the Israelitish peo
ple at the moment which ended their tent-life in the wil
derness, and which immediately preceded their entrance
upon the land assigned them, as that they, in full Eccle
sia, might properly be taught, advised, upbraided, pro
mised, threatened, in the manner of which the closing
book of the Pentateuch is the record and summary.
The Israelite of that time was such that to him might
be propounded, intelligently, the sublime theology and
the rightful and truthful ethics of the book of Deute
ronomy ; which have held their place, unrivalled, as In
stitutes of Religion from that age to this. What is our
alternative on this ground ? This book is either " from
Heaven," in its own sense ; or it is from man. If from
Heaven, then a great controversy reaches its conclusion,
by admission of the opponent; — but if from men, then
the people among whom this theology, and these ethical
principles, and these institutions spontaneously arose, and
to whose actual condition they were adapted, were a peo
ple far advanced beyond any other, even of later times,
in their religious conceptions, in their moral conscious
ness, in their openness to remonstrance, and their sensi
bility toward some of the most refined emotions of do
mestic and social life. It is a canon, open to no valid
exceptive instance, that the spoken-to are as the speaker

116 THE SPIRIT OF THE
and his speech.. There is an easy and warrantable
means of bringing this historic canon to a test, as avail
able in the instance before us. Our question is — What
were these people, or — what had they become, in con
sequence of their Egyptian sojourn — what in conse
quence of the discipline of the desert : — what, upon a
new generation, had been the influence of the Sinaitic
Law, and of the Tabernacle worship, and of the tribune
administration of social order ? Prospective as were
many of the Mosaic injunctions— social and ecclesiasti
cal — the theology was ripe and entire, from the first ;
— Lso were the ethical principles, and so was the wor
ship. The generation which then had reached maturity
along with all of younger age, from infancy upward,
were — the product of this religious and social training !
There is much more in the last book of the Penta
teuch than in the preceding four — regarded as a ground
or source of inferences — concerning the intellectual
and moral condition ofthe Hebrew people of that time;
for it consists of a series of popular addresses, orally de
livered ; and these, by the calm majesty of the style
throughout, by the remonstrant tone, by innumerable
allusions to events and usages, carry with them a demon
stration of historic verity which no ingenuous and cul
tured mind will fail to admit. And withal, toward the
close of these upbraiding admonitions the Heaven-in
structed Lawgiver and Prophet utters, with all the am
plitude and speciality of actual vision, a prediction of
national woe to arrive in the remotest distance of ages
— a prediction so irrefragably prescient as to have wrung
— to have wrenched — a reluctant admission of its Divine
origin from those who have schooled themselves in
rebutting sufficient and reasonable evidence.

HEBREW POETRY. 117
The utterance of a series of oral instructions and
remonstrances, in full assembly, differs, as we say, much,
as to its historical value, from the promulgation of a
written code, or of Institutes of Morals ; for these may
have been the work of a sage — theorising and devising
for the benefit of his contemporaries more and better
things than in fact they were prepared to receive. Ora
tions, if authentic, imply more than is implied in treat
ises or in systems of philosophy.
An intelligent and unsophisticated reader of the ma
jestic speeches which constitute the book of Deuterono
my — resplendent as they are with a bright and benign
theistic doctrine — translucent expressions as they are
of earnest paternal affection — deep as they are in the
knowledge of human nature — humane as they are, will
never believe — would never imagine, that the speaker's
audience were the chiefs and the followers, of a stupid,
sensual, truculent, remorseless mob. Here, indeed, the
ingenuous reader feels that — as is the speaker, such are
the spoken-to. Greatly may we err, as we have al
ready said, in parting off the credible from the incredi
ble among the records of past ages. When the Hebrew
Poet challenges an imagined respondent, and asks, in
the confidence of truth — " What was it, O Sea, that
thou fleddest, and thou Jordan, that thou didst turn
back?" — we grant him readily his own expected an
swer : — it was at the presence of the Almighty that the
earth then trembled, and that the sea was then moved
out of its place. This is not incredible, nay, it is easy
of belief, that He which formed the deep, and founded
the hills, should hold them in His hand, and do with
them what He wills. But now let it be considered whe
ther, with the books of Moses before us, and the aged

118 THE SPIRIT OF THE
Lawgiver in view, and with his people listening, as his
sons around him, we can imagine them to be the savages
which a malignant and perverse criticism has laboured
to paint them. We maybe sure it was not so: — let any
instances be adduced which might give support to a sup
position of that kind.
Was the Hebrew people a barbarous and sanguinary
horde ? The modern archetype of the ancient Israel
ite, if we are to take our notion of him from writers of
a certain class, is to be found among the (unchristian-
ized) tribes of Kafir-land, or among those — such as
once they were, of New Zealand; or among the Bed
Men of the American wilderness ; or we might find
him among those that now roam the Arabian deserts ;
or we might find him among the degraded and ferocious
occupants of the dens and cellars of great cities. But
assemble now a ten thousand of such men — the nearest
resemblances you can find of the "barbarians" ofthe
Exodus and of the Conquest under Joshua ; endeavour
to gain the hearing of the savage crowd — with the
painted face, and the horrid knife in the girdle, and the
skull of an enemy dangling from his belt ; take with
you, for an experiment, the twenty-sixth chapter of the
book of Deuteronomy, and with it make proof of the
endeavour to find your way to the mind and heart of
untutored and of unenlturable and sanguinary savages.
In fact, nd such experiment could be attempted. Try
it, then, under any other imaginable conditions. The
Christian Missionary must have laboured for many
years among any of the people of Asia — in China, in
Thibet, in India, and he must have schooled the child
ren of those nations from infancy to adult years, before
he could hope to surround himself with an audience that

HEBREW POETRY. 119
might be expected to listen with intelligence to instruc
tions and admonitions of this order. The Mosaic homi
lies are available as indirect, yet conclusive evidence of
the existence of a true theistic habitude of mind among
the people of the Exodus : — these exhortations are dis
tinguished by a majestic simplicity, and a fervour, and
a paternal warmth, which reflect, as in a mirror, the
popular mind so far as is needed for completing our his
toric conception of the scene and its transactions : — the
speaker, the listeners, and the addresses. The well-
schooled and Christianized people of Protestant Europe
excepted, there is not now a people on earth — Eastern
or Western — among whom a hearing could be had for
recitations, and advices, such as these are. If this ex
ception be allowed for, then the popular mind anywhere
among the nations of Europe must have been fused and
cast in a new mould before language like that which
was addressed by their Lawgiver to the Hebrew people
could meet a response in the mind and heart of the
multitude. The true and the safe inference is this —
That the thousands of Israel, such as they were at the
close of their forty years' life in the wilderness, could
not be, as it is affirmed, a gross, stupid, and ferocious
horde ; — but on the contrary, a people — young in age,
and quick in mind and feeling ; — a people in seeking
for analogues to whom, we must look among the best
trained of our modern Christianized — Bible-taught popu
lations : — they must have been a people with whom
there had been matured, a settled usage of theistic
terms, a spontaneous intelligence of these terms, devout
habitudes, and withal a diffused warmth of those social
sentiments which are consequent upon, and which are the
proper results of an expansion ofthe domestic affections.

120 THE SPIRIT OF THE
It is either from the want of philosophic breadth in
the mental habits of those who make great pretensions
to this quality ; or it is, on the other hand, from a sick
ly religiousness, that the terrible events and doings of
the conquest, and the extermination of the Canaanitish
tribes, are asserted to be at variance with the inferences
which we thus derive from the later portions of the
Pentateuch. These inferences are sure and conclusive ; and they
are the more so because mainly they are indirect and
circumstantial. Those events and transactions — as
they stand recorded in the Books of Joshua and the
Judges — are indeed appalling, and the perusal of them.
must be painful. It ought to be so : — it should not be
otherwise than that from a stern necessity only we rest
in imagination upon recitals of this order, let them be
found where they may, whether in our Bibles, or out of
them. When similar narratives are found out of our
Bibles, our philosophic habits of thought easily help us
to get rid of the difficulty ; and we abstain from petu
lantly drawing conclusions, as to the manners or tem
perament of nations, which would be precipitate aud
unwarrantable. When found within our Bibles, it is
only a gratuitous hypothesis, as to the methods of the
Divine government in human affairs that generates, or
that aggravates, the difficulty, in view of which our
religious faith, or our Christianized sentiments, are stag
gered or offended. The remedy is to be sought —
first, in a dispassionate attention to the facts; and then
in a comparison of these facts with others of a like
order, occurring on tho common field of history.
Take in hand the Books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth,
and Samuel. Rising to view at frequent intervals in

HEBREW POETRY. 121
these records, and always in a manner that is incidental
and inartificial, there are evidences irresistible of the
existence, diffused among the Hebrew people, of deep
and vivid domestic affections — of individual and fam
ily piety — of humane sentiments and usages — of a
high and chivalrous sense of honour and patriotism, and
of a stern sense of justice, and of the rights and claims
of the destitute and defenceless. These facts transpire
in the course of these narratives ; and the style of the
prophets — even when administering their most severe
rebukes — supposes the same facts. No such denun
ciations of the Divine displeasure toward cruelty, vio
lence, oppression, rapacity, could have had any mean
ing unless there had been, on the side of the people, a
consciousness of truth, justice, mercy, humanity, purity,
and piety, of which consciousness the indications are
frequent in the history of the people; — a history ex
tending a four hundred years onward from the time of
the passage of the Jordan. The acts of the Conquest
had not found the Hebrew people a sanguinary horde;
— nor had these acts rendered them such : to suppose
otherwise would be to reject conclusive evidence bear
ing upon this instance, and to forget parallel instances
elsewhere occurring.
War will be war, everywhere and always, until it shall
have been " made to cease unto the ends of the earth."
Horrible always, at the best, will be — slaughter —
wholesale ; and it ought to be revolting in the recital,
let the provocations, or the reasons of necessity, be what
they may : and especially is it so when, to circumstances
of urgent national peril are added inveterate and ag
gravated antipathies of race. The future readers of the
history of the British rule in India— such readers, more

122 THE SPIRIT OF THE
thoroughly Christianized than we of this time are —
will be fain to put from them the page which tells of
what was enacted by humane and Christian-hearted
British chiefs in regaining the lost supremacy of a for
eign over the native races of Hindoostan. Slaughter —
not effected by the predetermined stroke of the magis
terial sword — is, and ought always to be, beyond, and
contrary to, rule and order. A people is indeed savage
among whom slaughter could be a recognized practice :
never can it come under the restraints of any sort of
political or moral generalization : never can it. be rea
soned upon, or instituted, unless among a nation of
fiends. Nevertheless, it is certain that a people whose
history is marked by no blood-stains — deep and broad
— has never yet held a place for itself upon the map of
continents. The world being such as it has ever been,
and is — even now in this late age — no place, unless it
be that of abject servitude, is left for any race which is
so inerme as that it could neither provoke nor inflict
sanguinary revenges. If we resent any such allegation
as this, we ought, in proof of our consistency, not only
to snatch the musket from the soldier, but the bludgeon
from the girdle of the policeman. This may not be
questioned, that, unless the ancient Israelitish people
had possessed as much of stern truculent energy as this,
they could not have maintained themselves a ten years
upon their soil — wedged in, as they were, among the
iron-charioted millions of Amalek, and Midian, and
Philistia, and of Assyria, and of Egypt. If not so,
then must there, from century to century, have been
pointed, eastward, northward, southward, the always
visible and blazing swords of seraphim.
Already we have said that we need the hypothesis of

HEBREW POETRY. 123
the supernatural for solving the problem of the national
character, as well as for understanding the history of this
people. And so now, again, in this critical instance, it
is nothing less than an assumption of the supernatural
in the history of the Exodus, and of the conquest of
Canaan, that can make intelligible the facts with which
we have to do — and which are these — first, That the
Hebrew tribes did indeed enact the extermination ofthe
Canaanitish races (so far as this was done), but that the
work of slaughter, dire as it was, did not settle itself
down upon the national temper or habits, so as to show
itself upon the people as a permanent disposition. No
such effects followed from the tragedy-period of their
history : — it would not necessarily do so in any case ;
— it did not in this instance, because the people, and
their chiefs, acted at the prompting of a command which,
in their view, had received unquestionable authentica
tion from Heaven. Thus warranted, the act of slaugh
ter was, as we might say, screened from its impact upon
the moral sentiments of the people. It was as when,
shielded by a charm from the violence of fire, a
man passes unharmed through a furnace seven times
heated. Besides this hypothesis ofthe supernatural, which we
need in understanding the facts in view, there is to be
remembered also the often-mentioned facts of the con
summate abominations that had become inveterate
among the Canaanitish races. This state of social
putrescence — these destructive impurities, and these
Moloch cruelties, were known to the invading people,
and were understood by them as the reason of their
destruction. Thus commissioned to exterminate those
who could not be reformed, the work of slaughter did

124 THE SPIRIT OF THE
not unhumanize those who effected it : — that it did not
the evidence is various and valid.
Distinctly looked at, under its actual conditions, the
problem, so far as it affects the Israelitish people of the
Exodus and the Conquest, stands clear — if not of per
plexity, yet of any greater perplexity than such as hovers
over every other national history, in this world of evil.
What, then, are the conditions of this same problem,
considered in its upward-looking aspect, or as it is
related to the rules and methods of the Divine govern
ment ?
Our first step on this ground is — to reduce the
problem, in this aspect of it, within the limits due to it.
What we are concerned with is — a limited, that is to
say, a Bible problem : — with the world-wide problem,
affecting philosophic Theism, we are not here impli
cated. In this latter and more extensive sense the
existence at all, and the long-continued existence, of
nations so utterly degraded — so impure and cruel in
their manners and in their institutions — is a far deeper
mystery — it is a much more perplexing problem, than
is their quick extermination, whether effected by
plague, or deluge, or the sword. But then these dark
depths in the human system, as they stand related to
the Divine wisdom and beneficence, are not Bible
troubles : — they are not abysses which might be filled
in by throwing into them our Bibles — even millions
of copies of Bibles : — after this were done they would
still yawn upon us, as before. It is the disingenuous
practice — or call it artifice — of a certain class of writers
to throw the burden of world-wide mysteries upon the
Bible, upon which, in truth, they take no bearing.
The dark colour ofthe problem — whether considered

HEBREW POETRY. 125
in its widest import, or in its speciality, as related to the
Biblical question now in view — has been derived from
modern modes of feeling; and these are the fruit of
Christianity itself. No such mystery troubled the medi
tations of philosophers who looked complacently upon
the trains of wretches that graced the triumphs of
Roman generals; aud who relished the gladiatorial mas
sacres of the amphitheatre. It is neither the philosophy
nor the poetry of classic civilization that has schooled
the modern mind in its mood of humanity. It is Bible
reading that has done this : it is our Christian sensi
tiveness — out of which Infidelity has stolen an advan
tage — that converts a misunderstanding of those remote
transactions into a sore trial of our faith in Scripture.
Christian sensitiveness, which we should not wish to see
blunted, together with a misapprehension of the facts,
has conjoined itself with the besetting error of all reli
gious speculation — namely, the framing of some hypo
thesis concerning the Divine motives which is wholly
gratuitous and unwarrantable.
It has been on the ground of some hypothesis of this
order — gratuitous and unwarrantable, that the thought
ful of every age have made for themselves infinite
trouble, and great sorrow of heart. It has been thus
that the large economy of the animal creation, and its
stern realities, have driven many on toward the belief
of an Evil Principle — the creator of the carnivora !
And thus that we gloomily muse upon the course of
events when these are signally disastrous; and thus
that we find occasions of offence in Biblical history.
To a great extent also we are governed, or rather we
are tyrannized over, by the variable intensity of feel
ings which so often go beyond all reason in relation to

126 THE SPIRIT OF THE

the events of every day; as, for instance — It is with
ungovernable anguish that we stand spectators of the
foundering of an emigrant ship : — five hundred souls on
board — men, women, children, — lost within a cable's
length of the shore ! — a shifting of the gale — one point
— would have sufficed for bringing all safe into port!
It is on an occasion of this sort that our religious
impulses are liable to a dangerous strain, and we pas
sionately ask — Why was this calamity permitted ? Our
only conclusion — which indeed brings with it very little
abatement of our distress — is the theologie apophthegm
¦ — The ways of God are inscrutable. Yes, they are so ;
nevertheless, knowing that they are so, we have given
place to an hypothesis concerning the Divine attributes
which rests upon no authentic ground whatever. As
if to bring before us the incoherence of our own modes
of thinking, it happens that, the very next day after the
shipwreck, we read listlessly the report of the Public
Health ; and find there the statement — that " fevers
of the typhoid class, as well as scarlatina, have prevailed
during the last few weeks in crowded districts, and have
been fatal in as many as fifteen hundred cases.'' For the
difference in the intensity or violence of our emotions
in these two instances we can give no very satisfactory
account ; and yet it is the lesser woe that stirs the depths
of religious meditation ; while the greater woe barely
moves thought at all. The difference has much more to
do with scenic effect, than either with reason or piety.
Thought of strictly — in their theistic import, it is not
the destruction of the cities of the plain of Sodom, nor
the overthrow of hundreds of cities since then by earth
quake, nor deluges extending over kingdoms, nor the
prevalence of plagues, nor famines, nor the extermina-

HEBREW POETRY. 127

tion of races by the sword, that in any way touches the
theology of the Bible. These catastrophes — these mise
ries — fatal to millions of men, are all of them dark
items in a catalogue for the contents of which no philo
sophy has hitherto furnished any explication, and for
the explication of which Holy Scripture was not given,
and will not avail.
It is but few persons, even among the educated, who
have so trained themselves in the mauagement of their
own minds as to be able — unless it be for a moment —
to take up a subject in which elements are commingled,
and to sunder these elements, and to hold them apart,
and, as in this instance is requisite, to think temperately,
and separately of what belongs to the human, or
humanity side of it, and of what is proper to its theistic
aspect. This, therefore, must be our conclusion, as to
sensitive and imperfectly disciplined Christian people —
thoughtful and feeling as they are : — the blood-stained
page of Hebrew history must continue to give pain in
the perusal. Disciplined Christian minds, while perus
ing such narratives — wherever they may be found — will
read them with pain, but not with perplexity ; or with
no more perplexity than that which surrounds far larger
and deeper questions, and which sheds upon all an
impenetrable gloom.
It is enough for our present purpose — and our inten
tion in giving any prominence to the subject is complet
ed — when we take with us, as unquestionable, the fact
that the Israelite of those remote times was one whose
religious beliefs, and whose modes of feeling, and whose
social habitudes, were such as to place him far in
advance of any among his contemporaries, or even of
the men of much later times.

CHAPTER VIII.
POETRY IN THE BOOK OF JOB.
Nothing that is proper to the textual or the historic
criticism of this book, or of any other canonical book,
concerns us in relation to our subject in these pages ;
and we have to do with it only so far as we find
therein what is illustrative of our immediate purpose.
Undoubtingly we accept the claim of this book to a
high antiquity ; and moreover fully admit the historic
reality of the persons, as well as the canonical validity
of this portion ofthe Hebrew Scriptures.
Apart from the proper criticisms, philological and his
torical, which should determine the date of the com
position, and the chronology of the events, and their
reality, every reader who is not prepossessed on the
other side finds himself carried back by the archaic
majesty ofthe style, and by the breadth of the ground
it occupies (as compared with the more strictly national
style of the Prophets) to an age as early, at least, as
that of the Israelitish settlement in Palestine. Every
thing in this Book shows its remoteness from the Mosaic
ritualistic institutions, and from Israelitish modes of
life. If, indeed, contemporaneous with those times, the
usages it refers to, and the habits of thought it indicates,
are wholly of another order. Nor is this all. The
purpose and purport of the Book of Job is — the work
ing out, and the bringing to an issue, a great problem

HEBREW POETRY. 129
of the moral system, on that ground which the patriar
chal dispensation occupied, and from which the Mosaic
institutions moved away, for admitting what was pecu
liar to a more limited economy. The patriarchal
ground had been measured off with a longer radius,
which swept a more comprehensive field ; and within
this more ample circuit there was room for the agitation
of questions which, within the straiter Mosaic enclosure,
had met their determination in a more formal manner,
that is to say, in the mode of decisions by authority.
Within the range of those of the Hebrew Scriptures
that follow on from the Mosaic institutes, and that
recognize the national law, there do not occur any open
debatings of universal moral problems ; for every
theological, and every ethical principle is assumed as
granted, or is taken up as having been already deter
mined. It is quite otherwise in the Book of Job, which takes
its place on a free field. The ground assumed is the
patriarchal ground of earthly well-being, and the prin
ciple taken for granted is that of a visible administration
of human affairs, under the eye and sovereign control
ofthe Righteous and Benign Almighty; — He who is
unchangeable, just, and wise, and good, notes the ways
of men — He follows the wicked with rebukes, and He
rewards and blesses the good. But yet, in the actual
course of events, this principle meets many apparent
contradictions. Hence those perplexities which in every
age distress thoughtful minds. How shall these instan
ces of contrariety be so disposed of as shall save the
faith and the hope of the servants of God ? Here, then,
is the purport of the Book : this the problem that is
worked out in the arguments of the speakers, and in
6*

130 THE SPIRIT OF THE
the conclusion of the history ; it is indeed glanced at
often in the Prophetic writings, and in several of the
Psalms — the Seventy-third especially; but nowhere
else is it formally debated, and brought to an issue.*
The argument of the Book of Job bears — we say —
upon the visible administration of the Divine govern
ment, as related to the earthly well-being of those who
fear and serve God. Little or nothing within its com
pass touches the inner life, or opens to view the experi
ences of those who are under training for a more inti
mate communion with God — the Father of spirits —
and who freely court a discipline the intention of which
goes quite beyond the range of terrestrial rewards and
punishments. Here is the contrast between the Book
of Job and many of the Psalms : — the order of
Thought in the one is broad and ostensible; in the
other it is of a more refined species : — it is more
intense, it is more peculiar, it is more full-souled ; — in a
word — it is more spiritual ; and we use this sacred
term never in the modern mode of an affected accom
modation ; but in its proper, and its Biblical sense.
Inasmuch, then, as the ground occupied by the dis
putants in 'the Book of Job is of wider circuit than that
whereupon the Israelitish Prophets take their stand, it
might seem probable that, in availing themselves as
they do of the figurative style, and in uttering them
selves after the fashion of poets, they should also use a
discursive liberty in which, as we have said, the Pro
phets of Israel do not indulge. But it is not so ; — or it
is so very partially, in the speeches and the rejoinders
of Job and his three friends, or of their young reprover,
* See Note.

HEBREW POETRY. 131
Elihu. These all use the poetic diction ; yet only as a
means adapted to their purpose. But then, for bring
ing the argument to its close, and for winding up the
history in accordance with its intention, another
Speaker comes in — " Then the Lord answered Job
out of the whirlwind," and asks — •" Who is this that
darkeneth counsel by words without knowdedge ?"
Where shall we find the grandeur of Poetry, where
s majesty in language, where is boldness, fire, or de
scriptive force, if not in these four closing chapters of
this Book ? Strictly metrical in structure are these
passages : — antithesis and apposition prevail throughout.
Metaphoric in language — in single terms, and in combi
nations of phases are they throughout : thus far these
compositions are in accordance with the usages of the
Hebrew prophetic Scriptures ; but here the resem
blance fails, and the dissimilarity on other grounds is so
extreme as to carry with it, or rather to force upon our
notice, a principle which has been once and again refer
red to in these pages, and which should receive attention
as explicative of the Spirit of the Hebrew Poetry.
Throughout the Prophetic writings allusions to the
material world — the visible creation — are frequent, and
they are always bold, forceful, and apt ; yet they are
brief, and they are, as we might say — cursive — the
prophet hastens forward — he lingers never : the allu
sion, when it has subserved its purpose, is dismissed.
But in these closing passages of the Book of Job, albeit
a religious and a moral intention is kept in view, it is held
in abeyance till the end ; or it is left as an inference
which the hearer is required to gather up for himself,
and this inference, or this intention, gives a foremost
place to the material subject : it is as if the visible natural

132 THE SPIRIT OF THE
object might, in its own right, challenge principal atten
tion— w if it might, by itself, and irrespectively of every
moral purpose in relation to the argument, be worthily
retained in view", and be turned about descriptively, and
be looked at on every side. The things spoken of stand
in front : — the religious purpose — the doctrine — is to be
sought for after.
In these notable passages it is the Lord — the Crea
tor — that speaks of, and that commends, the works of
His hands ; and it is those of them He commends — and
it is for such of their qualities — as least comport with
modes of feeling that are characteristic of religiously
meditative minds : these passages are not of the fine or
sentimental order : — they give a bold contradiction to
those oriental dreams which made the animal creation
an occasion of offence to the languid, oriental devotee ;
and then their accordance is to be noted with those
juster views ofthe economy ofthe animal system which
modern science has lately brought itself to approve. In
a repeated perusal of these free and vigorous descrip
tions — mainly of animal life as they are — one feels to
have reached high ground, and to have left below the
region of those delicate surmisings and those melancholic
refinements that float about over the ague-levels of an
over-wrought sensitiveness. We are here called out
from the cloister and the cell, and are summoned abroad :
— at this invitation we take an upward path — we breathe
a pure air, and rejoice in sunshine. We are challenged
to look far and wide over a prospect in the sight of
which — at some moment far back in the remoteness of
ages — " The morning stars sang together, and all the
sons of God shouted for joy."
Is the Creation itself, is this material organization —

HEBREW POETRY. 133
class balanced against class as it is — welfare pledged
against welfare — constituting a vast antagonism for life
— is it such as the tender-spirited among us would have
made it ? It is not such : — a robust reason, and a large
acquaintance with the conditions and the structure of
animal and vegetable life, and a knowledge, too, of the
remote dependence of orders upon orders, are here
required ; and of this sort must be our seasoning if we
would gain a right apprehension of the theology of the
material world. Thoughtful and delicately-constituted
minds need to be acclimated in the world of animal life
before they can attain a healthful intelligence of the
things around them. Let us be understood now, as
always, to speak with reverence, and to keep in remem
brance what we profess undoubtedly to believe. With
this caution then premised, we say that, in these signal
passages of this book — regarded now as human utter
ances — there is as much of a bold and fearless Reason,
as there is of the fire and magnificence of Poetry. The
pictorial vigour of these descriptions may perhaps have
hidden from our view that healthful force in the treat
ment of subjects of this class which gives these passages
their prominence in relation to other contemporary
modes of thought, elsewhere occurring. Not of the
Brahminical mintage are these descriptions ; not of the
Gnostic ; not ofthe Manichaean ; and assuredly they are
of older stamp and hue than were those instincts of the^
Israelite which had become to him a second nature, and
which were the product of the Mosaic distinctions ofthe
"clean and the unclean." Free from trammels of
every sort are these portraitures of behemoth, and the
unicorn, and of leviathan, and of the ostrich, and ofthe
wild ass, and of the war-horse. No way are they nice :

134 THE SPIRIT OF THE
— they are in the very manner of the creative energy
itself, such as we see it. If we do not relish these de
scriptions, it must be because we distaste also the crea
tion ; it must be because the crocodile and cayman, the
boa-constrictor, and the vulture, and the hyaena, and the
parasitical orders, are not what we would have made
them : — it must be because the revelations ofthe micro
scope upturn our indoor-made theologies.
Inasmuch as these animal portraits overleap in chro
nology the wrong theories and the national and tempo
rary prejudices of antiquity, and seem to comport better
with modern scientific conceptions ofthe material system,
so — and in a very striking manner — do the exordial
portions of the same take on to our modern geology: —
they do so in breadth or grasp of handling — in freedom
of conception ; and especially in that looking back to the
morning time of the universe which it has been the
work of recent science to school us in. These utterances
are in the mode of a personal consciousness that is older
than the material framework of the creation : — they
sound like the Creator's recollections of an eternity past !
If they contain no definite anticipations of the results
of modern science, they are marvellously exempt from
any approximate error, akin to the misapprehensions
of later times. It is as if He who framed the world out
of nothing would speak of His work to a certain limit,
and not beyond it ; — the truth is uttered ; but not the
whole truth.
The same style which bespeaks a personal conscious
ness, older than the material world, appears again as the
mode proper to a consciousness that is as wide as the
universe of stars. It is here as if the recollections of an
era earlier than stellar time had brought with them the

HEBREW POETRY. 135
associated thought of the clustered glories of constella
tions that are infinitely remote ; and thence, spanning
the skies — of another, and another, and yet another, of
the million groups of flaming worlds. Quick is this
transit from era to era of eternity ; and quick is this
transit from side to side ofthe celestial infinitude; and
quick again is the descent thence to earth, whereupon
Man is to be taught that which concerns himself — his
place, and his welfare !

CHAPTER IX.
POETRY IN THE PSALMS.
Neither the authorship of the Psalms — singly, nor
their date — singly, comes within the limits of our sub
ject ; nor indeed, as already said, does any matter that
is proper to textual criticism (unless it be incidentally)
or to theological interpretation belong to our task. We
are to find in these compositions — the poetical element,
and are to note the conditions which attach to it, where
we find it. For securing these purposes it seems need
ful to distribute them into classes — clearly distinguish
able as most of them are, on the ground of their style,
their purport, and their apparent intention.
The most obviously distinctive of these classes com
prises those — they are of greater length than others —
which recite the Hebrew history in its earlier acts and
incidents ; and which, if regarded on the ground of or
dinary national poetry, are remarkable for their mani
fest tendency to break down, or even to mortify, the
national pride, and to keep the people in mind of their
often-repeated defections and apostacies. Of this sort
especially, and which may be named as a sample of
this class, is the 106th Psalm. The recital of national
offences begins with the penitential profession — " We
have sinned with our fathers, we have committed ini
quity, we have done wickedly ;" and its concluding
stanzas (v. 40 — 48) suggest the supposition — apart from

HEBREW POETRY. 137
any critical reasons — that this ode was of a late date —
probably as late as the return of the people from Baby
lon. The reflective tone of this summary of national
history gives the impression of a retrospect, from a
point of view the most remote from the times spoken
of. A congregational Psalm it manifestly is: — it sup
poses, in the people, a now-matured religious feeling,
abhorrent of idol-worship, and at length so thoroughly
weaned from errors of that kind, as to treat them con
temptuously. A Psalm of feeling and sentiment it is,
metrical, but not poetical.
Seventeen of the Psalms* may be classed together
under this designation — as recitals of the national his
tory, this being regarded always in its religious aspect,
and always more for purposes of penitential humiliation
than of glorification. And we note in all of them the
absolute avoidance of certain elements which, in national
odes intended for popular use on festive occasions, is a
circumstance full of significance. These wanting ele
ments are what might promote sacerdotal, or rather,
hierarchical aggrandisement : — the despotic, and also
the heroic style, or the idolization of the ancient warriors
and sages of the nation. In the loftiest and the purest
sense these odes are theistic ; and so they are, whether
the times be bright or dark. Look to the 44th Psalm,
and to the 46th, which breathe the sublimity of a tran
quil faith, rising above the storms of earth. The return
of the soul is ever to its resting-place, as in Ps. 60 :
" Give us help from trouble : for vain is the help of
man." The 68th Psalm — if now we might imagine
* These seventeen Psalms, are Pss. 44, 46, 60, 68, 74, 15, 16, 18,
19, 80, 81, 83, 85, 105, 106, 126, 137.

138 THE SPIRIT OF THE
the scenes, the sounds, and the circumstances, when,
under management of " the chief musician,'' the courts
of the temple shook with its chorus, and the " great
congregation," keeping holiday, joined their voices with
the ministers around the altar, we should have, in
sounds, in feeling, all that poetry and music combines,
and the depths of religious awe have ever done, or might
ever do, to exalt the spirit of man, and to carry popular
emotion to the highest pitch. No wonder that, in re
collection of seasons such as these, the exiled wanderer
in the wilderness should think " the tabernacles of God
amiable," or that he should expend sighs in terms like
these — " My soul longeth, yea even fainteth for the
courts of the Lord : my heart and my flesh crieth out
for the living God." — " A day in thy courts is better
than a thousand " — spent in pavilions of luxury.
No spot on earth was there then — none has there
been since — that might claim comparison with that
" Hill of the Lord " whereupon, under the blue vault
of heaven, these national anthems were performed, and
took effect with every aid of a composite musical system
— with the harmony of instruments and voices — with
the popular acclamation — with the visible adornments
of the temple and its awful sacrificial rites. In our dull
perfunctory recitations of these anthems of the Hebrew
nation we quite fail to estimate what was their power,
their majesty, and beauty, when and where they got
utterance at the first. Nor can it be within the chill
gloom of our Gothic cathedrals — let modern music and
the organ do its best — that an idea can be formed ofthe
commingled sublimities of that ancient worship — true in
its theology — perfect in its metrical and its musical ex
pressions — lofty, and yet reverential in its tone — humanis-

HEBREW POETRY. 13!)
ing in its sentiments, and withal indigenous — homefelt —
national — near to the heart and recollections of the
worshippers : — a worship homogeneous, and which was
especially in accordance with every belief and every
sentiment of that age, and of that people. There is
more in this last condition than we may have been
used to suppose. Turn now for a moment to this 68th
Psalm. Frigid, narrow, unrealizing is that exceptive criti
cism which fails to see and to feel the divine majesty —
the super-human truth and greatness of that worship of
which, in this instance, we have a sample. Along with
these ascriptions of majesty, power, goodness, to God
— the God of Israel — there are those pieties of the
affections of which no instances whatever are extant
anywhere — out of the circuit of the Hebrew Scriptures.
God is " a Father of the fatherless, and a judge of the
widows " — who also " setteth the solitary in families,
and bringeth out those which are bound in chains."
Verse, linked in with verse, are the images of power
and majesty, wrought into one mass with ideas of benefi
cence and of mercy.
The chariots of God — twenty thousand-thousands of angels.
The Lord is among them (as in) Sinai, in the Holy.
Thou hast ascended on high —
Leading captivity captive :
Thou hast received gifts for men ;
Yea the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell (among them.)
But now, in our modern recitations of this anthem,
and of others of the same order, the flow of feeling is
checked by the occurrence of expressions that run coun
ter to, or that go far beyond, the range of our christian-

140 THE SPIRIT OF THE
ized sentiments. So it is here at the very start — " Let
God ari>e, let his enemies be scattered." And after
wards — "The Lord shall bring his people from the
depths of the sea — that thy foot may be dipped in the
blood of thine enemies ; and the tongue of thy dogs in
the same. Undoubtedly we stay the course of our
sympathies at points such as these ! It could only be at
rare moments of national anguish and deliverance that
expressions of this order could be assimilated with
modern feelings. What then should be our inference?
It should not be of the confused or compromising sort
— taking what we approve — and rejecting this verse,
or that verse ; nor should our inference be timid and
pusillanimous, as if we were careful tt> shun some appre
hended ill consequence ; our inference should not be
drawn from a theology which is hypothetic — which is
a mixture of our own abstract notions, with Christian
principles. These war-energies of the Hebrew mind, in
a past time, were proper to the people, and to the age;
and would continue to be so until that revolution in reli
gious feeling had been brought about which, in abating
national enthusiasm, and in bringing immortality into
the. place of earthly welfare, gave a wholly new direc
tion to every element of the moral system. Difficult
indeed it may be — perhaps it is quite impossible — for
the modern mind, with its training, which has become
to it a second nature, to go back to that " Hill of God,"
and to join in the loud acclamations of the people. Yet
if we could do so, we should doubtless find that the
battle-force of parts in the national worship did not in
any way make discord with the loftiest and tho purest
religious emotions. We of this time are so schooled in
amenities, wc are so softened and sublimed, that a de-

HEBREW POETRY. Ill
termined effort, which few of us can make, is needed
for carrying us back to the place and era of these an
thems — full as they are of power, as well as of piety.
Always is the martial mood tempered with humiliating
recollections of national sins : — never is it exalted by
any flattery of chiefs or kings : — never docs this mar
tial force seek to enhance itself (as has been its tendency
always among other people) by ambitious vauntings of
conquests meditated — even for the spread of truth : the
conversion of the heathen is never connected with con
quests to be effected by the sword. Mahomet and his
caliphs could find nothing in these anthems that would
be available for the purposes of Islam.
The intention of these national and historical poems,
and their tone and spirit, are well seen in the 78th
Psalm. The intention was — the religious education of
the people, from the earliest childhood upward: the
tone and spirit are such as could not fail to form the
Hebrew mind to greatness, to depth and soberness of
feeling, and to a profound consciousness of that Provi
dential Government which fitted the people for other
and higher purposes than those of national aggrandise
ment. This metrical summary of the people's history
¦ — majestic in its imagery, and musical (even in a trans
lation) and so poised in its couplets and triplets as that
little of change would be needed for bringing it under
the conditions of rhythm, in any translation — would,
in its own Hebrew, and to the Hebrew ear, commend
itself at once as poetry, as music, and as devout senti
ment. Such was its purpose. The wonders of the
Divine Government from the remotest times were to be
fixed in the memory of children's children to the end
of time.

