THE BIBLE AND 
 ENGLISH PROSE 
 
 STYLE 
 * 
 
 ALBERT S. COOK 

 
 LftfKflKT
 
 THE BIBLE AND ENGLISH 
 PROSE STYLE 
 
 Selections anti Comments 
 
 EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 ALBERT S. COOK 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 
 IN YALE UNIVERSITY 
 
 BOSTON, U.S.A. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY D. C. HEATH & CO. 
 1892
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1892, by 
 
 ALBERT S. COOK, 
 in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 
 
 TYPOGRAPHY BY J. S. GUSHING & Co., BOSTON, U.S.A. 
 PRESSVVORK BY BERWICK & SMITH, BOSTON, U.S.A.
 
 TO 
 
 MY FRIENDS 
 AND SOMETIME FELLOW-WORKERS 
 
 THE ENGLISH TEACHERS OF CALIFORNIA
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS xxvii 
 
 Importance of the Bible to the Student of English xxvii 
 
 English Imitators of Biblical Language xxxv 
 
 The King James Version xxxvii 
 
 Rhetorical Features of Biblical Language xliii 
 
 Rhythm of the Bible 1 
 
 Biblical Style and Language Contrasted \\ith those of Western 
 
 Nations lix 
 
 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS i 
 
 Exodus 15 i 
 
 Exodus 20 3 
 
 Deuteronomy 32 5 
 
 2 Samuel i . 1 7-27 9 
 
 i Kings 8 10 
 
 Psalm 23 16 
 
 Psalm 32 1 6 
 
 Psalm 90 17 
 
 Psalm 91 18 
 
 Psalm 103 19 
 
 Psalm 112 21 
 
 Psalm 119 21 
 
 Psalm 1 39 32 
 
 Proverbs 2 33
 
 vi CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS Continued. 
 
 Proverbs 3 34 
 
 Proverbs 8 36 
 
 Proverbs 12 39 
 
 Isaiah 58 ... 40 
 
 Matthew 5 42 
 
 Matthew 6 45 
 
 Matthew 7 48 
 
 The Acts 26 50 
 
 I Corinthians 13 52 
 
 I Corinthians 15 53 
 
 James 4 57 
 
 Revelation 5 58 
 
 Revelation 6 . . 60
 
 THE BIBLE AND ENGLISH PROSE STYLE
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 TO enrich and ennoble the language of a race is to enrich and 
 ennoble the sentiments of every man who has the command 
 of that language. This process of enrichment and ennoblement has 
 been going on in English for nearly thirteen hundred years, and one 
 of the chief agencies by which it has been effected is the influence, 
 direct and indirect, of the Bible. The first coherent words of Eng- 
 lish speech which have been transmitted to us are in a species of 
 verse which suggests, though somewhat remotely, the rhythms and 
 parallelisms of Hebrew poetry ; they constitute a hymn of praise l 
 
 1 I subjoin this most ancient specimen of English : 
 
 Nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard, 
 
 metudaes maecti end his modgidanc, 
 
 uerc uuldurfadur ; sue he uundra gihuaes, 
 
 eci dryctin, or astelidae. 
 
 He aerist scop aelda barnum 
 
 heben til hrofe, haleg scepen. 
 
 Tha middungeard, moncynnaes uard, 
 
 eci dryctin, asfter tiadae, 
 
 firum foldu, frea allmectig. 
 
 Which may be literally translated (case-signs in Italics) : 
 
 Now [we] shall glorify heaven-kingdom's Warden, 
 Creator's might and his mood-thought [sc. counsel] 
 Work [or, works] of the Glory-father ; as he of wonders of each [sc. of each 
 
 of wonders, of every wonder] , 
 Eternal Lord, [the] beginning established. 
 
 He erst shaped of men for the children [sc. for the children of men] 
 Heaven to [sc. for] roof, holy Shaper [sc. Creator] . 
 Then Midgard [sc. the earth] , mankind's Warden, 
 Eternal Lord, after prepared, 
 For men [the] earth, Lord almighty. 
 
 ix
 
 X INTR OD UC TION. 
 
 which includes a paraphrastic rendering of the first verse of 
 Genesis, and whose diction throughout is colored by Scriptural 
 reminiscences. A single word will suffice to illustrate the state- 
 ment last made. This word is contained in the first line of Csed- 
 mon's Hymn, and in its ancient spelling appears as hefaenricaes. 
 What is the meaning of hefaenricaes ? In modern English it would 
 appear as heavenric's, the possessive of heavenric, a word which 
 would be akin in formation to bishopric. The first element of the 
 compound is easily distinguished ; the second (identical with the 
 German ReicJi) means kingdom. Hence the expression as a whole 
 is (except for the final s, the sign of the genitive) the equivalent 
 of the phrase so common in Matthew's Gospel, but found nowhere 
 else in the Scriptures, the kingdom of heaven, or, more literally, of 
 the heavens. With this New Testament phrase may be contrasted 
 another which owes its origin to the Old Testament. Such an one 
 occurs in the fifth line of the Hymn, as aelda barniim, signifying 
 for the children of men. From no other conceivable source could 
 this idiom have been derived except from the Scriptures of the 
 Old Testament. It occurs several times in the Psalms, as well 
 as sporadically in Genesis, Proverbs, and other books. That it 
 should have originated among the English themselves is highly 
 improbable, and there is no other language in which it is known 
 to occur save as a translation or adaptation from the Hebrew. 
 The conclusion already propounded is therefore the only one 
 which it is possible to admit. 
 
 From Caedmon's time to the present the influence of Bible dic- 
 tion upon English speech has been virtually uninterrupted. The 
 Latin of Bede, like that of all the later Fathers of the Church, is 
 saturated with its peculiarities. To them the Vulgate was not 
 merely a treasury of fact and wisdom, but a norm of speech. The 
 Christian poetry antecedent to the Conquest exhibits a curious 
 blending of ancient Germanic with Hebraic idiom, to which must 
 be added a few Latin elements. The prose of Alfred and yElfric 
 could not be otherwise than powerfully affected by the books 
 which they were constantly obliged to quote or imitate. At inter- 
 vals during the Old English period, translations were made from
 
 INTRODUCTION. xi 
 
 the Gospels, the Psalms, and other portions of the Scriptures. 
 Bede was at work on a rendering of John's Gospel when he died, 
 and more than two centuries later new versions, or recensions of 
 older versions, were seeing the light. Theological activity, far 
 from ceasing at the Conquest, was rather stimulated into new and 
 more vigorous life. The era of cathedral building began, and 
 much about the same time the first Miracle Plays must have been 
 written. The tradition continues through such men as Orm, 
 Richard of Hampole, and Langland, until we reach Wyclif not 
 even Chaucer lying outside its pale. From Wyclif to our own 
 day the line is again unbroken. Who needs to be reminded of 
 Tyndale, of Latimer, of Cromwell and his Puritans, of Bunyan, 
 Addison, and Wesley? The Bible has been an active force in 
 English literature for over twelve hundred years, and during that 
 whole period it has been molding the diction of representative 
 thinkers and literary artists. Forced into rivalry with other 
 models, it has struggled against them, now vanquished for the 
 moment, now sharing with its competitors the trophies of con- 
 quest, and now sole master of the field, yet always most powerful 
 when the national life was most intense, and scarcely ever so 
 baffled but that some signs of its authority are manifest. 
 
 Before considering the nature of the plastic influence which the 
 Bible has exercised upon English style, it may be well to remind 
 ourselves of some of the more obvious ways in which Scriptural 
 language has been appropriated by English writers. Of these the 
 most important are direct quotation and allusion. 
 
 Under the head of direct quotation it will not be necessary to 
 include the use made of Scripture in sermons and theological 
 treatises ; it will be sufficient to refer to its occasional employment 
 by secular writers to produce the effect of impressiveness or 
 pathos. This effect has been aptly characterized in the current 
 number of an American periodical, by an author 1 whom I rejoice 
 to call my friend. His words are, " A felicitous use of Scriptural 
 quotations, with the solemn dignity of their style and feeling, 
 brings us with our narrow cares into the presence of past ages, 
 
 1 Rev. Frederic Palmer, in the Andover Review fur April, 1892.
 
 xii INTR OD UCTION. 
 
 and raises the individual from his solitariness into union with man 
 everywhere, with the infinite and the eternal." 
 
 This truth is akin to that recognized by Shakespeare and the 
 great dramatists of antiquity, that tragedy requires the occasional 
 introduction of the aphorism or gnomic sentence. The same 
 principle holds in prose, though perhaps its application is here 
 somewhat more limited. John Morley perceives its validity when 
 he says of Burke : " Burke will always be read with delight and edi- 
 fication, because in the midst of discussions on the local and the 
 accidental he scatters apothegms that take us into the regions of 
 lasting wisdom. In the midst of the torrent of the most strenuous 
 and passionate deliverances, he suddenly rises aloof from his im- 
 mediate subject, and in all tranquillity reminds us of some perma- 
 nent relation of things, some enduring truth of human life or 
 society." l If a writer is sufficient for the coinage of his own max- 
 ims, it may in general be best that he should confine himself to 
 these, especially where it is the pure intellect that is addressed ; 
 but if the sensibility is to be touched as well, a felicitous use of 
 Scriptural phraseology will hardly fail to stir the deepest springs 
 of emotion. Who has not been thrilled, even to tears, by the 
 organ note struck at the euthanasia of Sydney Carton ? 
 
 She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless each other. The 
 spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing worse than a sweet, 
 bright constancy is in the patient face. She goes next before him is gone; 
 the knitting-women count Twenty-two. 
 
 / am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord; he that believetli in 
 me, though he were dead, yet shall he live ; and whatever liveth and believeth 
 in me shall never die. 
 
 The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing 
 on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward 
 in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away. Twenty-three. 
 
 They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the peacefulest man's 
 face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked sublime and prophetic. 
 
 We might be tempted to believe that the emotion was created 
 by the circumstances, or by Dickens' exquisite art in the shap- 
 
 1 See also Aristotle's Rhetoric, Bk. 2, chap. 2 1 .
 
 INTRODUCTION, xiii 
 
 ing of his own sentences ; but read the final chapter without the 
 Scripture words, and the difference will be readily appreciated. 
 
 Akin to direct quotation, but not identical with it, is the height- 
 ening of style through the employment of Biblical allusion. An 
 instance of remote allusion is given by Payne, among the com- 
 ments which follow. 1 A more palpable one is supplied by an 
 apostrophe near the end of Shelley's Defense of Poetry, 
 
 Their errors have been weighed and found to have been dust in the bal- 
 ance; if their sins were as scarlet, they are now white as snow; they have 
 been washed in the blood of the mediator and redeemer, Time. Observe in 
 what a ludicrous chaos the imputations of real or fictitious crime have been 
 confused in the contemporary calumnies against poetry and poets; consider 
 how little is as it appears or appears as it is; look to your own motives, 
 and judge not, lest ye be judged. 
 
 Here there are no fewer than seven Biblical sentences woven 
 into a tissue all palpitating with generous sympathy and generous 
 indignation. 
 
 Similar effects are often to be noted in poetry. Thus from the 
 close of Aurora Leigh : 
 
 He turned instinctively, where, faint and far, 
 Along the tingling desert of the sky, 
 Beyond the circle of the conscious hills, 
 Were laid in jasper-stone as clear as glass 
 The first foundations of that new, near Day 
 Which should be builded out of heaven to God. 
 
 Or from Longfellow's Interlude before the Theologian's Tale : 
 
 Not to one church alone, but seven, 
 
 The voice prophetic spake from heaven; 
 
 And unto each the promise came, 
 
 Diversified, but still the same; 
 
 For him that overcometh are 
 
 The new name written on the stone, 
 
 The raiment white, the crown, the throne, 
 
 And I will give him the Morning Star ! 
 
 But our concern is with prose, not poetry, and in prose there 
 are all grades and settings of allusion, down to the sheerest flip- 
 
 1 See p. xxxvi.
 
 xi v IN TROD UC TION. 
 
 pancy, even the latter testifying, through its very irreverence, to 
 the arrowy momentum and tenacity of these winged words. 
 
 As instances of an average sort of allusion, remarkable neither 
 for elevation nor smartness, I select two or three from a single 
 volume of Matthew Arnold's essays (the italics are mine). 
 
 He [Wordsworth] is one of the very chief glories of English Poetry; and 
 by nothing is England so glorious as by her poetry. Let us lay aside every 
 weight which hinders our getting him recognized as this. 
 
 What we have of Shelley in poetry and prose suited with this charming 
 picture of him; Mrs. Shelley's account suited with it; it was a possession 
 which one would gladly have kept unimpaired. It still subsists, I must now 
 add; it subsists even after one has read the present biography; it subsists, 
 but so as by fire. 
 
 It [society] looked in Byron's glass as it looks in Lord Beaconsfield's, and 
 sees, or fancies that it sees, its own face there; and then it goes its way, and 
 straightway forgets what manner of man it saw. 
 
 When a writer, with a native vigor, lightness, and rapidity of 
 his own, has become wholly permeated, as it were, with the 
 thought and diction of the Bible, so that he has acquired its tone 
 and manner, and yet kept himself above the condition of the mere 
 servile and mechanical copyist, we have from him such a clear, 
 simple, and picturesque style as that of Bunyan. Such writing has 
 an archaic flavor, yet is intelligible to the meanest capacity ; may 
 be full of quotation, yet perfectly assimilates all that it quotes ; 
 abounds in allusion which it never degrades ; but is best in that it 
 seems to have drawn from the same perennial fountains as the 
 Bible itself, instead of merely standing to it in a dependent and 
 derivative relation. One or two familiar extracts from Bunyan 
 will serve as illustrations. 
 
 As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain 
 place, where was a Den; and I laid me down in that place to sleep : and as I 
 slept I dreamed a Dream. I dreamed, and behold I saw a man clothed with 
 Rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own House, a Book 
 in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open 
 the book, and read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled; and not 
 being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, 
 What shall I do?
 
 INTR OD UC TION. x v 
 
 Now I saw in my Dream that these two men went in at the Gate; and lo, 
 as they entered, they were transfigured, and they had Raiment put on that 
 shone like Gold. There were also that met them with Harps and Crowns, 
 and gave them to them, the Harp to praise withal, and the Crowns in token of 
 honor. Then I heard in my Dream that all the Bells in the City Rang again 
 for joy, and that it was said unto them, Enter ye into the joy of your Lord. I 
 also heard the men themselves, that they sang with a loud voice, saying, 
 Blessing, Honor, Glory, and Power be to Him that sitteth upon the Throne, 
 and to the La'fnb for ever and ever. 
 
 In such examples as these we can study the . Biblical style to 
 better advantage, perhaps, than in the Bible itself. While preserv- 
 ing the essential qualities of Hebraic diction, Bunyan presents 
 them at one remove from antiquity and its aloofness. Bunyan is 
 a man of our own race, living but yesterday, as it were, in com- 
 parison with the centuries which separate us from the authors of 
 the Bible. Moreover, in studying Bunyan we are not only study- 
 ing Biblical style in English, but we are studying English itself at 
 an epoch when, according to one of the most accomplished of 
 foreign critics, it reached its best estate. Let us hear what Ville- 
 main has to say upon this topic. The time he is speaking of is the 
 Restoration, and of it he affirms : l " English idiom then attained 
 its happiest epoch ; it was taking on refinement without becoming 
 impoverished ; it still, like the ancient Northern languages, had 
 its whole rich supply of native, energetic, concise expressions. 
 With these it had blended a strong tincture of Biblical imagination. 
 Besides, though it appropriated in passing many French words, it 
 only employed them, so to speak, as proper names and fashionable 
 phrases, and in no respect changed the primitive originality of its 
 exact and elliptical constructions, and the energy of its numberless 
 metaphors. In this respect it did not model itself upon less regu- 
 lar and less poetic tongues ; it remained in possession of its own 
 physiognomy and of all its vigor." 
 
 We now approach our subject proper. - What is the literary 
 quality which the Bible possesses, and which it has therefore been 
 communicating to English for nearly thirteen hundred years? In 
 
 1 Tableau de la litterature au XVIII' Slide, I. 88.
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 asking this question, we refer to the Bible as if it were a single 
 book, instead of being, as its very name signifies, a collection of 
 books, each with its own peculiarities, and differing as widely as 
 an impassioned lyric from a mere genealogy, as the detached 
 aphorisms of the Book of Proverbs from the intricate arguments 
 of the Epistles by Paul. But the term is convenient, and, after 
 all, there is little danger of misunderstanding. Every one recog- 
 nizes the main characteristics of Bible diction in general, though 
 he may never have been at the pains to define to himself just 
 what those characteristics are. To my mind they may be summed 
 up in a very brief phrase. Whatever their number or variety, I 
 think they may all be comprehended under a single term, noble 
 naturalness. 
 
 But the phrase, noble naturalness, may be vague enough to 
 stand in need of further definition. By ' natural ' in its application 
 to men'and women, and the books which concern men and women, 
 I mean ' conformable to human nature,' and by ' unnatural,' ' con- 
 trary to human nature, either in whole or in part.' Human nature 
 may, for this purpose, be regarded as made up of sensibility, intellect, 
 imagination, and will. A book whose arguments are an insult to 
 intelligence is unnatural ; but so is also, in some sense, a book 
 which does not address the intellect at all. The latter sort of book 
 may be called unnatural through defect. With this qualification, no 
 book can be said to be thoroughly natural which does not address 
 the whole man. The predominance of any one element of human 
 nature to the virtual exclusion of the rest is sufficient, in a man or 
 a book, to constitute a kind of unnaturalness. It is in this sense, 
 therefore, that the Bible possesses eminent naturalness, as I shall 
 attempt to show more at length in the sequel ; and if to this 
 naturalness be added an accent of dignity or elevation, the prod- 
 uct will be what I have called noble naturalness. 
 
 Matthew Arnold has devoted a large part of his admirable essay 
 On Translating Homer to the proof and elucidation of four state- 
 ments concerning the style of Homer. In one place, by way of 
 summary, he says: "Homer is rapid in his movement, Homer is 
 plain in his words and style, Homer is simple in his ideas, Homer
 
 INTRODUCTION. xvii 
 
 is noble in his manner." An expansion of his thought is found in 
 another passage, as follows : " The translator of Homer should 
 above all be penetrated by a sense of four qualities of his author ; 
 that he is eminently rapid ; that he is eminently plain and di- 
 rect, both in the evolution of his thought and in the expression of 
 it, that is, both in his syntax and in his words ; that he is emi- 
 nently plain and direct in the substance of his thought, that is, in 
 his matter and ideas ; and finally that he is eminently noble." 
 
 Let us assume that the fact is as Matthew Arnold alleges, and 
 that, viewed in relation to most authors, Homer's narrative is uni- 
 formly rapid, plain, simple, and noble. How does the Homeric 
 narrative compare in these respects with those of the Bible ? Evi- 
 dently it is with respect to narrative that Homer and the Bible 
 should be compared, if they are compared at all, for it is this de- 
 partment of literature that Homer represents. For the answer to 
 this question I may refer to Chateaubriand's parallel on p. Ixiii. I 
 do this with the more confidence, as I am assured by my colleague, 
 Professor Seymour, whose authority on the subject of Homer is not 
 likely to be impugned on this side of the Atlantic, that Chateau- 
 briand has in no respect misrepresented the Homeric style, and 
 that an objection on this score cannot be made to lie against his 
 paraphrase of the verses from Ruth. But, leaving Chateaubriand's 
 parallel out of consideration, and appealing to the consciousness 
 of what the old Morality calls Everyman, did any one ever think 
 a New Testament parable too long, too involved, or too mean ? 
 Did any one ever think so of any Gospel narrative whatever, of 
 the Offering of Isaac by Abraham, or the Story of Joseph ? 
 
 Here, then, we might rest the claim for the noble natural- 
 ness of the Biblical style. What can be more natural than that 
 which, without demanding conscious effort, calls up a grateful 
 echo in the heart of every man, and offends no one by the excess 
 of any quality in itself gostfi ? 
 
 But to pursue the subject somewhat further into detail. I have 
 referred above to a division of human nature into sensibility, in- 
 tellect, imagination, and will. To each of these corresponds a 
 species of writing which is addressed to it, and constitutes its
 
 xviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 aliment. Thus mathematics, and philosophy viewed in one aspect, 
 appeal chiefly to the intellect ; certain kinds of poetry affect 
 almost exclusively the sensibilities, or the imagination, or both con- 
 jointly. Again, exhortations to resolve and action are primarily 
 directed at the will, though they may call in the aid of the allied 
 faculties. French critics, particularly those of the classical school, 
 are wont to assert that in French literature the intellect, or reason, 
 is supreme, other faculties being kept in strict subordination to 
 this one. In Carlyle, on the other hand, we might say that the 
 pure intellect is somewhat in abeyance ; in much of Shelley's 
 verse that both the intellect and the will are comparatively disre- 
 garded. With the Bible it is otherwise. Speaking broadly, it is 
 pervaded at once by a rational element, a sensuous element, an 
 imaginative element, and an animating or motive element. It is 
 the union of these in due proportions which constitutes full and 
 perfect naturalness, and such union we have in many parts of the 
 Bible. 
 