142 THE SPIRIT OF THE

Showing to the generations to come the praises of the Lord,
And his strength and his wonderful works that he hath done.
These — thus trained, should in their turn teach them
to— The children which should be born ;
Who should arise, and declare them to their children:
That they might set their hope in God,
And not forget the works of God,
But keep his commandments.
The recitations that follow have all the same purport;
they are as from God — a remonstrance — a rebuke; and
yet such as gave assurance always to the contrite and
obedient. If this poem be taken as an inauguration
of the monarchy under David, then should we not
note the archaic majesty, and the modesty of its closing
verses ? The enemies of Israel had been discomfited,
and put " to a perpetual reproach " — the monarchy was
now established upon Zion — the city was adorned with
palaces and strengthened with bulwarks, and thus peace
was established by the arm, and under the rule of this
David, whom God had chosen : — his servant, whom he
had taken  from the sheepfolds ;

From following the ewes, great with young,
He brought him to feed Jacob his people,
And Israel his inheritance.
So he fed them according to the integrity of his heart ;
And guided them by the skilfulness of his hands.
It was the warrior David whose own arm had been
the instrument of the victories which at length had
given rest to the people, and had confirmed them in
their hitherto precarious occupation of the land as-

HEBREW POETRY. 143
signed them. To the Poet-king this composition is at
tributed ; and if rightly so, then had he himself learned
a religious humility which few indeed of his class —
high-born or low-born — have understood. But if there
were reasons for assigning this Psalm to a bard of a
later time (not that any such reasons are pretended)
then this avoidance of the magnifying of a people's
ancient heroes is the more noticeable, for it is an absti
nence which, as it has no parallels in other national
poetry, so does it find its explication only on that
ground where the history of this one people can be
exempt from contradictions — which is the ground of its
supernatural attestations.
Distinguishable from the above-mentioned are those
of the Psalms — they may be reckoned as twenty* —
which, looking at them apart from the guidance (if in
deed it be guidance) of textual criticism, declare their
own intention as anthems, adapted for that public wor
ship which was the glory and delight of the Hebrew
people ; — a worship carrying with it the soul ofthe mul
titude by its simple majesty, and by the powers of
music, brought, in their utmost force, to recommend
the devotions of earth in the hearing of Heaven. Take
the last of the Psalms as a sample of this class, and
bring the spectacle and the sounds into one, for the
imagination to rest in. It was evidently to subserve
the purposes of music that these thirteen verses are put
together : it was, no doubt, to give effect first to the
human voice, and then, to the alternations of instru
ments — loud, and tender, and gay, with the graceful
* The Psalms here referred to are these— 24, 47, 48, 87, 95, 96, 97,
98, 99, 100, 108, 114, 117, 118, 122, 132, 134, 148, 149, 150.

144 THE SPIRIT OF THE
movements of the dance — that the anthem was com
posed, and its chorus brought out —
Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord:
Praise ye the Lord !
and so did the congregated thousands take up their part
with a shout — " even as the noise of many waters."
It is but feebly, and as afar off, that the ancient litur
gies (except so far as they merely copied their origiuals)
came up to the majesty and the wide compass of the
Hebrew worship, such as it is indicated in the 148th
Psalm. Neither Ambrose, nor Gregory, nor the Greeks,
have reached or approached this level ; and in temper
ing the boldness of their originals by admixtures of
what is more Christian-like and spiritual, the added
elements sustain an injury which is not compensated by
what they bring forward of a purer, or a less earthly
kind : feeble indeed is the tone of those anthems of the
ancient Church — sophisticated or artificial is their style.
Nor would it be possible — it has never yet seemed so —
to Christianize the Hebrew anthems — retaining their
power, their earth-like richness, and their manifold
splendours — which are the very splendours, and the
true riches, and the grandeur of God's world — and
withal attempered with expressions that touch to the
quick the warmest human sympathies. And as the
enhancement of all there is the nationality, there is that
fire which is sure to kindle fire in true human hearts —
He showeth his word unto Jacob,
His statutes and his judgments unto Israel.
He hath not dealt so with any nation :
As for his judgments they have not known them,
Praise ye the Lord !

HEBREW POETRY. 145
Nothing that mediaeval Gothic has achieved — nothing
that modern music has effected, can be sufficient for
carrying the modern worshipper back to that place and
age where and when these anthems " made glad the
city of the Great King." As to the powers of Sacred
Poetry, those powers were expanded to the full, and
were quite expended too by the Hebrew bards. What
are modern hymns but so mauy laborious attempts to
put in a new form, that which, as it was done in the
very best manner so many ages ago, can never be well
done again — otherwise than in the way of a verbal
repetition. About thirty-three Psalms might be brought toge
ther, forming a class of odes which, although many
or most of them probably, took their turn in the respon
sive services of the Temple, are less conspicuously litur
gical, and have for their principal subject the attributes
of God — His wonders of power in the creation — His
providence and bounty, and His righteous government
of mankind.* As samples of this class we might take
the 8th Psalm, and the 19th, the 29th, the 50th, the
65th, the 90th, and the 91st. In truth a selection of
specimens of this class is not easily made, for every one
of those named below might well stand as a representa
tive ofthe others.
With these brilliant poems before us, let us imagine
the thirty-three, or we might now add to them the
twenty anthems of public worship already named —
fifty-three odes and anthems — printed by themselves,
without note, comment, or any other literary or histori-
* These Psalms of Adoration are the following:— 8, 18, 19, 20, 29,
33, 34, 49, 50, 65, 66, 67, 82, 86, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 104, 107, 111,
112, 113, 115, 121, 123, 125, 135, 136, 145, 146, 147.
7

146 THE SPIRIT OF THE
cal information connected with them, save this only —
that in some mode of indubitable transmission, these
compositions had come into our hands from a remote
antiquity, and that they were the only extant remains
of a people, long since scattered and perished, concern
ing whose fortunes, institutions, beliefs, manners, we
could know nothing more than what might be gathered
from the remains now in view. The reader who will
give himself the pains to do so, must put far from his
thoughts the entire mass of his Bible beliefs — all his
recollections of the pulpit, and the desk, and of contro
versies, and of his own conclusions — thereto related — •
whether they be orthodox or heterodox. Thus strip
ped of his modern self, let him read the 65th Psalm,
and let him open his heart, and mind too, to admit —
the largeness of its intention — the width of its look-out
upon the world — the justness of its theism — if indeed a
Creator is acknowledged, and if the Creator be good
also — the warmth of its piety, and the gladsomeness of
its temper, and the landscape freshness of its images ;
and withal the preparation which is made in its exordium
for the outpourings of a grateful piety, by the open
confession of sin, and the deep consciousness of it as the
reason of the Divine displeasure. This ode supposes —
it connotes — an instituted congregational worship — a
temple, a liturgy, and a teaching !
What then were these people — what their theology
— what their ethics — what their history ? How can
it have come about, or why, under the Providential
Government ofthe world, that a people which was thus
highly instructed — was thus immeasurably advanced
beyond any others of antiquity — should have fallen
from their position, and have disappeared from the mus-

HEBREW POETRY. 117
ter-roll of the nations — leaving no monuments of them
selves — these odes only excepted, which have drifted
down upon the deluge-surface of human affairs ? In its
attempts to answer these, and such like questions, spe
culation might wander far, and find no conclusion ; but
whatever might be our surmises, as to the catastrophes
of such a people, or their apostacies, or the gradual
decay among them of their pristine virtue, nothing
could destroy the evidence which is here in our own
hands, to this effect, that — on some spot on earth, and
in some remote age, there was once a people fully pos
sessed of the highest truths, and so possessed of these
truths as to have assimilated them with its moral
sentiments, and with its tastes also ; for its perceptions
toward the visible world were alive to whatever is beau
tiful therein.
If such a perusal — if such a digestion of this one ode
brings into view, with the vividness of vision, this lost
theistic nation — then go on to peruse the other fifty of
this collection ; for these, in their different modes, will
give evidence touching each leading principle of what we
admit to be a true theology, and a true belief concern
ing the Creative Power, and a true belief in Providence,
and the righteous government, and gracious administra
tion of that Providence toward mankind, who are dealt
with in their weakness, and their failings, and their sins.
Vivid as these poems are, and full of force, and of feel
ing, and abounding as they do in allusions to the things
of the time, it is not credible that they are mere inven
tions, which had no archetypes in the mind and usages
of a people. This may not be thought. It is certain
then that there has once been a people among the
nations — there has been one among the millions ofthe

148 THE SPIRIT OF THE
worshippers of stocks — there has been one people —
taught of God.
The 90th Psalm might be cited as perhaps the most
sublime of human compositions — the deepest in feeling —
the loftiest in theologie conception — the most magnificent
in its imagery. True is it in its report of human life —
as troubled, transitory, and sinful. True in its concep
tion of the Eternal — the Sovereign and the Judge ;
and yet the refuge and hojse of men, who, notwithstand
ing the most severe trials of their faith, lose not their
confidence in Him ; but who, in the firmness of faith — ¦
pray for, as if they were predicting, a near-at-liand
season of refreshment. Wrapped, one might say — in
mystery, until the distant day of revelation should come,
there is here conveyed the doctrine of Immortality ; for
in this very plaint of the brevity of the life of man, and
of the sadness of these, his few years of trouble, and
their brevity, and their gloom, there is brought into con
trast, the Divine immutability ; and yet it is in terms of
a submissive piety : the thought of a life eternal is here
in embryo. No taint is there in this Psalm ofthe pride
and petulance — the half-uttered blasphemy — the malign
disputing or arraignment of the justice or goodness of
God, which have so often shed a venomous colour upon
the language of those who have writhed in anguish, per
sonal or relative. There are few probably among those
who have passed through times of bitter and distracting
woe, or who have stood— the helpless spectators of the
miseries of others, that have not fallen into moods of
mind violently in contrast with the devout and hopeful
melancholy which breathes throughout this ode. Right
ly attributed to the Hebrew Lawgiver or not, it bespeaks
its remote antiquity, not merely by the majestic simpli-

HEBREW POETRY. 149
city of its style, but negatively, by the entire avoidance
of those sophisticated turns of thought which belong to
a late — a lost age in a people's intellectual and moral
history. This Psalm, undoubtedly, is centuries older
than the moralizings of that time when the Jewish mind
had listened to what it could never bring into a true
assimilation with its own mind — the abstractions of the
Greek Philosophy.
With this one Psalm only iu view — if it were required
of us to say, in brief, what we mean by the phrase —
" The Spirit of the Hebrew Poetry" — we find our an
swer well condensed in this sample. This magnificent
composition gives evidence, not merely as to the mental
qualities of the writer, but as to the tastes and habi
tudes of the writer's contemporaries, his hearers, and
his readers ; on these several points— first, the free and
customary command of a poetic diction, and its facile
imagery ; so that whatever the poetic soul would utter,
the poet's material is near at hand for his use. There is
then that depth of feeling — mournful, reflective, and yet
hopeful and trustful, apart from which poetry can wdn
for itself no higher esteem than what we bestow upon
other decorative arts, which minister to the demands of
luxurious sloth. There is, moreover, as we might say,
underlaying this Poem, from the first line to the last,
the substance of philosophic thought, apart from which,
expressed or understood, Poetry is frivolous, and is not
in harmony with the seriousness of human life : this
Psalm is of a sort which Plato would have written, or
Sophocles — if only the one or the other of these minds
had possessed a heaven-descended Theology.
This, then, is our conclusion.— The Hebrew writers
as Poets — such a writer as was the author of this Psalm

150 THE SPIRIT OF THE
• — were masters of all the means and the resources, the
powers and the stores, of the loftiest poetry ; but the
spirit of this poetry is, with them always,.its instrumen
tality — its absolute subordination and subserviency to a
far loftier purpose than that which ever animates human
genius. There is a small number of the Psalms, eleven only,*
of which Psalms 37 and 73 might be named as samples.
The tone of these odes is meditative and ethical: they
represent those balancing thoughts by aid of which the
pious, in comparing their own lot, such as often it is,
with the lot of the ungodly, or with the outside show
of that lot, bring their mind to an even balance, and
restore its hopeful confidence in the Divine favour. These
Psalms are metrical, indeed, but they are not poetical ;
although the terms employed are all figurative, and are
some of them resplendent with a mild radiance, as pic
tures of earthly well-being under the favour of God,
and, as to their domestic quality, they are peculiarly
characteristic ofthe Hebrew social feeling, which was at
once domestic} — national — pacific.
Behold, how good and pleasant [it is)
For brethren to dwell together in unity.
As if in rebuke of the turmoil, and the ambition, and
the greediness of city life, the Hebrew bard commends
rather the quiet enjoyments of the home life, and espe
cially if home life be rural life also.
Vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late,
To eat tlie bread of sorrows :
So he giveth his beloved sleep.
Lo, children are (the) heritage of tlie Lord:
* These Psalms are— 1, 15, 37, 53, 62, 13, 101, 127, 128, 133, 139.

HEBREW POETRY. 151

The fruit of the womb (his) reward.
As arrows in the hand of a mighty man,
So are sons of the youth (ions of early married life).
Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.
They shall not be ashamed,
But they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.
There are here combined several elements of the He
brew life, and more so still in the Psalm following — a
song of degrees — a song in the chanting of which the
fatigues of the annual journeyings to the House of the
Lord were soothed.
Happy is every one that feareth the Lord :
That walks in His ways :
The labour of thy hands thou shalt eat :
It is well with thee — and (shall be) well with thee :
Thy wife is a fruitful vine, in the inner house :
Thy sons as olive plants round about thy table.
Behold thus shall the man be blessed,
Who fears the Lord.
The Lord will bless thee out of Zion.*
Thou shalt see the prosperity of Jerusalem all thy days.
And see thy children's children.
Yea — peace upon Israel.
These pictures are mild and bright : — humanizing
are they in the best sense : — they retain certain ele
ments of Paradise ; — and yet more, the elements of the
Patriarchal era ; with the addition of that patriotism,
and of that concentration in which the Patriarchal life
was wanting. The happy religious man, after the He
brew pattern, possessed those feelings and habitudes
which, if they greatly prevail in a community, impart
to it the strength of a combination which is stronger
* The meaning of this line is found in Numbers v. 22 — 21

152 THE SPIRIT OF THE
than any other, uniting the force of domestic virtue, of
rural (yeoman-like) agricultural occupations, of unag
gressive defensive valour, and of a religious animation
which is national, as well as authentic and true. Our
modern learning in oriental modes of life, and its cir
cumstance and scenery, may help us to bring into view
either of two gay pictures — that of the Hebrew man in
mid-life, at rest in his country home, with his sturdy
sons about him : his wife is still young : her fair daughters
are like cornices, sculptured as decorations for a palace.
Or else the companion picture, with it£ group on their way
Zion-ward, resting, for the sultry noon-hour, under the
palms by the side of a stream ; — and yet home — happy
home, is in the recollection of the party : but the H.'ll of
God — " whereunto the tribes of the Lord go up" — iis in
the fervent purpose of all ; and while they rest they
beguile the time with a sacred song, and with il s sooth
ing melody. Happy were the people while their mind
was such as this, and such their habits, and such their
piety ! and this was a piety which, along with true con
ceptions of God, was well used to those humbling medi
tations that give to the soul its calmness and its strength
too — Lord, what is man that thou takest knowledge of him I
The son ofthe dying, that thou makest account of him I
Man — like to vanity I
His days are as a flitting shadow I
In other Psalms of this class — as in the 73rd — the
religious doctrine takes place of the earthly sentiment.
The exceptional instance, namely, that of afflicted piety,
is taken up and discussed ; the sufferer narrates his
own experience on this ground; and yet he premises

HEBREW POETRY. 153
his conclusion, that, after all, the Hebrew principle holds
good; for " truly, God is good to Israel, to such as are
of a clean heart." In these compositions, feeling — piety
• — the truth of things, prevail over poetry; nevertheless,
they bring into view glimpses of modes of life upon
which the modern imagination may dwell with sweet
and soothing satisfaction.
The class next to be named includes many of the
Psalms (thirty, or more),* and they are not easily
grouped under a fitting designation which may be
applicable to all of them. They are individual and
personal — not congregational — not liturgical. They are
expressive of those alternations of anguish, dismay, hope,
trust, indignation, or even of deeper resentments, which
agitate the soul of one whose lot is cast among the
malignant, the cruel, the unreasonable ; or, in a word,
the dwellers in Mesech — the ungodly. These Psalms, or
most of them, are David's own, and they are to be
interpreted severally, by aid of his history, in its earlier
part especially. Neither with this history, nor with the
quality of the emotions that give an impassioned tone
to these compositions, are we here directly concerned.
Fully to realize circumstances and states of mind, such
as are here brought into view, we — in these easy times
— must travel far away from the secure and tranquil
meadow lands of ordinary life. But there have been
tens of thousands, in ages past, who have trodden the
rugged heaven-ward road, and have found it to be a way,
not merely thorny and flinty to the foot, but beset with
terrors ; for spiteful and remorseless men have couched
* The Psalms of this class are— 3, 4, 5, 1, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 11,
21, 35, 36, 41, 52, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 64, 71, 94, 109, 120, 124, 129,
140, 144. 7-y-

154 THE SPIRIT OF THE
beside this narrow way, and have rendered it terrible to
the pilgrim : — a path of anguish and of many fears it
has been. In our drowsy repetitions of these Psalms — ¦
cushioned as we are, upon the safe luxuries of modern
life, we fail to understand these outcries from the mar
tyrs' field. 0 Lord, the God of vengeance —
0 God, the God of vengeance, shine forth.
Rise up, thou Judge of the earth ;
Recompense a reward to the proud I
Let only such times return upon us, as have been of
more frequency than are these times of ease, in the
history ofthe Church, and we should quickly know how
to understand a Psalm such as the 94th. Christian
men and women, when they are called, in like manner,
to suffer, are required to pay respect to a rule of
suffering which is many centuries later than the time of
David, but which, although it is indeed a higher rule,
does not bring under blame the natural, and the reli
gious emotions that were proper to the earlier dispensa
tion. The Christian Rule which enjoins an unresisting
endurance of wrong, and a Christ-like patience, would
not stand, as it does, in bold relief upon the ground of
universal morality, if it were opposed only to those
malign and revengeful emotions which prompt the per
secutor. The Christian martyr's rule is declared to be
an exceptional rule, and it bespeaks its intention, as a
testimony sealed in blood, in behalf of the hope of eternal
life, in this very way, that it takes position as the anti
thesis, not the contradiction, of those emotions which,
in themselves, and apart from a peculiar purpose, are not
only natural, but are virtuous and religious. When the

HEBREW POETRY. 155
Christian martyr suffers wrong to the death — in silence,
or is triumphant at the stake, it is because he is looking
for " a better resurrection" — a crown of immortality :
it is, therefore, and it is on this newly-opened ground,
that he foregoes rightful indignation — that he represses
the instincts of resentment — that he abstains from impre
cations — that he will not, no, even in the utmost
severity of anguish — on the rack or in the fire, call
upon God — the God of vengeance, to render a reward
to the proud and the cruel. It is in thought of the life
eternal, and of the judgment to come, that the Christian
martyr abstains from consoling himself in the prospiect
of that time when his God shall bring upon his enemies
" their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own
wickedness." There is apt to be much misunderstanding on this
ground, and a consequent confusion of thought, on the
part of Christian advocates, has thrown an advantage
into the hands of those whose aim it has been to impugn
the morality of the Hebrew Scriptures. The subject,
although incidental only to the purport of this volume,
comes just now in our path, and it may claim a page.
We do not interfere, at all, with what may rightfully be
affirmed concerning the predictive import of the impre
catory Psalms ; for that is a subject which belongs to
the theological Biblical Commentator. In these pages
we are regarding these compositions from our standing
on a lower level : looked at from this point of view, then
there is seen to be shed upon the field of Christian mar
tyrdom, a splendour — full of the glories of that upper
world in the triumphs of which the martyr aspires to
take his part. There could be no need of martyrdoms
for bearing a testimony against dark, foul, inhuman,

156 THE SPIRIT OF THE
sanguinary passions : inasmuch as these receive their
proper rebuke in the conduct of the virtuous, and the
pious, who admit, and who give a governed expression
to rightful and religious resentments, even to those emo
tions of anger, and to those appeals to sovereign justice,
which are true elements of human nature, and which,
in fact, have in them so irresistible an energy, that they
overbear all contradiction, unless it spring from motives
of another order.
The slow and insensible advancement of Christian
motives has brought on a transfusion of the passive
martyr doctrine into the ethics of common life. It is
thus that we have come to read what are called the
Imprecatory Psalms ; — and then, so reading them, we
are perplexed in attempting to assimilate them to the
Christian rule of non-resistance ; which rule in truth,
we talk of, more than we practise it. Human nature,
in its primary constitution, is entirely such as these
very Psalms suppose it to be ; nor is this structure of
the emotions to be any way reprobated ; — far from it
— it is God's own work. As in relation to the vindic
tive passions, so in relation to other forces of human
nature, the Gospel comes in — on exceptive occasions, and
supervenes their operation : with a crown imperishable
in view, it bridles the energies of this present life, and
asks a sacrifice of the body and of the soul*
It is against the abounding impiety, cruelty, wrong
fulness, falseness, craftiness of the men of his times,
that the writer — or writers — of these Psalms makes
his passionate, or his mournful appeal to the righteous
ness of Heaven. His confidence in the issue of the
* See Note.

HEBREW POETRY. 157
Divine Government takes its spring, and receives its
force, from the vivacity of his own emotions of disap
proval and of resentment too : — the one energy, that
of faith, sustains itself upon the other energy, that of
natural feeling : remove or weaken the one, and then
the other is enfeebled, in proportion. This balancing
of the one force, by the other force, must have place,
unless motives derived from a higher level were brought
in to take the place, and to do the office of the natural
emotions of resentment. For a substitution of this kind
the time was not yet come : — long centuries were yet
to run themselves out before this revolution was to be
effected. Nevertheless, inasmuch as there was to be
nothing in the later economy which had not been pre-
dictively shadowed forth in the older economy, there
appears, in several of these denunciatory and vengeance
fraught Psalms, a glimmer, and more than a glimmer,
of that light of life which was at length to bring the
servants of God into a wholly new relationship toward
persecutors, and the doers of wrong. These gleams of
light from a brighter world give to several of the
Psalms something of the poetic tone in which otherwise
they are wanting.
We may take as an instance of this anticipated
Christian sentiment, an expression such as the follow
ing, — the meaning of which scarcely comes to the sur
face in our English version.
For (on account of) the oppression of the poor : for the outcry of the
destitute,
Now will I arise, saith Jehovah :
I will put him in safety from him that would entrap him:
Thou shalt preserve them (take them Out from) this generation, for the
age to come (tlie hidden future).

158 THE SPIRIT OF THE
Or more distinctly in the closing verse of the 17th
Psalm. Notwithstanding the short triumph of those
who have their portion in this life, the servant of God
is comforted in prospect of a life future.
As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness:
I shall be content, when I awake in thy likeness.
The still clearer revelation contained in the 16th
Psalm might demand distinct notice under another head.
Of the same import are these verses (of Psalm 36).
They (the servants of God) shall be abundantly satisfied
With the fatness of thy House ;
And (for) thou shalt make them drink
Of the river of .thy pleasures.
For with thee is the fountain of life.
In thy light shall we see light.
To take account of those of the Psalms which have
most distinctly a predictive meaning, and which are
prophecies of the Messiah, would not consist, on any
ground, with the intention of these pages : — a due con
sideration of them involves what is proper to Biblical
Criticism, to Biblical Exposition, and also to Christian
Theology. Among such Psalms are to be reckoned,
without doubt, the second, the sixteenth, the twenty-
second, the forty-fifth, the seventy-second, and the hun
dred and tenth.
The class which is the most numerous comprises
thirty-five, or, it may be, forty Psalms* Of this num-
* The Psalms referred to are these— 6, 16, 11, 23, 25, 26, 21, 28,
30, 31, 32, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 51,' 57, 61, 63, 69, 70, 71, 84, 88, 102,
103, 116, 119, 130, 131, 138,' 141, 142, 143.

HEBREW POETRY. 159
ber these might be taken as samples of the rest ; name
ly, the forty-second Psalm, the sixty-third, and the
eighty-fourth. Several of these odes bring to view what have already
been named as characteristic elements of the other
classes; especially that of the often-recurrent denuncia
tion, of the wickedness of the wicked — the persecutor,
and the impious man — who is the enemy of God, and
of His faithful servants, as well as the despoiler of the
helpless, the widow, and the fatherless. But passages
of this order occupy a less conspicuous place in the
Psalms now referred to, and are incidental to the prin
cipal intention of them. This principal intention is —
whatever relates to individual piety, and the experi
ences of the spiritual life. In these devotional compo
sitions the soul, with its own spiritual welfare imme
diately in view — its intimate emotions of love, trust,
hope, humiliation, sorrow, joy — spreads itself out, as
toward God, communion with whom, on terms of filial
affection, is, in its esteem, a blessedness rather to be
chosen than all the goods of the present life — a greater
treasure is it than " thousands of gold and silver." The
key to these compositions is this settled preference of the
welfare, the health, of the soul, as compared with any
worldly and sensual enjoyments. It is this fixed purpose
of the heart which determines the conduct ; it is this
which sheds a glow upon a lot of destitution, bodily
suffering, or persecution : — it is this, and not any
expanded, or distinctly uttered hope of immortality,
which sustains the wounded spirit, imparting strength
and courage to the broken in heart. And it is this
preference which gives its cha*-m to the public worship
of God. Witness the eighty-fourth Psalm, a better ver-

160 THE SPIRIT OF THE
sion of which than that of the English Bible is much to
be desired.
The prevailing feeling — the ruling sentiment of these
Psalms may be shown in sample, in passages such as this.
Many say — who will show us good ?
Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us.
Thou hast put gladness in my heart,
More than in the time their corn and their wine increased.
I will both lay me down in peace and sleep ;
For thou, Lord, only makest me to dwell in safety.
Or in the impassioned utterances of the forty-second,
or, still more strikingly so, in the sixty-third Psalm.
0 God, thou art my God ; early will I seek thee.
These two odes, by the beauty and fitness of the
imao-ery, and the warmth and tenderness of the emo
tions expressed in them, stand as exceptive instances t.o
the rule that Poetry, throughout the Psalms, is inverse
ly as the Piety to which they give utterance : or we
should say — the piety of individual feeling. It is
otherwise with what may be called congregational, or
collective piety ; for the anthems already spoken of are
many of .them in the highest sense poetical.
There is another rule which presents itself, in looking
to the verbal structure of these devotional Psalms —
those especially which have the most decisively an indi
vidual meaning ; — it is this — That the composition sub
mits itself, in a more formal manner than in other
instances, to metrical and arbitrary conditions — as to
apposition of verses, in twos, in threes; and also, by
obeying the rule of alliteration. Take the 119th Psalm

HEBREW POETRY. 161
as an instance. In every age has this Psalm met the
requirements of individual piety : it has been a chosen
portion of Scripture, to spiritually minded persons.
Never wearied by its repetitions, or its apparent redun
dancies, each verse has given direction anew to pious
meditation — each verse has supplied its aliment of
devout feeling. Fraught throughout with religious
feeling, and wanting, almost absolutely, in Poetry, it
stands before us as a sample of conformity to metrical
limitations* In the strictest sense this composition is
conditioned ; nevertheless, in the highest sense is it an
utterance of the spiritual life ; and in thus finding these
seemingly opposed elements intimately commingled, as
they are, throughout this Psalm, a lesson full of mean
ing is silently conveyed to those who will receive it —
that the conveyance of the things of God to the human
spirit is in no way damaged or impeded, much less is it
deflected or vitiated, by its subjugation to those modes
of utterance which most of all bespeak their adaptation
to the infirmity and the childlike capacity of the reci
pient. This same 119th Psalm opens also a subject which
might well engage careful consideration. Some of the
Psalms just above referred to contain allusions, not
obscure, to that better world— that " more enduring
substance'' — that "inheritance unfailing," upon which
the pious in all times have kept the eye of faith steadily
fixed. But now in all the 176 couplets of this Psalm
there are not more than two or three phrases, and these
of ambiguous meaning, which can be understood as
having reference to the future life, and its blessedness ;
* See Note.

162 THE SPIRIT OF THE
and so it is in other Psalms of this same class. One
such expression, susceptible of an extended meaning,
there is in the 23d Psalm : none in the 25th, nor in the
30th, where it might naturally be looked for, nor in the
32d, the 42d, the 63d, the 84th, the 103d ; and these are
the Psalms which might be singled out from the class
they belong to, as samples of the deepest utterings, the
most intense yearnings, of individual devotion — the
loving communion of the soul with God. Can any
explanation be given of this apparent defectiveness, in
the instances adduced, which seem to demand the very
element that is not found in them ?
We are not called to seek for an explication of this
difficulty among groundless conjectures concerning what
might be the Divine intention, in thus holding back
from these devotional odes the element which might
seem the most eminently proper to find a place among
them : what we have before us is the incontestable fact,
that these Psalms — and these by preference — have
actually fed the piety of the pious — have sufficed for
giving utterance to the deepest and most animated reli
gious emotions, throughout all time, since their first
promulgation ; and it has been as much so since the
time of the Christian announcement of immortality, as
before it ; we might say, much more so. During all
these ages, these many generations of men who have
sought and found their happiness in communion with
God, there has been in use, by the Divine appointment,
a liturgy of the individual spiritual life, which, absti
nent of the excitements of immortal hope — unmindful
of, almost, as if ignorant of, the bright future, takes its
circuit, and finds its occasions, in and among the sad
and changeful and transient experiences of the present

HEBREW POETRY. 163
life. Here is before us a daily ritual of fervent, im
passioned devotion, which, far from being of an ab
stracted or mystical sort, is acutely sensitive towards all
things of the passing moment. This metrical service
of daily prayer, praise, intercession, trust, hope, con
trition, revolves within the circle of the every-day
pains, fears, and solaces, of the religious man's earthly
pilgrimage. Pilgrimage it is, for the devout man calls
himself " a stranger, a sojourner on earth ;" and yet
the land whereunto he is tending does not in any such
manner fill a place in his thoughts, as that it should find
a place in the language of his devotions !
What is the inference that is properly derivable from
these facts ? Is it not this, that the training or disci
pline of the soul in the spiritual life — the forming and
the strengthening of those habits of trust, confidence,
love, penitence, which are the preparations of the soul
for its futurity in a brighter world — demands a con
centration of the affections upon the Infinite Excellence
— undisturbed by objects of another order ? If this be
a proper conclusion, then we find in it a correspondent
principle in the abstinence, throughout the Christian
Scriptures, of descriptive exhibitions of the " inherit
ance " that is promised. The eternal life is indeed
authentically propounded ; but the promise is not opened
out in any such manner as shall make meditation upon it
easy. Pious earnestness presses forward on a path that
is well assured ; but on this path the imagination is not
invited to follow. The same purpose here again pre
sents itself to notice — a purpose of culture, not of
excitement. There can be little risk of error in affirming that the
New Testament itself furnishes no liturgy of devotion,

164 THE SPIRIT OF THE
for this reason that a liturgy, divinely originated, had
already been granted to the universal Church ; and it
was such in its subjects, and in its tone, and in its modes
of expression, as fully to satisfy its destined purposes.
Devout spirits, from age to age of these later times,
since " light and immortality were brought to light,"
have known how to blend with the liturgy of David the
promises of Christ : these latter distinguished from
those long before granted to Patriarchs and Prophets,
more by their authoritative style, and their explicit
brevity, than by any amplifications which might satisfy
religious curiosity.

CHAPTER X.
SOLOMON, AND THE SONG OP SONGS.
In search, as we now are, of the Poetry of the
Hebrew writings, and of that only, twro inferences are
unquestionable — namely, first, that on this ground the
" Song of Songs " possesses a very peculiar claim to
be spoken of; and secondly, that, inasmuch as the
alleged religious or spiritual meaning of these beautiful
idyls must be made to rest upon considerations quite
foreign to any indications of such a meaning, found in
themselves, we might abstain from taking any note of
this — their superinduced spiritual significance. We
might stand excused from asking any questions thereto
relating ; nor need we perplex ourselves with difficul
ties therewith connected ; and might think ourselves
free to abstain from any expression of opinion upon a
question which belongs so entirely to the theological
expositor. Yet, although it be so, there may be reasons
sufficient for adverting to this very instance — quite
peculiar as it is, and illustrative as it is, of what was
affirmed at the outset, concerning the relation of the
Divine element toward the human element in the cano
nical Scriptures.
Just now we are proposing to look at these eclogues
as remarkable samples of the poetry of the Hebrews, in
this class ; — and in no other light.
By themselves they deserve to be considered on the

166 THE SPIRIT OF THE
ground of their striking unlikeness to the mass of the
Hebrew literature ; — one other book ofthe Canon — the
book of Esther, stands on the same ground of negative
theistic import. In neither of these compositions does
the Divine Name so much as once occur : in neither of
them does there occur a single religious or spiritual
sentiment of any kind : — the one — so far as appears on
the surface of it — is as purely amatory, as the other is
purely national — Jewish — political. Yet this absence
of the religious element is not the only, nor, indeed, is
it the principal distinction which sets the Canticles in
contrast with the other constituents of the Old Testa
ment. These all, as we have already said (Chapter
II.) exhibit a religions intention, which is so constant,
and is of such force, as to prevail over what might have
been the impulses of the individual writer's genius.
Poet as he may be by constitution of mind, and using
freely for his purpose the materials and the symbols of
poetry, yet he is never the poet-artist : — he is never
found to be devising and executing, in the best manner,
a work of art :— he is never the workman who has in
view the tastes, wishes, and commands, of those for
whom be writes.
It is ou this ground, as much as upon that of the
avoidance of religious expressions, or of moral senti
ments, that the " Song of Songs" stands quite alone
iu the "goodly fellowship of the prophets." These
Canticles are compositions, apparently on a level with
compositions the purpose of which is only that of pro
viding delectation for the reader. The author of the
Canticles lias done, in his way, what Theocritus and
Ilafiz have done — each in his way. This is what
must be said— reading what we read, apart from an

HEBREW POETRY. 167
hypothesis which sustains itself altogether on other
grounds. Thus regarded, and thus brought forward to stand in
a light of contrast with the mass of the Hebrew Scrip
tures, these delicious compositions carry us back, in
imagination, to, or towards, that primawal hour of
human history, a tradition of which is (as we have said)
the very germ, or inner reason of all poetry. The
author — and we need not doubt it — Solomon — the mo
narch of an era of peace, and of plenary terrestrial good,
breaks away, as if from underneath the thick clouds and
storms of centuries past : — he leaves behind him even
the tranquil patriarchal ages : — he draws near to that
first garden of love, and of flowers, and of singing-birds,
and of all sensuous delights — even to the paradise of
innocence: — he looks along the flowery alleys of that
garden : — he finds his subject there, and his images ;
and yet not entirely so ; for he takes up the paradisaical
elements in part ; and with these he mingles elements
of another order. Himself lord of a palace, and yet
alive to the better delights, and the simple conditions of
rural life, he is fain to bring love and flowery fields into
unison with luxurious habits. In song, this may be
done: in reality, never. The Canticle is therefore a
poem : it is an artistic work, because it brings into
combination those ingredients of an imaginary felicity
for which earth has no place.
Yet is this poem quite true to nature, if only man
were innocent, and if woman were loving only, and lovely
always. The truthfulness of the work is found in that
primeval alliance of love and nature — of love and rural
life — which imparts to the warmest of emotions its sim
plicity and its purity— its healthfulness, and to the rural

168 THE SPIRIT OF THE

taste, its animation and its vividness of enjoyment.
Upon this association human nature was at the first con
structed; and toward it will human nature ever be
tending. Love, and fields, and flowers, and the trim
graces of the garden, and the free charms of the open
country, and the breathing hillside, and the sparkling
stream, are — what they severally may be — as ingredi
ents of human felicity, when they are found together.
How far they may go toward realizing earthly well-being
has been known to many who have been the contented
dwellers beneath a thatched roof, and whose paradise
was a rood or two of land, hedged off from a cornfield
or meadow.
If a half-dozen heedlessly rendered passages of our
English version were amended, as easily they might be,
then the Canticle would well consist, throughout, with
the purest utterances of conjugal fondness. Happy
would any people be among whom there was an abound
ing of that conjugal fondness which might thus express
itself. A social condition of this kind is — or it would
be — at once the opposite of licentiousness, and its exclu
sion, and its proper remedy ; yet it must rest upon
sentiments and usages far less factitious than are those
of modern European city life : marriage, entered upon
early enough to secure for itself the bloom of the affec
tions, on both sides ; and so early as to have precluded
the withering and the weltering of loving hearts that
once were warm, pure, and capable of an entire abnega
tion of the individual selfism. Where, aud when, shall
the social system return upon its path, and become
healthful, and bright, with warm emotions, and content
with the modest sufficiency of rural life ! Who would
not willingly accept for himself the lot of the lover-

HEBREW POETRY. 169
husband — first out in the moist morning of May, in
this climate of ours, and who thus calls his love — his
wife abroad —
Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away ;
For lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over — is gone;
The flowers appear on the earth,
The time of the singing is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land ;
The fig-tree hath ripened her green figs ;
And the vines — the tender grape — give fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away I
Conjugal fondness, if true-hearted, will not make it a
condition of earthly happiness that it should be able to
take its leisure in gardens of oriental fragrance ; but will
joyfully accept very much less than this : —
A garden shut in — my sister — my spouse ;
A spring shut up — a fountain sealed.
Thy plants — an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits ;
Camphire, with spikenard — spikenard and saffron ;
Calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense ;
Myrrh and aloes, with all chief spices :
A fountain — gardens — a well of living waters,
And streams from Lebanon.
Albeit we, of a latitude so high, dare not go on, and
say, in our early spring —
Awake, 0 north wind ; and come, thou south ;
Blow upon my garden,
The spices thereof to flow out.
But the later summer time has come when the loving
wife takes up the invitation : —

170 THE SPIRIT OF THE
Let my beloved come into his garden,
And eat his pleasant fruits.
And he replies : —
I am come into my garden, my sister — spouse:
I have gathered my myrrh with my spice;
I (will) eat my honeycomb with my honey ;
I (will) drink my wine with ray milk.
Although the allusions in these poems are to rural
scenes, and also to the incidents of shepherd-life, there
is nothing — there is not a taiut of rusticity ; — there is
no coarseness — nothing ofthe homeliness ofthe Sicilian
cattle-keepers* — nothing of the factitiousness, the affec
tation, of Virgil's Eclogues. The persons speak at the
impulse of real and passionate emotions ; but, in the
utterance of these genuine and fond affections, there is
always elegance, and there are the ornate habitudes of
an advanced oriental civilization. There is also the
genuine and inimitable oriental self-possession, and the
consciousness of personal dignity ; in these love-
dialogues, and in these fond soliloquies, there is every
thing that may be permitted to amorous endearment ;
yet there is no taint of licentiousness : — these are the
loves of the pure in heart. An indication at once of
simplicity and ofthe refinement of tastes, aud of purity
of temperament in both lovers, appears at every turn of
this abrupt composition : for ever and again is there the
commingling of the language of tender fondness with
the sense of the beauty and sweetness of nature — the
field, the vineyard, the garden, the flowers, the
* See Note.

HEBREW POETRY. 171
perfumes, the fruits, are not out of sight, from hour
to hour, of these pastimes of love.
My beloved is gone down into his garden,
To the beds of spices.
To feed* in the gardens, and to gather lilies.
I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine :
He feedeth among the lilies.
Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field,
Let us lodge in the hamlets.
Let us get up early to the vineyards ;
Let us see if the vines flourish,
Whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth.
There will I give thee my loves.
The mandrakes give a smell,
And at our gates all kinds of pleasant (fruits) new and old,
I have laid up for thee, 0 my beloved.
Fervid fondness, tenderness, and elegance — and it is
an elegance which is peculiarly oriental, and which the
western races with their refinements have never realized
¦ — attach to, and are characteristic of, these Canticles ;
and the spirit of them brings to view, at every pause, at
every strophe, whatever is the most bright and graceful
in nature ; and it is in this same style that the enamoured
one ends her plaints ; for this is the last challenge of her
love: —
Make haste, my beloved, and be thou like to a roe,
Or to a young hart upon the mountain of spices.
The reason is not obvious why there should be no
allusion, of any sort, in these pastorals — -these songs of
* Not, to eat; but, KOl[iaivclv Iv Kqirots.

172 THE SPIRIT OF THE
love, to music — vocal, or instrumental. Music else
where has ever done its part in soothing, and in refining
emotions of this order; why, then, is it absent from
these eclogues ? Not because music had not, in that
age, and long before, taken its place — and a chief place
• — among those means of enjoyment which exalt human
nature. This is abundantly certain, apart from the
explicit affirmation of the royal preacher, " I gat me
men-singers, and women-singers, and the delights ofthe
sons of men — musical instruments, and that of all sorts.''
Why, then, is there not heard in these songs the soft
breathings of the flute, or the chimes of the lyre or
harp, so proper to the fragrant bowers where the royal
bridegroom, and his love, spend their summer hours?
Unless it should appear that the passage just now cited
from the book of Ecclesiastes carries with it the weight
of historical authority to the contrary,* it might be
conjectured that, in the age of David and Solomon, and
perhaps until a late period of the Israelitish people,
music, instrumental and vocal, still observant of its
primreval mood, and of its heavenly origin, reserved its
powers, in trust, for religious purposes, and that to bring
it into the service of emotions of a lower order would
have been deemed a sacrilege, and would grievously
have offended the sense of religious propriety. Might
it not be so at a time when the dance was a consecrated
pleasure, and when, on the most solemn occasions,
persons ofthe highest rank, leaping and moving at the
bidding ofthe cymbal and pipe (and probably the fiddle)
took their part in these devout festivities ? Oriental
were these outbreakings of animated religious feeling;
* See Note.

HEBREW POETRY. 173
and they were ante-Christian too; for Christianity, in
setting the religious emotions at a far loftier pitch, and
in connecting all such emotions with thoughts of an
awful futurity, and in combining them with the dread
infinitude of the unseen world, has imposed upon sacred
music a character which it bad not at the first ; and
which did not belong to it till some while after the age
when the martyr Church, with its torrents of faithful
blood, and its tortures, and its desolations, had come in
to shed a sombre glory even upon the brightest prospects
of immortality : thenceforward Church-music, wholly
changed in its tones, was the music of low plaintive
voices, and of the Cecilian organ. Not such was it in
those remote times when the very law and reason of
piety rested upon, or allied itself with, conceptions of
earthly well-being ; in that age the gayest music was
held to be not the less sacred, because it was gay ; —
but, then, the consequence was this — that the music
of soft delights was a dedicated pleasure, and was not
to be held at the service of human loves.
Conjectures, more or less probable, are all that we can
bring to bear upon this endeavour to show why music
takes no part in these songs of love. Yet something
more than conjecture we seem to need when we are
endeavouring to find a probable reason for the more
perplexing absence, throughout these poems, of the
Divine Name, and of a religious sentiment of any kind.
An explanation of the problem is not supplied by the
supposition that these songs of love belong to the dark
period of Solomon's religious apostacy, or of his guilty
complicity in the polytheism of his wives ; for in that
case there would not have failed to appear — at some
turn of passion — a sudden, incidental allusion to the

174 THE SPIRIT OF THE

demon worships of the Harem: — there would have
been visible some foul stain of lascivious rites. No
mark, no blot of this kind anywhere blemishes the
natural brightness of this poetry; a blemish of this sort
would, undoubtedly, have sufficed for excluding the
Canticle from the Hebrew Canon.
Abstaining, as we do, from any argument which
must be properly theological and expository, we now
accept the (almost) unanimous belief of the Jewish
doctors, and the (almost) unanimous concurrence
therein of the Christian Church, concerning the Can
ticle ; on the ground of which belief it was admitted
into the canon of Scripture, and maintains its place
there — that it is mythical throughout ; and has been
divinely given to illustrate, or to teach, that which St.
Paul affirms to be a truth, and " a great mystery."
This granted, then it would follow that the purely mys
tical import of this sacred poem would be interfered
with — would be quite damaged and broken up — by
the introduction of any of those expressions of piety
which are proper to the religious man, and the religious
woman — representatives as these are of piety — in an
unsymbolical sense. Expressions of this order, what
ever they might mean, have already been embraced
within the range of the mythical import of the Poem.
On the part of the celestial Bridegroom, his regard
toward his mystic bride comprehends all elements of
religion, as proceeding from the divine toward the
human nature ; and, on the part ofthe mystic bride, her
fond love to her Lord contains, or conveys, all elements
of human devotion — adoration, praise, prayer, and
yearning affection. There is nothing proper to fervent
piety remaining as a residue that has not been included

HEBREW POETRY. 175
in these mythic utterances. If on this ground — hypo
thetic as it is — we touch the truth of the problem,
then it is manifest that the language of ¦unmythic piety
would be utterly out of place, would be out of harmony,
in this Canticle. Might not an argument in favour of
the canonicity, and of the religious intention of this
Poem be warrantably made to rest upon this very cir
cumstance of the absence, throughout it, of those reli
gious expressions, the want of which has seemed to
contravene the general belief of the Church concerning
it? Accepted, then, as a portion of insjiired Scripture,
and regarded as fraught throughout with a religious
meaning — mystically conveyed — then does the " Song
of Songs " occupy the very front place among all other
instances which might be adduced in exemplification of
that coexistence of the divine and of the human ele
ments in Scripture, an understanding of which is always
important, — and is, at this moment, peculiarly needed.
In this instance — signal beyond comparison as it is
—the Divine element subsists at a remote depth below
the surface ; which surface might be passed over and
trodden, by a thousand of the wayfarers of literature,
with an utter unconsciousness of the wealth hidden
beneath. Like is this divine riches to the " treasure
hidden in a field," concerning which an intimation must
first be granted to any one who, for the sake of it — if
he knew it — would willingly sell all that he hath of this
world's goods. This Poem, with its bright images of
earthly delights — with its empassioned utterances of
human fondness — its abandonment of soul, and its
absorption of heart, and its emphasis of human love, if
it had come down to modern times apart from all con-

176 THE SPIRIT OF THE

nection with a body of religious writings, would so
have been read and admired, throughout all time ; nor
would ever a surmise of any deeper purpose have sug
gested itself to the modern European reader. Such an
interpretation — let us grant it — might have been caught
at by oriental dervishes ; — for a similar use is made by
them, in the East, of similar materials. The inference
duly derivable from an instance so remarkable should
be carefully noted, and it is of this sort : —
That we ought not to open the Bible with any pre
determined notions, as to those conditions within which
the divine element, in Scripture, must be expected to
confine itself, in its connection with the human element,
through which it conveys itself. On this unknown
ground we must not theorise ; we must not speculate
a priori ; for when we do this, and as often, and as far,
as we do it, we surround ourselves with occasions of
offence, and we provide the materials of endless doubts
and perplexities. On this ground we have everything
to learn : — we have nothing to stipulate ; we must pos
tulate nothing ; we must quite abstain from the perilous
endeavour to circumscribe the area within the limit of
which, and not beyond it, the Divine Wisdom shall
take its course in conveying to men the mysteries of
the spiritual economy.
It may be well to look distinctly at the instance now
before us, and to gather from it in full the lesson which
it suggests. The theological expositor, whether of the
ancient Jewish Church, or of the early Christian church,
or of the modern Church, has accepted the " Song of
Songs '' as a divinely-inspired myth, conveying the
deepest and most sacred elements of the spiritual
economy in the terms, and under the forms, of instinc-

HEBREW POETRY. 177
tive human feeling and passion. The exterior medium
of this conveyance is so entire, so absolute, that, until
the occult meaning of the poem has been suggested, or
is declared on sufficient authority, no reader would
surmise it to be there. No religious person would have
conjectured as probable, the insertion of this poem
within the compass of the inspired Scriptures. But it
is there, and not only is it there, but it has, if so we
might speak, justified its presence in the canon by the
undoubtedly religious purposes it has served, in giving
animation, and depth, and intensity, and warrant, too,
to the devout meditations of thousands of the most
devout, and of the purest minds. Those who have no
consciousness of this kind, and whose feelings and
notions are all " of the earth — earthy," will not fail to
find in this instance that which suits them, for purposes,
sometimes of mockery, sometimes of luxury, sometimes
of disbelief. Quite unconscious of these perversions,
and happily ignorant of them, and unable to suppose
them possible, there have been multitudes of unearthly
spirits to whom this — the most beautiful of pastorals,
has been — not indeed a beautiful pastoral, but the
choicest of those words of truth which are " sweeter
than honey to the taste," and " rather to be chosen
than thousands of gold and silver."

8*

CHAPTER II.
THE P0ETEY OF THE EAELIEE HEBEEW PEOPHETS.
Two subjects, quite distinct and separable, present
themselves for consideration when the "goodly fellow
ship ofthe Prophets'' comes in view. The first of these
subjects embraces what belongs of right to the function
of the Biblical expositor, whose office it is to examine
and illustrate, in series, those predictions which, in their
fulfilment, give evidence of a divinely-imparted presci
ence as to future events. The second of these sub
jects has a less definite aspect; for it has to do with
that Prophetic mood — that hopeful, forward-looking
habit, which is the prerogative, as it is the marked
characteristic also, ofthe Hebrew prophetic writings, at
large : it is so generally, although not in each instance,
or in equal degrees in each of them ; but each, without
exception, is true to great Theistic principles ; yet it is
not all that display this far-seeing, and this world-wide
anticipation of good things, on the remote horizon of the
human destinies — the destinies, not of the one people,
but of all nations.
This benign hilarity — this kindly Catholicism — this
glowing cosmopolitan prescience of a far-distant age of
universal truth, righteousness, and peace, is indeed the
prophetic glory, and its prerogative : it is the glory of
the Hebrew poets — for poetry without hopefulness is
inane and dead. On this ground these ancient Seers

HEBREW POETRY. 179

occupy a position where they have no competitors.
On this ground they are, in a true sense, the masters of
Modern Thought ; for it is they who have suggested,
and who have supplied the text for, those forccastings
of the destiny of the nations which, in these times
especially, have been prevalent in the writings, not of
divines merely, but of philosophers. We all, in these days
of great movements, have learned to think hopefully of
every philanthropic enterprise ; and our teachers in this
line have been — the "goodly fellowship ofthe Prophets."
If it were required to mention a one feature which
would be the most characteristic of our modern modes
of thinking, as contrasted with ancient classical modes
of thinking, we should not find a better than this : — the
philosophers, and the statesmen, and the poets, and the
orators, of classical antiquity, thought and spoke of the
past ; and their look-out was contemporaneous only.
But the philosophers, and the statesmen, and the poets,
and the orators of modern Europe, although they are
not unmindful of the past, and are occupied with the
present, show — all of them — this difMapaSoxia — this "ear
nest expectation" — this hopeful faith in the future — this
never-to-be-baffled confidence in a yet coming morning
time, and a noon too, for the nations — savage nnd civi
lized. Subjects apparently the most remote from the
region of philanthropic enthusiasm — speculations the
most thriftlike and dry — show this tendency to work
themselves round towards this sunshine — the sunshine of
universal well-being — industry — safety — peace — wealth,
which is in store for every continent. It is so that the
economist, in calculating next year's prices, ruled by the
probable supply of indigo — of cotton — of tobacco — of
sugar — of coffee— of tea, is quite likely to come near to

180 THE SPIRIT OF THE
the very subjects which, at the same moment, platform
philanthropists are propounding to crowded meetings:
nay, it is likely that this same economist shall be work
ing up, in his tables of imports, the very evidence that
has lately been brought home by the wan Missionary
from India, or from Africa. And so near, on this ground,
do we often come to an actual collision, that the astute
mercantile speculist shall be heard quoting the very man
— who is quoting Isaiah !
This now established usage of the modern mind was
never the usage of antiquity — Grecian or Roman. We
owe this revolution, we owe this shifting about toward a
better, and a brighter, and a hopeful futurity, mainly to
the Hebrew Prophets. Certain luminous passages have
been made use of — we might say — to jewel the machinery
of modern society — especially in this country, and have,
these seventy years past, been the centre-points of schemes
of distant civilization ; and so it is that, at the very time
when a nugatory criticism is questioning the super
human prescience of this or that single prediction, in
the Old Testament, we are all of us in group — philan
thropists — missionaries — ship-owners — dealers in mer
chandises of all sorts, we are all of us risking our lives —
risking lives dear to us — risking our fortunes — we are
sending out merchant navies, and are building mills,
and are doing a half of all that is done in this busy
world, on a belief that keeps itself alive by aid of those
passages of far-looking brightness which illumine, the
pages ofthe Hebrew Scriptures.
This catholic mood of hopefulness has been derived
much more from the Hebrew, than from the Christian
Scriptures ; in truth, scarcely at all from these (as we
shall have occasion to show). But with the Prophets,

HEBREW POETRY. 181
the future so governed them that they seem oblivious of
those materials in their own archaic literature of which,
if it had been at hand, in the same distinct and authentic
form, the Poets of Greece would have made no sparing
use. A phrase or two recollective of the golden para
dise, or of the silvery patriarchal era, is all they can
afford : — they were intent upon the future : — the bright
ness they thought of was that of an inheritance in
reversion ; not that of a paradise lost. These Seers —
or some of them — had been led up in spirit to the
summit of the Nebo of universal history ; the Seer had
thence caught a glimpse of ridges illumined in the
remotest distance; and the reflection rests now upon the
pages of our Bibles.
It is greatly this steadfast confidence in a bright
future for all nations that gives unity and coherence to
this series of Hebrew prophecy, and which blends into
a mass the various materials of which it consists. It is
this hope for the world that has welded into one the
succession ofthe Old Testament writers. The Patriarch
of the race received this very promise, that in him
should all nations hereafter be made happy. David
and the Psalmists take up this same large assurance,
and say — " All nations whom Thou hast made shall
come, and worship before Thee.'' Isaiah rests often
upon this theme, and kindles as he expands it ; and one
of the last of this company foresees the setting up of a
kingdom which should have no end, and which should
embrace " all people, nations, and languages." It is
true that Palestine was always the Hebrew Prophet's
foreground, and the Holy City his resting-place ; but
he looked out beyond these near objects, and with the
remoteness of place he connected the remoteness of

182 THE SPIRIT OF THE
time, and dwelt, with fervent aspirations, upon the pro
mise of an age when, " from the rising of the sun to
the going down of the same," the anthems of a univer
sal worship shall ascend from earth to heaven.
So far as the Israelitish people may be represented
by the series of their writers, then it may be affirmed
that these obdurate Hebrews — this stubborn repellant
mass — this knot at the core among the nations, were, in
fact, the most resolutely hopeful of all people, and
beyond compare they were wont to look a-head toward
the future. The Israelite — if the prophet speaks in his
name — was, notwithstanding his nationality, and his
hot patriotism, the one man upon earth who entertained
thoughts concerning a remote mundane renovation, and
who anticipated a time of peace and truth and justice
and good-will, for all men. The august fathers of the
Roman State were not more steadfast in hope for the
republic, in seasons of dismay, than were the Hebrew
people — if we are to gather their mood from their
Prophets. This people was elastic in temper, and
resolved, even when in the furnace of affliction, and
when the feet were bleeding on the flints in exile, still
to reserve its inheritance in a remote futurity ; and this
futurity embraced a wide area. Whatever the Jew of
later times may have become, as the subject of centu
ries of insult and outrage, his ancestors of the pro
phetical era were well used to the hearing of passages
that breathed, not only justice and mercy, but an
unrestricted philanthropy.
The Prophets, never forgetful of the prerogatives of
the descendants of Abraham, and never relaxing their
grasp ofthe land which had beeu granted in fee simple,
and forever, to their race, give expression to sentiments

HEBREW POETRY. 183
which are quite unparallelled in classic literature. Broad
hopes and generous wishes for the world took a place
also in the daily liturgies of the temple-worship ; and
thus, in whatever manner passages of a different aspect
might come to be reconciled with these expressions,
these stood as a permanent testimony, bearing witness
on the behalf of universal good-will ; and thus did
they avail to attemper the national mind. There may
take place a balancing of influences — a counteraction of
motives, where there neither is, nor could be, a logical
adjustment ofthe apparent contrariety ofthe two kinds
of moral force. Intensely national were the Hebrew
people — concentration was the rule ; but largeness of
feeling co-existed therewith, and it did so, not as a rare
exception ; and it has embodied itself in passages (as
we have said) which have come to be the text and
stimulants of modern philanthropy.
If at this very time such an event might be supposed,
as a final and formal abandonment of whatever it is in
the Hebrew prophetical writings that is predictive of
the ultimate triumph of justice and benevolence,
throughout the world, and of a happy issue of human
affairs — if we were so resolved as to cut off the entail
of hope, consigned to all nations in the Old Testament,
we should quickly be brought into a mood of despair,
and should learn to look in sullen apathy at those things
which Hebrew Prophets regarded with healthful hope.
Any such abnegation of good in the future would give
a mortal chill to useful enthusiasm ; it would be as a
poison shed upon patriotism — confirming it in its sel
fishness, and depriving it of its leaven of benevolence.
Such an excision of the predictive philanthropy from
our Bible would bring every self-denying and arduous

184 THE SPIRIT OF THE
enterprise for the benefit of others to a speedy end: it
would be death, in a moral sense, to the teacher of the
ignorant, and to the champion ofthe oppressed. When
we shut off forever, from our modern civilization, the
genial glow of the Hebrew predictive writings, we let
in upon the nations — Atheism in matters of religion — ¦
Despotism in politics — Sensuality, unbridled, in morals,
and a dark despair for the poor and the helpless all the
world over.
An expectation of the ultimate triumph of justice
and peace — an expectation unknown to classical anti
quity — has operated as a yeast, leavening the mass of
the modern social system, just so far as Bible-teaching
has prevailed among any people. This expectation has
drawn its warrant from the prophetical books of the Old
Testament ; and from these much rather than from the
Christian Scriptures. It is a fact deserving notice,
that the narrow and unphilanthropie, if not the misan
thropic, mood — the sullenness which modern Judaism has
assumed — has been contemporaneous with the rabbini
cal practice of excluding the Prophets from the ordinary
routine of public worship in the synagogue ; while the
books of Moses and portions of the Psalms, almost
exclusively, have supplied the. Sabbath lessons. Whether
or not the reasons usually alleged for this restricted use
of the Hebrew Scriptures by the Jewish rabbis be the
true reasons, it is certain that the consequence, as affect
ing the temper of the Jewish mind, must have been
every way much to its disadvantage. The modern
Jewish nation — the rabbis and the people alike — have
known very little of those incandescent .passages which
we Christian Bible-readers listen to with never-failing
delight. Christian philanthropy, whether wisely or

HEBREW POETRY. 185
unwisely developed in particular instances, undertakes
its labours for the benefit of the wretched, or for the
deliverance of the slave, in assured prospect of a reign
of righteousness which shall bless the nations, when an
Iron Sceptre shall be wielded by Him " who shall spare
the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the
needy ; and shall redeem their souls from deceit and vio
lence, and in whose sight their blood shall be precious.''
It is on this very ground (a ground which they occupy
alone) as prophets of good things for all nations —
good things far off in the distance of ages, — that the
claim of inspiration, in the fullest sense, may with pecu
liar advantage be affirmed and argued. It is on this
ground that the Old and New Testament Scriptures
are seen to stand toward each other in their proper
relationship, as constituents of the one scheme or system
which was ordered and planned from the beginning- of
time, and which extends to its close. Unless we thus
believe the Hebrew Prophets to have been inspired of
God, it will not be possible to show a reason for the
avoidance of the same buoyant and hopeful style, as
well in Christ's discourses and parables, as in the Apos
tolic epistles. If the question be this — Why has not
Christ — or, why did not His ministers, predict a future
golden age for the world at large ? — we find no answer
that can easily be accepted, unless we take this — That
the function of predicting the triumph of reason and of
peace upon earth had been assigned to the prophets of
the olden time, who have well acquitted themselves in
this respect. How stands it in a comparison of the
older and the later Scriptures, on this very ground ?
Promises addressed to the individual believe"!-, assuring
to him his daily bread, and other things that are need-

186 THE SPIRIT OF THE
ful for this life, do occur in the Gospels, and also in the
Epistles, and the Divine faithfulness is pledged to this
extent — " I will never leave thee — no, never forsake
thee;" and the rule of Christian contentment is thus
conditioned, — " Having nourishment and shelter, let us
therewith be content." Not only are the ancient pro
mises of earthly wealth, as the reward of individual
piety, not reiterated in the New Testament, but there is
an abstinence — most remarkable, as to any predictions
of secular welfare for the nations ofthe world, and even
as to the future universality of the Gospel : what we
actually find has, for the most part, a contrary meaning,
and a sombre aspect. (The Apocalypse demands a dis
tinct rule of exposition.)
Throughout the ancient prophetical Scriptures the
rule is this : — The things of earth, religiously considered,
are spoken of, such as they appear when seen from the
level of earth, and under the daylight of the present
life : the prophets speak of things " seen and temporal" —
piously regarded. Throughout the Christian Scriptures
the things of earth — the things " seen and temporal"
— are again spoken of, and again they are religiously
regarded as before ; but now it is as they appear when
looked at from the level of the things that are unseen
and eternal. From the one level the very same objects
wear an aspect of gladsomeness and exultation, which,
as they are seen from the other level, appear under an
aspect that is discomfiting and ominous. But besides
this difference of aspect ouly, it is objects of a different
class that appear to be in view, severally, by the pro
phets, and by Christ and His ministers. The contrast,
as exhibited in a few instances among many, is very
suggestive of reflection.

HEBREW POETRY. 187
The Hebrew Prophet is — the man of hope ; be looks
on through the mists of long ages of turmoil and con
fusion : — immediately in front he sees the rise and the
ruin of neighbouring kingdoms ; but he sees, in the remo
ter distance, a bright noon for humanity at large —
" When the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and
the lion eat straw like the ox — when dust shall be the
serpent's meat: and when none shall hurt or destroy
in the mountain of the Lord." The Christian Seer —
his eye turned off from the course of this world's affairs
— thinks only of the future of the Christian common
wealth, and thus he forecasts this future — " For I
know that after my departing shall grievous wolves
enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of
your ownselves shall men arise, speaking perverse things,
to draw away disciples after them." The ancient Seer,
expectant of good — good for the wide world — says, —
" It shall come to pass in the last days that the moun
tains of the Lord's house shall be established on the top
of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills,
and all nations shall flow unto it.'' But the Christian
Prophet foretells such things as these, and says — " Now
the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times
some shall depart from the faith ;" and another affirms
that " in the last days perilous times shall come ;'' for
in those latter days men generally, retaining a form of
piety, shall abandon themselves to the sway of every
evil passion — having the " conscience seared, as with a
hot iron."
The Hebrew Prophet, from his watch-tower upon
Zion, affirms that " in that mountain the Lord of Hosts
should make unto all people a feast of fat things," —
and that there " He will destroy the face of the cover-

188 THE SPIRIT OF THE
ing cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over
all nations :"— the Lord — the God of Israel — " shall
swallow up death in victory, and wipe away tears from
off all faces : and the rebuke of His people shall He take
away from off all the earth." It was many centuries
later in the world's life-time, and therefore it was so much
the nearer to the predicted break of day for all nations,
that the Christian Prophet foresaw a thick gloom, out
of the midst of which the " wicked one" should arise,
who should sit in the temple of God, and there should
blasphemously demand for himself the worship that is
due to God, and actually receive it from the deluded
dwellers upon earth — even the multitude of the nations.
These contrasts, other instances of which may be
adduced, are not contradictions : they are not contrary
affirmations, relating to the same objects, or to objects
seen from the same level ; but they bring into view, in
a manner that should fix attention, the harmonious
structure of the Scriptures — the Old and the New
Covenant. The latter is ruled by its purpose to reveal
and confirm the hope of immortality, which must be
individual immortality, inasmuch as communities have
no hereafter. The former, spiritual also in its intention,
not less so than the latter, is yet concerned with mun
dane welfares, in relation to which nations and communi
ties are regarded in mass ; and therefore these Prophets
look on to the very end of the secular period: — they
have in view the longevity of nations and they foretell
the remote benefits in which all people shall be partakers.
It is the life everlasting, which Christ and His minis
ters have in prospect, while, as to the things of earth,
the}- see only those changes which shall bring into peril
the welfare of immortal souls.

HEBREW POETRY. 189
Easily we may grant it — even if we fail to open up
the reason of the fact — that it must be always, and
only, with mundane objects, and with what belongs to
the now visible course of things — " the things that are
seen and temporal" — that poetry may and should con
cern itself. So it is that, while the ancient Prophets
are poets, and, as such, kindle emotion, and illumine
the path on which they tread, no quality of this sort
can (truthfully) be alleged in commendation of Evan
gelists or Apostles. The encomium of these takes
another, and a far higher ground. Poetry became mute
at the moment when immortality was to be proclaimed :
known to the Patriarchs and Prophets, and pondered
and desired by them, and by the pious always, even
from the first, yet an authentic announcement of it had
been held in reserve to a later age ; but when that ful
ness of time had come, and when the true light shone
out, then, in the blaze of it, the things of earth assumed
another aspect ; and even the perspective of them under
went a change, when they were seen from a higher
level. In passing from the "fellowship of the Prophets"
to the "company of the Apostles," it is true that we
tread the same solid earth, and we take with us the
same human nature, and, as to what concerns the spirit
ual life, we breathe the same atmosphere ; but we leave
behind us the flowery plains of earthly good, and ascend
to heights where the awful realities of another life
banish all thought of whatever is decorative, or of those
objects that awaken the tastes and the imagination.
Poetry, abounding as it does in the Old Testament,
finds no place at all in the New. On this ground of
comparison the difference between Isaiah, Hosea, Joel,
and Paul, Peter, John, or James, is absolute. So it

190 THE SPIRIT OF THE
must appear in bringing into comparison some passages
which, at a glance, might seem to be ofthe same order.
As, for instance, there occur, in the Epistles of Peter,
James, and Jude, some passages which not only take
up the archaic phraseology, and are, in a marked man
ner, of the Hebrew mintage, but which are also of that
denunciatory kind which gives them an exceptional as
pect, as related to the evangelic strain, and brings them
to be of a piece rather with the stern manner of the an
cient Seers, in protesting against the wrong-doings of
their contemporaries, and in predicting the judgments
of God upon guilty nations. Nevertheless, while in these
instances there are some points of accordance, the points
of contrast are of a more important and noticeable kind.
In the first place, these Apostolic samples are sternly
and ruggedly prosaic : — they have no rhythm, and,
although figurative in terms, they are graced by no deco
rations : — they demand the deepest regard, they strike
into the conscience, they awaken terror ; but with the
prediction of wrath they commingle no element upon
which the imagination might be inclined to rest : in a
word, the Apostolic message, whether it be of hope or
of dread, is in no sense — poetry. Turn to those well-
remembered passages which might recall the style of
Amos, Joel, Nahum : — " For if God spared not the
angels that sinned " ..." these (wicked men) are wells
without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest.1'
... " Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your
miseries that shall come upon you.'' ..." Ungodly men,
crept in among you, raging waves of the sea, foaming
out their own shame." . . . .* Wanting in poetry, but
* 2 Poter ii. 4 James v. Jude.