 The Scriptures everywhere postulate intellect or the absence of 
 it ; but only in a small minority of instances, is it dealt with in 
 what may be called the way of argument, or reasoning. There is 
 no attempt to convert men from their errors by ratiocinative or 
 philosophical processes. A right state of mind is denoted by such 
 words as understanding, or wisdom. This is conceived as the di- 
 rect gift of God, and connotes much besides clearness of intel- 
 lectual vision. To the perfection of wisdom a right state of the 
 will and affections is assumed as necessary, and thus we are led 
 back to a consideration of human nature in its totality. 
 
 The presence of imagination in the Bible will need no proof. 
 Who that has read the Psalms, or the Prophets, or the Apocalypse, 
 can doubt it for a moment? And who will have any more hesita- 
 tion in recognizing that the guidance of the will is perhaps the 
 primary purpose which underlies history and precept, proverb, 
 hymn, and vision of seer? 
 
 The sensuous element is perceptible in the metaphoric language 
 and. in the rhythm. However lofty or sublime be the sentiment, 
 the diction is concrete, never abstract. Every chapter with
 
 INTRODUCTION. xix 
 
 comparatively few exceptions is a gallery of word-pictures; and 
 it is this picturesqueness which makes the Bible always attractive 
 and usually intelligible. To the great bulk of readers the abstract 
 is identical with the dry, and but few persons could be won to a 
 perusal, much less imitation, of the Bible, were it couched in the 
 phraseology of an Aristotle. The picturesqueness of Scriptural 
 language addresses the mind's eye ; its simple, regular, natural 
 harmony addresses the ear. Its harmony is simple, because it de- 
 pends mainly on parallelism, or, as it has been called, antiphony ; 
 with this may be contrasted the intricate symphonic effects of a 
 Pindaric ode, or of its most felicitous imitations in English, and, 
 in prose, the now accelerated, now delayed and regressive footing 
 of a prolonged Ciceronian period. It is regular, because the ear, 
 when ever so little accustomed to it, knows just what to expect. 
 The verses fall into a march-tune ; their movement is disciplinary, 
 first of the emotions, and through them of life and conduct. It is 
 natural, because the emphatic syllable of the word and this alike 
 in Hebrew and English coincides with the natural stress of the 
 rhythm, and both with the pulse of the thought itself. In other 
 words, that syllable which is fullest of meaning gets at the same 
 time the rhythmical stroke within the word and within the verse. 
 If this principle be compared with the quantitative laws of Latin 
 and Greek which apply to the harmonies of prose no less than 
 to those of poetry the difference will be apparent. Moreover, 
 the balance of clauses is natural in another sense, in that their 
 length coincides approximately with that of a single expiration of 
 the breath. And this, as it is closely related with the pulse of the 
 blood, with the beat of the heart, elucidates and justifies the 
 remark of Dean Stanley, in his History of the Jewish Church 
 (2. 165) : "'The rapid stroke as of alternate wings,' 'the heaving 
 and sinking as of the troubled heart,' which have been beautifully 
 described as the essence of the parallel structure of Hebrew verses, 
 are exactly suited for the endless play of human feeling, and for 
 the understanding of every age and nation." 
 
 The difference between the simplicity and directness of the Bible 
 and the more complex and involved structure of Greek prose
 
 XX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 may be shown by comparing the close of a Thucydidean speech, 
 being about one-sixth of Brasidas' harangue to his soldiers before 
 their engagement with the Illyrians (Thuc. 4. 126), with the whole 
 of Gideon's address to his men before their encounter with the 
 Midianites (Judges 7. 17, 18). 
 
 If you repel their tumultuous onset, and, when opportunity offers, withdraw 
 again in good order, keeping your ranks, you will sooner arrive at a place of 
 safety, and will also learn the lesson that mobs like these, if an adversary with- 
 stand their first attack, do but threaten at a distance and make a flourish of 
 valor, although if he yields to them they are quick enough to show their courage 
 in following at his heels when there is no danger. 
 
 Look on me, and do likewise; and behold, when I come to the outside of 
 the camp, it shall be that, as I do, so shall ye do. 
 
 When I blow with a trumpet, I and all that are with me, then blow ye the 
 trumpets also on every side of all the camp, and say, The sword of the Lord, 
 and of Gideon. 
 
 For purposes of comparison I add another speech, the prophecy 
 of Jahaziel from 2 Chron. 20. 15-17, merely modernizing the 
 punctuation in order that the resemblance of its sentence structure 
 to that of a favorite species of nineteenth century English may be 
 more apparent. 
 
 Hearken ye, all Juclah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, and thou king 
 Jehoshaphat. Thus saith the LORD unto you : Be not afraid nor dismayed by 
 reason of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours, but God's. To-mor- 
 row go ye down against them. Behold, they come up by the cliff of Ziz, and 
 ye shall find them at the end of the brook, before the wilderness of Jeruel. 
 Ye shall not need to fight in this battle. Set yourselves, stand ye still, and 
 see the salvation of the LORD with you, O Judah and Jerusalem. Fear not, 
 nor be dismayed. To-morrow go out against them, for the LORD will be 
 with you. 
 
 Sensibility, we have seen, has a large place assigned it in the 
 Bible. Every emotion is comprised in the mighty gamut. Is it 
 friendship ? Behold the love of David for Jonathan. Is it right- 
 eous anger? Consider the imprecations of the Psalmist. Is it 
 exultation? Read over the Song of Deborah. Is it reverence, 
 joy, hope, faith, grief, pity ? Each one finds a tongue, and speaks 
 the expressive language of the heart. How should the qualities of
 
 INTRODUCTION. xxi 
 
 strength, vigor, simplicity, pathos, sublimity, be absent from com- 
 positions such as these ? How should there be room for the 
 intrusion of a frigid artificiality ? 
 
 Artificiality is a sign that intellect has become a usurper on the 
 domain of her rivals. It is a sign that, under pretence of issuing 
 in a more presentable form the crude data furnished by nature 
 and the human heart, the intellect has mangled, and mingled, and 
 disguised them beyond recognition. It is not to the Bible, then, 
 that we must look for artificiality, whether in the form of bombast, 
 of empty declamation, or of supersubtle and wiredrawn conceits. 
 Here is life ; here is nature ; nor is it matter for regret that, 
 compared with the average endowment of the race, it is a higher 
 life, a melior natura. 
 
 To turn now to the manifestation of some of these qualities in 
 English style. Evidently there must be many cases in which it 
 would be impossible to determine whether, when they appear in 
 an English author, they have been immediately derived from con- 
 verse with the Bible, or from familiarity with authors who directly, 
 or through some intermediary, have drawn them from that source, 
 or whether, in fine, they may have originated sporadically, as it 
 were, and have accidentally, or rather most naturally, coincided 
 and blended with the same qualities already in process of dissem- 
 ination from this one grand reservoir. 
 
 In the following passage from Macaulay's Essay on Milton, it 
 will perhaps be conceded that he is Hebraizing, at least in 
 part. 
 
 He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker; but he set his foot on 
 the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement he prayed with convul- 
 sions, and groans, and tears. He was half maddened by glorious or terrible 
 illusions. lie heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. 
 He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of 
 everlasting (ire. Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the sceptre of 
 the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that 
 God had hid his face from him. . . . The intensity of their feelings on 
 one subject made them tranquil on every other. One overpowering sentiment 
 had subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its 
 terrors, anil pleasure its charms.
 
 xxii JXTRODUCTION. 
 
 The kind of sentence-structure illustrated by this extract has 
 been called constructive or artificial, in contradistinction to an- 
 other known as the cumulative. Much of Milton's prose is in 
 the latter style. Of the former Payne says (Introduction to Burke's 
 Select Works, Vol. I.) : "The modern or French method is to 
 unite the members of the passage by a connexion of ideas ; as 
 Dr. Whately expresses it, ' to interweave or rather felt them 
 together,' by making the thought pass over from one member to 
 the other ; by concealing the sutures, and making the parts fit 
 into and complement each other. This method leaves better 
 opportunities for marking boldly the transitions in the argument, 
 and, if appropriate, making corresponding changes in the style." 
 
 Now this ' modern or French method ' probably owes some- 
 thing to the epistolary style of Cicero, something to the Latinity of 
 the silver age, something to Biblical models, and something to an 
 artistic striving after inartificiality, a pursuit of the analytic and sim- 
 ple, in avoidance of the synthetic and complex. The severance in 
 the literary product between what is due to one and what to another 
 of these causes will often be extremely difficult, if not impossible. 
 In the subjoined extract from Addison's Vision of Mirzah, how- 
 ever, the nature of the subject and the general mode of treatment 
 make the task easier, and lead to the conclusion that it certainly 
 owes much to Scriptural suggestion. 
 
 He then led me to the highest pinnacle of the rock, and placed me on the 
 top of it. Cast thy eyes eastward, said he, and tell me what thou seest. I 
 see, said I, a huge valley and a prodigious tide of water rolling through it. 
 The valley that thou seest, said he, is the vale of misery, and the tide of water 
 that thou seest is part of the great tide of eternity. What is the reason, sai.l 
 I, that the tide I see rises out of a thick mist at one end, and again loses itself 
 in a thick mist at the other? What thou seest, said he, is that portion of 
 eternity which is called time, measured out by the sun, and reaching from the 
 beginning of the world to its consummation. Examine now, said he, this sea 
 that is thus bounded with darkness at both ends, and tell me what thou dis- 
 coverest in it. I see a bridge, said I, standing in the midst of the tide. The 
 bridge thou seest, said he, is human life; consider it attentively. Upon a 
 more leisurely survey of it, I found that it consisted of threescore and ten 
 entire arches, with several broken arches, which, added to those that were 
 entire, made up the number about an hundred.
 
 INTRODUCTION. xxiii 
 
 The archaic style of parts of the Urn Burial suggests a similar 
 pattern, as a glance at this passage will show. 
 
 The dead seem all alive in the human Hades of Homer, yet cannot well 
 speak, prophesy, or know the living, except they drink blood, wherein is the 
 life of man. And therefore the souls of Penelope's paramours, conducted by 
 Mercury, chirped like bats, and those which followed Hercules made a noise 
 but like a flock of birds. The departed spirits know things past and to come, 
 yet are ignorant of things present. Agamemnon foretells what should happen 
 unto Ulysses, yet ignorantly inquires what is become of his own son. The 
 ghosts are afraid of swords in Homer; yet Sibylla tells /Eneas in Virgil, the 
 thin habit of spirits was beyond the force of weapons. 
 
 But it is when we come to authors like Hume, Hazlitt, or Lamb, 
 that we are more in doubt. What shall we say in this respect of 
 paragraphs like the following? 
 
 The Grecian addressed himself to an audience much less refined than the 
 Roman senate or judges. The lowest vulgar of Athens were his sovereigns 
 and the arbiters of his eloquence. Yet is his manner more chaste and austere 
 than that of the other. Could it be copied, its success would be infallible 
 over a modern assembly. It is rapid harmony, exactly adjusted to the sense. 
 It is vehement reasoning, without any appearance of art. It is disdain, anger, 
 boldness, freedom, involved in a continual stream of argument. And of all 
 human productions, the orations of Demosthenes present to us the models 
 which approach the nearest to perfection. 
 
 But I may say of him here, that he is the only person I ever knew who 
 answered to the idea of a man of genius. He is the only person from whom 
 I ever learnt anything. Ther,e is only one thing he could learn from me in 
 return, but that he has not. He was the first poet I ever knew. His genius 
 at that time had angelic wings, and fed on manna. He talked on for ever; 
 and you wished him to talk on for ever. His thoughts did not seem to come 
 with labor and effort, but as if borne on the gusts of genius, and as if the 
 wings of his imagination lifted him from off his feet. His voice rolled on the 
 ear like the pealing organ, and its sound alone was the music of thought. 
 His mind was clothed with wings; and raised on them, he lifted philosophy 
 to heaven. 
 
 My reading has been lamentably desultory and unmethodical. Odd, out of 
 the way, old English plays and treatises, have supplied me with most of my 
 notions and ways of feeling. In everything that relates to science, I am 
 a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world. I should have scaro ly
 
 xxiv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 cut a figure among the franklins, or country gentlemen, in King John's days. 
 I know less geography than a schoolboy of six weeks' standing. To me a 
 map of old Ortelius is as authentic as Arrowsmith. 
 
 The first of these is from a discourse on Eloquence, by Hume, 
 the second, Hazlitt's opinion on Coleridge, from his English Poets, 
 and the third from Elia (The Old and the New Schoolmaster}. 
 They are all in the constructive or artificial style, and, so far as 
 syntax goes, have much in common with the Bible. It may be 
 urged that their authors are quite as likely to be imitators of 
 Seneca, or of his imitators. But, apart from the question whether 
 Seneca himself may not have come under Hebraic influence, it 
 must still be said that the ear of the English reader (and it is for 
 the reader that, after all has been said, style is elaborated) had 
 been attuned, not by the treatises On Anger and On Benefits, but 
 by the cadences of Scripture. If now we compare these citations 
 with examples of the cumulative style, the difference will be most 
 conspicuous. The first extract which follows is from Hooker's 
 Ecclesiastical Polity (Bk. I. Chap. 3), the second from Milton's 
 Of Reformation in England, near its close. 
 
 But we must further remember also (which thing to touch in a word shall 
 suffice) that as in this respect they have their law, which law directeth them 
 in the means whereby they tend to their own perfection, so likewise another 
 law there is, which toucheth them as they are sociable parts united into one 
 body, a law which bindeth them each to serve unto other's good, and all to 
 prefer the good of the whole before whatsoever their own particular, as we 
 plainly see they do when things natural in that regard forget their ordinary 
 natural wont, that which is heavy mounting sometime upwards of its own 
 accord, and forsaking the centre of the earth, which to itself is most natural, 
 even as if it did hear itself commanded to let go the good it privately wisheth, 
 and to relieve the present distress of nature in common. 
 
 Then, amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one may perhaps 
 be heard offering at high strains in new and lofty measure to sing and cele- 
 brate thy divine mercies and marvelous judgments in this land throughout all 
 ages; whereby this great and warlike nation, instructed and inured to the 
 fervent and continual practice of truth and righteousness, and casting far from 
 her the rags of her whole vices, may press on hard to that high and happy 
 emulation to be found the soberest, wisest, and most Christian people at that 
 day when thou, the eternal and shortly expected King, shall open the clouds
 
 INTRODUCTION. xxv 
 
 to judge the several kingdoms of the world, and, distributing national honors 
 and rewards to religious and just commonwealths, shalt put an end to all 
 earthly tyrannies, proclaiming thy universal and mild monarchy through 
 heaven and earth, where they undoubtedly that by their labors, counsels, and 
 prayers have been earnest for the common good of religion and their country, 
 shall receive, above the inferior orders of the blessed, the regal addition of 
 principalities, legions, and thrones into their glorious titles, and in superemi- 
 iKMice of beatific vision progressing the dateless and irrevoluble circle of 
 eternity, shall clasp inseparable hands with joy and bliss, in overmeasure 
 for ever. 
 
 Who could mistake these, though the latter is colored by Script- 
 ural phrases, for imitations of Scriptural style, or regard them as 
 conformable to it ? l In its simplicity and concreteness Robinson 
 Crusoe has much more in common with the Bible, and it is from 
 this source that those qualities were no doubt in large measure 
 derived. Let us see. 
 
 I found also that the island I was in was barren, and, as I saw good reason 
 to believe, uninhabited, except by wild beasts, of whom however I saw none. 
 Yet I saw abundance of fowls, but knew not their kinds; neither when I 
 killed them could I tell what was fit for food, and what not. At my coming 
 back I shot at a great bird which I saw sitting upon a tree on the side of a 
 great wood. I believe it was the first gun that had been fired there since the 
 creation of the world. I had no sooner fired but from all the parts of the 
 wood there arose an innumerable number of fowls of many sorts, making a 
 confused screaming, and crying every one according to his usual note, but not 
 one of them of any kind that I knew. As for the creature I killed, I took it 
 to be a kind of a hawk, its color and beak resembling it, but had no talons or 
 claws more than common. Its flesh was carrion, and fit for nothing. 
 
 But the matter is beyond dispute when we come to a piece of 
 classic prose like Lincoln's Second Inaugural, which certainly 
 owes nothing to the Romans (oftener Spaniards) of the Deca- 
 dence. 
 
 Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it 
 has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might 
 cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for 
 an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read 
 the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against 
 
 1 They rather suggest Cicero as an ultimate model.
 
 xxvi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's 
 assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but 
 let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be 
 answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his 
 own purposes. 
 
 At this point we may pause, for we need no further demonstra- 
 tion of the indebtedness of English prose style to the Bible, nor 
 would it be easy to discover a better illustration of Biblical quali- 
 ties in modern guise, exemplified in a passage of more interest 
 to all the world. South reckoned it a mark of illiteracy to be 
 fond of ' high-flown metaphors and allegories, attended and set 
 off with scraps of Greek and Latin.' If this be true, the American 
 people in so far escape the imputation as they have set the seal of 
 their approval on such writing as Lincoln's ; and that they have 
 had the judgment and taste to do so is due, more than to any 
 other cause, to their familiarity with the Bible. 1 
 
 1 For a parallel influence of the Bible on German cf. Nagelsbach's remarks 
 in his Lateinische Stilistik, p. 7 : " Wahrend nun in den Schulen diese gross- 
 tentheils brotlosen Kunste getrieben wurden und das Latein so sehr seine 
 Wiirde verlor, dass es vor hundert Jahren in Deutschland wohl schwerlich 
 mehr als drei geschmackvolle Stilisten gab, Mosheim, Gesner und Ernesti, hob 
 sich auf der andern Seite die Muttersprache, an die rein gebliebene Kir- 
 chen- und Bibehprache ankniipfend, zu einer nie geahnten Darstellungsfdhig- 
 keit."
 
 ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 i. Importance of the Bible to the Student of English. 
 [RusKiN, Prate rita, Chap, i.] 
 
 WALTER SCOTT and Pope's Homer were reading of my 
 own selection, but my mother forced me, by steady daily 
 toil, to learn long chapters of the Bible by heart ; as well as to 
 read it every syllable through, aloud, hard names and all, from 
 Genesis to the Apocalypse, about once a year ; and to that dis- 
 cipline patient, accurate, and resolute I owe, not only a 
 knowledge of the book, which I find occasionally serviceable, but 
 much of my general power of taking pains, and the best part of 
 my taste in literature. From Walter Scott's novels I might easily, 
 as I grew older, have fallen to other people's novels ; and Pope 
 might, perhaps, have led me to take Johnson's English, or Gibbon's, 
 as types of language; but, once knowing the 32nd of Deuter- 
 onomy, the ngth Psalm, the i5th of ist Corinthians, the Sermon 
 on the Mount, and most of the Apocalypse, every syllable by 
 heart, and having always a way of thinking with myself what words 
 meant, it was not possible for me, even in the foolishest times of 
 youth, to write entirely superficial or formal English. 
 
 [RUSKIN, Pmterita, Chap. 2.] 
 
 I have next with deeper gratitude to chronicle what I owed to 
 my mother for the resolutely consistent lessons which so exercised 
 me in the Scriptures as to make every word of them familiar to 
 my ear in habitual music, yet in that familiarity reverenced, as 
 transcending all thought, and ordaining all conduct.
 
 xxviii ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 This she effected, not by her own sayings or personal authority ; 
 but simply by compelling me to read the book thoroughly, for 
 myself. As soon as I was able to read with fluency, she began a 
 course of Bible work with me, which never ceased till I went to 
 Oxford. She read alternate verses with me, watching, at first, 
 every intonation of my voice, and correcting the false ones, till 
 she made me understand the verse, if within my reach, rightly, 
 and energetically. It might be beyond me altogether ; that she 
 did not care about ; but she made sure that as soon as I got hold 
 of it at all, I should get hold of it by the right end. 
 
 In this way she began with the first verse of Genesis, and went 
 straight through, to the last verse of the Apocalypse ; hard names, 
 numbers, Levitical law, and all ; and began again at Genesis the 
 next day. If a name was hard, the better the exercise in pronun- 
 ciation, if a chapter was tiresome, the better lesson in patience, 
 if loathsome, the better lesson in faith that there was some use 
 in its being so outspoken. After our chapters, (from two to three 
 a day, according to their length, the first thing after breakfast, and 
 no interruption from servants allowed, none from visitors, who 
 either joined in the reading or had to stay upstairs, and none 
 from any visitings or excursions, except real traveling,) I had to 
 learn a few verses by heart, or repeat, to make sure I had not lost, 
 something of what was already known ; and, with the chapters 
 thus gradually possessed from the first word to the last, I had to 
 learn the whole body of the fine old Scottish paraphrases, which 
 are good, melodious, and forceful verse ; and to which, together 
 with the Bible itself, I owe the first cultivation of my ear in 
 sound. 
 
 It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my mother 
 thus taught me, that which cost me most to learn, and which was, 
 to my child's mind, chiefly repulsive the ngth Psalm has 
 now become of all the most precious to me. . . . 
 
 But it is only by deliberate effort that I recall the long morning 
 hours of toil, as regular as sunrise, toil on both sides equal 
 by which, year after year, my mother forced me to learn these 
 paraphrases, and chapters, (the eighth of ist Kings being one
 
 RUSK IN. xxix 
 
 try it, good reader, in a leisure hour !) allowing not so much as 
 a syllable to be missed or misplaced ; while every sentence was 
 required to be said over and over again till she was satisfied with 
 the accent of it. I recollect a struggle between us of about three 
 weeks, concerning the accent of the 'of in the lines 
 
 Shall any following spring revive 
 The ashes of the urn ? 
 
 I insisting, partly in childish obstinacy, and partly in true instinct 
 for rhythm, (being wholly careless on the subject both of urns and 
 their contents,) on reciting it with an accented of. It was not, 
 
 1 say, till after three weeks' labor, that my mother got the accent 
 lightened on the 'of and laid on the ashes, to her mind. But 
 had it taken three years, she would have done it, having once 
 undertaken to do it. And, assuredly, had she not done it, well, 
 there's no knowing what would have happened ; but I'm very 
 thankful she did. 
 
 I have just opened my oldest (in use) Bible, a small, closely, 
 and very neatly printed volume it is, printed in Edinburgh by Sir 
 D. Hunter Blair and J. Bruce, Printers to the King's Most Excel- 
 lent Majesty, in 1816. Yellow, now, with age, and flexible, but 
 not unclean, with much use, except that the lower corners of the 
 pages at 8th of ist Kings, and 32d Deuteronomy, are worn some- 
 what thin and dark, the learning of these two chapters having cost 
 me much pains. My mother's list of the chapters with which, thus 
 learned, she established my soul in life, has just fallen out of it. 
 
 I will take what indulgence the incurious reader can give me, 
 for printing the list thus accidentally occurrent : 
 
 Exodus chapters i5th and 2Oth. 
 
 2 Samuel " ist, from i7th verse to the end. 
 i Kings " 8th. 
 
 Psalms (23d, 32d, Qoth, gist, iO3d, nzth, 
 
 ( i igth, i39th. 
 
 Proverbs zd, 3d, 8th, i2th. 
 
 Isaiah " 58th.
 
 xxx ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 Matthew chapters 5th, 6th, 7th. 
 
 Acts " 2 6th. 
 
 i Corinthians " i3th, i5th. 
 
 James " 4th. 
 
 Revelation " 5th, 6th. 
 
 And truly, though I have picked up the elements of a little 
 further knowledge in mathematics, meteorology, and the like, in 
 after life, and owe not a little to the teaching of many people, this 
 maternal installation of my mind in that property of chapters, 
 I count very confidently the most precious, and, on the whole, 
 the one essential part of all my education. 
 
 [MATTHEW ARNOLD, Isaiah of Jerusalem, pp. 4-5.] 
 
 I rate the value of the operation of poetry and literature upon 
 men's minds extremely high ; and from no poetry and literature, 
 not even from our own Shakespeare and Milton, great as they are 
 and our own as they are, have I, for my own part, received so 
 much delight and stimulus as from Homer and Isaiah. To know, 
 in addition to one's native literature, a great poetry and literature 
 not of home growth, is an influence of the highest value ; it very 
 greatly widens one's range. The Bible has thus been an influence 
 of the highest value for the nations of Christendom. And the 
 effect of Hebrew poetry can be preserved and transferred in a 
 foreign language, as the effect of other great poetry cannot. The 
 effect of Homer, the effect of Dante, is and must be in great 
 measure lost in a translation, because their poetry is a poetry of 
 metre, or of rime, or both ; and the effect of these is not really 
 transferable. A man may make a good English poem with the 
 matter and thoughts of Homer or Dante, may even try to repro- 
 duce their metre, or to reproduce their rime ; but the metre and 
 rime will be in truth his own, and the effect will be his, not the 
 effect of Homer or Dante. Isaiah's, on the other hand, is a 
 poetry, as is well known, of parallelism ; it depends not on metre 
 and rime, but on a balance of thought, conveyed by a correspond-
 
 BO WEN. xxxi 
 
 ing balance of sentence ; and the effect of this can be transferred 
 to another language. Hebrew poetry has in addition the effect 
 of assonance and other effects which cannot perhaps be trans- 
 ferred ; but its main effect, its effect of parallelism of thought and 
 sentence, can. 
 
 [BOWEN, A Layman's Study of the English Bible, Chap, i.] 
 
 Leaving these general considerations, let us now come to par- 
 ticulars, and consider that aspect of the study of the English Bible 
 which makes it interesting to the mere lover of literature. Look 
 first at the diction, and weigh its merits regarded simply as a spec- 
 imen of English prose. The opinion of scholars is unanimous 
 that its excellence in this respect is unmatched ; English literature 
 has nothing equal to it, and is indeed largely indebted to con- 
 scious or unconscious imitation of it for many of its best and most 
 characteristic qualities. The diction is remarkable for clearness, 
 simplicity, and strength. It is as simple and natural as the prat- 
 tle of children at play, yet never lacking in grace or dignity, or in 
 variety and expressive force. Till our attention is called to it, we 
 seldom notice what I may call the homeliness of the style, tire 
 selection of short and pithy Saxon turns of expression, and the 
 wealth and strength of idiomatic phrase. One who should 
 attempt to imitate it would easily lapse into vulgar and colloquial 
 language, or, in striving to avoid this fault, into a certain primness 
 and stiffness of speech, which is even worse. In truth, it cannot 
 be imitated ; to write such prose as that of our Common Version 
 is now one of the lost arts. And I have not yet mentioned what 
 is to many persons the peculiar and most striking charm of the 
 style ; that is, its musical quality, the silvery ring of the sentences, 
 and the rich and varied melody of its cadences whenever the 
 sense comes to a close. . . . 
 
 Now the century beginning about 1520, during which our 
 English Bible thus gradually obtained its present beauty and finish, 
 was precisely that in which our noble mother tongue completed 
 its process of development and attained its highest stage of perfec-
 
 xxxii ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 tion. Since this period, there has been indeed an enlargement of 
 its stores, in order to keep pace with the progress of science, 
 invention, and art ; but we witness no further process of organic 
 growth. We see change, but no further amendment ; rather a 
 deterioration. This was the age of Hooker, Shakespeare, and 
 Bacon ; of Spenser, Latimer, and Raleigh ; and it prepared the 
 way for Hobbes and Dryden. It was the golden age of the Eng- 
 lish drama. These are great names, and many passages in their 
 writings show a complete mastery of the English language, and 
 form a grand display of its versatility, its sweetness, and its strength. 
 But beside them all, and above them all, is the prose of our Com- 
 mon Version. It is more sustained than any of them, more 
 uniformly strong and melodious in its flow, reminding one of the 
 famous couplet of Denham on the Thames : 
 
 Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull, 
 Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full. 
 
 And it has largely contributed to the fixation of the language at 
 this -its best estate, since the number of words in it the meaning 
 of which has become obsolete in the course of nearly three subse- 
 quent centuries is so small that they may almost be counted on 
 the fingers. True, the diction seems often to have a slightly 
 archaic tinge ; but this is an advantage rather than a fault, 
 as it tends to preserve the dignity and impressiveness of the 
 style. . . . 
 
 I ought to cite specimens in justification of the high praise here 
 awarded to the English style of the Bible. But one is at a loss 
 what to choose out of the wealth of material at hand ; and then, 
 so much of the charm of passages from the Scriptures is due to 
 associations going back to one's childhood, and to the intrinsic 
 power and sweetness of the thought, the precept, or the sentiment, 
 that it is hard to fasten our attention on the mere diction. But 
 in what follows, let me ask the reader to divest his mind, if he can, 
 from all thought of the doctrine conveyed, or of the tenderness 
 and pathos of the sentiment, and to consider the felicity and the 
 music of the words alone.
 
 BO WEN. xxxiii 
 
 Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
 rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am meek and lowly in 
 heart ; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my 
 burden is light. Matthew n. 28-30. 
 
 Again : 
 
 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them 
 which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children 
 together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would 
 not ! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye 
 shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the 
 name of the Lord. Matthew 23. 37-39. 
 
 Once more : 
 
 For ther? is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and 
 that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax 
 old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; yet through the 
 scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant. But man dieth, 
 and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the 
 waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up; so man lieth 
 down and riseth not; till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor 
 be raised out of their sleep. Job 14. 7-12. 
 
 Lastly : 
 
 I will take no bullock out of thy house, 
 
 Nor he goats out of thy folds. 
 
 For every beast of the forest is mine, 
 
 And the cattle upon a thousand hills. 
 
 Will I eat the flesh of bulls, 
 
 Or drink the blood of goats? 
 
 Offer unto God thanksgiving; 
 
 And pay thy vows unto the Most High : 
 
 And call upon me in the day of trouble : 
 
 I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me. 
 
 Psalm 50. 9-15. 
 
 1 may seem to have labored this point too much. But what is 
 here said is particularly addressed to young students, since it may 
 be supposed that one leading purpose of their education is the for- 
 mation of a good prose style, at once clear and flowing, strong and 
 pure. I hope to show that the proper study of the Bible may be,
 
 xxxiv ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 and ought to be, a means of comprehensive and thorough train- 
 ing, not only in theology, to which it is but too often exclusively 
 devoted, and in philosophy, poetry, and history, but also in litera- 
 ture and English style. In any scheme of University studies, it is 
 a great mistake to make over any one department altogether to 
 mere specialists, and thereby to lead the mind of the student along 
 one narrow track, strictly fenced in against any excursion over the 
 other broad fields of human culture which lie around it on every 
 side. Now this end, the formation of a good prose style, cannot 
 be attained by precept and system, by conscious effort or the 
 observance of fixed rules. But iust as a man's character and con- 
 duct are mainly determined by the company that he keeps, so his 
 modes of utterance are silently fashioned by unconscious imitation 
 of the models which he has often before him, that is, by the books 
 which he most familiarly reads. It is said of Voltaire, that he 
 always had a copy of the ' Petit Careme ' of Massillon lying on 
 his writing-table, to be taken up during any odd quarter of -an 
 hour, for the sake of its influence on his style. The method was 
 good, though perhaps the choice was not happy. I think Pascal, 
 Rochefoucauld, or La Bruyere would have served his purpose bet- 
 ter. But there can be no doubt what English models we ought to 
 select. Keep the Bible, a volume of Shakespeare, and Lord Bacon's 
 Essays always within arm's-reach ; half an hour devoted to either 
 of them will be mere recreation, and will never be unprofitably 
 spent. Only when your minds and memories have become satu- 
 rated with the prose of our Common Version, with the phrase- 
 ology of Shakespeare, and even, if one has command of French, 
 with the neat succinctness, precision, and point of Pascal, will you 
 have mastered the elements of a good English style. Then only 
 will you have a copious vocabulary to draw from, a rich store of 
 words and phrases and a variety of allusions always at hand, and 
 not be obliged painfully to ransack a meagre and hidebound dic- 
 tion in order to set forth your meaning. But as most people 
 nowadays read little except the newspapers and ten-cent novels, 
 one need not wonder that they talk and write slang, or adopt only 
 a slipshod, stilted, or uncouth phraseology. Coleridge rightly
 
 VENABLES. xxxv 
 
 says, in his Table-Talk, ' Intense study of the Bible will keep any 
 writer from being vulgar in point of style.' 
 
 John Ruskin is certainly the greatest master that the present 
 century has produced of pure, idiomatic, vigorous, and eloquent 
 English prose ; and as the first volume of his ' Modern Painters,' 
 perhaps his best work, appeared over forty years ago, when he was 
 a recent ' Graduate of Oxford,' his style was perfectly formed 
 while he was yet a young man. How was it formed ? In one of 
 his latest writings he has told us that in his childhood, as a part of 
 his home education, his mother required him to commit to mem- 
 ory, and repeat to her, passages from the Bible. A similar cus- 
 tom, as some of us old men know, prevailed here in New England 
 over half a century ago, and I hope that in some families it lingers 
 still. Ruskin gives us the exact list, twenty-six in number, of the 
 Psalms and chapters which he thus learned by heart ; and as the 
 selection was in the main an excellent one, we need not seek fur- 
 ther for the secret of his admirable diction and perfect command 
 of English phraseology. 
 
 2. English Imitators of Biblical Language. 
 
 [VENABLES, Biographical Introduction to Bunyan, Clarendon 
 Press Series, pp. xl-xli.] 
 
 The great charm of the Pilgrim's Progress is the purity, the 
 homeliness, of its vernacular. Few were ever such complete mas- 
 ters of their ' sweet mother tongue ' in its native vigor as Bunyan. 
 The book stands unrivaled as a model of our English speech, 
 plain but never vulgar, full of metaphor but never obscure, always 
 intelligible, always forcible, going straight to the point in the few- 
 est and simplest words. He is ' powerful and picturesque,' writes 
 Mr. Hallam, ' from his concise simplicity.' Bunyan's style is rec- 
 ommended by Lord Macaulay as ' an invaluable study to every 
 person who wishes to gain a wide command over the English lan- 
 guage. Its vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. 
 There is not an expression, if we except a few technical terms of
 
 xxxvi ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 theology, that would puzzle the rudest peasant.' He remarks that 
 there are whole pages which do not contain a single word of more 
 than two syllables, and that thus there is no book which shows so 
 well ' how rich the old unpolluted English is in its proper wealth, 
 and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed.' 
 And the reason of this excellence is evident. Bunyan's English 
 was the English of the Bible. By constant perusal his mind was 
 thoroughly steeped in Holy Scripture ; he thought its thoughts, 
 spoke its words, adopted its images. " In no book,' writes Mr. 
 Green, ' do we see more clearly the new imaginative force which 
 had been given to the common life of Englishmen by their study 
 of the Bible. Its English is the simplest and homeliest English 
 that has ever been used by any great English writer, but it is the 
 English of the Bible.' Those who desire to become, like him, 
 masters of our own grand mother tongue, and use it as an instru- 
 ment for swaying the hearts, and elevating the souls, and instruct- 
 ing the minds of others, can take no better way to this end to 
 say nothing of its higher purposes than to familiarize themselves, 
 as he did, by constant perusal, with our English Bible. 
 
 [PAYNE, Introduction to Burke, Select Works, I. xxxv-xxxvi.] 
 
 There is a passage in the former [Burke's Address to the King] 
 which Lord Grenville thought the finest that Burke ever wrote 
 perhaps the finest in the English language, beginning, ' What, 
 gracious Sovereign, is the empire of America to us, or the empire 
 of the world, if we lose our own liberties ? ' which was evidently 
 suggested by the passage in St. Matthew, ' What shall a man give 
 in exchange for his soul ? ' In the sections of his works in which 
 this grave simplicity is most prominent, Burke frequently employed 
 the impressive phrases of the Holy Scriptures, affording a signal 
 illustration of the truth that he neglects the most valuable reposi- 
 tory of rhetoric in the English language who has not well studied 
 the English Bible.
 
 SAINT SB UK Y. xxxvii 
 
 3. The King James Version. 
 [SAIXTSBURY, History of Elizabethan Literature, Chap. 6.] 
 
 But great as are Bacon and Raleigh, they cannot approach, as 
 writers of prose, the company of scholarly divines who produced 
 what is probably the greatest prose work in any language the 
 Authorized Version of the Bible in English. Now that there is 
 at any rate some fear of this masterpiece ceasing to be what it has 
 been for three centuries the school and training ground of every 
 man and woman of English speech in the noblest uses of English 
 tongue every one who values his mother tongue is more espe- 
 cially bound to put on record his own allegiance to it. ... 
 
 The advantages which, in a manner at least, were peculiar to 
 themselves, may be divided into two classes. They were in the 
 very centre of the great literary ferment of which in this volume 
 I am striving to give a history as little inadequate as possible. 
 They had in the air around them an English purged of archaisms 
 and uncouthnesses, fully adapted to every literary purpose, and yet 
 still racy of the soil, and free from that burden of hackneyed and 
 outworn literary platitudes and commonplaces with which centu- 
 ries of voluminous literary production have vitiated and loaded 
 the English of our own day. They were not afraid of Latinizing, 
 but they had an ample stock of the pure vernacular to draw on. 
 These things may be classed together. On the other side, but 
 equally healthful, may be put the fact that the style and structure 
 of the originals and earlier versions, and especially that verse 
 division which has been now so unwisely abandoned, served as 
 safeguards against the besetting sin of all prose writers of their 
 time, the habit of indulging in long wandering sentences, in para- 
 graphs destitute of proportion and of grace, destitute even of ordi- 
 nary manageableness and shape. The verses saved them from 
 that once for all ; while on the other hand their own taste, and 
 the help given by the structure of the original in some cases, pre- 
 vented them from losing sight of the wood for the trees, and 
 omitting to consider the relation of verse to verse, as well as the
 
 xxxviii ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 antiphony of the clauses within the verse. Men without literary 
 faculty might no doubt have gone wrong ; but these were men of 
 great literary faculty, whose chief liabilities to error were guarded 
 against precisely by the very conditions in which they found their 
 work. The hour had come exactly, and so for once had the men. 
 
 The result of their labors is so universally known that it is not 
 necessary to say very much about it ; but the mere fact of the 
 universal knowledge carries with it a possibility of under-valuation. 
 In another place, dealing with the general subject of English 
 prose style, I have selected the sixth and seventh verses of the 
 eighth chapter of Solomon's Song as the best example known to 
 me of absolutely perfect English prose harmonious, modulated, 
 yet in no sense trespassing the limits of prose and becoming 
 poetry. I have in the same place selected, as a companion pas- 
 sage from a very different original, the Charity passage of the First 
 Epistle to the Corinthians. . . . 
 
 The days of creation ; the narratives of Joseph and his brethren, 
 of Ruth, of the final defeat of Ahab, of the discomfiture of the 
 Assyrian host of Sennacherib ; the moral discourses of Ecclesiastes 
 and Ecclesiasticus and the Book of Wisdom ; the poems of the 
 Psalms and the Prophets ; the visions of the Revelation, a 
 hundred other passages which it is unnecessary to catalogue, 
 will always be the ne plus ultra of English composition in their 
 several kinds, and the storehouse from which generation after gen- 
 eration of writers, sometimes actually hostile to religion and often 
 indifferent to it, will draw the materials, and not unfrequently the 
 actual form, of their most impassioned and elaborate passages. . . . 
 The plays of Shakespeare and the English Bible are, and will ever 
 be, the twin monuments not merely of their own period, but of 
 the perfection of English, the complete expressions of the literary 
 capacities of the language, at the time when it had lost none of its 
 pristine vigor, and had put on enough but not too much of the 
 adornments and the limitations of what may be called literary 
 civilization.
 
 GREEN. xxxix 
 
 [GREEN, History of the English People, Bk. 7, Chap, i.] 
 
 Religion indeed was only one of the causes for this sudden 
 popularity of the Bible. The book was equally important in its 
 bearing on the intellectual development of the people. All the 
 prose literature of England, save the forgotten tracts of Wyclif, 
 has grown up since the translation of the Scriptures by Tyndale 
 and Coverdale. So far as the nation at large was concerned, no 
 history, no romance, hardly any poetry save the little-known verse 
 of Chaucer, existed in the English tongue when the Bible was 
 ordered to be set up in churches. Sunday after Sunday, day after 
 day, the crowds that gathered round the Bible in the nave of St. 
 Paul's, or the family group that hung on its words in the devo- 
 tional exercises at home, were leavened with a new literature. 
 Legend and annal, war song and psalm, State-roll and biography, 
 the mighty voices of prophets, the parables of Evangelists, stories 
 of mission journeys, of perils by the sea and among the heathen, 
 philosophic arguments, apocalyptic visions, all were flung broad- 
 cast over minds unoccupied for the most part by any rival learn- 
 ing. The disclosure of the stores of Greek literature had wrought 
 the revolution of the Renascence. The disclosure of the older 
 mass of Hebrew literature wrought the revolution of the Reforma- 
 tion. But the one revolution was far deeper and wider in its 
 effects than the other. No version could transfer to another 
 tongue the peculiar charm of language which gave their value to 
 the authors of Greece and Rome. Classical letters therefore re- 
 mained in the possession of the learned, that is, of the few ; and 
 among these, with the exception of Colet and More, or of the 
 pedants who revived a Pagan worship in the gardens of the Flor- 
 entine Academy, their direct influence was purely intellectual. 
 But the language of the Hebrew, the idiom of the Hellenistic 
 Greek, lent themselves with a curious felicity to the purposes of 
 translation. As a mere literary monument, the English version 
 of the Bible remains the noblest example of the English tongue, 
 while its perpetual use made it, from the instant of its appearance, 
 the standard of our language.
 
 xl ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 For the moment, however, its literary effect was less than its 
 social. The power of the book over the mass of Englishmen 
 showed itself in a thousand superficial ways, and in none more 
 conspicuously than in the influence it exerted on ordinary speech. 
 It formed, we must repeat, the whole literature which was practi- 
 cally accessible to ordinary Englishmen ; and when we recall the 
 number of common phrases which we owe to great authors, the 
 bits of Shakespeare, or Milton, or Dickens, or Thackeray, which 
 unconsciously interweave themselves in our ordinary talk, we shall 
 better understand the strange mosaic of Biblical words and phrases 
 which colored English talk two hundred years ago. The mass of 
 picturesque allusion and illustration which we borrow from a thou- 
 sand books, our fathers were forced to borrow from one ; and the 
 borrowing was the easier and the more natural that the range of 
 the Hebrew literature fitted it for the expression of every phase 
 of feeling. When Spenser poured forth his warmest love-notes in 
 the ' Epithalamion,' he adopted the very words of the Psalmist, 
 as he bade the gates open for the entrance of his bride. When 
 Cromwell saw the mists break over the hills of Dunbar, he hailed 
 the sunburst with the cry of David : ' Let God arise, and let his 
 enemies be scattered. Like as the smoke vanisheth, so shalt thou 
 drive them away ! ' Even to common minds this familiarity 
 with grand poetic imagery in prophet and apocalypse gave a lofti- 
 ness and ardor of expression that, with all its tendency to exagger- 
 ation and bombast, we may prefer to the slipshod vulgarisms of 
 to-day. 
 