HEBREW POETRY. 191
explicit in moral intention, are the Apostolic denuncia
tions ; and nearly combined are they always with the
Christian assurance of immortality : — this is the Apos
tolic mark. So it is with Jude, who, in the very breath,
which has given utterance to the message of wrath, and
when lie has made his protest for charity and mercy,
commends his brethren to the Divine regard in that sig
nal doxology, — " Now to Him that is able to keep you
from falling'' .... And, in like manner, James quickly
releases himself from his stern obligation as a Prophet
of judgment, and exhorts the Christian sufferer to be
patient — " for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh ;"
and thus also Peter, who enjoins his brethren, under any
extremity of suffering, to "hope unto the end for the
grace that is to be brought unto them at the revelation
of Jesus Christ ;" not thinking it strange, even though
" a fiery trial " should be appointed for them ; but rather
rejoicing in the prospect of the " glory " in which they
are to have their part.
The parallel places in the prophecies of Joel, of Amos,
of Micah, and Nahum, are not only metrical and rhyth
mical in structure, but they are rich in various imagery :
magnificence, sublimity, and beauty too, so recommend
these protests for righteousness, and these predictions
of national woe, that we now read and rest upon these
passages with a relish of their excellence as works of
genius ; and so it is that the Hebrew Poet shares the
regard ofthe modern reader with the Hebrew Prophet.
Ix is as poetry that these prophecies were adapted to the
services of congregational worship ; and in this manner
were they consigned to the memories of the people.
And yet, when we have noted this contrast between the
Prophetic and the Apostolic Scriptures, there remains

192 THE SPIRIT OF THE

to be noticed another contrast that is more marked, and
is full of meaning —
The brief prophecy of Habakkuk — one of those that
belong to the earliest era of the Hebrew prophetic time
— combines those qualities of style that distinguish his
peers and contemporaries; and along with majesty and
splendour and vigour of expression, there is the constant
protest for truth and justice, and the uniform sublimity
of a pure theology, and the scornful rebuke of the folly
of the idolater : — " Woe unto him that saith to the
wood, Awake ; to the dumb stone, Arise, it shall teach !
Behold, it is laid over with gold and silver, and there is
no breath at all in the midst of it." Then follows an
anthem, unequalled in majesty and splendour of language
and imagery, and which, in its closing verses, gives
expression, in terms the most affecting, to an intense
spiritual feeling ; and on this ground it so fully embodies
these religious sentiments as to satisfy Christian piety,
even of the loftiest order. Yet in this respect are these
verses the most remarkable that, while there is recog
nized in them the characteristic Hebrew principle, which
gives prominence to earthly welfare, the Prophet, for
himself, renounces his part in this — if only he may fully
enjoy a consciousness of the Divine favour. Yet this is
not all ; for he contents himself with these spiritual enjoy
ments — apart from any thought of the future life and of its
hopes ; thus does he renounce the present good ; and yet
he stipulates not for the good of the future ! for upon this
prophecy — bright as it is in its theistic import, there
comes down no ray of the light of the life eternal!
Witness these verses — ending the prophet's ministry in
the language of hope ; but it is a hope very ambiguously
worded if at all it takes any hold of immortality : —

HEBREW POETRY. 193
Although the fig-tree shall not blossom,
Neither fruit be in tlie vines ;
The labour of the olive shall fail,
And the fields shall yield no meat ;
The flock shall be cut off from the fold,
And no herd in the stalls :
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the G-od of my salvation,
The Lord God is my strength :
And He will make my feet like hinds',
And He will make me to walk upon high places.*
* This is an ode to be commended to the care of the chief singer,
and to be accompanied by stringed instruments — Neginoth — and
adapted (may we not conjecture ?) to the movements of the sacred
dance, in which the feet — well trained, should give proof of tho exul
tation of the soul — moving "like hinds' feet," even upon- the loftiest
platform ofthe temple area. Such should be the gladness of those
who took up this ode : — it should be like that of the Psalmist, who
would praise God with the psaltery and harp ; and praise Him, too,
with the timbrel and dance, as well as with stringed instruments and
organs, and with loud cymbals.

CHAPTER III.
CULMINATION- OF THE IIEBEEW POETEY AND PEOPIIECY
IN ISAIAH.
Whatever there is of poetry in the roll of the
Prophets, whatever of truth and of puritv, and of
elevation, as to moral principle, and theistic doctrine,
and especially whatever there is of catholicity, and of
hopefulness for all nations, is preeminently found in the
book of the prophecies of Isaiah. These prophecies may
well be said to embrace, and to comprehend, and, in a
sense, at once to recapitulate, the revelations of all pre
ceding ages, and to foreshow the revelations that were
yet to come. The Moral Law is there in the fixedness
of its eternal axioms : the spiritual life is there ; and the
substance of the Gospel is there ; for the Redeemer of
the world, and the most signal of all events in the
world's history, are there ; and with the Saviour the
brightness of the latest ages of the human family sheds
a light upon this prophecy. Revelation culminates in
the pages of this Prophet; for the Old and the New
Covenants are therein represented.
But how much more than a poet is this Prophet !
And yet as a poet he has won for himself the very
highest encomiums; — in this sense they are the highest,
that they have been uttered by those who, in so warmly
commending the Hebrew bard, have been incited by no
religious partiality or orthodox prejudice; but the con-

HEBREW POETRY. 195
trary. In this instance it would be easy to get released
from the task of framing eulogies duly expressive ofthe
admiration to which this poet is entitled ; for several
German scholars, of the foremost rank as Hebraists,
have already so exhausted this theme that it would be
difficult to do anything else than to repeat — sentence by
sentence, what they have said. Certainly there has
been no contrary verdict on this ground ; — or none that
is deserving of much regard.
If there were now a question concerning the richness
and the compass, the wealth, the distinctiveness, the
power, and pliability of the Hebrew language, it might
well be determined by an appeal to the poetry of Isaiah.
With perfect ease, as if conscious of commanding an
inexhaustible fund, this Prophet (or now let us call him
Poet) moves forward on bis path : — terms the most fit
and various are in his store : — imagery, in all species,
abounds for his use, whatever be the theme, and whether
it be terrible, or sombre, or gay and bright. Or if
rather the question related to the culture of the Hebrew
mind, in that remote age, and to its susceptibility, or to
the existence among the people, or many of them, at
that^time, of a refined spiritual sensibility, these compo
sitions would be vouchers enough of the fact. Let tho
reader put off for awhile, and let him quite distance
himself from, his Bible-reading associations : — let him
forget that the book ofthe son of Amoz is a constituent
of the Canon of Scripture ; and then, and as thus read
ing it afresh, not only will the Poet rise in his view,
and take rank as the most sublime, the most rich, the
most full-souled of poets, but there will come before
him, as if dimly seen, the men of that age — more than
a few such — to whom these utterances of the religious

196 THE SPIRIT OF THE
life — these words of remonstrance, and of comfort, and
of hope, would be reverently listened to, and treasured
up, and recited daily. What is it in fact that is clearly
implied in the very structure of these compositions?
Why are they metrical throughout ? Why are they
elaborately artificial in their form? It must be for this
reason, that the people of that time, and their ecclesias
tical rulers, received, with devout regard, the Prophet's
deliverance of his testimony, and that, notwithstanding
the sharpness of his rebukes, this "burden ofthe Lord"
took its place among the recitatives and the choral
services of public worship — to which purposes they are
manifestly adapted.
An experiment of this kind would produce its first
effect, in thus opening to our view at once the preemi
nence of the Prophet, as a poet, and the advanced
intellectual and religious condition of his contemporaries.
But then an effect speedily to follow this first would be
greatly to enhance the conviction that, in this instance,
the Poet, admirable as he may be, and lofty as was his
genius, is far less to be thought of than the Prophet.
Quickly we feel that he himself thus thinks of his
message, and is in this manner conscious of his burden,
and that, in his own esteem, he is so absolutely subordi
nate — he is so purely and passively instrumental, in the
delivery of it to the people, that the message, and He
from whom it conies, throw into shade whatever is human
only, giving undivided prominence to what is Divine.
In this manner the reader's religions consciousness so
coalesces with the Prophet's consciousness of the same,
that, us often as the prophetic formula occurs — "Thus
saith the Lord," the solemn truthfulness of this averment
commands our assent.

HEBREW POETRY. 197
Feelings of the same class, which give the modern
reader his sense of the beauty and sublimity of Isaiah,
as a poet, carry with them a deep conviction, which no
unsophisticated mind can resist, of the seriousness and
the truthful steady adherence ofthe Prophet to his call,
as the minister of God. If there be anywhere in the
compass of human writings irresistible evidence of gen
uineness, and of honesty, and of a man's confidence in
himself, as the authentic messenger of Heaven, it is here
that such indubitable marks of reality are conspicuously
present. Truth is consistent, and coherent, and uniform.
Truth, beneath all diversities as to the mode of its
expression, comes home to every conscience by the
unvarying fixedness of the principles on which it takes
its stand. And so it is that the utterances of this prince
of the prophets, dated as they are through the years of
a long life — not fewer than seventy — and called forth
by occasions widely dissimilar, are nevertheless perfectly
in unison as to the theology on which they are based,
and as to the ethical pirinciples which sustain the Pro
phet's denunciations and rebukes ; and, moreover, as to
that economy of Grace, toward the humble and obedi
ent, which illumines the first page, and the last page
with a ray from the throne of God.
Otherwise thought of than as a message from Him
who is unchangeable in His attributes of love, this con
sistency in announcing the terms of mercy, and this
sameness ofthe style in which the penitent are invited to
seek the divine favour, is wholly inconceivable. It does
not belong to human nature, with its wayward feelings
— it does not belong to human nature, with its constant
progression of temper and temperament, shifting from
early manhood to the last months of a term of eighty

198 THE SPIRIT OF THE
or ninety years, thus to utter the same things, in the
same mood, indicative equally of unbroken vigour and
of unclouded benignity. Men, however wise and good
they may be, will show themselves (as they are) the
creatures of their decades: — they will date themselves
onward in their style, from their third decade to their
eighth or ninth. But this Prophet exhibits no such
variations, because, in youth and in age alike, he is
delivering a message from Him who abides the same
throughout the lapse of years.
If, indeed, there were ground, which there is not, for
attributing these prophecies to two authors, with an
interval of centuries between them, then we might be
content to look only to the thirty-nine chapters of the
more ancient Isaiah, the interval between the earliest of
this portion and the latest being, by the acknowledgment
of modern expositors, fifty years. If the Prophet as
sumed his office as a minister of Jehovah at the earliest
date at which be could do so, then he had reached nearly
the limit of human life when he uttered the bright
presages contained in the thirty-fifth chapter. It
was in the heat of manhood that he thus denounces
the hypocrisy of the people — their chiefs and their
priests : — Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom.
Wash you, make you clean ;
Put away the evil of your doings.
Yet this same bold reprover is not a man who was
carried away by his own fiery temperament ; for in the
same breath he thus opens the path of mercy to who
ever may relent : —

HEBREW POETRY. ld\)
Come now, and let us reason together, saith tlie Lord ;
Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow ;
Though thej be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
It is the same Isaiah, now in extreme age, and whose
duty it had been, throughout these many years, still to
denounce the wickedness of the wicked — as thus :
(chapter xxxv.)
Woe to Ariel, to Ariel,
The city where David dwelt I
Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord I
It is the same ambassador from God — now hoary and
tremulous, yet not soured iu temper — not sickened by a
life-long ministration among a gainsaying people, but
benign, as at thirty, and hopeful as always, who sees,
in the age to come, " the wilderness and the solitary
place made glad, and the desert — the wide world— blos
soming as the rose.'' It is he who says — as at first he
had said : — Strengthen ye the weak hands,
And confirm the feeble knees.
Say to them of a fearful heart,
Be strong, fear not.
And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,
And come to Zion with songs,
And everlasting joy upon their heads ;
And they shall obtain joy and gladness,
And sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
On every page there is the same protest for truth,
justice, and mercy, between man and man: there is the
same message of wrath for the oppressor and the cruel,

200 THE SPIRIT OF THE
and the same righteous care for the widow, the father
less, the bondsman, the stranger. On every page there
are the same elements of what, at this time, we acknow
ledge to be a true theology, and which is so entire that,
after ages of painful cogitation on the part of the most
profound and the most exact minds — whether philoso
phers or divines, whether ancient or modern — nothing
that is preferable, nothing that is deeper, or more affect
ing, nothing which we should do well to accept, and to
take to ourselves as of better quality, has been educed
and taught, or is, at this moment, extant and patent, in
books — classical, or books — recent. This Prophet — if
we take him as the chief of his order — is still, after a
two thousand seven hundred years, our master in the
school of the highest reason.*
This consummation, and this faultless enouncement
of theistic principles, in an age so remote, and among
a people unacquainted with the methods of abstract
thought, is a fact which admits of explication on one
ground only — namely, that of the direct impartation of
this theology from Heaven. So strongly do those feel
this who read the Hebrew Scriptures ingenuously, that
the affectation which will be prating about the " sublime
and fiery genius'''' of the Prophet becomes offensive and
insufferable. Human genius soars to no height like
this ; and as to human reason, to find a sure and a
straight path for itself on its own level is more than
ever it has yet done.
There is, however, another field on which, if we fol
low this Prophet in his track, from the earliest of his
public ministrations to the latest of them, a conviction
* See Note.

HEBREW POETRY. 201
of the direct inspiration whence they sprang becomes,
if possible, still more firm. These prophesyings — de
livered to the people and princes of Jerusalem, on divers
occasions, throughout the lapse of seventy or eighty
years — contain (might we here use such a phrase) a
programme of the Divine purposes toward the human
family to the end of time. And this sketch — this fore
showing of a remote futurity, has for its object, or its
theme, not humanity in the abstract, not man immortal ;
but men in community ; and not a one people only, but
the commonwealth of nations. Whatever we intend
by the modern phrase — Catholicity, or by the word —
Cosmopolitan, whatever we of this age of breadth are
used to think of when we talk of " the brotherhood of
nations,'' and of the community of races — all these
ideas, substantially one, are embraced in that prescience
of the future which came to the surface so often during
the prophetic ministrations of Isaiah. Let it be noted
that what this prescience has in view is a remote terres
trial universality of truth, peace, justice, order, wealth,
for all dwellers beneath the sun. In a word, this Pro
phet foresees the accomplishment of that one petition
among those commended by Christ to His disciples — ¦
"Thy will be done on earth, even as it is done in
heaven." What we have to do with in this instance is not just
a line or a couplet, here or there, which may have an
ambiguous import, and may be startling on account of
its coincidence with remote events ; for the passages now
in view are recurrent — they are ample, and — one
might say — they are leisurely in the development of
their meaning: they open out objects upon which a
clear noon-day illumination is steadily resting. The
9*

202 THE SPIRIT OF THE
Seer so speaks as if indeed he saw the things of which
he speaks ; and he so speaks of them after intervals of
time — years perhaps — as if the very same objects, per
manent and unchanging in themselves, were by himself
recognized afresh as long familiar to his eye. Was it
then a man of Judah like others — was it one who paced
the streets of Jerusalem, and pressed forward among
his countrymen upon the ascents of the temple — was it
one gifted only as others may have been gifted, who
thus, long before the dawn of historic time (as to other
nations) looked right ahead, and afar over and beyond
the bounds of thousands of years, and who saw, in that
remoteness, not a hazy brightness — an undefined cloud,
or a speck of light upon the horizon ; but who gazed
upon a fair prospect — wide as the inhabited earth, and
fair as it is wide, and bright as it is wide, and of as long
endurance as the terrestrial destiny of man shall allow?
Assuredly the seeing- a prospect like this is no natural
achievement of genius : — it is nothing less than a pre
science which He only may impart who " knoweth the
end from the beginning ;" and in whose view thousands
of ages are as the now-passing moment.
The predictions of Isaiah and the predictions of Da
niel are of wholly dissimilar character: — they have a
different intention, and they demand exposition on
different principles. Those of Daniel are precisely
defined, although not opened out in detail ; — thev are
distinctly dated in symbol, they have a limitation also
which, in respect of what lias the aspect of hope, seems
to keep in view a national rather than a cosmopolitan
era of renovation ; and then, in exchange for the pro
spect of good in reserve for all nations, there is in this
later-age prophecy a far more distinct doctrine of im-

HEBREW POETRY. 203

mortality, and of the resurrection of the dead, than it
had hitherto been permitted to the Hebrew prophets to
announce.* The predictions of Isaiah are less distinctly marked —
as to their chronology — than are those of Daniel, be
cause they embrace extensive and unlimited eras of the
future, and they are unrestricted as to place, because
they comprehend all dwellers upon earth. Although
localized in respect of the centre whence the universal
renovation shall take its rise, these predictions overpass
all other bounds : — such as this is the prophet's style : —
In this mountain shall the Lord of Sabaoth make unto all people,
A feast. And He will destroy in this mountain
The face of the covering covering all people,
And the veil that is spread over all nations.
He will swallow up death in victory.
Placed almost in front of this eighty years' course of
prophecy, as if it were the text of whatever is to follow,
and as if it were to serve as a caution, or as a counterac
tion, of any inference that might be drawn from the
denunciations that are to occupy so large a space — is,
this foreshowing of a high noon of truth and peace for
all races and kindreds of the one human family : —
And it shall come to pass in the last days,
The mountain ofthe house of Jehovah
Shall be established (constituted) in the top of the mountains ;
And shall be exalted above the hills ;
And all nations shall flow unto it.
"" Daniel xii. 2, 3. The parallel passage in Isaiah xxvi. 19. should
be named as an exceptive instance as to that prophet.

204 THE SPIRIT OF THE
And many peoples shall go and say,
Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah,
And to the house of the God of Jacob ;
And He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths:
For from Zion shall go forth the Law,
And the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem.
And He shall judge among the nations,
And shall rebuke (convict or convince) many people :
And they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
And their spears into pruning-hooks:
Nation shall not life up sword against nation,
Neither shall they learn war any more.
These, and eight or ten other passages of similar
import, occurring at intervals in the same " roll of the
book," if they be read on any other supposition than
that of their Divine origin (this understood in the fullest
sense) must be regarded as marvels indeed of which we
shall never be able to give any solution ; and this per
plexity has its two aspects — the first is this — that a man
of Judah, in that age — let us attribute to him whatever
eminence we may, as to intelligence — should thus have
thought, and should thus have uttered himself, concern
ing the religious condition of the surrounding nations
of that time; and then that, thus thinking, he should
have conceived such an idea as that which is conveyed
in his anticipation ofthe conversion of the world, in the
last days, to truth in religion. Certain it is that a con
sciousness of the spiritual condition of the nations then
neighbouring upon Judiea was the guiding-thought of
the Prophet in these passages — as thus : —
Arise I shine! for thy light is come,
And the glory of Jehovah is risen upon thee ;
For, behold, darkness shall cover the earth,
And gross darkness tho nations;

HEBREW POETRY. 205

But Jehovah shall arise upon thee,
And His glory shall be seen upon thee,
And the nations shall walk in thy light,
And kings iu the brightness of thy rising.
The language of Isaiah, in thus speaking of the sur
rounding nations, does not savour of the arrogance of a
nation that is insulated by its profession of a purer
doctrine than that of others ; nor does it betray the
irritation or scorn of such a people, maintaining its
national existence, from year to year, in a precarious
conflict with its powerful neighbours. This language is
as calm and as tranquil as it should be — grant it be an
utterance from the throne ofthe eternal God. He who
counteth the nations but as " the small dust of the
balance" may be expected thus to speak of their
delusions : but not so, on any ordinary principles of
human nature, the bard of a haughty theistic nation,
contemning, and yet dreading, its neighbours, right-
hand and left-hand. Conceived of on any such ordinary
principles, and if the case is to be judged of on grounds
of analogous instances, this simplicity, this dignity, this
brevity, are not to be accounted for ; what were the
facts ? — In looking eastward toward the military em
pires ofthe great rivers-land, or southward to the mani
fold and gorgeous idolatries of the people of the Nile,
with the profound symbolized doctrine of those worships,
the Israelitish bard — the man of glowing imagination,
supposing him to be nothing more, would find his faith
in a pure theism, and his constancy in adhering to the
worship of Jehovah, severely tried. These neighbour
ing lands, where imperial magnificence surrounded itself
with the pomps of a sensual polytheism, and thus gave an
air of sparkling joyousness to the cities, palaces, temples

206 THE SPIRIT OF THE
— these lands would naturally be spoken of in terms
very unlike these phrases of modest truthfulness : the
language which here meets us we of this time accept as
quite proper to the subject, because we ourselves have
come to think of all forms of polytheistic superstition —
ancient and modern, in the same manner; to our modern
Christianized vision nothing can seem more fitting than
that the debasing worships of ancient Egypt, or of
Assyria, or the foul superstitions of India, should be
thus metaphored — as a veil — a thick covering — a gross
darkness, spread over the people which still abide under
the shadow of paganism. But it was not so to this man
of Palestine, three thousand years ago. The Prophet
of Judah, in thus speaking ofthe religious condition of
Assyria, and of Egypt, and of India, used a style which
lie could never have imagined — which lie would not
have employed, if the terms had not been given to him
from above. Those will the most readily feel this who
are the most accustomed to carry themselves back to
remote times, and to realize, in idea, the modes of feeling
ofthe men of countries remote, and of ages now almost
forgotten. So to designate the religions delusions of the nations
of antiquity was not the native gift ofthe son of Amoz:
— it was the gift and office of the Prophet of Jehovah ;
and with a still firmer confidence may w*e say that the
prediction which follows could not be from man, but
must have been from God.
The prediction is not of the kind that breathes the
mood of national ambition ; it is not military, but the
very contrary ; it is not of the same sort as the Islam
fanaticism ; it is not in harmony with a fierce propagan-
dism ; it was not prompted by the temper of that later

HEBREW POETRY. 207
age, when the zeal of the Pharisee incited him to " com
pass sea and land for making one proselyte." This pre
diction, by the very tact of its employment of figurative
language of this material quality — by speaking of the
fat things, and the delicacies, and the old wines, proper
to a royal banquet, and in associating these figures with
those ofthe gross darkness, and the veil ofthe covering,
precluded any interpretation of a lower species ; — for it
is manifest that as was the darkness — as was the cover
ing veil — symbolizing religions, moral, and spiritual
ignorance and error, so should the feast, and the refresh
ment, be that of religious nourishment, and of moral
renovation, and of spiritual enjoyment. In this instance
the apposition of metaphors furnishes a sure guide to the
interpretation. And then the history of the nations,
from the prophet's age to this, is a continuous comment
upon the prophecy. And so does the course of events,
at this very moment, give indication of its ultimate en
tire accomplishment — adverse events and thick clouds
of the sky, notwithstanding.
In contradiction ofthe strenuous endeavours of many
at this time to withdraw men's thoughts from the past,
and especially so far as the past carries a religious mean
ing, these Hebrew prophecies — those especially of
Micah, and of Isaiah, and of the Psalms, — affirm and
attest this vital principle, affecting human destinies —
namely, historic continuity. It is on this ground, as
much as upon any other, that the religion of the Scrip
tures stands opposed to atheistic doctrines of every sort.
The Bible holds all ages — past and future — in an indis
soluble bond of union, and of causal relationship, and
of development, and of progress, and therefore — of
hope, animated by a Divine assurance of universal

208 THE SPIRIT OF THE
blessings yet to come. Moreover this same historic
continuity, this integral vitality, stands connected with
a law of geographical centralization. The life and hope
of the commonwealth of nations is not a vague hypo
thesis, which may be realized anywhere, and may spring
up spontaneously, breaking forth at intervals from new
centres, or startling attention as from the heart of bar
barian wildernesses ; it is quite otherwise. Even as to
the light of civilization and of philosophy, it has shown
its constant dependence upon this same law of historic
continuity, and of derivation. Much more is it — has it
ever been so — as to the light of a pure theology, and of
an effective morality.
So did these Hebrew predictions, after a slumber of
five hundred years, wake into life among- all the nations
bordering upon Palestine, when, by the means of the
Greek version of the entire body of the Hebrew Scrip
tures, a true theology, earnestly sought after, and ac
tually found, by the thoughtful in every city of the
Roman empire, was silently embraced, and devoutly re
garded by thousands of the several races clustered
around the Mediterranean Sea, as well as in the remotest
East. And so at length were the Prophets of that
Elder Revelation honoured in the accomplishment of
their words, when the Apostolic preaching — like a sud
den blaze from heaven — imparted the light of life to
millions of souls throughout those same countries — of
Europe, Africa, and Asia.
Every onward movement of the western nations —
even those movements which humanity the most con
demns — has shown the same tendency to create or to
restore, a religious centralization, which, in its deoree
has been an accomplishment of these same predictions.

HEBREW POETRY. 209
And at this time these shining words of hope and of
peace, accepted as they are, and honoured by the one
people among the nations whose destiny and whose dis
positions carry them far abroad — East and West — are
working out their own fulfilment in a manner that is
indicative at once of the force that resides in the word
of prophecy, and of the Divine power which attends
this word, and which shall accomplish it — in every iota
of it — in " the last times."
Not yet indeed have the nations ceased to "learn
war;"' on the contrary, the arts, bearing upon the me
chanical destruction of life, and the demolition of de
fences, would seem to be making such advances as must
render the practice of war a day's work only in effect
ing the extinction of armies, or even the extermination
of races. So it may appear. Nevertheless each of
those inventions which have had the same apparent
tendency have, in the end, availed to shorten the dura
tion of wars, and to diminish the amount of slaughter
while they last. Speculations and calculations of this
kind are, however, quite beside our purpose. War,
when it shall cease to "the ends of the earth," will be
excluded by the concurrent operation of influences
secular, and influences moral, or religious. Permanent
peace will be brought about in the course of the provi
dential overruling of many lower causes, and by the
proper operation of causes of a higher quality. This
ultimate blessedness shall at once "spring out of the
earth, and shall look clown from heaven.''
What concerns us just now is this — to note in these
predictions that which demonstrates the absolute sub
ordination of the poetic genius to the prophetic function
of the man. Isaiah — Ave are told — was a man who

210 THE SPIRIT OF THE
should rank high among the men of genius of all ages ;
and as to his pirescience, it was that only which is a
characteristic ofthe poetic inspiration : he was a prro-
phet just so far as he was a poet. This hypothesis does
not consist with the facts in view. As often as he
touches themes that are the most awakening to poetic
feeling, Isaiah — and the same is true of his brethren —
is brief, and seems in haste to quit the ground on which
he has set foot for a moment. It is thus in the passage
just above cited, in which the attractive conception of a
silver age of peaceful rural life, to which all nations
shall joyfully return, presents itself; and again, as in
this passage : —
The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them,
And the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.
It shall blossom abundantly,
And rejoice even with singing;
The glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it,
The excellency of Carmel and Sharon ;
They shall see the glory of Jehovah,
And the excellency of our God.
The passing forward is immediate to themes of an
other order : — Strengthen ye the weak hands,
And confirm the feeble knees.
Say to them of a fearful heart.
Be strong— fear not. . . .
Near is the poet, in these instances, to those primaeval
conceptions of earthly good which, to the Hebrew peo.
pie, were fixed elementary ideas. Easy — natural 
pleasurable, would have been the transition to the Para
disaical and the Patriarchal morning times of the

HEBREW POETRY. 211

human family. No such divergence is in any instance
allowed ; nevertheless the fact remains, whether we duly
regard it or not, that the great scheme of the Hebrew
prophetic dispensation exhibits, in this instance, as in
others, the universality of its intention ; or let us rather
say — its grasp of all mundane time in this way, that the
same bright conditions which had attached to the com
mencement of the human destinies on earth, are fore
seen and foreshown as the ultimate conditions ofthe hu
man family. As there was a paradisaical morning, so
shall there be a high noon to all nations — a noon of
earthy good, as the proper accompaniment of the tri
umph and prevalence of religious truth and love.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE LATEE PE0PHETS, AND THE DISAPPEAEANCE OF
THE POETIC ELEMENT IN THE HEBREW SCEIPTUEES.
A Centuet onward from the age of Micah and Isaiah,
to that of Jeremiah, brings to view the greatness ofthe
change that was to take place in the modes of the one
Revelation of the Divine will and purposes. The same
principles always, but another style. Let it rather be
said — a progressive change was taking place in prepara
tion for that last mode of this teaching from heaven,
when the awful realities of the human system, in rela
tion to the future life, were to throw into the shade, as
well the bright eras, as the dark times, of this visible
mundane economy. Poetry, therefore, which is always
a function of this visible economy, gradually disappears
from the inspired pages ; while the prophetic element
assumes, continually, a more definite character, and be
comes also prosaic in its tone and style. Nevertheless
while, in the prophets of the late age, Poetry is in
course of subsidence, there does not take place a corres
ponding relinquishment of metrical forms. An instance
of this is presented in the closing portions of the pro
phecies of Jeremiah — namely, the Lamentations, where
in the artificial metrical structure prevails in a higher
degree than in any other part of the Hebrew Scrip
tures.* * See Note,

HEBREW POETRY. 213
This Prophet — a type of Him who was " acquainted
with griefs" — gives evidence at once of the sorrowful
ness, the tender sensitiveness of his temperament, and
of his want of those loftier gifts which distinguish Isaiah,
and which, in the esteem of Biblical critics, entitle him
to a high place among men of genius.
The difference between the two Prophets is best seen
in comparing those passages in the later prophet which,
as to subject and doctrine, are nearly the counterparts
of signal passages in the earlier prophet. Such espe
cially are those places in the two in which the majesty
of God is affirmed, while the folly and vanity of idol-
worship receives a contemptuous rebuke ; — such also
are those which predict the future kingdom of peace,
and the return of the people from their captivity.* A
richness of diction, a majestic flow, a compass and
accumulation of imagery, belong to the one, which do
not appear in the other ; but then this later prophet, in
some places, approaches that style of definite prediction
which was to be carried still further by his successors.
If what already (Chap. IV.) we have said concern
ing Palestine, as the fit birth-place and home of Poetry
be warrantable, as well as the contrary averment con-
* Compare passages in the two Prophets, such as the following : — ¦
Jeremiah. Isaiah.
f xl 12, to the end.
x. 1—16, and li. 15—19. -j xnv. 6, to the end.
[ xlvi.
xxiii 5—8. ~| (" xxx. 19. 26.
xxix. I j xxxv.
xxx. 10, 11. | j xlix. 1, to the end.
xxxi. 1 — 14. J [ liv. throughout.

214 THE SPIRIT OF THE
corning the levels of Mesopotamia, then the fact that
the Prophets of the Captivity, Ezekiel and Daniel
especially, are prophets not poets, will seem to be, at
least, in accordance with a principle, even if it may not
be adduced as a proof of it. The captives of Jtidrea
carried with them the Hebrew lyre ; but, seated dis
consolate by the rivers of Babylon, they refused to
attempt to awaken its notes, and themselves lost the
power to do so. On the banks of the Chebar (great
canal) and on the banks of the mighty Hiddekel, visions
of awful magnificence were opened to the seer's eye ;
and he describes what he saw : but his description is
strictly prosaic ; nor does the sublimity of the objects
that are described at all enkindle the imagination ofthe
reader. The reader, to become conscious of their sub
limity, must carry himself into the midst of the scene,
and picture its stupendous creations for himself. A
passage in Isaiah (chap, vi.) similar to that which opens
the prophecy of Ezekiel, produces, by its very brevity,
an effect on the imagination which the elaborate descrip
tion of the later prophet fails to produce.
Along with this subsidence, or disappearance of
poetry, there presents itself a more rigorous style of
rebuke, and an ethical tone, indicative of the change
that was coming upon the national character. The
Hebrew man of Palestine — the man of Judah — the
citizen of Jerusalem — was, in this late age, repre
sented by the Jew of the Captivity, and this personage
lias more affinity with the Jew of modern times, than
with the Hebrew people of the times of Isaiah. It is
true that those of the later prophets who exercised
their ministry in Judea — these are Haggai, Zachariah,
Malachi — retained the archaic style, if they breathed

HEBREW POETRY. 215
less of its animation ; but it is not so with Ezekiel, or
with Daniel: these lead us on toward a dispensation in
which poetry should have no part. Objects held forth
in vision, for a symbolic purpose, may be stupendous, or
they may be magnific, or splendid ; but while convey
ing their import, and demanding explication as emblems,
they quite fail to stimulate the imagination, or to satisfy
the tastes. Not only is it true that allegory is not
poetry, for it contradicts, it excludes poetry — it js
prosaic emphatically : faculties of another order are
appealed to ; and when these are in act the tastes, and
the consciousness of beauty and sublimity, are neutral
ized. This sort of antagonism is felt especially in the
perusal of the Apocalypse, which, even when the
scenery it describes is constituted of objects that are
in themselves the most proper for poetic treatment,
yet fails entirely to give pleasure on that ground.
These exhibitions of celestial splendours, or of infernal
terrors, carry with them another intention ; and that
this intention may be secured, they quell or dissipate
those emotions which poetry is always aiming to excite.
An instance presents itself in the chapter (xxxvii.)
of Ezekiel in which the Prophet brings into view, with
vividness, the scene and circumstance symbolically of a
national resurrection. He brings into view the valley
of blanched skeletons -the tremors in these heaps of
bones — the clustering of limbs — the coming on of
muscle and skin to each — and the sudden starting to
their feet of an array of warriors.* The painter here
* Bobur, vis, fortitude, maxirne bellica ; exercilus. Gesenius. This
seems the proper force of the Hebrew word. The Greek says only
awayoiyfi : which is less than the meaning.