 [WILLIAM TYNDALE, The Obedience of a Christian Man 
 (1528), Preface.] 
 
 The Greek tongue agreeth more with the English than with the 
 Latin. And the properties of the Hebrew tongue agreeth a thou- 
 sand times more with the English than with the Latin. The man- 
 ner of speaking is both one, so that in a thousand places thou 
 needest not but to translate it into the English word for word, 
 when thou must seek a compass in the Latin, and yet shalt have
 
 MARSH. xli 
 
 much work to translate it well-favoredly, so that it have the same 
 grace and sweetness, sense and pure understanding with it in the 
 Latin and as it hath in the Hebrew. A thousand parts better may 
 it be translated into the English than into the Latin. 
 
 [MARSH, Lectures on the Englisli Language, Lectures 4 and 28.] 
 
 When an intelligent foreigner commences the study of English, 
 he finds every page sprinkled with words whose form unequivo- 
 cally betrays a Greek or Latin origin. . . . Further study would 
 teach him that he had overrated the importance and relative 
 amount of the foreign ingredients ; that many of our seemingly 
 insignificant and barbarous consonantal monosyllables are preg- 
 nant with the mightiest thoughts, and alive with the deepest feel- 
 ing ; that the language of the purposes and the affections, of the 
 will and of the heart, is genuine English-born ; that the dialect of 
 the market and the fireside is Anglo-Saxon ; that the vocabulary 
 of the most impressive and effective pulpit orators has been almost 
 wholly drawn from the same pure source ; that the advocate who 
 would convince the technical judge, or dazzle and confuse the 
 jury, speaks Latin ; while he who would touch the better sensi- 
 bilities of his audience, or rouse the multitude to vigorous action, 
 chooses his words from the native speech of our ancient father- 
 land ; that the domestic tongue is a language of passion and per- 
 suasion, the foreign, of authority, or of rhetoric and debate ; that 
 we may not only frame single sentences, but speak for hours, with- 
 out employing a single imported word ; and finally that we possess 
 the entire volume of divine revelation in the truest, clearest, aptest 
 form in which human ingenuity has made it accessible to modern 
 man, and yet with a vocabulary wherein, saving proper names and 
 terms not in their nature translatable, scarce seven words in the 
 hundred are derived from any foreign source. . . . 
 
 The general result of a comparison between the diction of the 
 English Bible and that of the secular literature of England is that 
 we have had, from the very dawn of our literature, a sacred and a 
 profane dialect, the former eminently native, idiomatic, vernacu-
 
 xlii ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 lar, and permanent, the latter composite, heterogeneous, irregular, 
 and fluctuating ; the one pure, natural, and expressive, the other 
 mixed, and comparatively distorted and conventional. . . . 
 
 It will generally be found that the passages of the Received Ver- 
 sion whose diction is most purely Saxon are not only most forci- 
 ble in expression, but also the most faithful transcripts of the text, 
 and that a Latinized style is seldom employed without loss of 
 beauty of language, and at the same time of exactness in corre- 
 spondence. . . . 
 
 The subjects of the Testaments, Old and New, are taken from 
 very primitive and inartificial life. With the exception of the 
 writings of Paul, and in a less degree of Luke, there is little evi- 
 dence of literary culture or of a wide and varied range of thought 
 in their authors. They narrate plain facts, and they promulgate 
 doctrines, profound indeed, but addressed less to the speculative 
 and discursive than to the moral and spiritual faculties, and hence, 
 whatever may have been the capabilities of Hebrew and of classi- 
 cal Greek for other purposes, the vocabulary of the whole Bible is 
 narrow in extent, and extremely simple in character. Now in 
 the early part of the sixteenth century, when the development of 
 our religious dialect was completed, the English mind and the 
 English language were generally in a state of culture much more 
 analogous to that of the people and the tongues of Palestine, than 
 they have been at any subsequent period. Two centuries later, 
 the native speech had been greatly subtilized, if not refined. Good 
 vernacular words had been supplanted by foreign intruders, com- 
 prehensive ideas and their vocabulary had been split up into arti- 
 ficially discriminated thoughts and a corresponding multitude 
 and variety of terms. The language in fact had become too 
 copious and too specific to have any true correspondences with 
 so simple and inartificial a diction as that of the Christian Scrip- 
 tures. Had the Bible then for the first time appeared in an 
 English dress, the translators would have been perplexed and con- 
 founded with the multitude of terms, each expressing a fragment, 
 few the whole, of the meaning of the original words for which 
 they must stand ; and whereas three hundred years ago but one
 
 SOUTH. xliii 
 
 good translation was possible, the eighteenth century might have 
 produced a dozen, none altogether good, but none much worse 
 than another. . . . 
 
 The critical study of English has but just commenced. We are 
 at the beginning of a new era in its history. Great as are its 
 powers, men are beginning to feel that its necessities are still 
 greater. There is among its authors an evident stretching out 
 for additional facilities of expression, and as a means to this end 
 a deeper reaching down into the wells of its latent capabilities, 
 and hence, as I have so often remarked, a more general and zeal- 
 ous study of those ancient forms of English, out of which was 
 built up the consecrated dialect of our mother tongue. 
 
 4. Rhetorical Features of Biblical Language. 
 [SOUTH, Chrisfs Promise the Support of his Despised Ministers^ 
 
 For the ability of speaking conferred upon the apostles. It 
 was highly requisite that those who were to be the interpreters 
 and spokesmen of heaven should have a rhetoric taught them 
 from thence too, and as much beyond any that could be taught 
 them by human rules and art as the subjects they were to speak 
 of surpassed the subject of all human eloquence. 
 
 Now this ability of speech, I conceive, was to be attended with 
 these three properties of it : 
 
 1. Great clearness and perspicuity. 
 
 2. An unaffected plainness and simplicity. And, 
 
 3. A suitable and becoming zeal or fervor. And, 
 
 i. For its perspicuity. Christ and his apostles well knew that 
 the great truth delivered by them would support itself, and that 
 barely to deliver it would be abundantly sufficient to enforce it, 
 nakedness, of all things, being never able to make truth ashamed. 
 There was nothing false, faulty, or suspicious in it, and therefore 
 they were not afraid to venture it in the plainest and most intelli- 
 gible language. Where, indeed, the thing to be spoken is unwar- 
 rantable, and the design of the speaker as bad or worse, there
 
 xliv ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 I confess every word may need a cloak of obscurity both to cover 
 and protect it too ; but truth and worth neither need nor affect to 
 keep out of sight, nor the lights of the world to wrap themselves in 
 a cloud. The apostles never taught men to preach or pray in an 
 unknown tongue, nor valued such devotion as had ignorance for 
 its parent. Christ still closed his instructions to his disciples with 
 this question, ' Do ye understand these things?' And we find no 
 parable but the rear of it is brought up with an explication. For 
 even when Christ and his apostles preached the most mysterious 
 truths of religion, yet then, though the thing uttered might non- 
 plus their reason, the way and manner of their uttering it was 
 plain, easy, and familiar, and the hearer never put to study when 
 it was his business only to hear and understand. The oracles of 
 Christ were not like those of Apollo, doubtful and ambiguous, 
 always made to deceive, and commonly to destroy ; but, on the 
 contrary, as the grand business of our Saviour and his apostles 
 after him was to teach, and that chiefly in order to persuade, so 
 they well knew that there could be no effectual passage into the 
 will but through the judgment, nor any free admission into the 
 former but by a full passport from the latter. And therefore we 
 find not that in their sermons they were for amusing or astonish- 
 ing their auditory with difficult nothings, rabbinical whimseys, and 
 remote allusions, which no man of sense and solid reason can hear 
 without weariness and contempt. 
 
 Besides that, if we look into the reason of the thing itself, it will 
 be found that all obscurity of speech is resolvable into the confu- 
 sion and disorder of the speaker's thoughts : for as thoughts are 
 properly the images and representations of objects to the mind, 
 and words the representations of our thoughts to others, it must 
 needs follow that all faults or defects in a man's expressions must 
 presuppose the same in his notions first. 
 
 In short, nothing in nature can be imagined more absurd, irra- 
 tional, and contrary to the very design and end of speaking, than 
 an obscure discourse ; for in that case the preacher may as well 
 leave his tongue, and his auditors their ears behind them, as 
 neither he communicate, nor they understand, any more of his
 
 SOUTH. xlv 
 
 mind and meaning, after he has spoken to them, than they did 
 before. 
 
 And yet, as ridiculous as such fustian bombast from the pulpit 
 is, none are so transported and pleased with it as those who least 
 understand it. For still the greatest admirers of it are the gross- 
 est, the most ignorant and illiterate country people, who of all 
 men are the fondest of high-flown metaphors and allegories, 
 attended and set off with scraps of Greek and Latin, though not 
 able even to read so much of the latter as might save their necks 
 upon occasion. 
 
 But laying aside all such studied, insignificant trifles, it was the 
 clearness of the apostles' preaching which rendered it victorious 
 and irresistible. And this we may rest upon as certain, that he is 
 still the powerfullest preacher and the best orator who can make 
 himself best understood. But, 
 
 2. A second property of the ability of speech conferred by 
 Christ upon his apostles was its unaffected plainness and simplicity ; 
 it was to be easy, obvious, and familiar ; with nothing in it strained 
 or far-fetched ; no affected scheme, or airy fancies, above the 
 reach or relish of an ordinary apprehension ; no, nothing of all 
 this ; but their grand subject was truth, and consequently above 
 all these petty arts and poor additions, as not being capable of 
 any greater lustre or advantage than to appear just as it is. For 
 there is a certain majesty in plainness ; as the proclamation of a 
 prince never frisks it in tropes or fine conceits, in numerous and 
 well-turned periods, but commands in sober, natural expressions. 
 A substantial beauty, as it comes out of the hands of nature, needs 
 neither paint nor patch things never made to adorn, but to 
 cover something that would be hid. It is with expression, and 
 the clothing of a man's conceptions, as with the clothing of a 
 man's body. All dress and ornament supposes imperfection, as 
 designed only to supply the body with something from without, 
 which it wanted, but had not of its own. Gaudery is a pitiful and 
 a mean thing, not extending further than the surface of the body ; 
 nor is the highest gallantry considerable to any, but to those 
 who would hardly be considered without it ; for in that case in-
 
 xlvi ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 deed there may be great need of an outside, when there is little or 
 nothing within. And thus also it is with the most necessary and 
 important truths ; to adorn and clothe them is to cover them,, and 
 that to obscure them. . . . 
 
 'I speak the words of soberness/ said St. Paul (Acts 26. 25). 
 And I preach the Gospel not with the ' enticing words of man's 
 wisdom' (i Cor. 2. 4). This was the way of the apostles' dis- 
 coursing of things sacred. Nothing here of ' the fringes of the 
 North Star ' ; nothing of ' Nature's becoming unnatural ' ; nothing 
 of the ' down of angel's wings,' or ' the beautiful locks of cheru- 
 bims ' ; no starched similitudes, introduced with a ' Thus have I 
 seen a cloud rolling in its airy mansion,' and the like. No ; these 
 were sublimities above the rise of the apostolic spirit. For the 
 apostles, poor mortals, were content to take lower steps, and to 
 tell the world in plain terms that he who believed should be saved, 
 and that he who believed not should be damned. And this was 
 the dialect which pierced the conscience, and made the hearers 
 cry out, 'Men and brethren, what shall we do?' It tickled not 
 the ear, but sunk into the heart ; and when men came from such 
 sermons, they never commended the preacher for his taking voice 
 or gesture, for the fineness of such a simile, or the quaintness of 
 such a sentence ; but they spoke like men conquered with the 
 overpowering force and evidence of the most concerning truths, 
 much in the words of the two disciples going to Emmaus, ' Did 
 not our hearts burn within us, while he opened to us the Scrip- 
 tures ? ' 
 
 In a word, the apostles' preaching was therefore mighty and 
 successful, because plain, natural, and familiar, and by no means 
 above the capacity of their hearers ; nothing being more prepos- 
 terous than for those who were professedly aiming at men's hearts 
 to miss the mark by shooting over their heads. 
 
 3. The gift of preaching, conferred by Christ upon his apostles, 
 required a suitable zeal and fervor to attend it ; for without this, 
 as high and important a truth as the gospel preached by them 
 was, none would have believed that it had any powerful effect 
 upon the preacher's own affections, nor consequently that it could
 
 SOUTH. xlvii 
 
 have wrought at all more upon other men's ; this is most certain. 
 So true is it that the same things, differently expressed, as to the 
 proper effects of persuasion are indeed not the same. A cold in- 
 difference dispirits a discourse ; but a due fervor gives it life and 
 authority, and sends it home to the inmost powers of the soul, 
 with an easy insinuation and a deep impression. . . . 
 
 Thus when Christ accosted Jerusalem with that melting expro- 
 bration in Matt. 23. 37, 38, 'O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that 
 killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how 
 often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen 
 gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not ! Be- 
 hold, your house is left unto you desolate.' Now what a relenting 
 strain of tenderness was there in this reproof from the great Doc- 
 tor as well as Saviour of souls, and how infinitely more moving 
 than if he had said only, ' O ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, how 
 wicked and barbarous is it in you thus to persecute and stone 
 God's prophets ! And how can you but expect some severe judg- 
 ment from God upon you for it ? ' Who, I say, sees not the vast 
 difference in these two ways of address, as to the vigor and win- 
 ning compassion of the one, and the. low, dispirited flatness of the 
 other in comparison? Likewise for St. Paul, observe how he 
 uttered himself in his excellent farewell discourse to the elders of 
 Ephesus (Acts 20, from verse 18 to the end of the chapter, and 
 particularly in verse 31). ' Remember,' says he, ' how that for the 
 space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day 
 with tears.' These were the arguments here used by this great 
 apostle, arguments in comparison of which he knew that the most 
 flowing rhetoric of words would be but a poor and faint persua- 
 sive. And then again, in 2 Cor. n. 29, with what a true and 
 tender passion does he lay forth his fatherly care and concern for 
 all the churches of Christ ! ' Who," says he, ' is weak, and I am 
 not weak ? who is offended, and I burn not ? ' Than which words 
 nothing doubtless could have issued from the tongue or heart of 
 man more endearing, more pathetical and affectionate.
 
 xlviii ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 [SOUTH, The Scribe Instructed.^ 
 
 In God's word we have not only a body of religion, but also a 
 system of the best rhetoric ; and as the highest things require the 
 highest expressions, so we shall find nothing in Scripture so sub- 
 lime in itself, but it is reached, and sometimes overtopped, by the 
 sublimity of the expression. And first, where did majesty ever 
 ride in more splendor than in those descriptions of the divine 
 power in Job, in the 38th, 39th, and 4Oth chapters ? And what 
 triumph was ever celebrated with higher, livelier, and more exalted 
 poetry than in the Song of Moses in the 32d of Deuteronomy? 
 And then for the passions of the soul which being things of the 
 highest transport and most wonderful and various operation in 
 human nature, are therefore the proper object and business of 
 rhetoric let us take a view how the Scripture expresses the 
 most noted and powerful of them. And here, what poetry ever 
 paralleled Solomon in his description of love, as to all the ways, 
 effects, and ecstasies, and little tyrannies of that commanding pas- 
 sion? See Ovid, with his Omnia vincit amor, etc., and Virgil, 
 with his Vulnus alit venis et cceco carpitur igni, etc. ; how jejune 
 and thin are they to the poetry of Solomon, in the 8th chapter of 
 the Canticles and the 6th verse, ' Love is strong as death, and 
 jealousy cruel as the grave ! ' And as for his description of beauty, 
 he describes that so, that he even transcribes it into his expres- 
 sions. And where do we read such strange risings and fallings, 
 now the faintings and languishings, now the terrors and astonish- 
 ments of despair, venting themselves in such high, amazing strains 
 as in the 77th Psalm? Or where did we ever find sorrow flowing 
 forth in such a natural, prevailing pathos, as in the Lamentations 
 of Jeremy? One would think that every letter was wrote with a 
 tear, every word was the noise of a breaking heart ; that the author 
 was a man compacted of sorrows, disciplined to grief from his 
 infancy, one who never breathed but in sighs, nor spoke but in a 
 groan. So that he who said he would not read the Scripture for 
 fear of spoiling his style showed himself as much a blockhead as 
 an atheist, and to have as small a gust of the elegancies of expres-
 
 CARDINAL XI : .\\'MAN. xlix 
 
 sion as of the sacredness of the matter. And shall we now think 
 that the Scripture forbids all ornament of speech, and engages 
 men to be dull, flat, and slovenly in all their discourses? But let 
 us look a little further, and see whether the New Testament abro- 
 gates what we see so frequently used in the Old. And for this, 
 what mean all the parables used by our Saviour, the known and 
 greatest elegancies of speech ? So that if this way was unlawful 
 before, Christ by his example has authorized and sanctified it 
 since ; and if good and lawful, has confirmed it. 
 
 [CARDINAL NEWMAN, Idea of a University, pp. 289-290.] 
 
 Scripture not elaborate ! Scripture not ornamented in diction, 
 and musical in cadence ! Why, consider the Epistle to the He- 
 brews where is there in the classics any composition more care- 
 fully, more artificially written ? Consider the book of Job is it 
 not a sacred drama, as artistic, as perfect, as any Greek tragedy 
 of Sophocles or Euripides? Consider the Psalter are there no 
 ornaments, no rhythm, no studied cadences, no responsive mem- 
 bers, in that divinely beautiful book ? And is it not hard to under- 
 stand ? are not the Prophets hard to understand ? is not St. Paul 
 hard to understand ? Who can say that these are popular compo- 
 sitions ? who can say that they are level at first reading with the 
 understandings of the multitude ? 
 
 That there are portions indeed of the inspired volume more 
 simple both in style and in meaning, and that these are the more 
 sacred and sublime passages, as, for instance, parts of the Gospels, 
 I grant at once ; but this does not militate against the doctrine 
 I have been laying down. ... I have said Literature is one 
 thing, and that Science is another ; that Literature has to do with 
 ideas, and Science with realities ; that Literature is of a personal 
 character, that Science treats of what is universal and eternal. In 
 proportion, then, as Scripture excludes the personal coloring of its 
 writers, and rises into the region of pure and mere inspiration, 
 when it ceases in any sense to be the writing of man, of St. Paul 
 or St. John, of Moses or Isaias, then it comes to belong to Sci-
 
 1 ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 ence, not Literature. Then it conveys the things of heaven, 
 unseen verities, divine manifestations, and them alone not the 
 ideas, the feelings, the aspirations, of its human instruments, 
 who, for all that they were inspired and infallible, did not cease 
 to be men. St. Paul's epistles, then, I consider to be literature 
 in a real and true sense, as personal, as rich in reflection and 
 emotion, as Demosthenes or Euripides ; and, without ceasing to 
 be revelations of objective truth, they are expressions of the sub- 
 jective notwithstanding. On the other hand, portions of the Gos- 
 pels, of the book of Genesis, and other passages of the Sacred 
 Volume, are of the nature of Science. Such is the beginning of 
 St. John's Gospel. . . . Such is the Creed. I mean, passages 
 such as these are the mere enunciation of eternal things, without 
 (so to say) the medium of any human mind transmitting them to 
 us. The words used have the grandeur, the majesty, the calm 
 unimpassioned beauty of Science ; they are in no sense Litera- 
 ture, they are in no sense personal ; and therefore they are easy to 
 apprehend, and easy to translate. 
 
 5. Rhythm of the Bible. 
 
 [WAITS, in Encyclopedia Britannica, ninth edition, Article 
 Poetry.] 
 
 Perhaps it may be said that deeper than all the rhythms of art 
 is that rhythm which art would fain catch, the rhythm of nature ; 
 for the rhythm of nature is the rhythm of life itself. This rhythm 
 can be caught by prose as well as by poetry, such prose, for 
 instance, as that of the English Bible. Certainly the rhythm of 
 verse at its highest, such, for instance, as that of Shakespeare's 
 greatest writings, is nothing more and nothing less than the 
 metre of that energy of the spirit which surges within the bosom 
 of him who speaks, whether he speak in verse or in impassioned 
 prose. Being rhythm, it is of course governed by law, but it is a 
 law which transcends in subtlety the conscious art of the metricist, 
 and is only caught by the poet in his most inspired moods, a law
 
 DE MILLE. li 
 
 which, being part of nature's own sanctions, can of course never 
 be formulated, but only expressed as it is expressed in the melody 
 of the bird, in the inscrutable harmony of the entire bird-chorus of 
 a thicket, in the whisper of the leaves of the tree, and in the song 
 or wail of wind and sea. Now is not this rhythm of nature repre- 
 sented by that ' sense rhythm ' which prose can catch as well as 
 poetry, that sense rhythm whose finest expressions are to be found 
 in the Bible, Hebrew and English, and in the Biblical movements 
 of the English Prayer Book, and in the dramatic prose of Shake- 
 speare at its best ? Whether it is caught by prose or by verse, one 
 of the virtues of the rhythm of nature is that it is translatable. 
 Hamlet's peroration about man and Raleigh's apostrophe to death 
 are as translatable into other languages as are the Hebrew Psalms, 
 or as is Manu's magnificent passage about the singleness of man 
 (we quote from memory) : 
 
 Single is each man born into the world; single he dies; single he receives 
 the reward of his good deeds, and single the punishment of his evil deeds. 
 When he dies his body lies like a fallen tree upon the earth, but his virtue 
 accompanies his soul. Wherefore let man harvest and garner virtue, so that 
 he may have an inseparable companion in traversing that gloom which is so 
 hard to be traversed. 
 
 Here the rhythm, being the inevitable movement of emotion and 
 'sense,' can be caught and translated by every literature under 
 the sun. 
 
 [!)}: MII.LK, Elements of Rhetoric, 299.] 
 
 The greatest writers of ancient and modern times have sought 
 to infuse into their style something which should appeal to the 
 musical sensibility, and many noble passages in prose literature 
 exert an influence difficult to define, yet so powerful that they 
 affect the heart and cling to the memory. Their meaning is in 
 such cases enlarged and reinforced by the subtle yet potent aid 
 of harmony ; and while the thought affects the mind, the music 
 charms the ear. Two things are to be observed in such writings : 
 first, the sound of the individual words ; and, secondly, their 
 arrangement, with the recurrence of pauses at such intervals as
 
 Hi ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 shall produce a certain harmonious rise and fall of tone. These 
 constitute rhythm in prose. 
 
 Many passages in the English Bible exhibit a matchless beauty 
 of rhythm : 
 
 Or ever the silver cord be loosed or the golden bowl be broken or the 
 pitcher be broken at the fountain or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then 
 shall the dust return to the earth as it was and the spirit shall return unto 
 God who gave it. 
 
 Lord thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. 
 
 Before the mountains were brought forth or ever thou hadst formed the 
 earth and the world even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God. 
 
 These are they which came out of great tribulation and have washed 
 their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 
 
 If these passages be read with attention to the rhetorical pauses, 
 as marked, their euphonious flow and solemn and varied rhythm 
 will not fail to be apparent. It would be difficult to furnish any 
 other translation from their originals which could equal them in 
 this respect. 
 
 Rhythm in prose may be defined as the alternate swelling and 
 lessening of sound at certain intervals. It refers to the general 
 effect of sentences and paragraphs, where the words are chosen 
 and arranged so as not only to express the meaning of the writer, 
 but also to furnish a musical accompaniment which shall at once 
 delight the ear by its sound, and help out the sense by its sug- 
 gestiveness. 
 
 [SAINTSBURY, Specimens of English Prose Style, Introduction.] 
 
 Now the requirement of a perfect prose rhythm is that, while it 
 admits of indication by quantity- marks, and even by divisions 
 into feet, the simplicity and equivalence of feet within the clause 
 answering to the line are absent, and the exact correspondence of 
 clause for clause, that is to say, of line for line, is absent also, and 
 still more necessarily absent. Let us take an example. I know 
 no more perfect example of English prose rhythm than the famous 
 verses of the last chapter of the Canticles in the Authorized Ver-
 
 GESENIUS. liii 
 
 sion ; I am not certain that I know any so perfect. Here they are 
 arranged for the purpose of exhibition in clause-lines, quantified 
 and divided into feet. 
 
 Set me | as a seal | upon thine heart | as a seal | upon thine arm | 
 For love | is strong | as death | jealousy | is cruel | as the grave | 
 The coals thereof | are coals | of fire | which hath | a most ve | hement flame | 
 Many waters | cannot quench love | neither | can the floods | drown it | 
 If a man | should give | all the sub | stance | of his house | for love | it should 
 utjterly be contemned. | 
 
 I by no means give the quantification of this, or the distribution 
 into lines and feet, as final or impeccable, though I think it is, on 
 the whole as a good elocutionist would read the passage 
 accurate enough. But the disposition will, I think, be sufficient 
 to convince any one who has an ear and a slight acquaintance with 
 res metrica, that here is a system of rhythm irreducible to poetic 
 form. The movement of the whole is perfectly harmonious, 
 exquisitely modulated, finally complete. But it is the harmony 
 of perfectly modulated speech, not of song ; harmony, in short, 
 but not melody, divisible into clauses, but not into bars or staves, 
 having parts which continue each other, but do not correspond to 
 each other. A similar example may be found in the almost equally 
 beautiful Charity passage of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. 
 
 [GESENIUS, Geschichte der hebr'dischen Sprache und Schrift, pp. 
 
 21-22.] 
 
 In particular there exist here two species of diction side by 
 side, the prose of ordinary historical narrative and poetic diction ; 
 the latter, with all its peculiarities, entering likewise into the his- 
 torical books, the moment prophecies, blessings, or hymns of 
 praise rise to the plane of poetry. This poetical language, clear as 
 such even externally, not, it is true, through prosodic measurement, 
 but rather by the rhythmical marking off of periods, and the paral- 
 lelism which characterizes them, has likewise many peculiarities in 
 respect to language, verbal forms and meanings, grammatical con- 
 structions, etc., peculiarities which have not always been suffi-
 
 liv ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 ciently observed. . . . With regard to rhythm and language, the 
 prophets stand midway between poetry and prose ; however, those 
 of the golden age closely resemble the poets, and it is only the 
 later ones, like Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who approach the diction 
 of prose. 
 
 [DRIVER, Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, 
 
 Chap. 7.] 
 
 Hebrew Poetry. Hebrew poetry reaches back to the most 
 ancient recollections of the Israelites (Gen. 49. Nu. 21, 17 f. 
 27-30. Jud. 5 &c.) ; probably, as with other nations, it was the 
 form in which their earliest literary efforts found expression. 
 Many poetical pieces are preserved in the historical books ; and 
 the Books of Psalms, Proverbs, Job (the Dialogue), Song of 
 Songs, and Lamentations are entirely poetical. The line between 
 poetry and elevated prose being, moreover, less sharply drawn in 
 Hebrew than in Western languages, the prophets not unfrequently 
 rise into a lyric or elegiac strain ; and even the author of Eccle- 
 siastes is led sometimes, by the moralizing character of his dis- 
 course, to cast his thoughts into the form of gnomic poetry. . . . 
 
 Poetry is distinguished from prose partly by the character of 
 the thoughts of which it is the exponent, which in Hebrew 
 poetry, as a rule, either express or spring out of an emotion, 
 partly by its diction (the choice and order of words), but espe- 
 cially by its rhythm. The onward movement of emotion is not 
 entirely irregular or unrestrained ; it is checked, or interrupted, at 
 particular intervals ; and the flow of thought has to accommodate 
 itself in a certain degree to these recurring interruptions ; in other 
 words, it is divided into lines. In most Western poetry these 
 lines have a definite metre or measure : they consist, viz., of a 
 fixed number of syllables (or of " feet ") : in some cases all the 
 lines of a poem being of the same length, in other cases lines of 
 different length alternating, according to certain prescribed rules. 
 To the modern ear, also, the satisfaction which the recurrence of 
 lines of equable length produces, is often enhanced by that asso-
 
 DRIl'ER. lv 
 
 nance of the corresponding lines which we term rime. But in 
 ancient Hebrew poetry, though there was always rhythm, there 
 was (so far as has yet been discovered) no metre in the strict 
 sense of the term ; and rime appears to have been as accidental 
 as it was with the classical Latin poets. The poetical instincts of 
 the Hebrews appear to have been satisfied by the adoption of 
 lines of approximately the same length, which were combined, as 
 a rule, into groups of two, three, or four lines, constituting verses, 
 the verses marking usually more distinct pauses in the progress of 
 the thought than the separate lines. The fundamental (and pre- 
 dominant) form of the Hebrew verse is the couplet of two lines, 
 the second line either repeating, or in some other way reinforcing 
 or completing, the thought of the first. In the verse of two lines 
 is exemplified also the principle which most widely regulates the 
 form of Hebrew poetry, the parallelismus membrorum the par- 
 allelism of two clauses of approximately the same length, the 
 second clause answering, or otherwise completing, the thought of 
 the first. The Hebrew verse does not, however, consist uniformly 
 of two lines ; the addition of a third line is apt especially to intro- 
 duce an element of irregularity : so that the parallelismus mem- 
 brorum, though an important canon of Hebrew poetry, is not the 
 sole principle by which its form is determined. 
 
 The significance in Hebrew poetry of the parallelism of clauses 
 was first perceived by Rob. Lowth, who thus distinguished its 
 principal varieties : 
 
 I. Synonymous parallelism. In this kind (which is the most frequent) the 
 second line enforces the thought of the first by repeating, and, as it were, 
 echoing :A in a varied form, producing an effect at once grateful to the ear and 
 satisfying to the mind : as 
 
 Nu. 23, 8 How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed? 
 
 And how shall I defy, whom the LORD hath not defied? 
 
 Or the second line expresses a thought not indeed identical with that of the 
 first, but parallel and similar to it 
 
 Josh. 10, 12 Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; 
 
 And thou, Moon, upon the valley of Aijalon.
 
 Ivi ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 2. Antithetic parallelism. Here the thought of the first line is emphasized, 
 or confirmed, by a contrasted thought expressed in the second. Thus 
 
 Pr. 10, I A wise son maketh a glad father, 
 
 But a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother. 
 Ps. I, 6 For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous; 
 But the way of the wicked shall perish. 
 
 This kind of parallelism is most frequent in gnomic poetry, where, from the 
 nature of the subject-matter, antithetic truths are often contrasted. 
 
 3. Synthetic or constructive parallelism. Here the second line contains 
 neither a repetition nor a contrast to the thought of the first, but in different 
 ways supplements or completes it. The parallelism, therefore, is merely of 
 form, and- does not extend to the thought at all. E.g. 
 
 Ps. 2, 6 Yet I have set my king 
 
 Upon Zion, my holy hill. 
 
 Pr. 15, 17 Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, 
 Than a stalled ox and hatred therewith. 
 
 26, 4 Answer not a fool according to his folly, 
 
 Lest thou also be like unto him. 
 
 27, 8 As a bird that wandereth from her nest, 
 
 So is the man that wandereth from his place. 
 
 A comparison, a reason, a consequence, a motive, often constitutes one of the 
 lines in a synthetic parallelism. 
 
 4. A fourth kind of parallelism, though of rare occurrence, is still suffi- 
 ciently marked to be noticed by the side of those described by Lowth, vi/.. 
 climactic parallelism (sometimes called " ascending rhythm"). Here the first 
 line is itself incomplete, and the second line takes up words from it and com- 
 pletes them : 
 
 Ps. 29, I Give unto the LORD, O ye sons of the mighty, 
 
 Give unto the LORD glory and strength. 
 8 The voice of the LORD shaketh the wilderness; 
 
 The LORD shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh. 
 Ex. 15, i6 b Till thy people pass over, O LORD, 
 
 Till the people pass over, which thou hast purchased. . . . 
 
 By far the greater number of verses in the poetry of the OT. 
 consist of distichs of one or other of the types that have been 
 illustrated ; though naturally every individual line is not con- 
 structed with the regularity of the examples selected (which, in-
 
 DRIVER. Ivii 
 
 deed, especially in a long poem, would tend to monotony). The 
 following are the other principal forms of the Hebrew verse : 
 
 1. Single lines, or monostichs. These are found but rarely, being gener- 
 ally used to express a thought with some emphasis at the beginning, or occa- 
 sionally at the end, of a poem : Ps. 16, I. 18, I. 23, i. 66, -i; Ex. 15, 18. 
 
 2. Verses of three lines, or tristichs. Here different types arise, according 
 to the relation in which the several lines stand to one another. Sometimes, 
 for instance, the three lines are synonymous, as 
 
 Ps. 5, 1 1 Hut let all those that put their trust in thee rejoice, 
 
 Let them ever shout for joy, because thou defendest them : 
 And let them that love thy name be joyful in thee. 
 
 Sometimes a and /' are parallel in thought, and c completes it 
 
 Ps. 2, 2 The kings of the earth set themselves, 
 And the rulers take council together, 
 
 Against Jehovah, and against his anointed. 
 
 Or b and c are parallel 
 
 Ps. 3, 7 Arise, Jehovah; save me, O my God: 
 
 For thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheek-bone; 
 Thou hast broken the teeth of the wicked. 
 
 Or a and c may be parallel, and b be of the nature of a parenthesis 
 
 Ps. 4, 2 Answer me, when I call, O God of my righteousness; 
 
 Thou hast set me at large when I was in distress : 
 Have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer. 
 
 3. Tetrastich*. Here generally a is parallel to b, and c is parallel to d; 
 but the thought is only complete when the two couplets are combined; thus 
 
 Gen. 49, 7 Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; 
 And their wrath, for it was cruel : 
 I will divide them in Jacob, 
 And scatter them in Israel. 
 
 So Dt. 32, 21. 30. 38. 41. Is. 49, 4. 59, 3. 4 &c. 
 
 Sometimes, however, a is parallel to c, and b to d 
 
 Ps. 55, 21 His mouth was smooth as butter, 
 
 But his heart was war; 
 His words were softer than oil, 
 Yet were they drawn swords. 
 
 So Ps. 40, 14. 127, i. Dt. 32, 42. Is. 30, 16. 44, 5. 49, 2.
 
 Iviii ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 Occasionally a corresponds to d, and b to c ; this is called technically " in- 
 troverted parallelism," but is of rare occurrence; see Pr. 23, 15 f. Is. II, 13 
 (Cheyne), 59, 8. 
 Or a, b, c are parallel, but d is more or less independent 
 
 Ps. 1 , 3 And he is as a tree planted by streams of water, 
 That bringeth forth its fruit in its season, 
 And whose leaf doth not wither : 
 And whatsoever he doeth he inaketh to prosper. 
 
 Or a is independent, and b, c, d are parallel 
 
 Pr. 24, 12 If thou sayest, Behold, we knew not this; 
 
 Doth not he that weigheth the hearts consider it? 
 
 And he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it ? 
 
 And shall not he render to every man according to his work ? 
 
 Or it may even happen that the four members stand in no determinate rela- 
 tion to one another; see e.g. Ps. 40, 17. 
 
 4. and 5. Verses of five lines (pentastichs) occur but seldom in the OT., 
 and those of six lines (hexastichs) are still rarer; see for the former, Nu. 24, 8. 
 Dt. 32, 14. 39. i Sa. 2, 10. Ps. 39, 12. Cant. 3, 4; for the latter, Nu. 24, 17. 
 I Sa. 2, 8. Cant. 4, 8. Hab. 3, 17 (three distichs, closely united). 
 
 The finest and most perfect specimens of Hebrew poetry are, 
 as a rule, those in which the parallelism is most complete (synony- 
 mous distichs aad tetrastichs), varied by an occasional tristich 
 (e.g. Job 28. 29-31. 38-39. Ps. 18. 29. 104. Pr. 8, 12 ff . ; and in 
 a quieter strain, Ps. 51. 81. 91. 103 &c.). . . . 
 
 The prophets, though their diction is usually an elevated prose, 
 manifest a strong tendency to enforce and emphasize their thought 
 by casting it, more or less completely, into the form of parallel 
 clauses (e.g. Is. i, 2. 3. 10. 18. 19. 20. 27. 29 &c. ; 13, TO. n. 12. 
 13 &c. ; Am. 6, i. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7 &c.). And sometimes they 
 adopt a distinctly lyrical strain, as Is. 42, 10-12. 44, 23. 45, 8. 
 But with the prophets the lines are very commonly longer than is 
 the case in poetry (in the technical sense of the word) ; and the 
 movement is less bright and rapid than that of the true lyrical 
 style.
 
 STEDMAX. lix 
 
 6. Biblical Style and Language Contrasted with those of 
 Western Nations. 
 
 [ADDISON, Spectator, No. 405.] 
 
 There is a certain coldness and indifference in the phrases of 
 our European languages when they are compared with the Oriental 
 forms of speech ; and it happens very luckily that the Hebrew 
 idioms run into the English tongue with a particular grace and 
 beauty. Our language has received innumerable elegancies and 
 improvements from that infusion of Hebraisms which are derived 
 to it out of the poetical passages in Holy Writ. They give a 
 force and energy to our expressions, warm and animate our lan- 
 guage, and convey our thoughts in more ardent and intense 
 phrases than any that are to be met with in our own tongue. 
 There is something so pathetic in this kind of diction that it often 
 sets the mind in a flame, and makes our hearts burn within us. ... 
 If any one would judge of the beauties of poetry that are to be 
 met with in the Divine writings, and examine how kindly the He- 
 brew manners of speech mix and incorporate with the English 
 language, after having perused the Book of Psalms let him read a 
 literal translation of Horace or Pindar. He will find in these two 
 last such an absurdity and confusion of style, with such a compara- 
 tive poverty of imagination, as will make him very sensible of what 
 I have been here advancing. 
 
 [SxEDMAN, The Nature and Elements of Poetry, in the Centurv 
 Magazine for May, 1892.] 
 
 The naivet^ of the Davidic lyre is beyond question, and so is the 
 superb unrestraint of the Hebrew prophecy and paeans. We feel 
 the stress of human nature in its articulate moods. This gives to 
 the poetry of the Scriptures an attribute possessed only by the 
 most creative and impersonal literature of other tongues that of 
 universality. Again, it was all designed for music, by the poets of 
 a musical race, and the psalms were arranged by the first com-
 
 Ix ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 posers the leaders of the royal choir. It retains forever the 
 fresh tone of an epoch when lyrical composition was the normal 
 form of expression. Then its rhythm is free, unrestrained, in ex- 
 treme opposition to that of classical and modern verse, relying 
 merely upon antiphony, alliteration, and parallelism. Technical 
 abandon, allied with directness of conception and faithful revela- 
 tion of human life, makes for universality makes of the Hebrew 
 Scriptures a Bible, a world's book that can be translated into all 
 tongues with surpassing effect, notably into a language almost as 
 direct and elemental as its own, that of our Anglo-Saxon in its 
 Jacobean strength and clarity. . . . 
 
 It has been said of the Hebrew language that every word is 
 a poem ; and there are books of the Old Testament, neither 
 lyrical nor prophetic, so exquisite in kind that I call them models 
 of impersonal art. Considered thus, the purely narrative idyls of 
 Esther and Ruth have so much significance that I shall have occa- 
 sion to recur to them with reference to poetic beauty and con- 
 struction. 
 
 [CHATEAUBRIAND, Genius of Christianity, Part II., Bk. 5, Chaps. 
 
 3 and 4-] 
 
 So much has been written on the Bible, it has been so repeat- 
 edly commented upon, that perhaps the only method now left to 
 make its beauties felt is to compare it with the works of Homer. 
 Consecrated by ages, these poems have received from time a spe- 
 cies of sanctity which justifies the parallel and obviates every idea 
 of profanation. If Jacob and Nestor are not of the same family, 
 both at least belong to the early ages of the world, and you feel 
 that it is but a step from the palace of Pylos to the tents of 
 Ishmael. 
 
 In what respect the Bible is more beautiful than Homer, what 
 resemblances and what differences exist between it and the pro- 
 ductions of that poet such are the subjects which we purpose to 
 examine in these chapters. Let us consider these two monu- 
 ments, which stand like solitary columns at the entrance to the 
 temple of Genius, and form its simple peristyle.
 
 t 'If A TEA UBKIAND. Ixi 
 
 In the first place, it is a curious spectacle to behold the rivalry 
 of the two most ancient languages of the world, the languages in 
 which Moses and Lycurgus published their laws, and David and 
 Pindar chanted their hymns. The Hebrew, concise, energetic, 
 with scarcely any inflection in its verbs, expressing twenty shades 
 of a thought by the mere apposition of a letter, proclaims the 
 idiom of a people who, by a*remarkable combination, unite primi- 
 tive simplicity with a profound knowledge of mankind. The 
 Greek . . . displays in its intricate conjugations, in its inflections, 
 in its diffuse eloquence, a nation of an imitative and social genius, 
 a nation elegant and vain, fond of melody and prodigal of words. . . . 
 
 Our terms of comparison will be : Simplicity ; Antiquity of 
 Manners ; Narrative ; Description ; Similes or Images ; the Sub- 
 lime. Let us examine the first of these terms. 
 
 i. Simplicity. 
 
 The simplicity of the Bible is more concise and more solemn, 
 the simplicity of Homer more diffuse and more lively. The former 
 is sententious, and comes back to the same locutions to express 
 new ideas ; the latter is fond of expatiating, and often repeats 
 in the same phrases what has been said before. The simplicity 
 of Scripture is that of an ancient priest, who, imbued with all the 
 sciences, human and divine, pronounces from the recess of the 
 sanctuary the precise oracles of wisdom ; the simplicity of the poet 
 of Chios is that of an aged traveler, who, beside the hearth of his 
 host, relates what he has learned in the course of a long and 
 checkered life. . . . 
 