216 THE SPIRIT OF THE
might be tempted to try his art upon a large canvas,
and might do better ip such an attempt than the poet
could, unless he availed himself of other materials, and
put quite out of view the emblematic significance which
Ezekiel puts forward, when he says — "These bones
are the whole house of Israel." The same principle
takes effect in the instance of the vision (chap, viii.) of
the chamber of idol-worship, and the worshippers, and
the cloud of incense: a fine subject for learned art,
much rather so than for poetry.
No vein of poetry, not even a single incidental recol
lection of the Hebrew imaginative soul, makes its
appearance in the book of Daniel. Plainly historical,
for the greater part — its prophetic portions — its revela
tions, are of that order which, as we have said, is the
extreme antithesis of poetry. The entire class of allu
sive conveyances of a meaning differing from the obvi
ous or literal meaning of the terms employed, includes
allegories, emblems, proverbial phrases, and most varie
ties of wit ; and these, all, are distasteful to those in
whom the genuine poetic feeling is in force. True poetry
needs no interpreter ; for if its figures, its very boldest
metaphors, its most startling comparisons, do not inter
pret themselves instantaneously, it must be either
because the poet, mistaking his function, has wrapped
himself in myths, or because the reader wants the
poetic sense.
The seventy years' captivity — the demolition of the
Holy City — the breaking up of the Temple service —
the ravaging, and the laying waste of the country, and
its occupation by a heathen vagabond population — all
these events concurred in bringing to an end the Hebrew
poetic consciousness: thenceforward the Jewish people

HEBREW POETRY. 217
¦ — the gathered survivors of the long expatriation —
became prosaic wholly, historic only : — they became, as
a nation, such as should render them the fit recipi
ents and teachers of that next coming Revelation which,
because it was to demand a hearing from all people, and
to invite the submission of the reason, lays a foundation
in the rigid historic mood, which, though it may admit
symbols, rejects Poetry. A glance at the onward pro
gress of this transition, of which the Jewish people
were the immediate subjects, may properly be had, at
this place, and before we look back upon the Prophetic
Period — to take our leave of it.
In following the course ofthe national religious litera
ture downwards, from the times of the last of the Pro
phets, it is a wonder to find how rarely — if indeed at all
— a sense ofthe beauty of nature, or any sentiment allied
to poetic feeling, comes to the surface in that literature.
In truth it would be difficult to find evidence of its exist
ence, or of its survivance, in the Jewish temperament.
The books designated as Apiocryphal, and which are
unknown to the Hebrew Canon, are, some of them, no
doubt, of a time not much more than a century later
than that of the closing of the Old Testament Scrip
tures. Nevertheless they are of another order, in a
literary sense ; and they indicate the supervention of
another mood ofthe national mind. In explanation of
the difference (the fact of Inspiration is not now before
us) it would not suffice to say that the period within
which these Apocryphal books appeared was a continu
ous era of social and political confusion, and of extreme
suffering, and therefore unfavourable to the poetic mood,
for the same might be affirmed concerning those times in
which the Hebrew poetry shone with its brightest lustre.
10

218 THE SPIRIT OF THE
But another mind had at length come upon the Jew
ish people, or upon very many of them; the miseries of
the captivity had taken due effect upon them, and so the
apiostolic word had had its exemplification — " No afflic
tion seemeth for the present joyous, but grievous ; yet
afterwards it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteous
ness to them that are exercised thereby." Idol-worship,
in all its vanity and its frightful gorgeousness, had been
witnessed in its home, in the broad places of Babylon ;
and this spectacle had thoroughly sickened the better-
taught men of Jerusalem of their own infatuation
towards polytheism ; it was so that they now loathed
and contemned the sensual worships which themselves
and their fathers, with a fatal perversity, had hankered
after. Not only was idol-worship spurned, but the
national sufferings, and the demolition of their city, and
the cessation of their own worship, were at length under
stood in this sense as a Divine chastisement : — the punish
ment was accepted, the national ruin was meekly sub
mitted to, and thenceforward a new religious life was
inaugurated among them, and for a length of time it
was nobly maintained.
The national repentance, if not universal, had, no
doubt, been real in more than a few instances. Evi
dence of this renovated religious feeling is found in that
book (Baruch) which, among the Apocryphal writings
conies the nearest to a style that might substantiate its
claim to be included in the Canon. A bright monument
is this book of a people's mood while enduring, in exile,
the contempts and the oppressions of barbarian tyranny :
— penitent — submissive to the tyrant who was regarded
as the instrument ofthe Divine Justice; and while sub-

HEBREW POETRY. 219

missive, yet hopeful.* The return of the afflicted Jew
ish people to its duty and to its office, as witness among
the nations for truth in Religion, was a preparation for
that coming time when, with heroic constancy, they con
tended for their national and religious existence against
the two neighbouring monarchies — the Syrian especially.
But this season of doubtful conflict was a time of stern
earnestness among the people, and would not be favour
able to a spontaneous development of the Poetic feeling ;
besides, the men of the captivity found, on their return
to their country, that they had sustained an irretrievable
loss — the loss of their language. Instead of it, a dialect
had come into use which was incapable of giving utter
ance to thought and feeling of this order : it was itself
of heterogeneous composition : — it had. been the pro
duct, not of a nation's mind, but of its calamities : — in
all its deviations from the ancient forms it bore testi
mony to the facts of subjugation, expatriation, and of
the influx of corrupt populations ; besides that in itself
* The book of Baruch stands alone among the books of the Apo
crypha, and should be read — religiously, and read historically ; and in
this sense especially the appended Epistle of Jeremiah, which, genuine
or not so, has a graphic distinctness in its exposure ofthe folly ofthe
Babylonian worships, exceeding what is found in the parallel passages
in Isaiah. The writer undoubtedly had seen the things of which he
speaks : he so speaks as those among ourselves are wont to speak who,
with English religious feeling, walk about in the towns and cities of
southern Europe. With a homely contempt, and vivacious satire, the
writer of this Epistle says — what now might find a place in a Protes
tant journal of a tour in Italy or Spain : — " For as a scarecrow in a
garden of cucumbers keepeth nothing, so are their gods of wood, and
laid over with silver and gold . . they light them candles, yea more
than for themselves, whereof they (these gods) cannot see one ....
their faces are black through the smoke that cometh out of the tem
ple."

220 THE SPIRIT OF THE
it was harsh, unmelodious, defective ; it was the verna
cular ofthe busy population of vast plains, and of crowd
ed cities.
During the same periods not only had the rich and
copious and metonymic Hebrew given way to the rug
ged Aramaic (not more poetic as related to Hebrew
than the Dutch language is as related to the English),
but another inroad was rapidly taking its course — as
throughout western Asia, so not less in Palestine than
around it — namely, that of the Greek language : at
first prevalent as an upper class or governing tongue,
and at length, in the apostolic age, as the ordinary popu
lar medium of discourse. But then this importation of
the language of Greece by no means brought with it
the taste or the poetry of Greece, any more than, in any
genuine sense, it brought its philosophy. Greek, as the
language of literature, came in upon the Jewish mind,
not to enlarge it, not to enrich it, but as a sophistication.
Evidence to this effect is largely before us in the extant
compositions of that time — in the Apocryphal books, and
in the pages of Philo and Josephus. The Jewish mind
of that time had weaned itself from the Hebrew breast,
and it was imbibing, instead, a nutriment which, to itself,
could never be a "sincere milk," easily assimilated, and
promoting its growth. The Greek philosophy did not
make Jewish Rabbis philosophers, any more than Homer
and Sophocles had made them poets. Thus it was that,
between the Aramaic barbarism which poetry and philo
sophy alike would resent, and the Grecian high culture,
which the Jewish mind was not prepared to admit,
poetry entirely disappeared from the literature of the
people: and as to philosophy, it lodged itself upon
the upper surface — like houseleek upon the tiles of a

HEBREW POETRY. 221
building, into which it can strike no roots, and which
lives and grows where it lodges, fattened upon no
other soil than that supplied by its own decayed
foliage. The meditative Jewish mood — such as it exhibits
itself in the book of the " Wisdom of the Son of Sirach"
— not wanting in ethical value, or in epigrammatic
force, is yet only a groping wisdom. The sage sees not
more than a glimmer of light upon earth ; and he barely
lifts his eyes aloft toward the heavens ; — the light of
immortality does not send down one cheering beam
upon those dim pages ; and it must have been from
other sources than from these quaint indeterminate
compositions that the strenuous martyrs of the time of
Antiochus Epiphanes drew their courage in contending
to the death for the faith and hope of the nation.
In the course of not more years than those which
divide ourselves from the era of the Reformation, the
Jewish mind had quite fallen away from what might be
called its Poetic Mood. No writings of that order —
that we know — had been produced in Juda3a. The
Rabbis only — and probably it was a few only of these
— were familiarly conversant with the archaic national
language. A cumbrous, circuitous, and often a sophisti-
cative mode of commenting upon the Prophets, and of
darkening their meaning, had taken the place of what
might have been a nutritious popular instruction. In so
far — and there is reason to think it was very far — as
the Greek version had come to be used instead of the
Hebrew Scriptures, in the weekly service of the Syna
gogue, such a substitution would have the effect of
removing, to a remote distance, fhatpoetic consciousness
to which the Inspired Prophets had been used to make

222 THE SPIRIT OF THE
their appeal.* The version of the Seventy is bald,
prosaic, and wanting in rhythm, as well as majesty. It
had, indeed, carried a substantial knowledge of truth
far and wide among the nations ; but it had so carried
these elements as if, while leaving behind the graces of
the Hebrew Poetry, and failing to take up the graces of
the Greek Poetry, it would commend the grave
principles of Theistic doctrine to the Gentile world,
stripped of all attractions except those of a severe
reality. Such was the preparation that had been made, in
Judaja itself, and throughout the surrounding countries,
for the advent of Oxe whose ministry was to be of
another order — a fulfilment indeed of all prophecy;
but an awakening of the nations to a Revelation which
must utter itself in terms the most concise, and the
freest from ambiguity — in terms which, statute-like,
shall not only easily find their equivalents in all tongues
— barbarian or cultured, and not only maintain their
intelligible quality to the end of time, but, more than
this — such as shall reappear with luminous force in the
courts of the unseen world, when and where all men
are appointed to render their final account. There can
be no Poetry in the Statute-Book of Universal and
Eternal Right ! The Hebrew Poetry had been the free
medium of the Divine communications during ages
while the future unseen destinies of the human family,
if not undetermined, were not to be proclaimed. Earth's
own voices, earth's harmonies and graces, were mute,
and had long been mute, when He should appear who
is " from above," and whose mission it was to institute
* See Note.

HEBREW POETRY. 223
a new life — the life eternal — the life in attestation of
which multitudes were, ere long, to welcome death on
the rack — in the amphitheatre, and in the fire.
The extant memorials of the early Church — the
martyr-Church — exhibit few, if indeed there be any,
indications of the revival of that consciousness of the
sublime and beautiful in Nature which had been so long
in abeyance. The period of preparation for Christi
anity, and the subsequent martyr ages, must be reck
oned to include a space of nearly seven hundred years.
It was not until long after the conclusion of the martyr
time that this consciousness reappears at all within the
field of Christian literature. When therefore it is
attempted to show the derivation of our modern poetic
feeling from the Hebrew Scriptures, the attempt would
be hopeless to establish an " unbroken succession," as if
the flow had been continuous. That river, the streams
whereof, making glad the city of God, sparkled up from
the Holy Hill, disappears at the time when the prophetic
dispensation comes to its close ; and these waters
of Siloam then found for themselves an underground
conduit alongside of the lapse of many centuries ; nor
do they come again into day until near our modern
times. Assuredly the Rabbinical writers did not so drink of
those waters as to receive thence a poetic inspiration !
These grave, learned, laborious, and whimsical doctors,
had so used themselves to converse with whatever is
less important, and nugatory, and frivolous, that they
had become incapable of apprehending whatever, in
Nature, or in life, or in Holy Scripture, is great —
beautiful — sublime : in all things that which was
factitious or arbitrary had fixed the eye of the Rabbi,

224 THE SPIRIT OF THE
who had become blind to the majesty ofthe creation.
The Prophets were men who lived abroad — breathing
the air ofthe hills and plains, ofthe forests and of the
gardens of Palestine; but their commentators — the
Talmudists — were men of the cloister, the light of
which was dim, and its atmosphere dust-burdened and
sultry. Imagination of a sort the Rabbi might boast ;
but it was prolific of monstrous chimeras, and chose
rather the prodigious than the true. Astute more
than wise, the Jewish masters of thought groped
along a path abounding in thorns, and scanty in
fruits.* As to the Christian community — in the East and
the West alike — eager theological controversies came
in the place of sufferings. Heresy, instead of Pagan
ism, showed itself, even more than imprisonments and
tortures, to be out of accordance with the spirit of
Poetry. Christian men — orthodox and heterodox alike
— had passed through that vast intellectual and moral
revolution which had brought with it the consciousness
of Truth in Belief, as a personal concernment — incal
culably momentous. With this feeling of individual
relationship to God, on terms to which an abstract
scheme of theology was to give its sanction, the dialectic
Reason came to be invoked, and was brought into play
continually ; and the style of this controversial reason
is always strenuous, harsh, and unmelodious. The con
troversial mood, full of disquietudes, and of evil sur-
misings, and of angry imputations, is the very opposite
of the discursive, imaginative, poetic temper. No con
dition of the human mind shows a front so repulsive
* See Note.

HEBREW POETRY. 225
to taste and feeling as does the logical mood, with its
formal egotism, and its intolerance. This temper of
earnest wrangling (albeit for the right) is death to
imaginative, as well as to the moral, sensibility. For
centuries it seemed as if men, in contending for the
Truth of God, had quite ceased to see or to know that
the world we live in is beautiful, and that the universe
is great.There was a season in the growth of the Ascetic
Institute — dating its rise in the Decian persecution —
in the lapse of which there may be traced much of
the spirit of Romance, and something of the spirit of
Poetry. A conception of romance, if not of poetry,
one might believe to have inspired, even the crabbed
and dogmatic Jerome, when he put together, for popu
lar use, the prodigious legends concerning the ascetic
heroes — St. Paul the Monk, St. Hilarion, and St. Mal-
chus, and others of the sort. It is certain, as to Palla-
dius, and the compilers of the Lausiac Memoirs, that
they had caught a feeling of the sublime, if not of
the beautiful, in Nature ; and the terms in which they
speak ofthe horrors of the bladeless wilderness suggest
the idea that the complementary conception of what is
gay and beautiful, from the neighbourhood of which the
heroic anchoret fled far, was not quite absent from
their thoughts. These writers, in their encomiums of
what might be called — spirituality run savage, betray
their own consciousness, and that of their heroes, of
those decorations of the material world upon which
they dared not look : whatever was fair, bright, gay,
joyous, in creation was contraband in the ascetic phi
losophy ; nevertheless some of those who signalized their
zeal in denouncing these graces of Nature gave evi-
lV

226 THE SPIRIT OF THE
deuce, obliquely, ofthe strength of their own forbidden
feeling towards them.
In many instances the Christian solitary was a man
of culture, who, in sincerity, bad fled from the abound
ing corruptions of cities, with their Christianized pagan
ism — and who, when he had well nestled himself in
his cavern, and had learned a lesson, not extremely
difficult, in a warm climate, how to exist and be content
in the destitution of the appliances of artificial life, and
had come to draw spiritual nutriment from every misery,
would return to his early tastes, and would follow that
leading of pious meditation which finds its path from
the worship of God, the Creator, to the manifestation
of the Divine attributes in the Creation. No wilder
ness in which man may exist is absolutely bladeless : no
solitude can be wanting in the elements of sublimity, if
it be skirted by purple and jagged rocks, which outline
themselves sharply against a cloudless azure by day,
and against the curtain of stars by night. When once
the genuine relish of natural beauty has been engen
dered, the rule will be — or often it will be — the fewer
the objects on which it feeds, the more intense, the more
concentrated, will be the feeling they excite. The
shrivelled grass — the thorny shrub — the scanty rush,
will prove themselves to be fraught with all poetry;
and then fertile devout meditation will feast itself upon
these crumbs of the beautiful — even as the life-long
tenant of a dungeon learns to satisfy the social instincts
of humanity in tending a spider.
Far more of what, with our modern tastes, we should
admit to be true poetic feeling, here and there makes
its appearance upon the rugged surface of the ancient
asceticism, than we can find in the factitious versifica-

HEBREW POETRY. 227
tiou of some of the great Church-writers of the same
time — eastern or western. Such spontaneous adorn
ments of the ascetic lite, if compared with the laboured
poetry — so called, of Gregory Nazianzen or of Ambrose,
might suggest a comparison between the rich mosses,
with a hundred hues — that embossed the rocks around
the hermit's cavern — and the dazzle and the glare of
the marbles and jewellery of the basilicas of the imperial
city. Grotesque, more than poetic, are those romauces in
the composition of which Jerome (as we have said)
beguiled his leisure at Bethlehem, and abused the credu
lity of his contemporaries. But another style meets us
when we look into the correspondence of the accom
plished and spiritually voluptuous Basil — an ascetic
indeed who, while maintaining his repute as a saint —
not falsely, but factitiously — knew how, in his retreat
on the banks ofthe Iris, to surround himself with rural
enjoyments which might have been envied by the
younger Pliny, in his villa on the margin of the lake of
Como.* It does not appear — or the evidence to that effect is
not at hand, showing — how far the Psalms of David,
rich as they are in poetic feeling, availed to nourish
a kindred feeling within the monastic communities.
Through the lapse of a thousand years — dating back
from the time of the revival of literature in Italy — the
Psalter had so been rolled over the lips of monks,
morning, noon, and night, in inane repetitions, as must
have deprived these odes of almost all meaning— spi
ritual or intellectual. Let the modern reader imagine
* See Note.

228 THE SPIRIT OF THE
what would be the effect upon himself of repeating the
hundred and fifty Psalms, entire — round the year, fifty
times or more !
But the waking hour ofthe European mind came on ;
our modern consciousness toward Nature, as well as Art,
sprang into existence ; and along with this renovation
of the Tastes, as well as of the Reason of the western
nations, there came the diffusion, and the restored influ
ence of the Inspired writings. Thenceforward this
mighty influence, which was at once a force and a
guidance, took its way alongside of the recovered clas
sical literature ; and the two powers — the sacred and
the profane — went on commingling their energies in
those various portions which have given nationality to
the literature, distinctively, of Italy, of England, of
France, and of Germany.* * See Note.

CHAPTER XIV.
THE MILLENNIUM OF THE HEBEEW POETET, AND THE
PEINCIPLE WHICH PEEVADES IT.
Theee is presupposed in the phrase which has been
used as the title of this volume, an idea of unity or
continuity, as belonging to the Hebrew Poetry. We
speak of the Spirit of the Hebrew Poetry, and in thus
speaking a meaning is conveyed to this effect — that
there is a oneness of intention, or a constant principle,
or a prominent characteristic, which may be recognized
throughout, and which attaches, more or less decisively
to each writer, in a long series — connecting the whole,
and imparting to the mass a high degree of consistency
and of homogeneousness. The Hebrew Poetry, from
its earliest era to its last day, stands in view as a One
Poetry. This averment in its behalf means something more
than this — which might as well be affirmed of the
Poetry of Greece, or of that of Persia, or of Rome —
that it is the literature of one people or race, and of a
people strongly marked with the peculiarities of their
national mood of mind, and of their habits, and their
religious notions and usages. More than this must be
intended to be affirmed when we so speak of the litera
ture of the Hebrews, and we must mean what would best
be made intelligible by the hypothesis that, in the midst
of these many and diverse voices — each uttering itself

230 THE SPIRIT OF THE
after its own fashion, and following each other through
the lapse of more than a thousand years — there is
heard the mind and feeling of One, who is unchange
able in disposition and principle — the same yesterday,
and to-day, and in all time. This, undoubtedly, is
the hypothesis on the ground of which we accept the
books ofthe Canonical Scriptures, as given by the Inspi
ration of God — in a sense peculiar to themselves. But
just now let this hypothesis (unquestionably true as
it is) be set apart, or removed from our view. That
which remains, after this abeyance of the belief of
Inspiration has been effected, is a congeries of facts
of such a kind that they must compel an immediate
return to that belief, apart from which these facts can
receive no solution whatever.
So familiar are the topics involved in this argument
that the reader who is well used to his Bible may
believe that he fully apprehends them : and it may be
so ; and yet it is not so with many who, following the
daily routine of Scripture lessons in the track of the
misadj usted order (which in a chronological sense is
disorder) of the Old Testament books, fail to perceive,
or fail to recollect, that, in passing from one Psalm to
the next, or from one Prophet to the next, they may
have spanned a five hundred, or even a thousand years;
and moreover that they have made this leap in a retro
grade direction : — as, for instance, when an ode later
dated than the Captivity, is followed by one which is
earlier dated than the Exodus. These anachronisms of
our modern Bibles take possession of our minds in a
disadvantageous manner, and stand in the way of clear
and firmly held convictions concerning the historic
reality of the series of events. If the Ensrlish Ian-

HEBREW POETRY. 231
guage, in a thousand years, had undergone as little
change as did the Hebrew language in that time, and
if we were to read, in constant niislocation, passages
of Cowper and of Chaucer, or of Milman and Bede,
it would demand a very frequent reference to the dates
of our literature to dispel the chronological confusions
that would beset us.
The degree of uniformity or homogeneousness in the
literature of a people, which might easily be regarded
as probable, on common principles, would be of this
kind — first, there is the same language throughout,
with diversities of dialect only ; and there might be the
same metrical or rhythmical system; then we should
find the same figurative material — related as this would
be to the climate and the country; and we might also
find the same theology and ethics — or nearly the same
— as well as allusions to nearly the same political and
social institutions. Prevalent as these characteristics
might be, and enduring as might be their influence, it
is not to be imagined that a series of writers, represent
ing the national history through so long a term as more
than a thousand years, should fail to exhibit great diver
sities on such grounds as these, namely — (1) The indi
vidual disposition and intellectual disparities of the
writers (this must be even if they were all nearly con
temporaries and fellow-citizens). (2) The varying posi
tion of these writers, as belonging to, or as representing
the several orders and interests in the commonwealth.
(3) The influence upon each writer of those marked
changes in the habits and dispositions of a people from
which no people, hitherto, has been exempt — or not
exempt if many centuries of their history are to be
included. In these senses uniform, and in these senses

232 THE SPIRIT OF THE
also diverse, the literature — or say, the poetry — of a
one people may be accepted as the product of causes
the operation of which is intelligible.
The Hebrew writers do in fact exhibit much diversity
in the several respects above named : — individually they
differ — each has his manner: — differences also are per
ceptible among them arising from their social position,
as of the sacerdotal class, or of other classes : — dif
ferences also there are the distinctness of which is
sufficient, in several instances, to support an inference
as to the place in the national history to which each
writer belongs. Yet in this last-named respect the
differences are far from being such as, on ordinary
principles, might seem likely to arise from the greatness
of those changes through which the Hebrew race had
passed in this lapse of time. These changes embrace
the most extreme and peculiar conditions under which
a people may at all conserve its continuous identity ;
for the fortunes of this people went the round of
national well-doing and of disaster. Not to go back to
the patriarchal age, although then this poetry had had
its commencement, the Hebrew lyre gave evidence of a
long and well-skilled practice at the very moment when
the race, in tumultuous excitement, stood, ransomed
and astounded, upon the eastern margin of the Red
Sea. The training of the people who, with their
Leader, there sang the song of triumph unto Jehovah
(Exodus xv.) had been such a schooling in music, and
in recitative worship, as might be carried on in the
house of bondage, and while the tribes, in severest ser
vitude, were labouring under the sun in the brickfields
of Pharaoh. Yet it Mas then and there that this pecu
liar function of the Israelitish race made its bold essav

HEBREW POETRY. 233
of power. This lyre, attuned on the banks of the Nile,
did its office until the moment of sadness came — a
thousand years later, for leaving it to sigh in the winds
by tlie rivers of Babylon. Frequent notes of this same
lyre give proof that the tent-life of the terrible wilder
ness had not put it to silence; and at the time when
these wanderings were to cease, strains burst anew from
its wires of surpassing majesty (Dent, xxxiii.) It might
seem as if rhythm, and music, and bold imagery, so
floated in the air far around the camp of God, that even
the false-hearted prophet, when he looked down upon it
from " the high places of Baal," caught the same rhythm
and the same fire.*
Throughout the precarious times of the Judges— a
three centuries or more — when everywhere within the
borders of Israel, often —
the highways were deserted,
And the travellers walked through by-ways :
The villages ceased — they ceased in Israel ;
— even through those dark years of almost national
extinction, the energies of sacred song did not decline.
The ruddy youth of Bethlehem found poetry and music
— one divine art — ready for his hand, and for his voice,
and for his soul ; and his-Psalms are vouchers for a fact
so well deserving notice, that neither the sweetness of
these tones, nor their depth, nor their grandeur, were in
any manner affected, for the worse, by the changeful
fortunes ofthe man. It is the same soul, graceful and ten-
* Tt belongs to 'another line of argument to note the fact that
Ealaam's reluctant prophecy was—" The word put into his mouth by
God," (Numbers xxiii.)

234 THE SPIRIT OF THE
der, even when it is the most impassioned, which utters
itself, whether the poet be the leader of a band of out
laws in the rugged wilderness, or the anointed of the
Lord, with tens of thousands of warriors at his side.
The Israelitish monarchy, through another long era —
a five hundred years — underwent seasons of fiery trial in
its alternations of power and splendour, and of decay
and subjugation, and almost of extinction ; and these
revolutions in the political and social condition of the
people were enough — were more than enough — under
ordinary conditions, to bring about an absolute loss, or
final disappearance of the poetic feeling — the poetic
habitude, and even of the rhythmical art — the metrical
practice, among a people. The people of Greece lost
the soul of poetry within as short a time, and under con
ditions much less severe.
But there was a vitality in the Hebrew Poetry which
preserved it from decay through these eleven centuries
of national fortunes and reverses. There was a prin
ciple within it which resisted every influence that might
have wrought upon it, either to abate its tone, or to alter
and vitiate its moral and religious import. Not only did
this poetry last out its destined millennium, but, with a
robust persistence — with a fixed and resolute consis
tency — it continued to vindicate the same moral axioms,
and to denounce, in the same terms of inexorable rebuke,
the vices of mankind at large, and the corruptions of
the one people in particular. Amidst the varying moods
of a passionate people, this millennial utterance docs
not vary by a shade from its pristine theology, or its
pristine ethics. Do we please to call this theology
" unphilosophic?" — if it was so in its earliest forms, it
continued to be such in its latest forms — notwithstand-

HEBREW POETRY. 235

ing the tendency of religious thought, always and
everywhere, to sophisticate its notions, and to compli
cate its phraseology, in the direction, on the one hand,
toward mysticism ; on the other hand, toward vague,
fruitless, and negative abstractions. Or do we please to
say that this Hebrew morality was severe and uncom
promising ? If it was so at its birth in the glooms of
the wilderness of Sinai — such also was it in that day of
sadness when the triumphant idolater carried " of the
vessels of the house of the Lord to Babylon, and put
them in his temple at Babylon." Or if we say — and
this is far nearer to the truth — that the Hebrew reli
gious system rested, peacefully, upon an assured belief
of the graciousness and clemency of Jehovah ; such it
was at the first, when the Eternal proclaimed Himself —
" the Lord — the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-
suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth ;" so was
it in that later age when the terms ofthe divine economy
towards man were to be repeated in form — "What now
doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to
love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God."
This consistency — this exemption from the variable
ness that attaches always, and everywhere else, to what
ever is human — is utterly inconceivable until, for its
explanation, we bring in the one truth that, whoever
might be the Prophet that challenges the people to a
hearing, the Speakee is ever the same — the same in
mind and in purpose through a thousand generations.
That first principle of true Religion — the Personality
of God (insufficient and unpleasing are all phrases of this
order !) — this principle always taught and affirmed in the
Hebrew Scriptures, is also insensibly conveyed in that
mode which — rather than, and far better than, any

236 THE SPIRIT OF THE

formal affirmation — gives us our consciousness of the
individuality — the separate independent personality of
those around us. Whence is it, in fact, that, in our
every-day converse with those who make up our homes
and social circles, we unconsciously acquire our concep
tion ofthe disposition, the moods, the tastes, the consti
tutional faults and virtues, and the mental bulk of each
and all ? A knowledge of character — a knowledge so
important to every one's own conduct — is a slowly
derived induction; it is an accretion from day to day,
built up out of each person's casual utterances and
incidental discourse, as every one is moved or provoked
by the occurrences of the passing hour. If we only
hear what lias been said on any occasion, we know- who
has said it : — the utterance is index ofthe person ; or if
a single utterance be not sufficient for this recognition,
a few, taken at hazard, will not fail to remove any doubt
as to the speaker. It is the same as to our feeling of the
individuality of the prominent persons of history. If
memoirs sufficient are extant — if there are records suffi
cient, of the sayings and the doings of noted persons,
we come to know the person, thenceforward, even with
a distinctness that approaches the vivacity of actual
acquaintance. If, then, we accept it as an axiom of Biblical science
that a main purpose of the Old Testament Scriptures
was tins — to ingrain upon the minds of men this vivid
conception of God — the one Living and Ever-present
Creator, Ruler, Father— then it is seen that this purpose
has been secured in that one method in which alone it
could be effected — namely, by the record of utterances,
each related to some occasion of the time, on the part
of Him who is thus to be made known. The Speaker —

HEBREW POETRY. 237
unchanging in disposition and in His principles of con
duct — utters His mind by a direct conveyance of it in
the form — " Thus saith the Lord." Century after
century, through all the shirtings of a people's weal, and
of their correspondence with their neighbours, God,
their God, thus utters His mind. Nothing approaching
to this vivid revelation, this bringing the conception of
the Person home to the consciousness of men, has
elsewhere ever taken place : it is the peculiarity of the
Hebrew Scriptures.
Why should the Hebrew testimony concerning the
true and living God — why should it have been thrown
into the poetic mould ? — why should this theology have
been made to flow as a river through the levels of time,
reflecting, as it passes, the objects on its banks? One
might speculate to little purpose in attempting an
answer to this question. Meantime the fact is before
us — the Hebrew Poetic Prophecy is a revealing of God,
carried on through a millennium, in all which course of
time, just as the thunder of heaven is even-toned, and is
always like itself in awful grandeur, and is unlike other
sounds of earth, so did the voice of the Eternal con
tinuously peal over-head of the chosen people, and thus
did it take firm possession of the human mind — which
never, thenceforward, lost its consciousness toward God,
as a Mind — a Will — a Heart, and a concentrated
Resolve, in a right knowledge of whom stands our
well-being — present and future.
If there be among those that actually read the Old
Testament Scriptures any who are wavering in then-
belief of the proper inspiration of the prophetic books,
such persons might be advised to put to themselves a
question which, perhaps, hitherto they have never pro-

238 THE SPIRIT OF THE

pounded, or even thought of, namely, this — Whether,
in the habitual perusal of these books, there has not
formed itself in their minds what might be called a
consciousness of the Divine Being as — A Person of
History — a feeling or cognition, much more sharply
defined than an abstraction can ever be? And then
this well-defined historic conception is consistent with
itself in all its elements: — every particle of which this
one Idea is constituted is characteristic, and is in
harmony with the whole. If it be so —
Then comes a second question, which may be thus
worded — Is it conceivable that an Idea of this order —
a conception so majestic, and so vivid and real, and so
truthfully historic, should, even if once it had been
formed, have floated itself onwards, unbroken, through
the waywardness of so many uncontrolled human minds ?
Onwards, unbroken, it has come, even from the remote
age of its first expression, down to the latest age of its
last utterance. Nothing that is incredible and incon
ceivable can be more inconceivable than is a supposition
of this kind. With a healthful confidence in the sure-
ness of the instincts of truth, a mind in health returns
to its belief that it is indeed the voice of God which lias
given consistence and authority to the millennium ofthe
Hebrew Scriptures.
It is a trite theme with Biblical expositors to insist
upon that doctrinal and ethical consistency which im
parts its character of oneness to the Canonical writings.
Argumentation on this ground is perfectly valid ; yet
what now we have in view differs from that argument,
as well in its substance, as in the use that may be made
of it. Difficult it is, and must be, to give distinct
expression to a conception of this kind, involving as it

HEBREW POETRY. 249
does, the most sacred elements, and in doing so to avoid
apparent improprieties ; so to write as shall offend no
religious decorum, and yet so as shall be sufficient for
bringing into view, with distinctness, an occult analogy.
H, however, a writer's intention is well understood,
indulgence may well be granted him on any single
occasion when he bespeaks it.
If the Hebrew Poetry, regarded as a whole, be a
national literature, and if it carries upon its surface,
very distinctly, its nationality, and not less distinctly
the individuality of each writer in the series — it carries
with it also — and it does so with a bright distinctness
(let us speak with all reverence) the Individuality of
the Infinite, the Eternal, the Just, the Good, and
Wise, who is the Author of this Hebrew literature in
a higher sense.
The Bible reader — if his consciousness has not already
been damaged by his converse with petulant and nuga
tory criticism — is here challenged to pursue the sugges
tion that has been put before him. The more he gives
himself to this line of thought — following it out in a new
perusal of the prophetic Scriptures, from first to last —
the more convincing will be the inference, and the more
irresistible the impression, that these Scriptures are
everywhere marked with an Individuality which is not
that of the people, and which is not that of the men —
the prophets in series — but is that of Him " who spake
by the prophets.''
An argument resting on this ground may easily be
put aside by those who may be inclined to escape from a
foreseen inference ; for an appeal is made to a sense — to
a feeling — to a moral and a literary taste which all men
have not, and which some who once bad it have lost, and

240 THE SPIRIT OF THE
of which any one may choose to profess himself destitute.
We now address ourselves to those whose mental and
moral condition is of that kind which readily coalesces
with Truth, and not the less so when it is found beneath
the surface. We say — found beneath the surface in this
sense: — the individuality of each of the inspired writers
presents itself to view, on the surface: the theology and
the moral system of all — as one religion, is conspicuous
on the surface of the Scriptures; but what we here
venture to speak of in terms of reverence — namely, the
Personal Character or Individuality of the Divine Being
— is a fact — distinct indeed, but occult, and needing
therefore to be sought for.