 3. Narrative. 
 
 The narrative of Homer is interrupted by digressions, harangues, 
 descriptions of vessels, garments, arms, and sceptres, by genealo- 
 gies of men and things. Proper names are always surcharged 
 with epithets ; a hero seldom fails to be divine, like the immortals, 
 or honored by the nations as a god, A princess is sure to have 
 white arms, her shape always resembles the trunk of the palm-tree 
 of Delos, and she owes her locks to the youngest of the Graces.
 
 Ixii ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 The narrative of the Bible is rapid, without digression, without 
 circumlocution ; it is broken into short sentences, and the per- 
 sons are named without flattery. Proper names are incessantly 
 recurring, and the pronoun is scarcely ever used instead of them, 
 a circumstance which, added to the frequent repetition of the 
 conjunction and, indicates by this simplicity a society much nearer 
 the state of nature than that sung byT-Tomer. The forms of self- 
 love are already evoked in the characters of the Odyssey, whereas 
 they are dormant in those of Genesis. 
 
 4. Description. 
 
 The descriptions of Homer are prolix, whether they be of a 
 pathetic or a terrible character, melancholy or cheerful, energetic 
 or sublime. The Bible, in all its different species of description, 
 gives in general but one single trait, but this trait is striking, and 
 distinctly exhibits the object to our view. 
 
 5. Similes. 
 
 The Homeric similes are lengthened out by accidental circum- 
 stances ; they are little pictures hung round an edifice to refresh 
 the eye which has been fatigued with the height of the domes, by 
 calling it back to rest on scenes of nature and rural manners. 
 The comparisons of the Bible are almost all given in but few 
 words : you have a lion, a stream, a storm, a fire, roaring, falling, 
 ravaging, devouring. It is, however, no stranger to circumstan- 
 tial similes, but then it adopts an Oriental turn and personifies the 
 object, as pride in the cedar, etc. 
 
 6. The Sublime. 
 
 Finally, the sublime in Homer commonly arises from the gen- 
 eral combination of the parts, and arrives by degrees at its acme. 
 In the Bible it is almost always unexpected ; it bursts upon you 
 like lightning, and you are left smoking and riven by the thunder- 
 'bolt before you know how you were struck by it. In Homer, 
 again, the sublime consists in the magnificence of the words har- 
 monizing with the majesty of the thought. In the Bible, on the
 
 ( 7/. / TEA I 'HR1AXD. Ixiii 
 
 contrary, the highest degree of sublimity often proceeds from a. 
 contrast between the grandeur of the idea and the littleness, at 
 times even the triviality, of the word that expresses it. From this 
 results a shock, a violent wrench to the mind ; for when, raised 
 by contemplation, the soul darts towards the highest regions, sud- 
 denly the expression, instead of buoying it up, lets it fall from 
 heaven to earth, and hurls it from the bosom of God to the mire 
 of this nether world. This species of sublime, the most impetu- 
 ous of all, is admirably adapted to an immense and awful being, 
 allied at once to the greatest and the smallest objects. . . . 
 
 We shall conclude this parallel, and the whole subject of Chris- 
 tian poetics, with an essay which will show at once the difference 
 between the style of the Bible and that of Homer ; we shall take 
 a passage from the former and paint it with colors borrowed from 
 the latter. Ruth thus addresses Naomi : 
 
 " Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after 
 thee ; for whither thou goest, I will go ; and where thou lodgest 
 I will lodge ; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my 
 God ; where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried." 
 
 Let us try to render this verse into the language of Homer : 
 
 " The fair Ruth thus responds to the wise Naomi, honored by 
 the people as a goddess : ' Cease to oppose the determination with 
 which a divinity inspires me ; I will tell thee the truth, just as it is, 
 and without disguise. I am resolved to follow thee. I will remain 
 with thee, whether thou shalt continue to reside among the Moab- 
 ites, so dexterous in throwing the javelin, or shalt return to Judea, 
 so fertile in olives. With thee I will demand hospitality of the 
 nations who respect the suppliant. Our ashes shall be mingled 
 in the same urn, and I will offer agreeable sacrifices to the God 
 who incessantly accompanies thee.' She said ; and as when the 
 vehement West Wind brings a warm, refreshing rain, the husband- 
 men prepare the wheat and the barley, and make baskets of rushes 
 nicely interwoven, for they foresee that the falling shower will soften 
 the soil and render it fit for receiving the precious gifts of Ceres ; 
 so the words of Ruth, like a fertilizing rain, melted the heart of 
 Naomi."
 
 Ixiv ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 Such, perhaps, as closely as our feeble talents allow us to imi- 
 tate Homer, is a shadow of the style of that immortal genius. 
 But has not the verse of Ruth, thus amplified, lost the original 
 charm which it possesses in the Scriptures ? What poetry can 
 ever be equivalent to this single stroke of eloquence, ' Thy people 
 shall be my people, and thy God my God ' ? 
 
 [RENAN, Histoire Gene rale dcs Langues Scmitiques, second edi- 
 tion, pp. 18-24.] 
 
 The unity and simplicity which distinguish the Semitic race are 
 likewise found in the Semitic languages. Abstraction is unknown 
 to them ; metaphysics, impossible. Language being the neces- 
 sary mold of a people's intellectual operations, an idiom almost 
 destitute of syntax, without variety of construction, lacking the 
 conjunctions which establish such delicate relations among the 
 members of thought, portraying every object by its external quali- 
 ties, ought to be eminently suitable to the eloquent inspirations of 
 seers and the delineation of fugitive impressions, but should deny 
 itself to all philosophy, to all purely intellectual speculations. To 
 imagine an Aristotle or a Kant with such an organ of expression 
 is as impossible as to conceive an Iliad or a poem like that of Job 
 written in our metaphysical and complicated languages. Add to 
 this that the Semitic languages, especially the older ones, are in- 
 exact, and correspond but approximately with the things them- 
 selves. Their formulas have not the precision which with us 
 leaves no room for ambiguity. When we seek to translate into 
 our European tongues, where each word has only a single meaning, 
 the oldest monuments of Hebrew poetry, we experience the neces- 
 sity of putting questions to ourselves, and of making a multitude 
 of distinctions which never occurred to the author, but to which 
 the mechanism of our idioms obliges us to attend. 
 
 This physical and sensuous character seems to us the dominant 
 trait of the family of languages which forms the object of our 
 study. Their roots are almost all derived from the imitation ot 
 nature, and allow us to perceive, as through transparent crystal, the
 
 RENAN. Ixv 
 
 impressions which, reflected by the consciousness of primitive man, 
 resulted in language. Derivative words are formed according to 
 simple and uniform laws. The verb has a still evident character 
 of priority. . . . The noun has but few inflections. . . . Certain 
 parasitical monosyllables, which agglutinate at the beginning of 
 words, take the place of terminal inflections. . . . Indeed, the 
 whole construction of the sentence displays such a character of 
 simplicity, especially in narrative, that we can only think of the 
 artless stories of a child. Instead of the skilful involutions of 
 phrase (circuitus, comprehensio, as Cicero calls them) within 
 whose compass Greek and Latin unite with so much art the 
 various members of a single thought, the Semites can only 
 attach one proposition to the end of another, using as their 
 sole contrivance the simple copula and, which serves them in 
 lieu of almost every other conjunction. 
 
 Ewald has rightly observed that the language of the Semites 
 is rather poetic and lyrical than oratorical or epic. It is true that 
 the art of oratory, in the classical sense, has always been foreign to 
 them. Semitic grammar is almost ignorant of the art of sub- 
 ordinating the clauses of the sentence ; it taxes the race which 
 created it with a patent inferiority of the reasoning faculties, but 
 allows it a very lively sense of reality and much delicacy of sensa- 
 tion. Perspective is wholly wanting to the Semitic style ; in vain 
 should we seek in it those sallies, those retreats, those half-lights, 
 which give the Aryan languages a second power of expression, as 
 it were. Plain and destitute of inversions, the Semitic languages 
 are acquainted with no process save the juxtaposition of ideas, 
 after the manner of Byzantine painting or the bas-reliefs of 
 Nineveh. We must even admit that the idea of style, as we 
 understand the word, is entirely wanting to the Semites. Their 
 periods are very short ; the extent of discourse which they can 
 embrace at once does not exceed one or two lines. Solely con- 
 cerned with the thought of the moment, they do not prepare in 
 advance the mechanism of the sentence,, and never consider what 
 precedes or what is to come. Hence result strange inadvertences, 
 into which they are led by their inability to follow to the end a
 
 Ixvi ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 single idea, and by their practice of never returning to correct 
 what has once been written. It is like the most careless conver- 
 sation, caught in the act and immediately fixed by writing. 
 
 In the structure of the sentence, as in their whole mental con- 
 stitution, there is with the Semites one intricacy less than with the 
 Aryans. They are destitute of one of the degrees of combination 
 which we esteem necessary for the complete expression of thought. 
 The uniting of words into a proposition is their supreme effort ; 
 it never occurs to them to repeat the process on the proposi- 
 tions themselves. This is, according to the expression of Aristotle, 1 
 the ' indefinite style,' advancing by accumulated atoms, as opposed 
 to the finished rotundity of the Greek and Latin period. Every- 
 thing which may be included under the denomination of oratorical 
 harmony remained unknown to them. Eloquence is for them 
 only a lively succession of earnest observations and bold images ; 
 in rhetoric no less than in architecture their favorite device is 
 the arabesque. 
 
 The importance of the verse in Semitic style is the best proof of 
 the total lack of internal construction which characterizes their 
 diction. The verse has nothing in common with the Greek and 
 Latin period, since it does not present a succession of members 
 dependent upon one another ; it is an almost arbitrary division in 
 a series of propositions separated by commas. Its length is not 
 determined by anything essential ; the verse corresponds to the 
 pauses demanded by the exigencies of respiration, whether or not 
 such pauses are required by the sense. The author stops, not 
 from the feeling that he has arrived at a natural halting-place in 
 his discourse, but simply because he cannot help himself. Let 
 any one attempt to divide up in this way a speech of Demosthenes 
 or Cicero, and he will realize how fully the verse belongs to the 
 very essence of the Semitic languages. It is only at a compara- 
 tively recent period that they gave up this feature, an insufficient 
 provision against the wearisome monotony to which they were 
 condemned by their too simple idea of discourse. 
 
 We may say that the Aryan tongues, compared with the Semitic, 
 1 See p. Ixviii.
 
 RENAN. Ixvii 
 
 are the languages of abstraction and metaphysics, compared with 
 those of realism and sensuousness. With their marvelous flexibil- 
 ity, their variety of inflections, their delicate particles, their com- 
 pound words, and especially because of the admirable secret of 
 inversion, which allows the natural order of ideas to be changed 
 without injury to the determination of grammatical relations, the 
 Aryan languages lead us directly into complete idealism, and in- 
 duce us to regard the creation of language as a fact essentially 
 transcendental. 
 
 If, on the other hand, we considered only the Semitic languages, 
 we might be tempted to believe that sensation alone presided at 
 the first movements of human thought, and that language was in 
 the beginning only a kind of reflex of the external world. In 
 running over the list of Semitic roots, we scarcely encounter a 
 single one which does not offer a primary material sense, ap- 
 plied, by transitions more or less direct, to intellectual objects. 
 Is it a feeling of the soul which is to be expressed, recourse is had 
 to the organic movement which is usually its sign. Thus anger is 
 expressed in Hebrew in a multitude of ways, all alike picturesque, 
 and all derived from physiological circumstances. Now the meta- 
 phor is taken from the rapid and animated breathing which accom- 
 panies passion l ; now from heat, or from ebullition ; now from the 
 action of breaking with a crash ; now from shuddering. Dejection 
 and despair are expressed in this language by internal liquefac- 
 tion, the dissolution of the heart ; fear, by the loosing of the reins. 
 Pride is depicted by the elevation of the head, a tall and erect stat- 
 ure. Patience is a long breathing, impatience a short. Desire is 
 thirst or paleness. Pardon is expressed by a host of metaphors 
 borrowed from the idea of covering, concealing, passing over a 
 sin a coating which blots it out. In the Book of Job, God sews 
 up sins in a bag, affixes his seal, then casts it behind his back, 
 and all this to signify forgetting. To shake the head, look upon 
 one another, let fall one's arms, are expressions which Hebrew 
 much prefers to all our psychological terms for the rendering of 
 disdain, indecision, and despondency. We may even say that 
 1 The Hebrew roots, adduced by the author, are here omitted. ED.
 
 Ixviii ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 such psychological terms are almost totally wanting in Hebrew, or 
 at least that there is always added the portrayal of the attendant 
 physical circumstance : ' He grew angry, and his countenance was 
 inflamed . . . ; he opened his mouth, and said,' etc. 
 
 Other notions more or less abstract have received their symbol, 
 in the Semitic languages, in a like manner. The idea of the true 
 is drawn from solidity, stability ; that of the beautiful, from radi- 
 ance ; that of good, from rectitude ; that of evil, from deviation, 
 from the curve, or else from stench. To make or create was 
 originally to carve out ; to decide anything is to cut across ; to 
 think is to speak. ' Bone ' signifies the substance, the inmost of a 
 thing, and serves in Hebrew as the equivalent of the pronoun 
 'self.' I am not ignorant that similar facts occur in all lan- 
 guages, and that Aryan idioms would furnish almost as many ex- 
 amples where pure thought is, in the same way, involved in a 
 concrete and sensible form. But what distinguishes the Semitic 
 family is that the original fusion of sensation and idea has always 
 been maintained, that neither of the two has thrown the other into 
 the shade, as has come to pass in the Aryan languages ; in short, 
 that idealization has never taken place with any thoroughness, 
 so that in every word we imagine we hear the echo of the primi- 
 tive sensations which determined the choice of those who first 
 bestowed the names. 
 
 [ARISTOTLE, Rhetoric, Bk. 3, Chap. 9, Welldon's translation.] 
 
 By a jointed style I mean one which has no end in itself ex- 
 cept the completion of the subject under discussion. It is dis- 
 agreeable from its endlessness or indefiniteness, as everybody likes 
 to have the end clearly in view. This is the reason why people 
 in a race do not gasp and faint until they reach the goal ; for 
 while they have the finishing-point before their eyes, they are 
 insensible of fatigue. The compact style, on the other hand, 
 is the periodic ; and I mean by a period a sentence having a 
 beginning and an end in itself, and a magnitude which admits 
 of being easily comprehended at a glance. Such a style is agree-
 
 RENAN. Ixix 
 
 able and can be easily learnt. It is agreeable, as being the oppo- 
 site of the indefinite style, and because the hearer is constantly 
 imagining himself to have got hold of something, from constantly 
 finding a definite conclusion of the sentence, whereas in the other 
 style there is something disagreeable in having nothing to look 
 forward to or accomplish. It is easily learnt too, as being easily 
 recollected, and this because a periodic style can be numbered, 
 and number is the easiest thing in the world to recollect. It is 
 thus that everybody recollects verses better than irregular or prose 
 compositions, as they contain number and are measured by it. 
 But the period should be completed by the sense as well as by the 
 rhythm, and not be abruptly broken off. 
 
 [RENAN, Histoire Generate des Langues Semitiques, 
 pp. 411-413, 418.] 
 
 One of the laws most generally observed in the different fami- 
 lies of languages, especially the Aryan, is that which refers synthe- 
 sis and complexity to the beginning. Far from representing the 
 present state as the development of a primitive germ less complete 
 and simple than the state which has succeeded, the most profound 
 linguists are unanimous in placing at the infancy of the human 
 spirit the languages which are synthetic, obscure, and complicated, 
 so complicated, indeed, that it is the want of an easier lan- 
 guage which has led later generations to abandon the learned 
 tongue of their ancestors. It would be possible, by taking one 
 after another the languages of almost all the countries where man- 
 kind has had a history, to verify this regular progress from syn- 
 thesis to analysis. Everywhere an ancient language has made 
 way for a popular speech, which does not constitute, it is true, a 
 new idiom, but is rather a transformation of that which preceded 
 it. The latter was more learned, laden with inflections to express 
 the infinitely delicate relations of thought, even richer in the order 
 of its ideas, though this order was comparatively restricted, an 
 image, in a word, of primitive spontaneity, in which the mind 
 gathered elements into a confused unity, and lost in the whole the
 
 Ixx ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. 
 
 analytic view of the parts. The modern dialect, on the other hand, 
 corresponds to a progress of analysis, is clearer and more explicit, 
 separating what the ancients jumbled together, shattering the mech- 
 anism of the ancient language in order to bestow on each idea 
 and relation its own isolated expression. . . . The axiom which 
 we have just enounced is subject to weighty exceptions, recog- 
 nized by the very persons who formulated it. Friedrich Schlegel 
 dares not apply it to certain languages which have remained in an 
 inferior stage of culture ; Abel-R^musat and Wilhelm von Hum- 
 boldt have excepted the Chinese language. We believe that in 
 many respects the Semitic languages must share in the same ex- 
 ception. Indeed, so far from complexity being their primitive 
 state, the further we go back toward their origins the more sim- 
 ple they appear ; on the contrary, the further we depart from their 
 cradle the fuller and richer they are. . . . 
 
 The Semitic languages, considered as a whole, are languages 
 essentially analytical. In place of rendering in its unity the com- 
 plex element of discourse, they prefer to dissect it, and express it 
 term by term. They are ignorant of the art of establishing among 
 the members of a sentence that reciprocity which makes the period 
 a body whose parts are connected in such a way that the under- 
 standing of the one is impossible except through the collective 
 view of the whole. They have not had to shake off the yoke that 
 the comprehensive thought of the fathers of the Aryan race im- 
 posed on the spirit of their descendants. The wonderful clearness 
 with which the Semitic race perceived at once the distinction of 
 the ego, the world, and God, excluded this vast and simultaneous 
 intuition of relations. The Hebrew sentence is a masterpiece of 
 logical analysis, and we are surprised to find there at every step 
 the explicit turns, the Gallicisms, if I may venture to say so, which 
 seem the heritage of the most positive and reflective tongues.
 
 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 Exodus 15. 
 
 MOSES 1 SONG OF DELIVERANCE. 
 
 THEN sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto 
 the LORD, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the LORD, for he 
 hath triumphed gloriously ; the horse and his rider hath he thrown 
 into the sea. 
 
 2 The LORD is my strength and song, and he is become my 
 salvation ; he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation ; 
 my father's God, and I will exalt him. 
 
 3 The LORD is a man of war ; the LORD is his name. 
 
 4 Pharaoh's chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea ; 
 his chosen captains also are drowned in the Red sea. 
 
 5 The depths have covered them ; they sank into the bottom 
 as a stone. 
 
 6 Thy right hand, O LORD, is become glorious in power ; thy 
 right hand, O LORD, hath dashed in pieces the enemy. 
 
 7 And in the greatness of thine excellency thou hast over- 
 thrown them that rose up against thee ; thou sentest forth thy 
 wrath, which consumed them as stubble. 
 
 8 And with the blast of thy nostrils the waters were gathered 
 together, the floods stood upright as an heap, and the depths were 
 congealed in the heart of the sea. 
 
 9 The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide 
 the spoil ; my lust shall be satisfied upon them ; I will draw my 
 sword, my hand shall destroy them.
 
 2 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 10 Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them ; they 
 sank as lead in the mighty waters. 
 
 11 Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods? who is 
 like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders ? 
 
 1 2 Thou stretchedst out thy right hand,, the earth swallowed 
 them. 
 
 13 Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou 
 hast redeemed ; thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy 
 holy habitation. 
 
 14 The people shall hear, and be afraid; sorrow shall take 
 hold on the inhabitants of Palestina. 
 
 15 Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed ; the mighty men 
 of Moab, trembling shall take hold upon them ; all the inhabitants 
 of Canaan shall melt away. 
 
 1 6 Fear and dread shall fall upon them; by the greatness of 
 thine arm they shall be as still as a stone ; till thy people pass 
 over, O LORD, till the people pass over which thou hast pur- 
 chased. 
 
 1 7 Thou shalt .bring them in, and plant them in the mountain 
 of thine inheritance, in the place, O LORD, which thou hast made 
 for thee to dwell in, in the sanctuary, O LORD, which thy hands 
 have established. 
 
 1 8 The LORD shall reign for ever and ever. 
 
 19 For the horse of Pharaoh went in with his chariots and with 
 his horsemen into the sea, and the LORD brought again the waters 
 of the sea upon them ; but the children of Israel went on dry 
 land in the midst of the sea. 
 
 20 And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a 
 timbrel in her hand ; and all the women went out after her with 
 timbrels and with dances. 
 
 21 And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the LORD, for he 
 hath triumphed gloriously ; the horse and his rider hath he thrown 
 into the sea. 
 
 22 So Moses brought Israel from the Red sea, and they went 
 out into the wilderness of Shur ; and they went three days in the 
 wilderness, and found no water.
 
 EXODUS 20. 3 
 
 23 And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of 
 the waters of Marah, for they were bitter ; therefore the name 
 of it was called Marah. 
 