CHAPTER XV.
THE HEBREW LITERATURE, AND OTHER LITERATURES.
Much might easily be written, pertinently perhaps, and
ingeniously, no doubt, and learnedly too, with the inten
tion of instituting a comparison between the Hebrew
Scriptures and other national literatures, which must be
those of China, of India, in its two fields, and of Persia,
and of Greece. Comparative criticisms on this ground
may be instituted either with an intention hostile to the
claims of the Hebrew literature, or with an intention
favourable — not so much to those claims, as to the
assumed literary repute, and the supposed genius and
intelligence of the several writers.
Comparisons of this kind, and it is the same whether
the intention of those who institute them be hostile or
apologetic, we hold to be founded altogether upon an
erroneous hypothesis ; and in fact they never fail to ex
haust, quickly, any small substance of reason that there
may be in them, and to spend themselves in disquisitions
that are nugatory, impertinent, and pedantic. The read
er soon becomes sick of any such attenuated criticisms,
in the course of which the writer swelters away to no
end — for he has set out on a path that leads to nothing.
If now putting out of view the Oriental literatures, with
which the mass of readers can have none but a third-
hand acquaintance, and which must be fragmentary and
insufficient for any purposes of intelligent adjudication

242 THE SPIRIT OF THE

— and if we were to bring into view that only ancient
literature with which educated persons are more or less
familiar — the literature of Greece — its Philosophy, its
History, its Poetry — lyric, dramatic, and epic, then
might any proposed comparison with the Hebrew books
be peremptorily rejected, on this ground, that the dis
similarities — the contrasts — the contrarieties, are so
great and striking as to throw absurdity upon the
attempt to establish any ground of analogy — whether
for purposes of encomium or of disparagement.
The Greek literature, in each of its species — not less
than its inimitable sculptures — is a product of art ; it
is an elaborate combination ofthe poet's or ofthe artist's
individual genius and practised skill, with the highly-
cultured taste, and the large requirements of the men
of his time. But, as we have said, again and again,
the Hebrew writers are never artists. Two or three
books of the Canon excepted, if indeed these should be
excepted, then it must be affirmed that everything with
in this circle is unartistic in a literary sense, and unla
boured. Certain metrical usages are complied with by
the poet ; and so he complies with the grammatical
usages of his language : but his course of thought obeys
an influence of another, and of a higher order. It
would not be enough to affirm — That the manner of
the Hebrew writers is that of simple-hearted men, who
naturally fall into an inartificial and fragmentary mode
of expressing themselves; for this affirmation does not
satisfy the requirements of the instance before us.
Their manner is not an artless innocence; it is not the
rudeness of a pristine era; for, from the first to the last,
it has the force and the firm purpose proper to a deep
intention. Moreover the constant course of things in

HEBREW POETRY. 213
the development of a people's mind is this — -that a lite
rature which is inartificial in its dawn, goes through a
process of elaboration in its noon-tide ; nor ever fails, in
its decline, to become false in taste, and wanting in soul.
No process of this sort gives evidence of its presence
in the passage of the Hebrew Poetry from age to age ;
and yet its presence becomes manifest enough at the
very moment after the sealing of the prophetic eco
nomy : thenceforward Jewish literature shows its grey
hairs. Within the compass of the Psalms there are
odes which belong to the extreme points ofthe national
history — if we take its commencement at the time of the
Exodus, and date its conclusion a century later than the
return of the remnant of the people to their City, and
the restoration of their worship. We here embrace
more than a thousand years ; yet, on the ground of the
natural progress of Poetry, from its earliest to its latest
style, this difference of date would not be detected, and
it is indicated only by references to events in the people's
history. The Hebrew literature differs absolutely, and it differs
in a manner that sets at nought all attempted compari
sons between itself and that of Greece. It does so, for
instance, in the department of history ; for even if we
take up that of Greece, not as we find it in Thncydides,
but as it pleasantly flows on as a devious river in the
pages of Herodotus, we should do no service to the He
brew chroniclers by attempting to show that, if they had
written of Assyria, and of Babylon, and of Egypt, dis
cursively, we might have found in our Bibles a match
for the Clio or the Melpomene. With these narrators
of single lines of events there was no ability ofthe same
order ; there were no literary habits of the same order.

244 THE SPIRIT OF THE

Even less tolerable would be an attempt to match David
or Isaiah with jEschylus, or Sophocles, or even with
Hesiod or Pindar. It is not so much that we might not
find in the Greek writers — Plato, for instance, or
.lEschylus — the rudiments of a theology — true and
great, so far as it goes ; but in no Greek writer, in none
anterior to the diffusion of the Gospel, are there to be
found any rudiments whatever — any mere fragments,
however small — of that Life of the soul toward
God, and of that Divine correspondence with man
which, in every Psalm, in every page of the Prophets,
shines — burns — rules, with force — overrules Poetry —
drives from its area the feeble resources of humau art,
and brings down upon earth those powers and those
profound emotions which bespeak the nearness of the
Infinite and Eternal, when God holds communion with
those that seek to live in the light of His favour.
There is, however, a ground — not indeed of compari
son, but of intelligible contrast, which it is well to pur
sue ; for it is here that the proper claims of the He
brew Scriptures come into a position where there neither
is, nor can be, any sort of rivalry.
Let it just now be granted (for a moment) that, with
in the circle of the Greek literature — including its his
tory, its poetry, and its philosophy — there might be
found a sufficient theology, and a sufficient system of
morals — a belief toward God, and a practice of the vir
tues — personal and social — justice, temperance, mercy,
or benevolence; and let those who would risk such a
paradox affirm that, on the whole, the Greek theology
and ethics are as commendable, and as eligible, as are
the theology and the ethics of the Hebrews : yet is there
this difference — if there were no other — that the one

HEBREW POETRY. 245
religious scheme has thrown itself into a form to which
a direct authentication, as from Heaven, could never be
made to apply ; while, on the contrary, the Hebrew
theology, and its ethical system, exist in a form to which
the voucher from above may be made to attach ; and
therefore that this scheme may meet the requirements
of mankind — as an authenticated Religion, which may
be taken up and used as the rule and warrant of the reli
gious life. Briefly to open up this contrast will be
proper ; and two or three instances, selected from differ
ent quarters, will be enough to show what it is that is
intended. The question is not — Which, in any two samples, is
the preferable one, on abstract grounds, as more true,
or of better tendency than the other ? — but this — To
which of the two — when placed side by side — it
would be possible (or, if possible, useful) to attach the
seal of Heaven, as our warrant for accepting it as the
source of belief in religion ? Nor does it at all concern
us to inquire whether, in Plato, the theology and the
philosophy be his own, or be that of his master —
whether it is Socrates who speaks, or Plato, for himself
and his master ; in either case it is the same flow of
human thought throughout these Dialogues — deep —
sincere — ingenuous — a depth which has secured for
them, and must ever give them, an immortality among
cultured nations, to the world's end. And this is an
immortality which perhaps may brighten so much
the more, when, in the onward course of religions
opinion, Christianity — or let us better say, the Religion
of Holy Scripture, at length accepted, rejoiced in by all
men, shall draw all things that are the most excellent
into its wake — no one thenceforward unwisely attempt-

246 THE SPIRIT OF THE
ing to bring the two upon a level, as if both alike were
Revelations —both alike inspired. The one is sterling,
excellent, admirable, weighty, and of inestimable value:
— the other is Divine — it is more than human : —
God has sealed it as His own, and the two stand before
us, distinguished, not only in this way, that the one
bears on it a stamp which the other has not ; — nor only
in this way, that the doctrine of the one, as compared
with the doctrine of the other, is preferable, and is more
true, and is more conspicuously Divine — but in this
way, that the one body of religious thought which
actually carries the seal, presents itself under condi
tions adapted to so peculiar a purpose and to so special
a service as that of receiving this mark from Heaven,
and of going forth into all the world — to rule the
human mind, and to make valid every hope and every
dread that can strengthen virtue.
Poor and narrow indeed is that jealousy, pretended
to be felt for the honour of our Christianity, which
prompts some to lay bare the ambiguous speculations of
the Ph-edo — pointing the finger at its tremulous places,
and vaunting its dimness, and ending with the trium
phant interjection — "See what was the darkness of
heathenism ! " Nay, this dimness was crepuscular ; it
was not a shadow of the eventide. This dimness,
regarded in its bearing upon the progress ofthe human
mind, bespoke the morning at band ; and why should
we doubt it, or why be backward to give utterance to
our confidence, that, to these illustrious minds — this
Creed — " wherefore we hold it to be true that the soul
is immortal and imperishable " — was, to him who so
spoke, a presage of day ? The dying sage, who said,
yo\g to <MXov xai y tXiri; ixsyaXri, shall he not find that,

HEBREW POETRY. 247
within the Hades, on the threshold of which his foot
then calmly rested, there was, in due time, to be opened,
a door of hope ?
" To stay oneself," says this teacher, " with absolute
confidence, or fo utter with assurance, as certain, the
things we have thus discoursed about, would not
become a wise man.'' Nevertheless, the argument on
this side was of such strength that, as he says, a man
might well live, and practise every virtue, on the faith
of it. The reasoning of Socrates, if translated into the
terms of modern philosophy — if put into its equivalents
in French, German, or English, would not carry con
viction to many minds ; and the less so because reasons,
drawn from the instincts of the moral life, which with
ourselves must have the greatest force, are not* in this
instance, adduced. Nor is the faith of Socrates (Plato)
in any proper sense a theological faith. God is not the
reason of the immortality of man ; nor is He the
Granter of it ; nor is the favour of God spoken of as
the light of that life future.
But even if the argument of the Phjedo were more
complete than it is, in a theological sense, it is, at the
best, nothing better than the opening out of a hypo
thesis : — the reasoner disposes of certain objections ;
he fortifies his position on this side, and that side.
Human thought is here evolving itself, after its manner,
on ground over which no road has been laid down,
and on which no sure light shines. In what way, then,
or to what purpose, might this, or, indeed, the entire
body of Plato's writings, receive a warranty from
Heaven, and so come into a pjlace of authority, in
matters of belief? To no such purpose as this are
they adapted. Looking now to the Apology, and to

218 THE SPIRIT OF THE
the Ph^do, as related to the same great question of a
future life, the attractive quality of both is that modesty,
that calm philosophic balance of the mind, professing
its choice of a belief that is favourable to virtue, and
enheartening especially to those who bear testimony for
wisdom and goodness among the enemies of both ; the
Martyr-teacher will yet do no more than declare his
own faith, and make profession of a hope, the reality
of which, or its futility, none among the living knows,
or can know : — it is known, he says, to God alone.*
Taking the Platonic belief— just as it stands in these
Dialogues, and in the Apology, the substance to which,
in any way whatever, the seal of God might come to
be attached is — not, that belief itself; but only — the
dialectic, conditions under which it may be entertained,
as a probable hypothesis, by a wise and good man.
The voucher could reach this extent only — that it is
allowable so to believe concerning the future of the
human soul. If beyond this we should say — the Socra
tic belief might have received an explicit approval, this
could only be by appending to the Platonic text a sup
plementary text — a page or paragraph, which, in fact,
is not there. What we have to do with is — Plato, as
the existing manuscripts have put him into our hands.
Then there would be a further difficulty in affixing
the seal of Heaven to the Socratic, or the Platonic
creed — namely, this — that the belief of the immortality
and future blessedness of good men is not in any way
made to take its rise in a theology, or even in an ethical
* If the last words of the Apology may seem ambiguous, the
inference we are here concerned with will be the same : — the doc
trine of immortality, as professed by Socrates, was not more than a
choice among contrary hypotheses. See Note.

HEBREW POETRY. 210

scheme. Although Plato is not himself an atheist, his
doctrine of immortality is absolutely atheistical. Row
then shall He in whom is the life of the future life
authenticate a creed in which the Divine Attributes
find no place, and are not once named ?
In search of a belief which might thus be made
available as a Religion — authenticated by God, we must
look elsewhere. The rareness and the brevity of those
passages in the Hebrew Scriptures which relate to the
future life we are all used to speak of, and also to con
jecture the probable reasons of this reserve. Yet few
as such passages may be, and brief as they are — this
characteristic attaches to each of them — namely, that
the language of each is peremptory, and assured.
Great is the difference — on this ground — between a
copious discursive disquisition — with its probable con
clusions — laboriously reached — and a ten words sharply
uttered, in the natural tone of one who is reporting
things of which he has a direct and infallible knowledge.
This sort of determinate averment — inviting no dis
cussion, and supposing no question or contradiction —
possesses, let it be clearly understood, that logical form
which it should have, in adaptation to the purpose of
receiving the seal of God.
In turning from the recorded hope of Socrates, to
the recorded hope of David, the contrast we are here
concerned with is not that of quality ; nor is it that of
the quantity of Illumination which is shed upon the
two respectively, but this — which arises from a distinct
affirmation, resting upon knowledge in the one case,
compared with the avowal of an opinion, on grounds of
probable reasoning, in the other case. Where Socrates
professes his hope of a happy release from the pains
11*

250 THE SPIRIT OF THE
and labours of life, and an admittance into the society
of the heroes of past time, who, he says, are inhabit
ants of Hades for ever, David thus gives the upshot of
his nightly meditations, and thus, as we might say, does
he open the roll of the book, in readiness for its receiv
ing the seal of Heaven, by bringing in the Lord — the
First Party in this compact, even as if visibly present
for the purpose : —
I have set the Lord always before me;
Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved :
Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth :
My flesh also shall rest in hope;
For thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades,
Neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.
Thou wilt show me the path of life :
In thy presence is fulness of joy,
At thy right hand are pleasures for evermore. *
As is the difference between the first doubtful streak
of light in the eastern sky, and the blaze of noon in the
tropics, such is the difference in quantity of illumination
between the hopeful belief of Socrates, and the firm
belief of David. Equally great also is the difference as
to the quality of that light in each instance — might one
say — as to the actinic force — the germinative energy
of each.
Yet if we allege that the Platonic philosophy, because
it is hypothetic and indeterminate, could not be given
forth to the world as a Divine Revelation (even it' it
were of much better religious quality than it is) should
we not be led to seek for what might serve such a pur-
* The Messianic meaning of this Psalm has no bearing upon our
argument in this instance.

HEBREW POETRY. 251
pose in those products of the Greek mind, the very
characteristic of which is a determinative and catego
rical declaration of principles ? Shall we not find in
Aristotle that which Plato will not yield ? With this
purpose in view, it is natural to turn to the Nicomachean
Ethics: — a book of sharply cut definitions and distinc
tions, within the circuit of which nearly every term
belonging to the glossary of common discourse, as well
as' of philosophical discussion, finds its due place, in and
between its contraries, and its cognates, and its syno
nyms. Exact, discriminative, unquestionable, for the
most part, are these refined collocations of ethical terms.
How far such a book might be made to subserve the
purposes of a Treatise on Morals is not a question that
concerns us in this place : it might, in a sense, serve this
purpose, and so might a Lexicon, if cut in pieces, and
put up anew in logical order, instead of the alphabetical
order. It is clear that what might be said of a treatise like
the Nicomachean Ethics, might be affirmed also of
Euclid's Elements of Geometry. Both profess to be
demonstrative : or otherwise to state the case, Aristotle
and Euclid, alike, so deal with the matter in hand, at
each step of their progress, as to exhaust all supposable
contrary affirmations. In each instance any hypothetic
contradiction is overthrown, or is driven off the field.
On the ground of formal logical demonstration no place
is left for authentication, as if it might be superadded to
the process of reasoning. If the reasoning, in any sin
gle instance, were faulty or fallacious, then it could gain
nothing by the seal which a higher authority might give
it : but if the reasoning be valid, and if we may exa
mine it, in every link, then a voucher for its truth is quite

252 THE SPIRIT OF THE
superfluous : — nothing is added to our faith in the rela
tions of extension to be told, from on high, that the
three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles
—or to 180 degrees. The definitions of this treatise
— the Ethics — accord, or they do not accord, with the
notions we may have entertained of the usages and pro
prieties of the Greek language, in the class of terms
which it embraces. Rarely, or to a very limited extent
only, does Aristotle dip into the depths of the moral
consciousness : for, as he is wanting in a theology — if
theology be more than a naked abstraction — so he
wants soul, nor could he ever be thought of as the
Prophet of great truths ; or as one who was " sent of
Heaven." Whither else, then, on the field of Greek
literature, shall we turn in search of any such embodi
ment of religious and moral principles as might be fit
for receiving an authentication, so that it might be ac
cepted and trusted to by men everywhere ? The Poets
of the earlier era — Hesiod and Homer — may be thought
to give expression, in some undefined sense, to a reli
gious and moral system ; but this system, if thus it may
be spoken of, everywhere so commingles itself with,
and weaves itself into, the texture of a polytheistic
tissue, that no voucher for great truths could be attached
to the mass, so as not to complicate itself with the
fables that thicken around it, on every page. Nor does
an extrication of the true from the fabulous become at
all more easy when we reach times of higher refine
ment, and of a more elaborate art, as it is found in the
tragedians — JEschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides.
Much has been said and written of late in behalf of
what professes to be a benevolent and catholic doctrine
concerning the religious schooling of the human family :

HEBREW POETRY. 253
— all tribes of earth, it is said, have been alike cared
for, and have been led forward in company toward the
true and the good ; and among those who have thus
been providentially disciplined, the Hebrew people is
not forgotten. Yet to each and to all alike an un au
thenticated Revelation has been granted. China has
had its Bible — the Buddhist millions have had their
Bible — and so have the people of Persia and of Greece;
and so of Palestine : all men cared for alike ! (a good
belief, indeed,) and all, not only cared for alike, but
dealt with in the same manner ; for among each people
there has been raised up a prophet, or a series of pro
phets — men of soul and of fire, who, either as philoso
phers or as poets, have quickened the inert masses
around them, and have left on record their testimony on
behalf of virtue.
Hold we then to this catholic modern doctrine until
we see what it involves. There is assumed in this creed
a providential interposition in human affairs ; and there
is supposed a beneficent purpose, which is the guiding
reason of this interposition. Then, if it be so, this
peculiarity of the Hebrew literature, and of its body of
poetry especially, is brought into prominence ; for it is
this literature, and it is this alone among the literatures
that are extant, which, from its earliest samples to its
last, adheres to that form of peremptory affirmation
which fits it to receive a supernatural attestation ; and
thus to become an authoritative source of religious
belief, beyond the circuit of its birthplace : — that is, to
men everywhere to the world's end. If the teaching of
Buddha was from Heaven, and if Homer, Hesiod, Plato,
Aristotle, were ministers of Heaven, and if Moses also,
and David, and Isaiah, were such, then were these last-

254 THE SPIRIT OF THE
named teachers so overruled in the delivery of their
teaching as to do it — not hypothetically — not ambigu
ously — not scientifically — not as if uncertain — in igno
rance ; and yet not as if certain in the way of demon
stration ; but authoritatively, and in a tone, and in
terms, which imply, and suppose, and are proper to, a
continuously given supernatural attestation.

CHAPTER XVI.
THE HEBREW P0ETEY, AND THE DIVINE LEGATION OF THE
PEOPHRTS.
Geeat, substantial, and of the highest value are the
achievements of modern criticism, in its laborious explo
rations of the Hebrew Scriptures ; nor can it be doubted
that more will yet be done on this field when the time
shall come — and it is sure to come, though we may wait
long for it — that the same learning (or more learning)
and the same industry, and the same liberty (or even
greater liberty) shall be employed on the same path of
philological and historical elucidation, wholly free,
which it is not yet, on the one hand, from the sinister
purposes of infidelity, and on the other hand, from
those groundless alarms which take their rise in inde
terminate convictions of the Divine Legation of the
Prophets, and so, in a precarious religious belief.
It is not on the pathway of criticism, whether philo
logical or historical, that a determinate conviction to
this effect will ever be attained. Individual men will
not, nor do they in fact, become believers in this
method : religious communities — that is to say, the
masses of professedly Christian people — with their
teachers, as a body, do not, in the pursuit of studies of
this order, rid themselves of that wavering, anxious,
unquiet, half-compromising, tone and style which indi
cate a deep-seated perplexity — a root of unbelief, ready

256 THE SPIEIT OF THE
always to shoot up and put forth leaves on the sur
face. But take the question of the Divine Legation of the
Hebrew Prophets to an upper, and this is its proper,
ground — namely, the ground of the greater question,
concerning the truth and reality of a Spiritual System
— even of the life of the soul toward God, and there,
and on that ground, a Faith shall be attained in posses
sion of which no peril can be incurred on the side of
even the freest criticism.
Did the Hebrew Prophets speak " as they were
moved by the Holy Ghost ?" Did they so speak as no
men but they, and the Apostles, have ever spoken or
written? We should seek a reply to this question in
the answer that must be given to another question — Is
there a life divine — is there a life of the soul toward
God ? — Is there a communion of the finite spirit with
the Infinite, on terms of intimate correspondence, in
which the deepest and the most powerful affections of
human nature are drawn forth toward, and centred
upon, the Perfections ofthe Infinite Being? If there
be — and there is — a life of the soul toward God — a life
not mystical, not vague and abstractive — then we find
our reply to the included question concerning the
Hebrew Prophetic Scriptures ; for it is in these, and
it is nowhere else — no not to the extent of a line —
a fragment — -it is within this range that the Spiritual
Life is embodied, and is expanded, and is uttered in a
distinct and articulate manner. It is within the com
pass of the Hebrew Poetic and Prophetic Scriptures
that all moods and occasions — all trials and exercises —
all griefs and perplexities — all triumphs and all .con
solations — all joys, hopes, and exultations — all motives

HEBREW POETRY. 257
of patience, and all animated expectations ofthe future,
find their aliment, and their warrant also. In a word,
if there be a life of the soul toward God, and if this life
be real, as toward God — then are the Hebrew writers
true men of God ; — then is it certain that they were
instructed and empowered — each of them in his time —
to set it forth, for the use of all men, to the end of the
world. Thus have believed and thus have felt, millions of the
human family — even " a great multitude which no man
can number," gathered from among the nations,
throughout the ages past.
But there is now, and there has long been, a contra
diction of the Divine origination and authority of the
Old Testament Scriptures, which has been identical, or
nearly so, with a denial of that life of the soul toward
God of which these Scriptures are the exposition. This
is the natural course of things ; for to those who them
selves have no experience or consciousness of the spiri
tual life, the Hebrew Scriptures can be indeed only a
dead letter — unintelligible, flat, vapid, and unattractive,
and therefore open to that hostile and disparaging cri
ticism which has so much abounded of late. We say
the two denials have been nearly identical ; and yet not
absolutely so ; for a strenuous endeavour has been made
of late to affirm a sort of spirituality, while the claim of
the Old Testament Scriptures to Divine origination has
been resentfully rejected. Those who make this endea
vour do not allow themselves to inquire whence it is that
they themselves have derived those notions (defective
indeed) of the spiritual life which they profess : — the
derivation cannot have been from oriental sources,
which yield nothing, at the best, but a pantheistic mys-

258 THE SPIRIT OF THE
ticism : — nor can it have been from the Greek classical
literature, for in this literature no element whatever — no,
not a stray spark — not the remotest indication of the
affectionate communion of the human soul with God —
God, near at hand and personal — is to be found, either
in the poets, or in the philosophers. Nor has this vague
spirituality derived itself from the writings of the Evan
gelists and Apostles, for in these the spiritual life —
the devotional life, is assumed, and it is vouched for as
real ; but it is not expanded or expounded. Those,
in fact, who profess a sort of spirituality, and who, in
doing so, reject the claims of the Hebrew Scriptures,
have stolen what they profess: — or they have snatched
it uj), not caring to know whence it has come into their
hands. Happily, as to a thousand to one of devout Christian
people, well assured as they are of the reality of the
spiritual life — conscious as they are of it, and finding
therein their solace — their peace — their anticipation
of its fulness in the future life— these religious persons
have remained uninformed of the exceptive pleadings
of modern criticism ; and thus they hear and read their
Bibles in the tranquil confidence of faith ; — and it is a
warrantable confidence in which they live, and in which
they die — ignorant of gainsaying : or it may be that
some rumours of these nugatory contradictions come,
once and again, to the knowledge of such persons,
giving them a momentary uneasiness : — a rude assault
— repelled, at the moment, is presently forgotten ! Well
that it should be so !
But an injury more serious — a damage less transient,
is sustained— at this time — by many among those
who, partakers as they are of the spiritual life, have

HEBREW POETRY. 259
been brought, by their education, and by their social
habitudes, within range of the modern exceptive criti
cism ; — especially of that portion of it which bears
upon the Hebrew Scriptures ; and which also has a
malignant intention. From this cognizance of adverse
criticism much trouble of mind springs up ; and this
is perhaps more often enhanced or deepened, than
assuaged or dispersed, by listening to the well-inten
tioned explanations, and extenuations, and glozings, and
evasions of Christian teachers. The disturbed mental
condition — the damaged spiritual health of this large
class of religious persons is, at this time, the problem
of Christian Instructors. Authenticated and well-inform
ed instructors — themselves perplexed, and themselves
inwardly unquiet — do their best, honestly, for the help
of their people ; but they do it with little satisfaction to
themselves or others.
It is not perhaps many, even of these well-informed
Christian teachers, who well perceive — if they perceive
at all — that the epidemic trouble is altogether the con
sequence of modes of religious thinking that are quite
recent : too recent are they to have been provided for
in our schemes of religious teaching. The remedy will
come in its time ; and the life ofthe soul toward God —
relieved from this temporary oppression, will regain its
healthful condition with renewed power.
Nevertheless, this renovation will not take place
apart from some severe and painful procedures in demo
lishing cherished prepossessions. If we have coveted,
and have actually possessed ourselves of the privileges
and the triumphs of knowledge, it is inevitable that we
should endure the pains consequent upon that acqui
sition : these pains are as infallibly sure to come on, as

260 THE SPIRIT OF THE
if they were enacted by statute. We must not fondly
think it possible to retain the comforts of ignorance
(which are many and real) while we are in the fruition
of the better blessings of knowledge. The present
trouble of the religious body may be interpreted as
premonitive of a renewed life which shall ere long be
granted to the Christian community, from on High.
It is not enough to say — the modern mind, for we
must say — the Northern modern mind, has passed into
a mood which, as yet, has not got itself adjusted to a
rightful acceptance of a Revelation attested as such by
supernatural interventions. In the nature of things a
Revelation, attested as from God, by supernatural inter
ventions, can never adjust itself to generalizations of
any kind ; for a Revelation which might be d«alt with
— either as to its mode of reaching us, or as to the
substance of the matters so conveyed — as open to gene
ralizations, must cease to be what it declares itself to
be — a unique Revelation : — it must at once be, and not
be — an instance that has no parallel.
On this ground there is a lesson yet to be learned by
the thoughtful men of this present time : — these, or the
sons of these, shall look back and wonder that this
lesson was found to be so hard ; and in truth we of this
time may come to think of it as less difficult if we duly
considered the fact that a problem^ equally perplexing,
was solved, and that a lesson equally revolting was
learned, so recently as two centuries ago, or a little
more, by our intellectual ancestors — even by the great
guild of mind at the challenge (mainly) of Bacon.
This problem, upon the solution of which our modern
philosophy now broadly takes its rest, bears more than
a remote resemblance to the problem in the solution ot

HEBREW POETPY. 261

which the Christian body, throughout the world, shall
at length rejoice, and shall take its rest.
It had been believed " by them of old time" — it had
been held as a first truth, beyond the range of doubt,
that the material universe — the visible Kosmos, must be,
and is, in conformity with a scheme of logical genera
lizations, and that phenomena, of all kinds, should be
interpretable on the ground, and by the means of, those
generalizations, which did office in philosophy as its orga-
non. But the time came for the proclamation of a
Novum Organon, and at that proclamation old things
passed away, as a dream, and all things became new.
Fatal to the universe — according to logic — were those
words of doom — Homo natures minister et interpres.
Some real progress has been made of late in winning
the assent of the Christian community to the parallel
axiom, which puts the words " Holy Scripture" in the
place of the word " Nature" in Bacon's aphorism. So
far as this it is admitted, in regard to the substance of
truth conveyed in the Inspired writings, that — The best
theologian is the best interpreter ; or, otherwise worded
— The best theology is that which is an undamaged
product of a free and genuine interpretation of the
sacred text. This now assented-to axiom stands opposed,
on the one hand, to all logic-made theologies ; and, on
the other hand, to that theology which pays little or no
regard to Scripture, and which — putting contempt upon
the Bible — takes at pleasure out of it just so much, or
as little of doctrine as may suit every man's notions of
what it is fitting to believe.
Thus far a conclusion has slowly grown upon the
Christian mind — among ourselves at least ; but the ax
iom has a further application, which still awaits the

262 THE SPIRIT OF THE
assent and approval of the same Christian mind. The
perplexities ofthe present time, regarding the authority
and the constitution of the Inspired Scriptures, are the
indications of an unsettled or undetermined belief on
this ground. The assailants of the proper inspiration of
the Scriptures think themselves strong in their position,
and reckon themselves sure of a triumph, not distant :
— they believe they shall so make good their array of
Bible-faults as shall compel their perplexed opponents
to acknowledge an overthrow, and so to leave the Bible
to its fate. This overweening and unwise confidence is
indeed a demonstration of the vanity and the presump
tion of those who entertain it, and of their own want
of (or loss of) those greater qualities of mind which
should have secured them against so slender an infatu
ation. But then, on the believing — or, as we say, on the
orthodox side, there are indications, not to be mistaken,
of indecisiveness, and of the anxieties which attend a
transition-period in matters of faith. So it is that we
find expressions of this kind abounding on the pages of
orthodox apologists — Ought we not to expect difficul
ties, even serious difficulties, in Holy Scripture ? — As to
most ofthe objections urged by infidel writers, they are
susceptible of a reasonable answer ; — and as to such as
remain, at present, unsolved, we are to regard them as
left where they are for the trial of our faith. And thus
again— The Scriptures were not given to teach us
natural science ; and we ought not to look into them for
a philosophy which the human mind is to work out for
itself. These, and such-like exculpatory and palliative aver
ments, are true and proper, so far as they go ; but they

HEBREW POETRY. 263
do not avail, and never can avail (every one feels it) to
the extent that is just now required for allaying the
prevalent uneasiness. Not at all do such explanations
suffice for substantiating the modern (Reformation era)
notion of verbal inspiration. How can that notion hold
its ground in front of the long catalogue of the results
of genuine modern criticism? This cannot be ; and the
adherents of a theory so inconsiderately framed await,
in alarm, the moment of an unconditional surrender.
Intermediate, or compromising theories, many and
various, have been propounded. Yet a question has
barely been considered of this sort — Whether the need,
at all, of a theory of inspiration is not quite imaginary,
taking its rise in a natural prejudice of which we should
rid ourselves ? It is inevitable (nor blameworthy) that,
if we think much of God, and of His ways, we should
run off into theories — should assume much, in our pur
blind way, concerning the attributes of God, and His
wTays of governing the universe, and of dealing with men
at large, and especially of His providential treatment of
those who love and fear and serve Him. So it comes
about, on frequent occasions, that we give oblique utter
ance to these unwarranted surmises, and acknowledge
the breaking-up of some theory when, in painful and
distracting instances, we speak of — a dark Providence —
a mysterious Providence ! The ways of God are not
what we had supposed they ought to be : — they run
counter to all our notions of what is wise and good ; we
are therefore perplexed and offended.
A similar perplexity and a similar offence come in to
trouble us when Biblical criticism puts in its plea for a
hearing. The ground of this perplexity, or, let us say,
the history of its rise, might thus be rudely put into

264 THE SPIRIT OF THE
words — If I imagine myself possessed of all knowledge
— natural, historical, and spiritual, and if I am sincere,
and if my intentions are in every sense wise and good,
and if, being thus qualified, and thus disposed, I sit
down to write a book — that book shall be faultless in
every sense : — not only shall it be true throughout, but
it shall be the best book that ever has been written, as
to its taste, its style, its literary execution : in a word
the book will be such as may defy criticism, on every
ground. But the Bible is the Book of God ; — or, according
to the modern phrase — the Bible has God for its Author.
Most true indeed is this ; — but it is not true in the
sense in which the modern Church has understood its
own saying. If the Bible has God for its Author, why
is it not such a book as I would have written, if I were
qualified, as above stated ? Clearly it is not such a
book ; and we are staggered in our faith.
In the day when the Church — the Christian com
munity — shall have come fully to know (and they must
acquire this knowledge by aid of criticism) what sort
of book the Bible is, then will they have come to know
also, what sort of book the Bible ought to be. It is,
we may be sure, such a book as shall, in the most
complete and absolute manner, accomplish and bring
about, in the world at large, and in the souls of men
individually, the purposes for which it was sent : but
the accomplishment of those inscrutable purposes is
wholly irrespective of those points of perfection which,
to the human apprehension, seem of primary impor
tance. In this sense how true is it that " the things
which are highly esteemed among men" are in no
esteem with God : — it may be they are in His sight

HEBREW POETRY. 265
deserving of reprobation. The Bible is not — as a
book — the book we should have made it ; nor is it the
book we should now make it, if the Canon were sub
mitted to our revising wisdom. But it is the book of
Him who has thus commended it to our acceptance : —
" For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven,
And returneth not thither,
But watereth the earth,
And maketh it to bring forth and bud,
That it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater ;
So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth :
It shall not return unto me void,
But it shall accomplish that which I please,
And it shall prosper whereto I sent it."
So indeed has it prospered in every age since its first
promulgation, and in every land to which, according to
the Divine purpose, it has been sent. Thus has it
prospered in quickening to life millions of souls — in
nourishing the Divine life within these souls. So has it
prospered in ruling the life, in strengthening the pur
poses, in giving heart to the courage of martyrs ; and
patience and contentment, and a bright hope, to the
individual spirits of that great multitude which is
gathering into the kingdom of heaven. Well, there
fore, may we spare ourselves the labour of inquiring,
according to our small critical manner, whether the
books of Scripture are well adapted to subserve the
purposes for which they profess to be given — namely,
the religious and moral instruction of the nations.
These purposes they have subserved — they are now
subserving — and they shall continue to subserve, to the
end of time ; and, in a time not remote, shall they
12

266 THE SPIRIT OF THE
carry light and life, even to every land which hitherto
they have not visited.*
After so large, and so long-continued an induction,
demonstrative of the efficiency and ofthe sufficiency of
the Scriptures for imparting life to the souls of men,
and for nourishing that life, what more do we need ?
Nothing, if only we will be wise and ingenuous— as
befits us— discarding an hypothesis which, natural as it
is, has no foundation in reason ; but which, so long as it
is adhered to, gives abundant occasion to infidelity, and
spreads disquietude among ourselves. There is no need
of a new theory of inspiration, or of a new principle of
Biblical interpretation ; but this only is needed, that
every hypothesis and theory — better or worse — should
be put out of view — should be laid aside — should be
forgotten. The mode of that commingling of the
Divine and the human in Scripture, upon which these
theories profess to shed a light, will never be known to
us, any more than the commingling of the worlds of
mind and of matter in the scheme of animal life will
become known to us : — both are inscrutable. Yet we
are well assured of the actuality of both Mind and
Matter in the animal system, and in the human system
especially. We know each — distinctly and infal
libly, when we regard each as it is seen from its own
ground ; but each becomes a problem insoluble — a
perplexity distracting, when it is looked at from the
ground of the other. In the desperate endeavour to
solve this problem, and to be fairly rid of this per
plexity, we first look in upon mind, as seen from the
ground of the animal structure, and we say — mind is
* See Note.