 24 And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall 
 we drink? 
 
 25 And he cried unto the LORD; and the LORD showed him a 
 tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were 
 made sweet. There he made for them a statute and an ordinance, 
 and there he proved them, 
 
 26 And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the 
 LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and 
 wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I 
 will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought 
 upon the Egyptians ; for I am the LORD that healeth thee. 
 
 27 And they came to Elim, where were twelve wells of water, 
 and threescore and ten palm trees ; and they encamped there by 
 the waters. 
 
 Exodus 20. 
 
 THE LAW GIVEN TO THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL. 
 
 AND God spake all these words, saying, 
 2 I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out 
 of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 
 
 3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 
 
 4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any like- 
 ness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth 
 beneath, or that is in the water under the earth ; 
 
 5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them ; 
 for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of 
 the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation 
 of them that hate me, 
 
 6 And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me 
 and keep my commandments.
 
 4 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain ; 
 for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in 
 vain. 
 
 8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 
 
 9 Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work ; 
 
 10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God ; in 
 it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, 
 thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy 
 stranger that is within thy gates ; 
 
 1 1 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, 
 and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day : wherefore the 
 LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. 
 
 12 Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be 
 long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. 
 
 13 Thou shalt not kill. 
 
 14 Thou shalt not commit adultery. 
 
 15 Thou shalt not steal. 
 
 1 6 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. 
 
 17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not 
 covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidser- 
 vant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's. 
 
 1 8 And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, 
 and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking ; and 
 when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. 
 
 19 And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will 
 hear ; but let not God speak with us, lest we die. 
 
 20 And Moses said unto the people, Fear not ; for God is come 
 to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye 
 sin not. 
 
 21 And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto 
 the thick darkness where God was. 
 
 22 And the LORD said unto Moses, Thus thou shalt say unto 
 the children of Israel, Ye have seen that I have talked with you 
 from heaven. 
 
 23 Ye shall not make with me gods of silver, neither shall ye 
 make unto you gods of gold.
 
 DEUTERONOMY 32. 5 
 
 24 An altar of earth them shall make unto me, and shalt sacri- 
 fice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, 
 and thine oxen ; in all places where I record my name I will come 
 unto thee, and I will bless thee. 
 
 25 And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not 
 build it of hewn stone ; for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou 
 hast polluted it. 
 
 26 Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy 
 nakedness be not discovered thereon. 
 
 Deuteronomy 32. 
 
 THE SONG OF MOSES. 
 
 GIVE ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak ; and hear, O earth, 
 the words of my mouth. 
 
 2 My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as 
 the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the 
 showers upon the grass ; 
 
 3 Because I will publish the name of the LORD ; ascribe ye 
 greatness unto our God. 
 
 4 He is the Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are 
 judgment ; a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is 
 he. 
 
 5 They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of 
 his children ; they are a perverse and crooked generation. 
 
 6 Do ye thus requite the LORD, O foolish people and unwise ? 
 is not he thy father that hath bought thee ? hath he not made 
 thee, and established thee ? 
 
 7 Remember the days of old, consider the years of many gen- 
 erations ; ask thy father, and he will show thee, thy elders, and 
 they will tell thee. 
 
 8 When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, 
 when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the 
 people according to the number of the children of Israel.
 
 6 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 9 For the LORD'S portion is his people ; Jacob is the lot of his 
 inheritance. 
 
 10 He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling 
 wilderness ; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as 
 the apple of his eye. 
 
 11 As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, 
 spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her 
 wings, 
 
 12 So the LORD alone did lead him, and there was no strange 
 god with him. 
 
 13 He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he 
 might eat the increase of the fields ; and he made him to suck 
 honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock ; 
 
 14 Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and 
 rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of 
 wheat ; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape. 
 
 15 But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked; thou art waxen fat, 
 thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness ; then he for- 
 sook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his 
 salvation. 
 
 1 6 They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with 
 abominations provoked they him to anger. 
 
 1 7 They sacrificed unto devils, not to God ; to gods whom they 
 knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers 
 feared not. 
 
 1 8 Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast 
 forgotten God that formed thee. 
 
 19 And when the LORD saw it, he abhorred them, because of 
 the provoking of his sons and of his daughters. 
 
 20 And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what 
 their end shall be, for they are a very froward generation, chil- 
 dren in whom is no faith. 
 
 21 They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not 
 God ; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities ; and I 
 will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people ; I 
 will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.
 
 DEUTERONOMY 32. 7 
 
 22 For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the 
 lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and 
 set on fire the foundations of the mountains. 
 
 23 I will heap mischiefs upon them ; I will spend mine arrows 
 upon them. 
 
 24 They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burn- 
 ing heat, and with bitter destruction ; I will also send the teeth of 
 beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust. 
 
 25 The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the 
 young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray 
 hairs. 
 
 26 I said, I would scatter them into corners, I would make 
 the remembrance of them to cease from among men, 
 
 27 Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy, lest their 
 adversaries should behave themselves strangely, and lest they 
 should say, Our hand is high, and the LORD hath not done all 
 this. 
 
 28 For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any 
 understanding in them. 
 
 29 O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they 
 would consider their latter end ! 
 
 30 How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thou- 
 sand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the LORD 
 had shut them up ? 
 
 3 1 For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies them- 
 selves being judges. 
 
 32 For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the figlds 
 of Gomorrah ; their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are 
 bitter ; 
 
 33 Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom 
 of asps. 
 
 34 Is not this laid up in store with me, and sealed up among 
 my treasures? 
 
 35 To me belongeth vengeance and recompense ; their foot 
 shall slide in due time ; for the day of their calamity is at hand, 
 and the things that shall come upon them make haste.
 
 8 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 36 For the LORD shall judge his people, and repent himself for 
 his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is 
 none shut up, or left. 
 
 3 7 And he shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom 
 they trusted, 
 
 38 Which did eat the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine 
 of their drink offerings ? let them rise up and help you, and be 
 your protection. 
 
 39 See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with 
 me ; I kill, and I make alive ; I wound, and I heal ; neither is 
 there any that can deliver out of my hand. 
 
 40 For I -lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live for ever. 
 
 41 If I whet my glittering sword, and mine hand take hold on 
 judgment, I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will 
 reward them that hate me. 
 
 42 I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword 
 shall devour flesh ; and that with the blood of the slain and of the 
 captives, from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy. 
 
 43 Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people ; for he will avenge 
 the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adver- 
 saries, and will be merciful unto his land and to his people. 
 
 44 And Moses came and spake all the words of this song in 
 the ears of the people, he, and Hoshea the son of Nun. 
 
 45 And Moses made an end of speaking all these words to all 
 Israel ; 
 
 46 And he said unto them, Set your hearts unto all the words 
 which I testify among you this day, which ye shall command your 
 children to observe to do, all the words of this law. 
 
 47 For it is not a vain thing for you ; because it is your life, 
 and through this thing ye shall prolong your days in the land, 
 whither ye go over Jordan to possess it. 
 
 48 And the LORD spake unto Moses that selfsame day, saying, 
 
 49 Get thee up into this mountain Abarim, unto mount Nebo 
 which is in the land of Moab, that is over against Jericho ; and 
 behold the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of 
 Israel for a possession ;
 
 2 SAMUEL i : 17-27. 9 
 
 50 And die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gath- 
 ered unto thy people, as Aaron thy brother died in mount Hor, 
 and was gathered unto his people ; 
 
 51 Because ye trespassed against me among the children of 
 Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin ; 
 because ye sanctified me not in the midst of the children of Israel. 
 
 52 Yet thou shalt see the land before thee ; but thou shalt not 
 go thither unto the land which I give the children of Israel. 
 
 2 Samuel i : 17-27. 
 
 DAVID'S LAMENT OVER SAUL AND JONATHAN. 
 
 AND David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and 
 over Jonathan his son : 
 
 1 8 (Also he bade them teach the children of Judah the use of 
 the bow ; behold, it is written in the book of Jasher.) 
 
 19 The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places ; how are 
 the mighty fallen ! 
 
 20 Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon ; 
 lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of 
 the uncircumcised triumph. 
 
 21 Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let 
 there be rain, upon you, nor fields of offerings ; for there the shield 
 of the mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of Saul, as though he 
 had not been anointed with oil. 
 
 2 2 From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the 
 bow of Jonathan turned not back, and the sword of Saul returned 
 not empty. 
 
 23 Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, 
 and in their death they were not divided ; they were swifter than 
 eagles, they were stronger than lions. 
 
 24 Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in 
 scarlet, with other delights, who put on ornaments of gold upon 
 your apparel.
 
 10 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 25 How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle ! O 
 Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places. 
 
 26 I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan ; very pleasant 
 hast thou been unto me ; thy love to me was wonderful, passing 
 the love of women. 
 
 2 7 How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished ! 
 
 i Kings 8. 
 
 DEDICATION OF THE TEMPLE AND SOLOMON'S PRAYER. 
 
 THEN Solomon assembled the elders of Israel, and all the 
 heads of the tribes, the chief of the fathers of the children 
 of Israel, unto king Solomon in Jerusalem, that they might bring 
 up the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of the city of David, 
 which is Zion. 
 
 2 And all the men of Israel assembled themselves unto king 
 Solomon at the feast in the month Ethanim, which is the seventh 
 month. 
 
 3 And all the elders of Israel came, and the priests took up the 
 ark. 
 
 4 And they brought up the ark of the LORD, and the tabernacle 
 of the congregation, and all the holy vessels that were in the 
 tabernacle, even those did the priests and the Levites bring up. 
 
 5 And king Solomon, and all the congregation of Israel, that 
 were assembled unto him, were with him before the ark, sacrific- 
 ing sheep and oxen, that could not be told nor numbered for 
 multitude. 
 
 6 And the priests brought in the ark of the covenant of the 
 LORD unto his place, into the oracle of the house, to the most holy 
 place, even under the wings of the cherubims. 
 
 7 For the cherubims spread forth their two wings over the place 
 of the ark, and the cherubims covered the ark and the staves 
 thereof above.
 
 / KINGS 8. 11 
 
 8 And they drew out the staves, that the ends of the staves were 
 seen out in the holy place before the oracle, and they were not 
 seen without ; and there they are unto this day. 
 
 9 There was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone 
 which Moses put there at Horeb, when the LORD made a covenant 
 with the children of Israel, when they came out of the land of 
 Egypt. 
 
 10 And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the 
 holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the LORD, 
 
 1 1 So that the priests could not stand to minister because of the 
 cloud ; for the glory of the LORD had filled the house of the LORD. 
 
 1 2 Then spake Solomon, The LORD said that he would dwell in 
 the thick darkness. 
 
 13 I have surely built thee an house to dwell in, a settled place 
 for thee to abide in for ever. 
 
 14 And the king turned his face about, and blessed all the con- 
 gregation of Israel ; (and all the congregation of Israel stood ;) 
 
 15 And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Israel, which 
 spake with his mouth unto David my father, and hath with his 
 hand fulfilled it, saying, 
 
 1 6 Since the day that I brought forth my people Israel out of 
 Egypt, I chose no city out of all the tribes of Israel to build an 
 house, that my name might be therein ; but I chose David to be 
 over my people Israel. 
 
 1 7 And it was in the heart of David my father to build an house 
 for the name of the LORD God of Israel. 
 
 1 8 And the LORD said unto David my father, Whereas it was in 
 thine heart to build an house unto my name, thou didst well that it 
 was in thine heart. 
 
 19 Nevertheless thou shalt not build the house; but thy son 
 that shall come forth out of thy loins, he shall build the house 
 unto my name. 
 
 20 And the LORD hath performed his word that he spake, and 
 I am risen up in the room of David my father, and sit on the 
 throne of Israel, as the LORD promised, and have built an house for 
 the name of the LORD God of Israel.
 
 12 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 21 And I have set there a place for the ark, wherein is the 
 covenant of the LORD, which he made with our fathers, when he 
 brought them out of the land of Egypt. 
 
 22 And Solomon stood before the altar of the LORD in the 
 presence of all the congregation of Israel, and spread forth his 
 hands toward heaven ; 
 
 23 And he said, LORD God of Israel, there is no God like thee, 
 in heaven above, or on earth beneath, who keepest covenant 
 and mercy with thy servants that walk before thee with all their 
 heart ; 
 
 24 Who hast kept with thy servant David my father that thou 
 promisedst him ; thou spakest also with thy mouth, and hast ful- 
 filled it with thine hand, as it is this day. 
 
 25 Therefore now, LORD God of Israel, keep with thy servant 
 David my father that thou promisedst him, saying, There shall not 
 fail thee a man in my sight to sit on the throne of Israel ; so that 
 thy children take heed to their way, that they walk before me as 
 thou hast walked before me. 
 
 26 And now, O God of Israel, let thy word, I pray thee, be 
 verified, which thou spakest unto thy servant David my father. 
 
 2 7 But will God indeed dwell on the earth ? behold, the heaven 
 and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee ; how much less this 
 house that I have builded ? 
 
 28 Yet have thou respect unto the prayer of thy servant, and to 
 his supplication, O LORD my God, to hearken unto the cry and to 
 the prayer, which thy servant prayeth before thee to day ; 
 
 29 That thine eyes may be open toward this house night and 
 day, even toward the place of which thou hast said, My name shall 
 be there ; that thou mayest hearken unto the prayer which thy 
 servant shall make toward this place. 
 
 30 And hearken thou to the supplication of thy servant, and of 
 thy people Israel, when they shall pray toward this place ; and hear 
 thou in heaven thy dwelling place : and when thou hearest, forgive. 
 
 31 If any man trespass against his neighbor, and an oath be 
 laid upon him to cause him to swear, and the oath come before 
 thine altar in this house ;
 
 / KINGS 8. 13 
 
 32 Then hear thou in heaven, and do, and judge thy servants, 
 condemning the wicked, to bring his way upon his head, and 
 justifying the righteous, to give him according to his righteousness. 
 
 33 When thy people Israel be smitten down before the enemy, 
 because they have sinned against thee, and shall turn again to thee, 
 and confess thy name, and pray, and make supplication unto thee 
 in this house ; 
 
 34 Then hear thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of thy people 
 Israel, and bring them again unto the land which thou gavest unto 
 their fathers. 
 
 35 When heaven is shut up, and there is no rain, because they 
 have sinned against thee ; if they pray toward this place, and con- 
 fess thy name, and turn from their sin, when thou afflictest them ; 
 
 36 Then hear thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of thy ser- 
 vants, and of thy people Israel, that thou teach them the good way 
 wherein they should walk, and give rain upon thy land, which thou 
 hast given to thy people for an inheritance. 
 
 37 If there be in the land famine, if there be pestilence, blast- 
 ing, mildew, locust, or if there be caterpillar ; if their enemy be- 
 siege them in the land of their cities ; whatsoever plague, what- 
 soever sickness there be ; 
 
 38 What prayer and supplication soever be made by any man, 
 or by all thy people Israel, which shall know every man the plague 
 of his own heart, and spread forth his hands toward this house ; 
 
 39 Then hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive, 
 and do, and give to every man according to his ways, whose heart 
 thou knowest ; (for thou, even thou only, knowest the hearts of all 
 the children of men ;) 
 
 40 That they may fear thee all the days that they live in the 
 land which thou gavest unto our fathers. 
 
 41 Moreover concerning a stranger, that is not- of thy people 
 Israel, but cometh out df a far country for thy name's sake ; 
 
 42 (For they shall hear of thy great name, and of thy strong 
 hand, and of thy stretched out arm ;) when he shall come and 
 pray toward this house ; 
 
 43 Hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and do according to
 
 14 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 all that the stranger calleth to thee for ; that all people of the earth 
 may know thy name, to fear thee, as do thy people Israel ; and 
 that they may know that this house, which I have builded, is called 
 by thy name. 
 
 44 If thy people go out to battle against their enemy, whither- 
 soever thou shalt send them, and shall pray unto the LORD toward 
 the city which thou hast chosen, and toward the house that I have 
 built for thy name ; 
 
 45 Then hear thou in heaven their prayer and their supplication, 
 and maintain their cause. 
 
 46 If they sin against thee, (for there is no man that sinneth 
 not,) and thou be angry with them, and deliver them to the 
 enemy, so that they carry them away captives unto the land of the 
 enemy, far or near ; 
 
 47 Yet if they shall bethink themselves in the land whither they 
 were carried captives, and repent, and make supplication unto 
 thee in the land of them that carried them captives, saying, We 
 have sinned, and have done perversely, we have committed 
 wickedness ; 
 
 48 And so return unto thee with all their heart and with all 
 their soul, in the land of their enemies which led them away 
 captive, and pray unto thee toward their land, which thou gavest 
 unto their fathers, the city which thou hast chosen, and the house 
 which I have built for thy name ; 
 
 49 Then hear thou their prayer and their supplication in heaven 
 thy dwelling place, and maintain their cause, 
 
 50 And forgive thy people that have sinned against thee, and all 
 their transgressions wherein they have transgressed against thee, 
 and give them compassion before them who carried them captive, 
 that they may have compassion on them ; 
 
 5 1 For they be thy people, and thine inheritance, which thou 
 broughtest forth out of Egypt, from the midst of the furnace of 
 iron ; 
 
 5 2 That thine eyes may be open unto "the supplication of thy 
 servant, and unto the supplication of thy people Israel, to hearken 
 unto them in all that they call for unto thee.
 
 i KINGS 8. 15 
 
 53 For thou didst separate them from among all the people of 
 the earth to be thine inheritance, as thou spakest by the hand of 
 Moses thy servant, when thou broughtest our fathers out of Egypt, 
 O Lord GOD. 
 
 54 And it was so, that when Solomon had made an end of 
 praying all this prayer and supplication unto the LORD, he arose 
 from before the altar of the LORD, from kneeling on his knees with 
 his hands spread up to heaven. 
 
 55 And he stood, and blessed all the congregation of Israel with 
 a loud voice, saying, 
 
 56 Blessed be the LORD, that hath given rest unto his people 
 Israel, according to all that he promised : there hath not failed one 
 word of all his good promise, which he promised by the hand of 
 Moses his servant. 
 
 5 7 The LORD our God be with us, as he was with our fathers ; 
 let him not leave us, nor forsake us ; 
 
 58 That he may incline our hearts unto him, to walk in all his 
 ways, and to keep his commandments, and his statutes, and his 
 judgments, which he commanded our fathers. 
 
 59 And let these my words, wherewith I have made supplication 
 before the LORD, be nigh unto the LORD our God day and night, 
 that he maintain the cause of his servant, and the cause of his 
 people Israel at all times, as the matter shall require ; 
 
 60 That all the people of the earth may know that the LORD is 
 God, and that there is none else. 
 
 6 1 Let your heart therefore be perfect with the LORD our God, 
 to walk in his statutes, and to keep his commandments, as at this 
 day. 
 
 62 And the king, and all Israel with him, offered sacrifice before 
 the LORD. 
 
 63 And Solomon offered a sacrifice of peace offerings, which 
 he offered unto the LORD, two and twenty thousand oxen, and an 
 hundred and twenty thousand sheep. So the king and all the 
 children of Israel dedicated the house of the LORD. 
 
 64 The same day did the king hallow the middle of the court 
 that was before the house of the LORD ; for there he offered burnt
 
 16 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 offerings, and meat offerings, and the fat of the peace offerings ; 
 because the brazen altar that was before the LORD was too little to 
 receive the burnt offerings, and meat offerings, and the fat of the 
 peace offerings. 
 
 65 And at that time Solomon held a feast, and all Israel with him, 
 a great congregation, from the entering in of Hamath unto the 
 river of Egypt, before the LORD our God, seven days and seven 
 days, even fourteen days. 
 
 66 On the. eighth day he sent the people away ; and they blessed 
 the king, and went unto their tents joyful and glad of heart for all 
 the goodness that the LORD had done for David his servant, and 
 for Israel his people. 
 
 Psalm 23. 
 
 THE LORD is my shepherd ; I shall not want. 
 2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he 
 leadeth me beside the still waters. 
 
 3 He restoreth my soul ; he leadeth me in the paths of right- 
 eousness for his name's sake. 
 
 4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, 
 I will fear no evil ; for thou art with me ; thy rod and thy staff 
 they comfort me. 
 
 5 Thou prepares! a table before me in the presence of mine 
 enemies ; thou anointest my head with oil ; my cup runneth over. 
 
 6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of 
 my life ; and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever. 
 
 Psalm 32. 
 
 BLESSED is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is 
 covered. 
 
 2 Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not 
 iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.
 
 PSALM go. 17 
 
 3 When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roar- 
 ing all the day long. 
 
 4 For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me ; my moist- 
 ure is turned into the drought of summer. [Seiah. 
 
 5 I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I 
 not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD ; 
 and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. [Selah. 
 
 6 For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a 
 time when thou mayest be found ; surely in the floods of great 
 waters they shall not come nigh unto him. 
 
 7 Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from 
 trouble ; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. 
 
 [Selah. 
 
 8 I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou 
 shalt go ; I will guide thee with mine eye. 
 
 9 Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no under- 
 standing ; whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest 
 they come near unto thee. 
 