HEBREW POETRY. 267
— nothing but a function of the nervous substance.
Yet this easy conclusion plunges us soon into per
plexities that are still more hopeless. If this will not
do, then we shift our ground, and looking out of the
window tvpon matter — upon the material universe
entire, we say — matter is a nihility — it is nothing but
a coudition of thought ; or if there were a real world
beyond us, we could never know it. Thus far the good
bishop of Cloyne. But it will not do ; and at the hear
ing of this paradox there ensues a riot on the highways
of the common world, and a doctrine so whimsical is
hooted off as intolerable. The lynch-law of common
sense is brought to bear upon it, and then we are left
where we were — mind and matter — each resolutely
holding its own as before — philosophers notwithstand
ing. What is needed here is not a new theory of the
universe, but humility enough to cease asking for one.
Very near to a strictly parallel instance, or real ana
logy, comes the instance of the commingling of the
Divine and the human in Holy Scripture. It is quite
true of the human structure — in a sense, that it is all
mind; and it is quite true of the same structure — in a
sense, that it is all material organization ; and if it be an
error to affirm that man is organization, and nothing
else, or to affirm, on the other side, that he is mind, and
nothing else — a greater error, and an error crammed
with confusion, would it be to say of human nature —
this part of it is mind, and that part is matter ; thus par
titioning the members, and dividing the substance.
Take the case, then, of Holy Scripture — assuming
that the analogy we here introduce has some ground of
reality. Three doctrines, as in the above instance, stand
before us : —

268 THE SPIRIT OF THE
1. That the Inspired Scriptures are wholly Divine,
and nothing else. There are few at this time who will
roundly profess this doctrine, in unqualified terms ; but
there are many who greatly desire to do so, and who
would do it, if they dared : but in so far as they do it,
they stand confronted, and speechless, before the body of
criticism, which shows its store of instances in proof of
the contrary. Infidelity triumphs in its antagonism to
this doctrine ; and it makes the more noise on this
ground because it can triumph on no other ground.
About this field the eagles and the vultures are soaring,
for here is — " the carcase."
Or we may say (2) that the Scriptures (accounted
Inspired) are wholly human, and nothing more : — or, to
state this hypothesis in mitigated terms, that these excel
lent writings are inspired just as all other good and
useful books are inspired. This doctrine, the simplicity
and facility of which tempt shallow thinkers to adopt it,
leaves unaccounted for the great facts of Scripture ;
namely, its theological, its ethical, and its historical
portions. To those who think more coherently, the
problem of the Bible, considered apart from its super
natural origination, is a problem that confounds all rea
soning, and that renders hopeless — indeed impossible —
any induction on the ground of history.
Or (3) it may be affirmed that, within the compass
of the Canonical Scriptures, there are certain portions
that are Divine, and other portions that are merely
human, and that it is the office of criticism to segregate
these intermingled elements. A difficult, as well as a
perilous labour this must be ! Well we might ask — and
yet despair of receiving an answer to the question —
Who is sufficient for this work ? Not a pope — not an

HEBREW POETRY. 269
(Ecumenical Synod — not a Royal Commission ; not this
or that school of learned interpreters : — nor yet the
individual Bible reader for himself. There must be a
second inspiration thus to elicit inspiration from its
entanglements. This is a case of that kind in which one
of two claimants to a property is sure, in the end, to lay
his hand upon the whole ; because the plea which is
admitted to be valid in relation to the smallest frag
ment, may be urged, with equal reason, bit by bit, in
relation to every separate part. On the other side, the
claimant who urges an undefined plea will be compelled
to surrender his ground at each step, when he is pushed
to do so.
But if we reject each of these three suppositions, and
if we take instead of them our confidence in the Scrip
tures — theories of inspiration put out of view — then
shall we not surround ourselves with perplexities ?
Probably it will be so if we are hypochondriacs in reli
gion : it will be so if the principle of religious faith has
suffered paralysis from contact with sophistry.
The man who is in the enjoyment of health of body,
and soundness of mind, well knows that he has a body ;
and he knows also that he has a soul ; and he knows
that human nature is thus constituted of two diverse
elements, to deny the reality of either of which is to
plunge into an abyss of metaphysical contradictions. Yet
no man of sound mind attempts to draw a line of demar
cation between body and soul, or to distinguish between
mind and matter in the working of human nature ; nor
will he affirm of any one part or function of the one that
it has absolutely no dependence upon the other. But,
while unconscious of these distinctions, he well knows
that he is in possession of a nature which is available for

270 THE SPIRIT OF THE
every purpose of thought and of action. This know
ledge is enough, for, from the conscious possession of a
sound mind and a healthy body there arises a responsi
bility to think rightly, and to act rightly in all the rela
tions of life. This compound human nature, blending,
as it does, a spiritual and an animal structure, carries
with it an authority which the man disregards at bis
peril. And so it is in regard to the authority of Holy Scrip.
ture. If there be indeed a moral consciousness— if there
be a spiritual sense, we then feel and know, with the
certainty of an infallible percejition, that, in these writ
ings — wholly unlike as they are to any other writings —
we are hearing the voice of God : — while listening to
these writers we are in communication with the Father
of spirits. When we thus read, and while we thus
listen, the soul in health does not stay to put the futile
and peevish question, Is this text — is this passage,
human or Divine ? It is the patient who is " griev
ously tormented with palsy" that puts this question to
those about him, and to himself, and gets no reply.
There are many questions which may be fit for exer
cising the ingenuity of casuists, a proper reply to which
is this — that, the giving a reply at all may well be post
poned to a time when some instance of the sort shall act
ually present itself. So as to questions of this kind —
What are we to do if a revelation, credibly attested by
miracles, propounds for our belief, or for our practice,
what must be rejected ? What should be done in such
a case shall be duly considered when the occurrence of
an instan'cc of that kind has indeed been established.
Yet there is a class of instances to which more or less
of difficulty attaches from a cause already referred to —

HEBREW POETRY. 271
namely, an assumption — gratuitous and unwarranted —
concerning theDivine attributes, or concerning the modes
ofthe Divine intervention in human affairs. Instances of
this sort attach mainly to the Old Testament Scriptures.
The feeling which prompts these assumptions is, for
the most part, a modern feeling ; it is a refinement ; it
is a sentitnentalism ; it is valetudinary ; it is fastidious.
It is a feeling which receives its correction, not merely
from a larger knowledge of national usages — ancient
and modern ; but from a broader aspect of human na
ture. This breadth — this freedom — this boldness, is
indeed a characteristic of the Scriptures — Old and New
Testament equally so. If the fastidious modern reader
of the Bible is himself unconscious of this freedom and
boldness, it is because, by frequency of perusal, be has
fallen into a sort of Biblical hypnotism, or artificial slum
ber, under the influence of which the actual meaning of
words and phrases fails to rouse attention. This dozing
habit may be well in its way, and it is well if it saves
offence ; but no offence will be taken by those who —
profoundly conscious of the awful voice of God in the
Scriptures, and immoveably firm in their belief to this
extent — are animated by the courage which is proper to
a fervent and enlightened piety ; and who, in the daily
perusal ofthe Prophetical books and the Psalms, rejoice
in, and fully relish, that fearless dealing with human
nature, and with its incidents, which at once vouches
for the historic reality ofthe record, and is evidence of
a power more than human pervading the whole. Just
as the material world and the animal economy has each
far more of strenuous force in it than we moderns — if
we had been consulted, would have allowed it ; so is the
Bible— bold — broad— strong, in a degree which makes

272 THE SPIRIT OF THE
the reading of it a trial and a grievance to our pale-faced
sensibilities, and to our pampered tastes. The remedy
is to be found at once in a more robust mental health,
and a more thorough spiritual health.
This more robust mental health, combined with a
deeper spiritual health, shall show itself in a liberty of
thought which indeed is— free thinking. The attend
ant upon this free thinking will be a free criticism ; and
the two shall put to shame as well, the spurious freedom
of unbelief, as the spurious criticism which feeds itself
upon husks, and has no appetite for nutritious food.
When we yield assent to the Scriptures, as an authenti
cated Revelation, this assent and this consent of the
reason, and of the soul, bring with them an exemption
from disquietudes of every kind. There are no alarms
where the Almighty is present to save and to bless.

CHATTER XVII.
CONTINUANCE OF THE HEBEEW POETEY AND PEOPHECY
TO THE WOELIl's END.
The history of nations furnishes so many instances of
the extinction of intelligence and civilization, and so few
— if indeed any — of its permanence in anyone region,
or as to any one race or people, that the decay and gra
dual extinction of the light of mind seems to be the
rule, and its continuance anywhere, beyond the reach of
a few centuries, the exception ; — and hitherto this is not
an established exception.
This decay, and almost extinction, has had place in
the instance of each of the Oriental races. The people
of China, and of Thibet, and of India, and of Ceylon,
and of Persia, and of Mesopotamia, occupied, in remote
times, a position in philosophy, and in the arts, and in
social habits, and in populousness, and in political power,
and wealth, which is very feebly, or is not at all, reflected
in the condition of the modern occupants of the same
regions. The same must be affirmed of Egypt, and
Nubia, and Abyssinia. The same also of the people of
every country upon which the Macedonian kingdoms
once so splendidly flourished. The same, moreover, of
the countries which were the birth-fields ofthe Arabian
race. But it is believed, or it is customarily taken for cer
tain, that our modern European civilization rests upon
12*

274 THE SPIRIT OF THE
a basis as immoveable as that ofthe pyramids of Gizeh.
It is thought that the marvels of the mechanic arts, and
the ready means which these arts afford for the instan
taneous interchange of knowledge, and the consequent
breadth of intelligence among the masses of the people,
are guarantee sufficient against the prevalence of brute
despotisms, as well as against the insensible encroach
ments of those sordid, sensual, and brutalizing tenden
cies which are inherent in human nature. Gladly should
we all think this : nevertheless there are forebodings of
another cast which might easily find support in the
actual course of events at this very moment, and as well
in the new world, as in the old world. Might not then
the question of the permanence of our European civili
zation be regarded as a problem that is in suspense,
between opposite probabilities ?
The prevailing belief on the bright side of this pro
blem rests, for the most part, no doubt, upon grounds
of secular calculation. It is imagined to be inconceiv
able that our actual civilization, based as it is on a
broad political framework, and sustained as it is by its
philosophy, and its arts, and aided as it is by its
printing-press, and its railways, and its telegraphic
wires, should ever fall out of repair, so as to become
lumber upon the field of the European and the Ameri
can populations.
Yet there is a faith in the world's future — a bright
faith also, albeit it is less sharply defined, and is of more
depth, subsisting among us; and this faith may easily be
traced to its rise in the Hebrew Scriptures. This sub
ject has already been brought forward in these pages
(Chap. XI.) The Hebrew Prophet, we have said, is
the man of hope. The Hebrew Prophets and the

HEBREW POETRY. 275

Psalmists are the authors of hops in regard to this
present mundane economy ; and it is they, rather than
Cnr.isr and His Apostles, that, looking on to the
remoteness of the existence of nations, see, in that dis
tance — terrestrial good; they see— truth — peace —
love ; and they foretell a social system at rest. A last
utterance ofthe ancient prediction was heard overhead
of Bethlehem when the coming in of the new dispen
sation was announced by a " multitude of the heavenly
host." But in the end — in the furthest distance — the
two economies shall coincide, and then there shall be
great joy to all nations — "Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace, good-will toward men." In the
ages intervening — it is " not peace, but a sword.''
The Hebrew Prophets (Poets) represent the mundane
religious economy ; and they vouch for its ultimate real
ization in universal peace. Evangelists and Apostles
represent the economy of the unseen and the future ;
and they vouch for that immortality in Christ, for which
the painful discipline of the present life is the necessary
preparation. But this discipline, and this life hereafter,
must come to its bearing always upon the individual
human spirit; for it takes no account of races — of na
tions — of communities. (Gal. iii. 28; Coloss. iii. 11;
1 Cor. xii. 13.)
Nevertheless the two economies are not at variance ;
for the two tend in the same direction, and they shall,
in the end, coalesce. They do so now, inasmuch as the
individual spiritual life has received its exemplification,
and its ample development, within the compass of the
poetical books — the Prophets and the Psalms; nor shall
the individual spiritual life ever seek to alienate itself
from, or become indifferent to, those liturgies, and those

276 THE SPIRIT OF THE
litanies of the soul, in its communion with God. Never
shall those forms of praise — prayer — penitence — exulta
tion — those deep expressions of the emotions of the
quickened soul, cease to be — what hitherto they have
been — the genuine promptings of love, fear, and hope,
toward God. Futile have been all endeavours — so often
repeated in modern times, to dissociate the two Revela
tions, or to take up a Christianity, divorced from the
Old Testament. In each instance the attempt has given
evidence of the absence of that spiritual consciousness
apart from which there remains nothing in Christianity
itself that is much to be cared for ; or which may not
be found in Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, in nearly as
acceptable a form.
So far as the two economies go abreast on different
paths, and so far as they have different objects in front
of them, they may seem to be divergent ; but, in con
tradiction of this apparent divergence, there occur, in
each, what might be termed — nodes of intersection, or
points, where the two are coincident. Such a poiut of
junction may be found in that signal Messianic predic
tion — the seventy-second Psalm ; if this be taken in
connection with the second Psalm, and with the forty-
fifth, and with the hundred and tenth. These odes,
which are susceptible of none but the most vapid
interpretation, if their Messianic import be rejected,
point in the same direction, but not in the same manner.
They agree in foreseeing a mundane empire, ad
ministered from a centre — an empire wielding irre
sistible material force, which shall be coseval, for a
period, with adverse forces ; but which shall trample
upon all, and at length be recognized by all. In the
second Psalm, and in the hundred and tenth, and, in

HEBREW POETRY. 277
part, in the forty-fifth, the imagery has the aspect of
vindictive force — force, not softened, or only a little
softened, by intimations of clemency. Yet this martial
energy has, for its end, right and truth, and the esta
blishment of order. In these odes there occur no dis-
tiuct points of accordance with the rules, the purer pre
cepts, or the moral intention of the Christian dispensa
tion. Right and power shall be in conjunction, and
the two which, hitherto, have so usually been sun
dered, shall then — according to these predictions —
walk the earth hand in hand, for the terror and extermi
nation of every wrongful tyranny. This then is the
world's future — according to the Hebrew Prophets ;
and who are they that do not exult in the prospect ?
The seventy-second Psalm allies itself with the Psalms
above mentioned, as in the fourth, the ninth, and the
fourteenth verses. Force, employed in the maintenance
of right, and for the deliverance ofthe oppressed, is still
present: — the minister of wrath is still at hand. As the
Primus Lictor, with the formidable fasces on his shoul
der, stood at the elbow of the Roman magistrate,
prompt to inflict death — animadvertere — upon any that
should dare resist the power, so, in this prediction, there
are notices of contemporary wrong ; but then there is
deliverance at hand, and the time that is indicated in
this instance is some way onward in the course of events
— for, as to the adverse powers, they have either "learned
wisdom," or they have fallen to rise no more.
The Sovereign Right has now become a genial influ
ence — which is gratefully accepted — even as are " the
showers of heaven that water the earth." Everywhere
shall this administration of justice and mercy have
come to be commended (ver. 15.) All races, all nations,

278 THE SPIRIT OF THE
shall at last feel and acknowledge the blessings of this
rule — All shall be blessed in Him:
All nations shall call Him blessed.
Not only from this realm of right shall violence and
wrong be excluded ; but the hitherto perplexing problem
of the equilibrium of orders shall at length have found
its solution; for it is said ofthe upper class that — "like
Lebanon'' — it shall be great and fruitful ; and as to the
lower class — even the dense millions of cities — it also
" shall flourish like grass of the earth"— room enough
shall be found for it ; nor shall its greenness be
grudged. Upon all these images of mundane wealth we here
catch the mild effulgence ofthe Gospel. It is now our
Christianity — it is now that doctrine of love to establish
which the army of martyrs bled at the first (and often
since) and to maintain which the preachers of truth,
through long centuries, have prophesied in sackcloth :
— it is this " everlasting Gospel" that at length —
like a sun, rising in a stormy morning — has climbed
the heavens, has hushed the winds, has scattered
the thick clouds of the sky, and thenceforward it
rules the azure in the burning brightness of an endless
noon. The Hebrew Scriptures — every way secure of their
immortality in a literary sense— are secure of it also
as they are the expansion, and the authentic expression,
of the spiritual life — a liturgy of the communion of
souls with God : — secure moreover, as they are the
foreshadowing of the Gospel, and of the coming of the
Saviour of the world ; yet this is not all, for, embedded
in these writings — confided to the Hebrew Poetry —

HEBREAY POETRY. 279

are those hopes of a mundane future — peaceful and
benign — which the best men in every age have clung
to, and which they have used, as the ground and reason
of their sacrifices, while they have believed that, not
for themselves, but for the men of a distant time, they
have spent life, and have laid it clown.
Effective philanthropy has always taken its spring
from the ground of a religious faith in a bright future,
of that sort for which the Hebrew Scriptures are our
sole authority. And as to this effective, laborious, self-
sacrificing benevolence, it combines whatever is peculiar
to the Old, with whatever is peculiar to the New Testa
ment — taking from the one source its expectation of
mundane national welfare, and from the other source
drawing those powerful motives which prevail over all
motives, inasmuch as they draw their force from a
belief of the life eternal.
Thus it is that the controversy of the present time,
between those who hold fast their confidence in the
historic revelation contained in the Scriptures, and
those who reject it, and who would rid themselves
of their own misgivings on its behalf, is brought to
an issue on this ground. There is a question concerning
the human destinies — The human family has it had a
known commencement ? and has it a known middle
period of development and progress ? and has it in
prospect a known — a predicted — ultimate era of good ?
Is there in front ofthe nations an avxtraudig — is there a
<ta.l3j3a.Tidii.bg — is there a time of refreshment, a season of
rest — a year of release— a redemption, an end of the
reign of evil, and a beginning of the kingdom of God,
on earth? If not, then the thick veil of barbaric
ignorance, violence, sensuality, and cruelty, shall be

280 THE SPIRIT OF THE
drawn anew over the nations, and the world must
return to its night of horrors.
The positions affirmed in these pages in behalf of the
Hebrew Scriptures (those of them especially that are
poetic in their style and structure) are briefly these
seven : —
That the poetry of these writings everywhere appears
as a means to a higher end ; or otherwise stated — that
the poet, whatever may be his quality or his genius, is
always the Prophet of God, more than he is the poet.
That whatever may be the individual characteristics
of each of these writers, as a poet, they teach always the
same theology, and they insist always upon the same
moral princijiles.
That although, for the most part, they boldly denounce
the errors and immoralities of their contemporaries,
they employed a medium, as to the structure of their
writings, which implies a reverential acceptance, and
use of them, on the part of the people, and of their
rulers. That amidst, and notwithstanding, all diversities of
temper and style in the men, and all changes in the
national condition, there prevails, from the first in the
series to the last, an occult consistency which is
expressive of what we have ventured to speak of as—
the Histoeic Personality of God.
That within the compass of the Hebrew Poetic
Scriptures there exists — (and in these writings alone) —
a Liturgy, and a Litany, ofthe spiritual life — the life of
the soul toward God; this Liturgy being inclusive of
the forms of congregational worship.
That the Hebrew Poets and Prophets—besides the
special predictions which they utter relating to the

HEBREW POETRY. 281
destinies of surrounding nations, and besides the
preparation which they make for the advent of Him
who should be the Saviour of the world — give a testi
mony which is the ground, and which is the only
warrant, of the hopeful anticipation we entertain of the
issue of events in times that are yet future.
That it is thus, while predicting a bright age to come,
that they bring into combination those higher motives
and purer principles which the Gospel furnishes, and in
the universal prevalence of which that bright prospect
shall be realized.

NOTES,

Note to page 43.

Many pages would be required for giving even a very scanty sample
of those secular variations of the religious mind, which are indicated
by the style and the feeling of commentators, on selected passages of
Scripture. To collect such a sample, if sufficient to answer any valu
able purpose, would indeed be a heavy task ; and, to present it in a
useful manner — a task from which I must shrink. Instead of attempt
ing this, I must be content to direct the attention of any reader who
may have leisure and opportunity to act upon the suggestion, to the
class of facts which should be kept in view on this ground.
The varying style and feeling of commentators upon Scripture may
be regarded, for example, as it is exhibited in the instance — first, of
the Church writers of the Greek, and then of the Latin Churches —
then in those of the African Church, and in these compared with the
Rabbinical commentators. These variations would bring to view the
changes that are taking place, from one age to another, in consequence
of insensible mutations of the human miud; and also, as indicative
of the effect of what, to borrow a phrase from geology, might be
called — the catastrophes of religious history. Such revolutions,
namely, as that of the Lutheran Reformation ; or such as the sudden
rise and spread of Methodism in England ; or as that of the German
Rationalism in the last century. Any reader to whom the patristic
volumes are accessible may, if he so please, turn to the places indi
cated below, as samples only of what is here intended. Let then the
sample be the manner in which Christian commentators have met tho
difficulty which presents itself in that imprecatory Psalm, the 1 36th —
" Happy shall he be," &c. Objgen brings this passage forwards aa an
instance, among several others, proving the necessity of that rule of

HEBREW POETRY. 283
spiritual interpretation which understands the Old Testament histories
always, and only, in a symbolical sense: — If not (vol. I. p. 41.
Benedictine) what shall we say to the polygamy of the patriarchs,
and to other similar instances, or to that of the vindictive utterances
of that Psalm, which would seem to recommend or sanction the indul
gence of vindictive passions — "Filia Babylonis misera : beatus qui
reU'ibuet tibi, &c?" In like manner does he argue with Celsus (vol. I.
p. 710) — he says: — The " little ones" of Babylon — the "babes,'' are
those new-born urchins of evil in our own hearts, which good men
will be prompt to destroy : — this offspring of Babylon — confusion —
the heads of which, while young, must be dashed against the stones 1
The same ingenious mode of exposition — clearing a difficulty at a
leap — is enlarged upon in another place (vol. li. p. 348): — The baby
concupiscences meet their fate when their little brains are dashed out
against the rock — " Petra autem est Christus." The same occurs in
several different places : — it is, in this Father's view, the undoubted
meaning of the Psalm : (so again, vol. il. p. 433 ; and vol. III. p. 313.)
In nearly the same strain writes St. Augustine (Exposition of this
Psalm) ; yet with a difference marking the feeling of the Church toward
its late enemies — persecutors and heretics : — In any case the " Rock,"
upon which either infant carnal suggestions or Babylonish errors are
to meet their end, is, Cheist. In a sounder style St. Chrysostom
(Exposition of this Psalm) contends with the apparent difficulty fairly,
and he alleges what may be accepted as a sufficient explanation in
clearing it up : he says — noWa yap oi irpo^rjrai oil* oikuBev ^diyyovrai,
dAAa TO tripixlv Trddrj itnyov^^voi, Kal els [ilaov (plpoVTEi; '. but, he adds, If
instead of the passionate utterances of the captives at Babylon —
whose language of exasperation the Psalmist only reports — you would
know what is his own inner mind, you have it in those words (Ps.
vii.) — " If I have rewarded evil, &c." In a passage which has frequently
been quoted, of late, in which St. Jerome confesses the anguish of his
soul, so often endured in the parched wilderness, arising from the
inrqads of worldly and luxurious recollections (Epist. ad Eustochium)
he gives, like Origen, the symbolic interpretation to the vindictive
passage in this Psalm ; and so this strange conceit continued to be in
favour with the ascetics to a late age. The babes of Babylon are, this
Father says, " the ever new-born desires of the flesh — and the rock
upon which they are to be dashed is Christ." And thus also Cassian

284 THE SPIRIT OF THE
(p. 144): — "Exurgentes primuni cogilationes carnales illico repel-
lendas esse . . et dum adhuc parvuli sunt, allidere tilios Babylonis
ad petram.'' So it will be everywhere and always, where and when
Biblical exposition takes its course, unchecked by criticism. Easy
would it be to furnish illustrations of this fact drawn from sources not
so remote as the patristic times, or the middle ages. The properly
religious and spiritual use of Holy Scripture needs a near-at-hand
counteractive or corrective criticism, apart from which the most dan
gerous species of perversion or even of sacrilege does not fail to be
fallen into. The religious Bible-reader may well invite criticism to do
its office; but it must be religious criticism; not that of those who
appear to be wholly destitute of faith and piety.
Note to page 15.
Why did not Herodotus describe io us the Al-Kuds — the Holy Oily,
which he visited ? The supposition that the Cadytus of Herodotus
was Jerusalem has been generally admitted as probable ; but it has
recently been called in question, as by others, so by Dr. Rawlinson
(Herodotus, vol. n p. 246.) A discussion of this question, in relation
to which no direct evidence can be adduced on either side, would be
out of place in these notes. I wish only to state that I am aware of
a contrary opinion, especially of that of so competent a writer as Dr.
Rawlinson, who thinks that it was Gaza, not Jerusalem, which Hero
dotus intends. Note to page 93.
The comparative copiousness of languages — the Hebrew especially.
A language which would deserve to be called scanty or poor in its
vocabulary, especially in the class of words denoting the objects of
nature, will give evidence of this poverty in translations from itself
into a more copious language : it will do so in one of these two modes,
namely, either the translation would itself be as bald and poor as the
original; or, if itself rich and copious, it will be found to have
employed many more words than are found in the original : — that is
to say, whero in the original the same word occurs, five times or more,
on similar occasions, because the writer had no better choice, the
translator into a copious language, who has a better choice, is able
easily to improve upon his author, and to give to his version an opu-

HEBREW POETRY. 285

lence which he did not find in his origiual. Tried on this principle,
it will not appear that the Hebrew language, as compared with
the Latin, or with the Greek, or with the English, or with other
modern languages, gives any indication of this deficiency of words.
In this note I can attempt nothing more than, as mentioned in the
text, to indicate "one method among others, in which an inquiry of
this kind might be pursued.
Take as an instance the 65th Psalm, which is a rich descriptive ode.
It will be recollected that, in ascertaining the number of words occur
ring in any one composition, or, as we say, the glossary of that single
composition, the Hebrew affixes and suffixes give rise to a difficulty,
which however is not insurmountable ; yet it is sufficient to be
adduced in explanation of what might seem an erroneous reckoning,
to some small extent. In the Hebrew text of this Psalm there occur
— including affixed prepositions, and suffixed pronouns — 137 words:
but the absolute words — particles put out of view — are 118. In the
Latin of the Vulgate, rejecting particles corresponding to those
rejected in reckoning the Hebrew, about ninety words are employed,
as equivalents for the 118 of the original If we now turn to the
Greek of the Septuagint, reckoned in a similar manner, there occur
eighty-two words, which stand as the representatives of the Hebrew,
as above said. Consequently, several of these Greek words must
have done service for two, three, or more distinctive Hebrew words :
— as we find three English words (mentioned in the text, p. 92) repre
senting eight or ten in the Hebrew. Whether the Greek translators
might not have given a better choice of words, in this instance, is not
now the question ; probably they might; but at least the presumption
is, that the Hebrew, as compared with the Greek language, in the
class of descriptive words, does not fall far short of the Greek as to its
copiousness. The authorized English version of this Psalm employs, as does the
Hebrew, 131 words, from which number, throwing off, as above, par
ticles, expletives, and the like, the words substantive (i. c. nouns sub
stantive, nouns adjective, and verbs) may be reckoned as ninety; this
number standing for the 118 of the original. We should not there
fore be warranted in affirming that the Hebrew language is poor, as
compared with our own ; an inference of another kind is warrantable
— namely, this, that this language, if we were in possession of a com-

286 THE SPIRIT OF THE
plete Oopia Verborum — an absolute Hebrew Lexicon — as we are of
the Greek and Latin, would well stand comparison with either of
them, at least in respect of those classes of words of which poets
have occasion to avail themselves. The Hebrew would no doubt
appear to be deficient in abstract philosophic terms, in those technical
phrases which indicate artificial modes of life, and the practice of the
arts ; and in the entire class, so large as it is, of words modified —
extended — contracted, or intensified, by the prefixed prepositions.
Any one who may be so inclined, might, with little labour, carry out
the above-suggested mode of comparison, in the instance of the several
European versions of the Psalms. Instead of the 65th Psalm, take
the 50th, which has 252 words in the Hebrew — reckoned at 140 ; or
the 91st, which has 170 — reckoned at 97 ; or the 38th chapter of Job,
including 402 words — its absolute glossary, say — 205".
Note io page 130.
The book of Ecclesiastes may seem to be an exception to what is
here affirmed ; and it is so, in so far as the great controversy concern
ing the wisdom that is earthly, and the wisdom that is heavenly, is
argued, as if on even ground, between the advocates of each. The
problem is stated, and it is discussed, for some time, as if it were
undeterminable. " There is a vanity which is done upon the earth ;
that there be just men, unto whom it happeneth according to the
work of the wicked ; again, there be wicked men, to whom it happeneth
according to the work of the righteous : I said that this also is vanity."
This apparent misdirection of events, as men must judge of them, is a
vanity — it is a confusion — it is a whirl, which makes meditation giddy.
Nevertheless, evenly balanced as this argument may seem, it is not
left in an undetermined state at the last: — the disputants are not
allowed, both of them, to boast a judgment in his favour. Most deci
sively is the disputation brought to its close on the side of piety in
the last sentences : — " Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter."
It is the same in that other remarkable instance — the 73rd Psalm, in
which the perplexed and discomforted writer confesses, with mingled
grief and shame, the prevalence, too long, of his rankling meditations.
But he had already recovered his footing; and thus he prefixes his
conclusion : — " Truly (notwithstanding any appearance to the contrary)
truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart."

HEBREW POETRY. 287
If in this instance there may have been a debated question, it is a
question already answered ; and the answer has been assented to.
In Ezekiel this same argument—it is mainly the same — is determined
in another manner (chap, xxxiii.) and the grounds' of doubt are dif
ferent. There is here a peremptory affirmation of the rectitude of the
Divine government, if its final adjudications are taken into the
account. Of the same import is the expostulation which occupies the
eighteenth chapter ; and in this course of reasoning — this Theodicsea
— the awards of a future judgment are undoubtedly understood ; and
so in a similar passage — ilalachi iii. 13-18.
Note to page 156.
Asks a sacrifice of the body and of the soul. " If ye be reproached
for the name of Christ, happy aro ye. . . If any suffer as a Christian,
let him not be ashamed" (on that account). As to those " that suffer
according to the will of God, let them commit the keeping of their
souls, as to a faithful Creator, in well doing." Thus speaks St. Peter ;
and thus the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in recounting the
martyrdoms of earlier times, says of the martyrs that they " died in
faith," in faith of " a better resurrection." And so Christ, in prepar
ing His people for the fiery trial that was in prospect, says — " Fear
not them that kill the body, but after that have nothing more that
they can do." It was on this ground that the martyrdoms of the
early centuries, and those of later times as well, were nobly endured.
And it was thus that " the hope set before us in the Gospel" was at the
first confirmed : — thus was it sent forward to all times ensuing; and
thus again must it be, if ever again Christian men and women, as
such, shall be called to bear testimony, on the rack and in the flames
— to their hope in Christ. But no such value as this, which it actually
bears, could have attached to Christian martyrdom, if it did not stand
out as an exceptive instance, broadly distinguishable from all other
instances of suffering, inflicted by others. In respect of such suffer
ings, or such occasions of mortal antagonism between man and man
— or between nations, the powerful instincts of human nature take
their course, needing to be ruled always, and curbed, and repressed,
by those Christian principles which forbid revenge, and forbid espe
cially the harbouring of resentments, or the cherishing, as a sweet
morsel, some vindictive purpose. Christianity deals in a special manner

288 THE SPIRIT OF THE

with the case of suffering for the truth — for the word of Christ ; but it
deals universally, by its law of love, and of self-denial, with those
impulses that are properly natural, and apart from which neither the
life of individuals, nor the existence of communities, could be secured.
The Christian man will not attempt to exscind the irascible emotions ;
but he will strive to master them, in like manner as he governs the
animal appetites.
As to the presence and operation of these vindictive emotions dur
ing the pree-Christian ages, a freer scope was then allowed them, and
men who were virtuous and wise spoke and acted in a manner which
we of this time have learned greatly to modify ; we have so learned
this better lesson — partly in consequence of the broad Christianization
that has had place throughout the European nations ; and partly also
by a not reprehensible confounding of the martyr-doctrine of Christ
with the universal Christian principle of self-restraint and moderation.
A confusion of this sort, natural as it is, and especially so in the
case of highly sensitive Christian persons, has taken effect in render
ing the martial tone of some of the Psalms, and the vindictive lan
guage of others of them, a sore trial to peace-loving, gentle-hearted
modern Bible readers. The trial is the more severe, because those
modes of evading the difficulty which the patristic expositors had
recourse to, would not, at this time, seem to us tolerable.
Few indeed among us would accept, as good and true, the symbolic
expositions of Origen, or those of Augustine, of which a, sample has
been given in a preceding note. If a caution were needed against
fanciful interpretations of this order, we might adduce this last-
named Father's exposition of the 149th Psalm. It fills several pages,
and no doubt it exhibits much ingenuity, as well as a right Christian
feeling : — " Jam, fratres, videtis sanctos armatos : adtendite strages ;
adtendite gloriosa pralia, . . . Quid fecerunt isti habentes in mani-
bus frameas bis acutas ? Ad faciendam vindictam in gentibus. . .
Quomodo, inquies, pagani occiduntur? Quomodo, nisi cum Christiam
fiunt ? Qua:ro paganum ? non invenio, Christianus est I Ergo mor-
tuus est paganus. . . . Unde ipse Saulus occisus est persecutor, et
Paulus erectus est pradicator ? Quffiro Saulum persecutorem, et non
invenio; occisus est." Much is there to the same purpose in this,
and in the parallel places ; but this method could not now be accepted.
Let it be granted that, in such instances, there is indeed a spiritual

HEBREW POETRY. 289
meaning — a meaning hidden and intended: but no doubt there was a
primary meaning ; and it is this primary meaning which the modern
expositor should hold himself bound to place in its true historic light.
He will then be at liberty to adduce, at his best discretion, the ulterior
meaning of the passage. Note io page 170.
Sicilian caltte-keepers. I have already affirmed my belief (Chapter
XX.) that comparisons attempted between the Hebrew poets, and
those of Greece, can scarcely in any case be valid or available in
a critical sense ; for besides other grounds of difference, which are
many and obvious, there is this one, which should at once preclude
any such endeavours to ascertain tho relative merits of the two litera
tures: — in the one an artistic excellence is aimed at, and the poet did
his best to secure an award of admiration from his contemporaries ;
the Hebrew poets give proof of a lofty indifference to everything
resembling literary fame. The reference to Theocritus has this mean
ing, that this poet's literal, graphic, unideal, exhibitions of rude Sici
lian Ufe, throughout which a sense of the beauty of Nature, and of
the sweetness of eountry life, barely appears, would place him in
a position of disadvantage by the side of the Cantiele of Solomon,
the charm of which is the vividness of this feeling toward Nature ;
and beside this, there is the warmth, ttie softness, the delicacy, the
fondness of those feelings — properly conjugal, which eome up in each
strophe. Moreover, the erotic idyls of Theocritus — like those of his
imitator — are damaged by a putrid slain from which — let it be noted
— the Hebrew poetry — universally — as well as this Canticle, is abso
lutely and wholly free. Note lo page 172.
... a, passage cited from the book of Ecclesiastes. Neither in
these pages, nor in any other of my writings, have I professed myself
competent to enter upon discussions relating to tho date or authorship
of the separate books included in the Canon. Disclaiming any such
qualifications, I am shielded from blame, as toward the Canon, in
offering an opinion of that casual sort which any attentive reader of
the Scriptures may well think himself at liberty to propound. The
date and authorship, and consequently the strict canonicity of the book
13

290 THE SPIRIT OF THE
of Ecclesiastes, I leave to be discussed among those whose professional
learning fits them to engage in an argument of that sort. At a first
glance the passage cited — "I gat me men-singers, and women-singers,
and the delights of the sons of men — musical instruments, and that of
all sorts," suggests the idea of a time much later in Jewish life than the
age of Solomon, lt is not that the practice of music — vocal and instru
mental — had not reached a stage of great advancement in that age ; for
we must believe that it had ; but there does not appear evidence in
support of the opinion that music had been secularized at so early a
time ; or that concerts had come to hold a place in the routine of the
amusements ofthe harem. If a passage in Ezekiel (xxxiii. 32) might
be understood as implying a practice of music, not sacred or litur
gical, this evidence touches upon a time as late as the Captivity.
Note to page 200-
Isaiah .... our master in the school of ihe highest reason.
This is a broad affirmation which is likely to be rejected and resented.
But whoever does so reject and resent what is here affirmed in behalf
of the Hebrew prophet, should be prepared, not merely with a naked
contradiction of the averment, but with a list of names from among
which we might easily find another and a better teacher, in the
school of divine philosophy. The production of any such list may be
a more difficult task than those imagine who would be' prompt to
profess that it might be accomplished in a moment.
There is a preliminary work to be done on this ground; for among
the names that will instantly occur to every one who is conversant
with the history of philosophy many must be excluded from any such
catalogue on a ground of exception that is quite valid ; as thus — when
we are in search of those who might fairly dispute with the Hebrew
prophet his place at the head of theistic thought, we must not name,
as if they were his rivals, any of those who, in fact, have sat at his
feet, and who achieved whatever they may have achieved by building
upon the Hebrew foundation. In abstract philosophy the advantage
is incalculably great of starting in a right direction ; whether or no
the best path over the ground be afterwards followed. This ground
of exception will at once reduce our liberty of choice to a very few
names. The long series of theologians — philosophical or biblical —
who have received their early training within the pale of either

HEBREW POETRY. 291

Jewish or Christian institutions, have set out — capital in hand: as
well intellectually, as morally, they have been provided with the
materials and the terms of theistic speculation ; and not only so, for
every habitude of mental labour has been acquired and matured under,
and amidst, Bible influences. Those primary elements of religious
speculation which include the idea and the belief of the Personality
of God, and of His moral government, and of the emotional relation
ship of the human spirit to God — the Father of spirits, and the
Hearer of prayer — all these elements are, in the most exclusive sense
— Hebrew elements : it is in these writings that they first occur ; and it
is within these writings that they have received an expression and an
expansion beyond which no advance has since been made, anywhere,
withiu the range of literature — ancient or modern. Moreover, these
primary elements of theology and of piety are of such force in them
selves, and they so hold their sway over the human intellect and
feelings, when once they have been admitted, that to disengage the
mind from their grasp is exceedingly difficult — it is a wreuching effort
to which very few have been equal, even among the most resolute
and robust of modern sophists.
Those therefore who might be named as our masters in theology,
or a philosophy which might supplant theology, must be such as have
either lived and taught far remote from any glimmer of Biblical light,
or they must be those, if indeed there be any such, who, living within
the circle of that light, have freed themselves entirely from its influence.
How difficult it has been to do so is shown by the extravagance — by
that stjde of paradox — by the hyperbolic endlessness in speculation,
which have marked the course of modern atheistic philosophy in
Germany, France, and England. It has not been otherwise than as
by a convulsive out-leap from the ground of Biblical belief, that men
like Feuerbach, or Hegel, or Auguste Compte, or Holyoake, or Geo.
Combe, have landed themselves upon the howling wilderness of base
less abstractions — or " free thought."
The atheistic thinkers of classical antiquity are comparatively mild
in mood ; they are for the most part free from acrimony : they stop
short of nihilism, and they retain some ground of confidence in the
foundations of knowledge. The ancient Pyrrhonists stand in a light
of great advantage, as to temper and style, when placed by tho side
of the modern professors of atheism. In fact, this comparison sug-

292 THE SPIRIT OF THE
gests the need of another term which modern languages do not
supply; for the word atheist has acquired an ill sense from the malign
mood of those who would declare themselves at one with the non-
theists, or with the universal sceptics, of antiquity. Whence has
come this opprobrious or sinister meaning of the word ? It may be
said it has come from the contumelious style, and the ill temper of
their opponents, namely — Christian theists. In part it may be so ;
but not wholly, nor chiefly, for the opprobrium has been earned by
those to whose names it has come to be attached : a savour of virulence
has become the characteristic of writers of this class ; and if we ask
why it should be so, the reason is not far to seek — modern non-lheisU
have not been able to distance themselves far enough from the true
theology — the Biblical theology, to relieve themselves from au uneasy
consciousness of its presence. So it has been that the simple negation
of belief has taken to itself the temper of a growling hatred. The
classic fathers of the same philosophy were tormented in no such
manner as this; and therefore they conserved their philosophic equa
nimity. It was not until the time when the easy-tempered atheism
of antiquity came into conflict with Christianity, as in Porphyry (if
we may accept the evidence of his opponents) that it acquired its
animus — its sharp arrogance, and its resentful dogmatism.
When it is affirmed, as it has been affirmed once and again in these
pages, that the Hebrew theology is the only theology which might be
propounded to mankind as — a religion, an appeal in support of this
averment may be made, on the one hand, to the unvarying issue of
all philosophical speculation which opposes itself to the Biblical
theism : this issue has been Pantheism, or avowed Atheism ; or, on
the other hand, we might appeal to the many attempts that have been
made to establish, or to demonstrate a theism of abstractions, on the side
of Biblical belief, or in supposed confirmation of it. A sufficient
instance of what may be looked for on this ground is the noted Demon
stration of ihe Being and the Attributes of God. We need not cite the
acknowledgments of several strong-minded Christian theists who have
avowed their dissatisfaction with Clarke's line of abstract reasoning.
It is enough to say that, although reasoning's of this order may help
the belief of a few believers — much as sea-breezes and sea-bathing
enhance the health of those who are in health — this Demonstration
avails little or nothing with any but the few whose minds are so

HEBREW POETRY. 293
constituted as to find rest on metaphysic ground. Certain it is that a
Religion for mankind never has been set a-going upon the stilts of
metaphysical logic: who then shall be enthusiast enough, in future, to
attempt an enterprise of this order? There never has been — there
never will be, a religion — no, nor a theology — of abstractions,
There will be no other religious theism than that of which the Hebrew
Scriptures are the source. Thus it is therefore — taking a distinguished
individual of a class as its representative, that even now in this
nineteenth century we claim for Isaiah the position due to him as our
master in the school of the highest reason.
Note to page 212.
Metrical structure of the Lamentations. In part the highly artificial
structure of these poems is conspicuous even in the English version
(or indeed in any other version). Each verse has two, three, or four
members, or sentences, in apposition ; which together constitute the
one meaning or sense, of the verse, irrespectively, often, of the
meaning of the preceding, or of the next following verse. Where,
as in several places, the meaning is continuous, from triplet to triplet,
yet there presents itself a break, or change, more or less manifest.
Thus far the metrical structure gives evidence of itself in a transla
tion ; but not so the acrostic or alliterative rule, which of course can
be seen only in the Hebrew. Throughout the poetical books, gene
rally, the modern division of chapters is arbitrary or accidental, and
it is often disregardful of the sense and connection of passages; but
in the Lamentations this division into five portions, or independent
poems, rests upon the alphabetic structure of each portion ; unless it
might be said that the third chapter, with its sixty-six verses, would
better have been divided into three. The first chapter, with its
twenty-two verses, corresponding to the letters of the Hebrew alpha
bet, each letter taking its turn to stand first in the verse. So the
second chapter. The third has its three alphabetic series— sixty-six
in all. The fourth, twenty-two ; the fifth, twenty -two. As well the
regularity of this structure, as the few instances of departure from it,
convey a meaning which may be noted ; but the probable reasons, in
each instance, whether arising from the requirements of the alphabetic
rule, or from the higher requirements of the subject-matter, could not
be set forth otherwise than in adducing the HebTew text, and in fol-

291 THE SPIRIT OF THE
lowing a track of probable conjecture as to what might have been
the choice of words, or the no-choice, in each instance in which a
departure from the exact metrical rule occurs. In the instance of
tlie 119th Psalm — the structure of which is quite different — the want
of a sufficient choice of words, suitable for the initial word of eight
verses, is indicated by the recurrence of the same word, two, three, or
four times, in each compartment, or strophe. An accomplished
Hebraist, whose ready recollection of the copia verborum of the
language might enable him to do so, would not, perhaps, find itvery
difficult to trace what we may allowably call the verbal reasons, or
even the glossary necessities, which had been followed, or yielded to,
in several of these instances ; and this, as well where the metrical
rule has been adhered to, as where a deviation from it has been
admitted. Leaving unattempted any such critical analysis of the metrical
Hebrew poems as is "here imagined, we may very safely assume, as
probable, a reason why a structure so artificial as that of the Lamenta
tions, or of the 119th, and other Psalms, should have been employed in
the constitution of the Canon of Scripture. Generally, the reasons
which supply our answer to the questions — Why should the Inspired
writings adopt the poetic style, and why, to so large an extent as
they do ? and why should they in this manner submit the thought to
the arbitrary sway of metrical rules ? — apply in full force to any minor
question, relating to cases in which certain rules of structure, which
are in, an extreme degree artificial, are complied with by the inspired
writers. The obvious advantages of the poetic style, and of a metri
cal structure, are — the adaptation of both to the tastes and culture
of the people; and especially the adaptation of the latter to the pur
pose of storing these compositions in the memory, from infancy
upward. Thus it was that the minds of this — indeed favoured, though
afflicted — people, were richly furnished with religious and moral senti
ments ; and thus was meditative thought nourished, and suggested,
and directed, and was made conducive to the momentous purposes of
the individual, and of the domestic spiritual life. Too little do we
now take account, in our Biblical readings and criticisms, of this
deep-going purpose of the Hebrew poetic Scriptures, which, through
centuries of national weal and woe, have nourished millions and mil
lions of souls — " unto life eternal." Thus it was that those who, in

HEBREW POETRY. 295
the lapse of ages, should be " more in number than the stars of hea
ven," were trained for their gathering, one by one, into the "bosom
of Ab rail am."
As to the Lamentations, and the highly artificial structure which
distinguishes them, as being the most artificial portions of the entire
Hebrew Canon, a peculiar, and a very deep historic meaning is sug
gested by this very peculiarity. Through long — long tracts of time, this
one immortal people has been left, as if forsaken of God, to weep in
exile. The man who found a grave in any strange land, but a home
in none, took up this word — " Thy testimonies have been my songs in
the house of my pilgrimage." In the scatterings and wanderings of
families, and in lonely journeyings — in deserts and in cities, where no
synagogue-service could be enjoyed, the metrical Scriptures — infixed
as they were in the memory, by the very means of these artificial
devices of versets, and of alphabetic order, and of alliteration — became
food to the soul. Thus was the religious constancy of the people,
and its brave endurance of injury and insult, sustained and animated.
Thus was it that, seated in some dismal lurking place of a suburb,
disconsolate where all around him was life, the Jew uttered his disre
garded plaint : —
Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by ?
Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done
unto me,
Wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger.
The purpose which has been kept in sight in these pages may here
again be adverted to. The one inference that is derivable from the
fuel of the artificial, or arbitrary metrical structure of the Hebrew
poetic Scriptures is, as I think, this — that the high intention of the
Inspired writings is secured — over the conditions and the require
ments, and the necessities, of language: — this high intention is
secured beneath these conditions and requirements and necessities ;
and it is secured in and among them. Where these requirements
seem most to rule the course of thought, and where most tho tyranny
of the medium appears to triumph over the sovereign purpose — that
purpose nevertheless comes off undamaged and entire. In witnessing
what we might regard as a conflict between the medium, and the
mind, of Scripture, the mind saves itself, and the medium prevails,
only in appearance.

296 THE SPIRIT OF THE
Note to page 222.
The Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures. A large subject,
abounding in facts that invite, and that would repay, learned industry,
is the diffusion of the Septuagint translation during the prte-Apostolic
era, and its actual influence in preparing a people, gathered from
among the heathen, for the promulgation of the Gospel. The facts
belonging to this subject would need to be collected at the cost of
some labour, from the earliest of the Christian writers — especially the
apologists, such as Tatian, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, and
Origen. Much, of course, from Philo and Josephus. More than a
little also might be gleaned from the writings of Plutarch, Seneca,
Athena?us, Horace, Juvenal, Lucian ; and much from the two treasures
of antiquity — the " Evangelic Demonstration," and the "Preparation,"
of Eusebius. Among those instances of providential interposition
which favoured the spread and triumph of Christianity, none are more
signal, or more worthy of regard, than is this of the early and wide
diffusion of the Old Testament Scriptures by the means of the Alex
andrian version. Whatever may be its faults, or failures — and on this
ground more is often alleged than could be proved — undoubtedly it
truthfully conveys the theologie purport of the Hebrew Scriptures ;
aud in so doing, at the first, that is to say, from about B. c. 140 to,
and beyond, the Apostolic age. it had "made ready a people for the
Lord'1 in almost every city wherein the Greek language was spoken.
Wherever the Apostles came " preaching the word," they found
among the frequenters of the Sabbath services in tlie Jewish Syna
gogue not only listeners, as they might also among remoter barbarians,
but learners, who already were well conversant with the phraseology
of a true theology, and of a pure devotional service. In most cities
there were a few of the philosophic class (this may fairly be assumed)
who were used to drop in to tho synagogue and listen to the reading
of Moses and the Prophets. No doubt, among the " honorable
women" of those places there were many — very many — Sabbath
worshippers who had found, in the Jewish Synagogue, that liturgy of
the soul which woman's nature more quickly discerns, and more truly
appreciates, than does man's nature, or than his pride will allow him
to accept, or care for. Thus it was that by means of the Greek
Scriptures, road-ways had been made for the conveyance of the
Gospel — north, south, east, and west ; and thus that word had been

HEBREW POETRY. 297

fulfilled — '• Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths
straight." It was, we say, the truth in theology that had thus been carried forth
throughout the Greek-speaking world : it could not be the poetry of
the prophets ; it was their theism and their ethics. To Greek minds
of the cultured class, the strange idioms, and the allusive phrases
which abound in the version of the Seventy, must have had the effect
of quite dispelling or offending those tastes which, otherwise, the
Hebrew poetry might have awakened. Headers of Greek poetry
could n+ but dislaste the Psalmists and the Prophets — if thought of
as poets. Such readers accepted them only in their higher character
as teachers of piety. Xute to page 224.
The Babbinical mood. The Rabbis of a later age appear to have
followed in the track of their masters — the Scribes of the Apostolic
age ; and, serviceable as these Jewish versionists and commentators
no doubt are — for they were ministers in the providential scheme
which has secured the safe transmission of the Inspired writings to
later times — it was not their function to concern themselves with the
soul and spirit — with the fire — of the national literature ; but only
with the letter. Thus writes a competent critic : — " Nihil nisi tradi-
tiones Scribae docuerunt, quid sc. hie aut ille Doctor, aut Synedrium
quondam docuerit aut determinarit ; quid Hillel, Shammai, Baba ben
Buta, Rabban Simeon, aut Gamaliel, aut alii eruditi, asseverint, aut
negarint ; aut qui hane aut illamve qiuestionem proposuerint, aut qui
hoc aut illud determinarint. . . Doctrina omnis Scribarum circa
externa maxime versabatur, vulgares scilicet communesque ritus ac
effirimonias, ut in Codice Thalmudico ubique apparet. . . Yix quid-
quam prseter carnalia Thalmud continet, ut legenti patebit." Liciit-
POOT, vol. L p. 504. Note to page 111.
Basil's description of his delicious retreat, on the banks of the Iris,
I have had occasion to adduce at length in another place. The pas
sage has also been cited more than once or twice by modern writers,
and I need not repeat the quotation here, where, in fuct, it could bear
upon the subject of this volume only in an indirect manner. It is
enough here to point out the characteristic difference, distinguishing
the ascetic tastes and style of the Eastern, and of the Western mona-
13*

298 THE SPIRIT OF THE
chism : a poetic feeling, a mildness, a sense of the beautiful, may be
traced in the one, contrasted with the rigour and murkiness that belong
to the other. It is true that abstemiousness was carried to a greater
extent by the Greek ascetics; but severity in modes of living was the
boast of the monks of the West. Fasting was comparatively easy in
the sultry East, and in Egypt — appetite was terribly clamorous in
Gaul. So says Sulpitius Severus: — "Nam edacitas in Gratis, gula
est, in Gallis, natura." Dialog. I.
Note to page 228. ^
The influence of the Inspired vmiings upon national literatures.
It cannot be said that the Hebrew poetry has given a poetry to any
modern literature. Its influence has been rather to give poetry — to
give depth, force, animation, fueling, to the prose, and to the political
and common Ufe of those modern nations among whom the Scrip
tures — the Old Testament especially— have been the most freely dif
fused. Hitherto no attempt to idealize, or to heroize, or to transmute
into the dramatic form, the persons, or the events, or the conceptions
of the Bible, has been anything better than a failure : the instances
that might be named as exceptions, might better be named as exam
ples confirmatory of this broad assertion. What are Racine's Esther
or Athalia ? What is Klopstock's Messiah? What is Milton's Para
dise Regained? What are these ill-judged enterprises better than
Mrs. Hannah More's Sacred Dramas ? — vapid, wearisome, ineffective,
either for edification, or for entertainment 1 Paradise Lost is not an
exceptive instance ; for it is a mere germ — an almost nothing — in this
great poem that is properly Biblical : it is a realization of conceptions
that have had quite another source, or other sources ; modern, much
rather than ancient, and in which Hoses and the Prophets make much
less appearance than do Dante, Michael Angelo, and some of the Ger
man and middle-age painters. In a Christian sense, it must be
acknowledged that the paganized orthodoxy (is it orthodoxy?) of
Paradise Lost offends, much more than it satisfies, Christian belief.
Whatever in Milton is purely terrestrial and human, reaches at once
the sublime; but whatever is celestial, whatever is transacted on an
upper stage, barely saves itself from the bathos: or if among the
sirpemals the true sublime is attained, it is iu hell, not in heaven, that
this success has been achieved.

HEBREW POETRY. 299

There is room for a parallel affirmation in regard to the poetry of
ancient Greece, which has not given a pot try to any modern litera
ture; but instead of this, it has been Greece, in its history, in its
philosophy, in its politics, that has given a poetry — a depth, a force,
an animation, to the prose — to the public life of (free) modern nations.
A repetition, or an attempt to put forth in modern guise the classical
poetry, barely reaches the faint evanescent colours of the reflected
arch in a double rainbow : such repetitions are exercises for school
boys. Yet is it true that modern public life, in free communities, has
breathed a spirit which has drawn the power and fire of poetry from
classic prose. It is neither Homer's heroes, nor those of pEschylus,
that have made the great men of modern states what they were : but
it is the real men of the best times of Athens : it has been this influ
ence, mainly, that has thrown a poetic glow upon selfish ambition.
So far then as what is here affirmed may be true, we shall look for
the " mighty influence' ofthe Scriptures, when it has displayed itself
in national literatures, not in the poetry directly, but in the prose, and
in the life of each people ; and so it will be that the Bible-reading
nations of modern Europe have displayed, in the most decisive man
ner, that richness as wrell as quaintness — that soul-force, that intensity
of the social affections — that moral energy of the irascible emotions,
which declare their source to have been the Hebrew Scriptures. The
England and the Scotland of the seventeenth century were rich in
men of force, whose behaviour and language, whose courage, and
humanity too, breathed a Bible inspiration, raised abovo vulgarity or
barbarism by the training of Bible history and poetry.
Note io page 248.
Tlie Apology of Socraiee. The closing words of the Apology, as
reported by Plato, may be open to a question, as to the precise mean
ing which they carry — or which they carried in the mind of the mas
ter, or of his disciple : they are these (often cited) — 'AXXi yip F,6n
iiTztivai Epoi plv diroddvovpivut, iip.iv ii (3lij)tj3p£vats' uTu'rtojt ne npdv ip^ovrai
if! apeww -Kpiypn, ainXoi) irovri J7 r£ Oe<d. There might be room to
ask — In thus speaking was Socrates thinking of the life and the world
he was leaving, or of the world — the hidden future, the Hades— upon
which ho was about to enter? If of the former, then his meaning
would be— God only knows whether it be not a better thing to die,

300 THE SPIRIT OF THE
as I am about to die, under an unmerited sentence — to die, an inno
cent man, than to live — as you, my inequitable judges, will live, con
demned now by your own consciences, and soon to be followed by
the execrations of the Athenian people. But even if the philosopher,
as we may well suppose, had his eye fixed upon the future — the
unseen world, there are still t\yo senses between which a choice
might be made ; for he might intend to say — God only knows whether
the happiness which I have in prospect is not such as greatly to out
weigh all those pleasures of the present life which you, my judges,
may yet live to enjoy. Or, on this second supposition, the other sense
may be this — God only knows to which of us — whether to me, or to
you — the happier lot shall be assigned, when, at length, you and 1
together shall come to meet our dues, severally, in Hades, according to
the award of inexorable and impartial justice. This last meaning of
the words may find support in some passages of the Phaedo : but per
haps it draws its chief support in our minds, from our own Christian
beliefs. The version of the phrase which Cicero gives (Tusc. Quest.
\. 44) does not determine the sense — " Utrum autem sit melius."
Lactantius (Instit. vn. 2) in repeating this passage from Cicero, adduces
it in illustration of his argument, touching the uncertainty of all philo
sophical speculations — " Quare necesse est omnes philosophise sectas,
alienas esse & veritate ; quia homines errant, qui eas constituerunt ;
nee nllum fundamentum, aut firmitatem possunt habere quae nullis
divinarum vocum fulciuntur oraculis."
Whatever the meaning of the martyr-philosopher in this instance, or
in other instances, might be, it is certain that he, and his profound
disciple, laboured to their best, in the mine of thought ; or, changing
the figure — that, with sincere purpose, they toiled along that rugged
thorny path that leadeth upward from the sordid and sensual levels
of the world, toward a world of light, truth, goodness, upon which
upward, rugged, thorny path, none shall walk and lose his way —
none, if indeed the modesty and the sincerity of Socrates be in them,
for it is these qualities that give the soul its aptitude to receive guid
ance from above, where it may be had. Socrates, and Plato too, in
professing their consciousness of the need of a heavenly leading on
this path, approached very near to an expression of David's better
confidence: —

HEBREW POETRY. 301
Thou wilt not leave {abandon, ovk e^varaXen/'Kis) my soul in Hades;
Thou wilt show me the path of life :
In Thy presence is fulness of joy ;
At Tui- right hand are pleasures for evermore.
Note io page 266.
The mission of tlie Scriptures. A subject too large, as well as too deep
to find room for itself in a note; but it is a subject which might well
engage the meditations of those who will, and who can, calmly think of
the course of things at this moment. There is a stage of intellectual and
literary sophistication, commingling fastidious tastes and the sardonic
frivolity of luxurious modes of life, which will never consist with the
feelings, the tastes, tho moral habitudes, that belong to a devout read
ing, study, relish, and home-use of the Bible. Whoever has had near
acquaintance with leisurely cultured life, in this, ils advanced stage of
refinement, and whoever has felt the potent influence of such an
atmosphere upon himself for a length of time, and has learned to relish
the ironies, the mockeries, the spiritualisms of the region, with its soft
intellectuality, and its epicureanism, will think that a thousand
leagues of interval are not too many to intervene between such a
region and a home where there is feeling and truth, and within which
the Scriptures — Prophets and Apostles — might be listened to, and
where those ministers of God might make their appeal to the deeper
principles of human nature. Is it that the canonical writings have
been proved untrue ? Is it that Revelation has lately been tried, and
found wanting? It is not so; but those who spend life in the pre
cincts of well-bred affectations find that they have come into a mood
which renders the Bible, in its wonted place — on the table, at home —
an unwelcome object. There is felt to be a sacrilege, even, in
opening the book while the fancy is revelling in whatever is frivo
lously intellectual and artistically sensuous. To produce this effect,
there need be nothing gross or licentious in the converse of our inti
mates, whose converse, nevertheless, does not consist, never will con
sist, with Bible-reading habitudes : the two influences are irreconcilably
repellant, the one ofthe other.
In every highly-cultured community there is an upper stage, or
privileged enclosure, within which this sophistication bears sway, and
is always in progress; but so long as its circuit is limited, and so long
as it includes none but either the wealthy, and the parasites of wealth.

302 THE SPIRIT OF THE
and a few intruders, the masses of the people may retain the native
force of their feelings — their genuineness, their serious beliefs, and
their consciousness ofthe strenuous realities of life. Among such a
people the Bible may retain, and may exert its proper influence. But
there is a tendencj-, which, from day to day, is enlarging the circle of
upper-class sophistication, and which therefore, in the same proportion,
is driving in the boundaries of the more robust national moral consci
ousness. Narrowed continually it is, moreover, by all those well-
intended devices of recent invention, the purpose of which is to bring
the luxuries of art, in all lines, and the fine things of literature, within
reach of the middle, and of the labouring classes.
Should we then step forward, and, in gloomy mood, attempt to
arrest this course of things? This may not be; nor would any
endeavours of this sort avail for the purpose intended. Nevertheless
the issue is inevitable; or it is so unless, within the upper classes,
and especially within and among the ministers of religion, n decisive
renovation of religious convictions should take place. Let this be,
and then the Scriptures will retain their place of power; but if not,
then our institutions, however stable they may seem, will crumble
into dust, wrought upon daily, as they are, by the dry-rot of sophisti
cated intellectuality, and epicurean tastes. This is the course of
things in England ; and such has long been the actual condition of our
nearest continental neighbours.
At this moment the spread of infidelity, especially in the educated
classes, is spoken of with alarm. Yet the unbelief of educated
Englishmen is not a product of reason: it is not the ascertained
upshot of an argument: it is not the result of a controversy which
may have been unskilfully managed on the side of belief. This
infidelity, or this pantheism, or this atheism, which walks the streets
with a noiseless camel-tread — breathing in the ear from behind — this
rife infidelity, is the natural out-speak of intellectual and literary
sophistication, and of that relish for frivolous pleasures, the operation
of which is to render the tastes factitious, and to lull the moral
consciousness, and to falsify the social affections; and which so
perverts the reasoning faculty that evidence produces an effect in an
inverse ratio to its actual force.
Meantimo the Scriptures are fulfilling their mission. Among our
selves, and abroad, tho Bible goes ou its way, and it prospers to the

HEBREW POETRY. 303
end whereto He that thus sends il, sent it. The Scriptures take effect
upon men — singly, and in communities — among whom what is real in
human nature, what is strong and great, still subsist: the Scriptures
come where they come, as the dew ; or as the rain from heaven * or
they come as the tempest: — the word is gentle, and germinating; or
it is a force irresistible; and it does its office, here or there, as the
need may be, where human nature, as to its moral elements, is still in
a culturable slate, and is still reclaimable: as to those, and at this
time they are many, who, in respect of the moral elements of human
nature, have passed beyond this range by the deadly influence of
luxurious refinements — the message from Heaven leaves them where
they are, and goes forward. It is thus that individual men, and that
communities, may lose their part in God's Revelation. At this time,
and among ourselves, so false and fatal a condition is that of a class
only; but it is the class which, by its culture, and its intelligence,
possesses the means and the opportunity to speak for itself; and it is
thus that an estimate of its numbers, and of its mental and moral
importance — greatly exaggerated, is made by itself, on the one side;
and by those who speak of it in tones of vivid alarm, on the other
side.

THE END.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH*
Isaac Tatlor was the son of the late Rev. Isaac
Taylor, a dissenting minister at Ongar, in Essex, and
brother of Jane Taylor, whose " Contributions of Q. Q."
are well known. He was born about the close of the last
century, and, we believe, educated privately under the
immediate superintendence of his father. He was ori
ginally destined for the dissenting pulpit, and com
menced a course of preparatory study ; but he soon
relinquished the idea of becoming a minister, and turned
his thoughts to the bar. His connexion with the legal
profession was not of long duration. Ho betook him
self to literature, and for many years lived in retirement
at Stanford Rivers — a beautiful rural retreat in the
immediate vicinity of his native place. In this secluded
spot he wrote and published anonymously " The Natu
ral History of Enthusiasm," and other works, some of
which have had a fair share of popular favour, more
especially among the enlightened and thoughtful of the
various dissenting communities. His other principal
works are " Ancient Christianity," published periodi
cally, and manifesting an intimate acquaintance with the
writings of the early fathers — an attempt to meet the
Tractarians on their own ground, and to prove that
some of these ancient writers were not so immaculate.
either in doctrine or morals, as to entitle them to the
blind adherence claimed for them by their modern eulo-
* From " Men of the Time." Kent & Co. London. 1859.

306 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
gists — "Elements of Thought," a small treatise which
is used as a sort of rade mecum by students entering
upon their philosophical studies in dissenting colleges —
" The Physical Theory of Another Life," in which he
indulges in speculations respecting the material condi
tion of man and other created beings in a future state.
The mental characteristics displayed in this and his
other works gave rise to a highly amusing and inte
resting article from the pen of Sir James Stephen, in
the "Edinburgh Review." Mr. Taylor, however, was
comparatively little appreciated as a writer until it
became known that he was the author of "The Natural
History of Enthusiasm." He had been for some time
before the public in propria persona, but failed to elicit
that attention to his writings which their intrinsic
merits deserved. His circuitous style and Coleridgean
manner of viewing the various subjects on which he
wrote proved a great barrier to his popularity. His
classical learning, his philosophical acuteness, and his
general culture, were never called in question ; but the
laboured obscurity of style, and his indefinite mode of
expression, proved substantial obstacles to his literary
fame. "The Natural History of Enthusiasm," how
ever, was very differently received by the religious
public. It was fortunate in the time of its appearance.
It was issued when the excitement and enthusiasm con
nected with Row and Irving were at their height. Mr.
Taylor's philosopliieo-religious turn of mind, his pre
vious studies, and even his peculiarities of style, enabled
him to treat this subject in a manner agreeable to all
professors of religion, of whatever sect or denomination.
Young men preparing for the ministry began to imitate
the idiosyncrasies of its style, and some with greatei

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 3J7
success to imbibe its unsectarian spirit. His oilier works
on kindred subjects, "Fanaticism,'' "Spiritual Despot
ism," "Loyola and Jesuitism," "Wesley and Method
ism;" the series of sacred meditations entitled "Satur
day Evening," and " Home Education ;" have all been
well received, although their popularity has been by no
means equal to that which "The Natural History of
Enthusiasm " has all along maintained. In addition to
his gifts as an author, Mr. Taylor possesses a certain
amount of mechanical genius, which, we believe, he has
turned to some profitable account in originating various
designs of a useful and ornamental character. It may
not be uninteresting to add that his habits are simple
and methodical ; although a " recluse," as he somewhere
in his writings styles himself, he is said to be an expert
and eager angler, and fond of healthy and manly sports.
He spends his Saturday mornings in directing the games
of his children, while his Saturday evenings are devoted
to meditations of a religious character, similar to those
which appear in the work under that name; and on
Sundays he occasionally preaches, although a layman, to
the great delight of those who are fortunate enough to
hear him. His books have all, or nearly all, been
republished in America, and have had an extensive
circulation in the States as well as in Canada.

A CATALOGUE

WRITINGS OF ISAAC TAYLOR.

Ancient Christianity,
And the Doctrines of the Oxford Tracts for the Times. Fourth
Edition, with Supplement, Index, and Tables. 2 vols. 8vo., pp.
550 and IOO. London, 1844.
Ancient Christianity,
And the Doctrines of the Oxford Tracts for the Times. Supple
ment, including Index, Tables, (fee. 8vo., pp. 142. London, 1844
Spiritual Despotism.
Second Edition. 8vo., pp. 504. London, 1835.
Fanaticism. 8vo.
Natural History of Enthusiasm.
Eighth Edition. 8vo. London.
Saturday Evening.
Sixth Edition. 8vo. London. 12mo., pp. 379.
Home Education.
Crown 8vo. London, 1838.
Physical Theory of Another Life. 8vo.
Fou.r Lectures on Spiritual Christianity,
Delivered in the Hanover-Square Rooms, London, March, 1841.
12mo., pp. 203. London, 1841.

Writings of Isaac Taylor.
Elements of Thought ;
Or, Concise Explanations, Alphabetically Arranged, of the Prin
cipal Terms Employed in the Different Branches of Intellectual
Philosophy. Seventh Edition. 12mo. London.
An Essay,
Introductory to a New Edition of Pascal's Thoughts. 12mo.
Transmission of Ancient Boohs
To Modern Times. 8vo.
Essay On the Application of Abstract Reasoning in the Christian Doc
trine. Originally published as an Introduction to Edwards on
the Will. 12mo., pp. 163. Boston, 1832.
Wesley an Metliodist ;
A Review, published in the Edinburgh Review.
Introductory Essay
To a Translation of Pfizer's Lifw of Luther.
Loyola and Jesuitism
In its Rudiments. 12mo., pp. 416. London, 1850.
Process of Historical Proof. 8vo.
Balance of Criminality,
Or Mental Error. 12mo.
Jane Taylor's Works.
A New Edition. With a Life and Notes. 5 vols. 12mo.
Wesley and Methodism.
Josephus, The Worhs of.
A New Translation, by the Rev. Robert Traill, with Notes, Ex
planatory Essays, and Pictorial Illustrations. Edited by Isaac
Taylor, lioyal 8vo. London, IS 11.

Writings of Isaac Taylor.
Restoration of Belief.
The Restoration of Belief. 12mo., pp. 3S1. Cambridge, 1855
World of Hind.
The World of Mind, an Elementary Book. 12mo. London, 1858
•Logic of Tli oology.
Logic of Theology and other Essays. 12rao,pp. 384. London,
1859.
Ultimate Civilization.
Ultimate Civilization, and other Essays. By Isaac Taylor
London, 1860.
Hebrew Poetry.
The Spirit ofthe Hebrew Poetry. Svo., pp. 363. London, 1861.

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