 10 Many sorrows shall be to the wicked ; but he that trusteth 
 in the LORD, mercy shall compass him about. 
 
 1 1 Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, ye righteous ; and shout 
 for joy, all ye that are upright in heart. 
 
 Psalm 90. 
 
 T ORD, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. 
 
 J > 2 Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou 
 
 hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to 
 everlasting, thou art God. 
 
 3 Thou turnest man to destruction ; and sayest, Return, ye 
 children of men. 
 
 4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when 
 it is past, and as a watch in the night. 
 
 5 Thou earnest them away as with a flood ; they are as a sleep ; 
 in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.
 
 18 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 6 In the morning it flourished!, and groweth up ; in the even- 
 ing it is cut down, and withereth. 
 
 7 For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are 
 we troubled. 
 
 8 Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in 
 the light of thy countenance. 
 
 9 For all our days are passed away in thy wrath ; we spend our 
 years as a tale that is told. 
 
 10 The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if 
 by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength 
 labor and sorrow ; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. 
 
 1 1 Who knoweth the power of thine anger ? even according to 
 thy fear, so is thy wrath. 
 
 12 So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our 
 hearts unto wisdom. 
 
 13 Return, O LORD, how long ! and let it repent thee concern- 
 ing thy servants. 
 
 14 O satisfy us early with thy mercy, that we may rejoice and 
 be glad all our days. 
 
 15 Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast 
 afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. 
 
 1 6 Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto 
 their children. 
 
 1 7 And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us ; and 
 establish thou the work of our hands upon us ; yea, the work of 
 our hands establish thou it. 
 
 Psalm 91. 
 
 HE that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall 
 abide under the shadow of the Almighty. 
 
 2 I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress ; my 
 God ; in him will I trust. 
 
 3 Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and 
 from the noisome pestilence.
 
 PSALM 103. 19 
 
 4 He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings 
 shalt thou trust ; his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. 
 
 5 Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night ; nor for the 
 arrow that flieth by day ; 
 
 6 Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness ; nor for the 
 destruction that wasteth at noonday. 
 
 7 A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy 
 right hand ; but it shall not come nigh thee. 
 
 8 Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of 
 the wicked. 
 
 9 Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge, even 
 the Most High, thy habitation, 
 
 10 There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come 
 nigh thy dwelling. 
 
 1 1 For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee 
 in all thy ways. 
 
 12 They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy 
 foot against a stone. 
 
 1 3 Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder ; the young lion 
 and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet. 
 
 14 Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I 
 deliver him ; I will set him on high, because he hath known my 
 name. 
 
 1 5 He shall call upon me, and I will answer him ; I will be with 
 him in trouble ; I will deliver him, and honor him. 
 
 1 6 With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation. 
 
 Psalm 103. 
 
 BLESS the LORD, O my soul ; and all that is within me, bless 
 his holy name. 
 
 2 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits ; 
 
 3 Who forgiveth all thine iniquities ; who healeth all thy dis- 
 eases :
 
 20 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 4 Who redeemeth thy life from destruction ; who crowneth thee 
 with lovingkindness and tender mercies ; 
 
 5 Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things ; so that thy youth 
 is renewed like the eagle's. 
 
 6 The LORD executeth righteousness and judgment for all that 
 are oppressed. 
 
 7 He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the chil- 
 dren of Israel. 
 
 8 The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plen- 
 teous in mercy. 
 
 9 He will not always chide ; neither will he keep his anger for 
 ever. 
 
 10 He hath not dealt with us after our sins ; nor rewarded us 
 according to our iniquities. 
 
 1 1 For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his 
 mercy toward them that fear him. 
 
 1 2 As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed 
 our transgressions from us. 
 
 13 Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth 
 them that fear him. 
 
 14 For he knoweth our frame ; he remembereth that we are dust. 
 
 15 As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, 
 so he flourisheth. 
 
 1 6 For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone ; and the place 
 thereof shall know it no more. 
 
 1 7 But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting 
 upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's 
 children, 
 
 1 8 To such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember 
 his commandments to do them. 
 
 19 The LORD hath prepared his throne in the heavens ; and his 
 kingdom ruleth over all. 
 
 20 Bless the LORD, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do 
 his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word. 
 
 2 1 Bless ye the LORD, all ye his hosts ; ye ministers of his, that 
 do his pleasure.
 
 PSALM ug. . 21 
 
 2 2 Bless the LORD, all his works in all places of his dominion ; 
 bless the LORD, O my soul. 
 
 Psalm 112. 
 
 PRAISE ye the LORD. Blessed is the man that feareth the 
 LORD, that delighteth greatly in his commandments. 
 
 2 His seed shall be mighty upon earth ; the generation of the 
 upright shall be blessed. 
 
 3 Wealth and riches shall be in his house ; and his righteous- 
 ness endureth for ever. 
 
 4 Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness ; he is 
 gracious, and full of compassion, and righteous. 
 
 5 A good man sheweth favor, and lendeth ; he will guide his 
 affairs with discretion. 
 
 6 Surely he shall not be moved for ever ; the righteous shall be 
 in everlasting remembrance. 
 
 7 He shall not be afraid of evil tidings; his heart is fixed, 
 trusting in the LORD. 
 
 8 His heart is established, he shall not be afraid, until he see 
 his desire upon his enemies. 
 
 9 He hath dispersed, he hath given to the poor ; his righteous- 
 ness endureth for ever ; his horn shall be exalted with honor. 
 
 10 The wicked shall see it, and be grieved; he shall gnash 
 with his teeth, and melt away ; the desire of the wicked shall 
 perish. 
 
 Psalm 1 19. 
 
 X (ALEPH). 
 
 BLESSED are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law 
 of the LORD. 
 
 2 Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek 
 him with the whole heart. 
 
 3 They also do no iniquity ; they walk in his ways.
 
 22 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 4 Thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently. 
 
 5 O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes ! 
 
 6 Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all 
 thy commandments. 
 
 7 I will praise thee with uprightness of heart, when I shall 
 have learned thy righteous judgments. 
 
 8 I will keep thy statutes ; O forsake me not utterly. 
 
 2 (BETH). 
 
 9 Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking 
 heed thereto according to thy word. 
 
 10 With my whole heart have I sought thee; O let me not 
 wander from thy commandments. 
 
 1 1 Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin 
 against thee. 
 
 1 2 Blessed art thou, O LORD ; teach me thy statutes. 
 
 13 With my lips have I declared all the judgments of thy 
 mouth. 
 
 14 I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies, as much as 
 in all riches. 
 
 15 I will meditate in thy precepts, and have respect unto thy 
 ways. 
 
 1 6 I will delight myself in thy statutes; I will not forget thy 
 word. 
 
 3 (GlMEL). 
 
 1 7 Deal bountifully with thy servant, that I may live, and keep 
 thy word. 
 
 1 8 Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things 
 out of thy law. 
 
 19 I am a stranger in the earth; hide not thy commandments 
 from me. 
 
 20 My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thy 
 judgments at all times. 
 
 21 Thou hast rebuked the proud that are cursed, which do err 
 from thy commandments.
 
 PSALM irg. 23 
 
 22 Remove from me reproach and contempt; for I have kept 
 thy testimonies. 
 
 23 Princes also did sit and speak against me ; but thy servant 
 did meditate in thy statutes. 
 
 24 Thy testimonies also are my delight and my counsellors. 
 
 "?l (DALETH). 
 
 25 My soul cleaveth unto the dust ; quicken thou me according 
 to thy word. 
 
 26 I have declared my ways, and thou heardest me ; teach 
 me thy statutes. 
 
 27 Make me to understand the way of thy precepts ; so shall I 
 talk of thy wondrous works. 
 
 28 My soul melteth for heaviness ; strengthen thou me accord- 
 ing unto thy word. 
 
 29 Remove from me the way of lying ; and grant me thy law 
 graciously. 
 
 30 I have chosen the way of truth ; thy judgments have I laid 
 before me. 
 
 31 I have stuck unto thy testimonies; O LORD, put me not to 
 shame. 
 
 32 I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt 
 enlarge my heart. 
 
 H (HE). 
 
 33 Teach me, O LORD, the way of thy statutes ; and I shall 
 keep it unto the end. 
 
 34 Give me understanding, and I shall keep thy law ; yea, I 
 shall observe it with my whole heart. 
 
 35 Make me to go in the path of thy commandments ; for 
 therein do I delight. 
 
 36 Incline my heart unto thy testimonies, and not to covetousness. 
 3 7 Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity ; and quicken 
 
 thou me in thy way. 
 
 38 Stablish thy word unto thy servant, who is devoted to thy 
 fear.
 
 24 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 39 Turn away my reproach which I fear; for thy judgments 
 are good. 
 
 40 Behold, I have longed after thy precepts ; quicken me in 
 thy righteousness. 
 
 1 (VAU). 
 
 41 Let thy mercies come also unto me, O LORD, even thy sal- 
 vation, according to thy word. 
 
 42 So shall I have wherewith to answer him that reproacheth 
 me ; for I trust in thy word. 
 
 43 And take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth ; 
 for I have hoped in thy judgments. 
 
 44 So shall I keep thy law continually for ever and ever. 
 
 45 And I will walk at liberty ; for I seek thy precepts. 
 
 46 I will speak of thy testimonies also before kings, and will 
 not be ashamed. 
 
 47 And I will delight myself in thy commandments, which I 
 have loved. 
 
 48 My hands also will I lift up unto thy commandments, which 
 I have loved ; and I will meditate in thy statutes. 
 
 1 (ZAIN). 
 
 49 Remember the word unto thy servant, upon which thou 
 hast caused me to hope. 
 
 50 This is my comfort in my affliction ; for thy word hath 
 quickened me. 
 
 5 1 The proud have had me greatly in derision ; yet have I not 
 declined from thy law. 
 
 5 2 I remembered thy judgments of old, O LORD ; and have 
 comforted myself. 
 
 53 Horror hath taken hold upon me because of the wicked 
 that forsake thy law. 
 
 54 Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pil- 
 grimage. 
 
 55 I have remembered thy name, O LORD, in the night, and 
 have kept thy law. 
 
 56 This I had, because I kept thy precepts.
 
 PSALM ng. 25 
 
 H (CHETH). 
 
 5 7 Thou art my portion, O LORD ; I have said that I would 
 keep thy words. 
 
 58 I entreated thy favor with my whole heart; be merciful 
 unto me according to thy word. 
 
 59 I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto thy testi- 
 monies. 
 
 60 I made haste, and delayed not to keep thy commandments. 
 
 6 1 The bands of the wicked have robbed me : but I have not 
 forgotten thy law. 
 
 62 At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto thee because of 
 thy righteous judgments. 
 
 63 I am a companion of all them that fear thee, and of them 
 that keep thy precepts. 
 
 64 The earth, O LORD, is full of thy mercy; teach me thy 
 statutes. 
 
 13 (TETH). 
 
 65 Thou hast dealt well with thy servant, O LORD, according 
 unto thy word. 
 
 66 Teach me good judgment and knowledge ; for I have be- 
 lieved thy commandments. 
 
 67 Before I was afflicted I went astray; but now have I kept 
 thy word. 
 
 68 Thou art good, and doest good ; teach me thy statutes. 
 
 69 The proud have forged a lie against me ; but I will keep 
 thy precepts with my whole heart. 
 
 70 Their heart is as fat as grease ; but I delight in thy law. 
 
 71 It is good for me that I have been afflicted ; that I might 
 learn thy statutes. 
 
 72 The law of thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of 
 gold and silver. 
 
 11 GOD). 
 
 73 Thy hands have made me and fashioned me ; give me un- 
 derstanding, that I may learn thy commandments.
 
 26 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 74 They that fear thee will be glad when they see me ; because 
 I have hoped in thy word. 
 
 75 I know, O LORD, that thy judgments are right, and that 
 thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me. 
 
 76 Let, I pray thee, thy merciful kindness be for my comfort, 
 according to thy word unto thy servant. 
 
 77 Let thy tender mercies come unto me, that I may live ; for 
 thy law is my delight. 
 
 78 Let the proud be ashamed ; for they dealt perversely with 
 me without a cause ; but I will meditate in thy precepts. 
 
 79 Let those that fear thee turn unto me, and those that have 
 known thy testimonies. 
 
 80 Let my heart be sound in thy statutes ; that I be not 
 ashamed. 
 
 3 (CAPH). 
 
 8 1 My soul fainteth for thy salvation ; but I hope in thy 
 word. 
 
 82 Mine eyes fail for thy word, saying, When wilt thou com- 
 fort me? 
 
 83 For I am become like a bottle in the smoke ; yet do I not 
 forget thy statutes. 
 
 84 How many are the days of thy servant? when wilt thou 
 execute judgment on them that persecute me ? 
 
 85 The proud have digged pits for me, which are not after 
 thy law. 
 
 86 All thy commandments are faithful ; they persecute me 
 wrongfully ; help thou me. 
 
 8 7 They had almost consumed me upon earth ; but I forsook 
 not thy precepts. 
 
 88 Quicken me after thy lovingkindness ; so shall I keep the 
 testimony of thy mouth. 
 
 7 (LAMED). 
 
 89 For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven. 
 
 90 Thy faithfulness is unto all generations ; thou hast estab- 
 lished the earth, and it abideth.
 
 PSALM 119. 27 
 
 91 They continue this day according to thine ordinances ; for 
 all are thy servants. 
 
 92 Unless thy law had been my delights, I should then have 
 perished in mine affliction. 
 
 93 I will never forget thy precepts ; for with them thou hast 
 quickened me. 
 
 94 I am thine, save me ; for I have sought thy precepts. 
 
 95 The wicked have waited for me to destroy me ; but I will 
 consider thy testimonies. 
 
 96 I have seen an end of all perfection ; but thy command- 
 ment is exceeding broad. 
 
 a CMEM). 
 
 970 how love I thy law ! it is my meditation all the day. 
 
 98 Thou through thy commandments hast made me wiser than 
 mine enemies ; for they are ever with me. 
 
 99 I have more understanding than all my teachers ; for thy 
 testimonies are my meditation. 
 
 100 I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy 
 precepts. 
 
 10 1 I have refrained my feet from every evil way, that I might 
 keep thy word. 
 
 1 02 I have not departed from thy judgments ; for thou hast 
 taught me. 
 
 103 How sweet are thy words unto my taste ! yea, sweeter 
 than honey to my mouth ! 
 
 104 Through thy precepts I get understanding; therefore I 
 hate every false way. 
 
 3 (NUN). 
 
 105 Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. 
 
 1 06 I have sworn, and I will perform it, that I will keep thy 
 righteous judgments. 
 
 107 I am afflicted very much ; quicken me, O LORD, accord- 
 ing unto thy word. 
 
 1 08 Accept, I beseech thee, the free-will offerings of my mouth, 
 O LORD, and teach me thy judgments.
 
 28 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 109 My soul is continually in my hand ; yet do I not forget 
 thy law. 
 
 no The wicked have laid a snare for me; yet I erred not 
 from thy precepts. 
 
 in Thy testimonies have I taken as an heritage for ever : for 
 they are the rejoicing of my heart. 
 
 112 I have inclined my heart to perform thy statutes alway, 
 even unto the end. 
 
 D (SAMECH). 
 
 1 13 I hate vain thoughts ; but thy law do I love. 
 
 114 Thou art my hiding place and my shield; I hope in thy 
 word. 
 
 115 Depart from me, ye evildoers; for I will keep the com- 
 mandments of my God. 
 
 116 Uphold me according unto thy word, that I may live ; and 
 let me not be ashamed of my hope. 
 
 117 Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe ; and I will have 
 respect unto thy statutes continually. 
 
 1 1 8 Thou hast trodden down all them that err from thy stat- 
 utes ; for their deceit is falsehood. 
 
 119 Thou puttest away all the wicked of the earth like dross; 
 therefore I love thy testimonies. 
 
 1 20 My flesh trembleth for fear of thee ; and I am afraid of 
 thy judgments. 
 
 ^ (AlN). 
 
 121 I have done judgment and justice; leave me not to mine 
 oppressors. 
 
 122 Be surety for thy servant for good; let not the proud 
 oppress me. 
 
 123 Mine eyes fail for thy salvation, and for the word of thy 
 righteousness. 
 
 1 24 Deal with thy servant according unto thy mercy, and teach 
 me thy statutes. 
 
 125 I am thy servant; give me understanding, that I may 
 know thy testimonies.
 
 PSAL!\f 7/9. 29 
 
 126 It is time for thee, LORD, to work; for they have made 
 void thy law. 
 
 127 Therefore I love thy commandments above gold ; yea, 
 above fine gold. 
 
 128 Therefore I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things 
 to be right ; and I hate every false way. 
 
 a CPE). 
 
 129 Thy testimonies are wonderful; therefore doth my soul 
 keep them. 
 
 130 The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth under- 
 standing unto the simple. 
 
 131 1 opened my mouth, and panted; for I longed for thy 
 commandments. 
 
 132 Look thou upon me, and be merciful unto me, as thou 
 usest to do unto those that love thy name. 
 
 133 Order my steps in thy word ; and let not any iniquity have 
 dominion over me. 
 
 134 Deliver me from the oppression of man; so will I keep 
 thy precepts. 
 
 135 Make thy face to shine upon thy servant; and teach me 
 thy statutes. 
 
 136 Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep 
 not thy law. 
 
 (TZADDl). 
 
 137 Righteous art thou, O LORD, and upright are thy judg- 
 ments. 
 
 138 Thy testimonies that thou hast commanded are righteous 
 and very faithful. 
 
 139 My zeal hath consumed me, because mine enemies have 
 forgotten thy words. 
 
 140 Thy word is very pure ; therefore thy servant loveth it. 
 
 141 I am small and despised ; yet do net I forget thy precepts. 
 
 142 Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and thy 
 law is the truth.
 
 30 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 143 Trouble and anguish have taken hold on me; yet thy 
 commandments are my delights. 
 
 144 The righteousness of thy testimonies is everlasting; give 
 me understanding, and I shall live. 
 
 p (KOPH). 
 
 145 I cried with my whole heart; hear me, O LORD; I will 
 keep thy statutes. 
 
 146 I cried unto thee ; save me, and I shall keep thy testi- 
 monies. 
 
 147 I prevented the dawning of the morning, and cried; I 
 hoped in thy word. 
 
 148 Mine eyes prevent the night watches, that I might meditate 
 in thy word. 
 
 149 Hear my voice according unto thy lovingkindness ; O 
 LORD, quicken me according to thy judgment. 
 
 150 They draw nigh that follow after mischief; they are far 
 from thy law. 
 
 151 Thou art near, O LORD; and all thy commandments are 
 truth. 
 
 152 Concerning thy testimonies, I have known of old that thou 
 hast founded them for ever. 
 
 "1 (RESH). 
 
 153 Consider mine affliction, and deliver me; for I do not 
 forget thy law. 
 
 154 Plead my cause, and deliver me ;. quicken me according to 
 thy word. 
 
 155 Salvation is far from the wicked; for they seek not thy 
 statutes. 
 
 156 Great are thy tender mercies, O LORD ; quicken me accord- 
 ing to thy judgments. 
 
 157 Many are my persecutors and mine enemies ; yet do I not 
 decline from thy testimonies. 
 
 158 I beheld the transgressors, and was grieved; because they 
 kept not thy word.
 
 PSALM 119. 31 
 
 159 Consider how I love thy precepts; quicken me, O LORD, 
 according to thy lovingkindness. 
 
 1 60 ThyVord is true from the beginning : and every one of thy 
 righteous judgments endureth for ever. 
 
 ttf (SCHIN). 
 
 161 Princes have persecuted me without a cause ; but my heart 
 standetli in awe of thy word. 
 
 162 I rejoice at thy word, as one that findeth great spoil. 
 
 163 I hate and abhor lying; but thy law do I love. 
 
 164 Seven times a day do I praise thee because of thy right- 
 eous judgments. 
 
 165 Great peace have they which love thy law; and nothing 
 shall offend them. 
 
 1 66 LORD, I have hoped for thy salvation, and done thy com- 
 mandments. 
 
 167 My soul hath kept thy testimonies; and I love them 
 exceedingly. 
 
 n (TAU). 
 
 1 68 I have kept thy precepts and thy testimonies ; for all my 
 ways are before thee. 
 
 169 Let my cry come near before thee, O LORD; give me 
 understanding according to thy word. 
 
 1 70 Let my supplication come before thee ; deliver me accord- 
 ing to thy word. 
 
 171 My lips shall utter praise, when thou hast taught me thy 
 statutes. 
 
 172 My tongue shall speak of thy word ; for all thy command- 
 ments are righteousness. 
 
 1 73 Let thine hand help me ; for I have chosen thy precepts. 
 
 174 I have longed for thy salvation, O LORD; and thy law is 
 my delight. 
 
 175 Let my soul live, and it shall praise thee ; and let thy judg- 
 ments help me. 
 
 1 76 I have gone astray like a lost sheep ; seek thy servant ; for 
 I do not forget thy commandments.
 
 32 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 Psalm 139. 
 
 OLORD, thou hast searched me, and known me. 
 2 Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising ; thou 
 understandest my thought afar off. 
 
 3 Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art 
 acquainted with all my ways. 
 
 4 For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou 
 knowest it altogether. 
 
 5 Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand 
 upon me. 
 
 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me ; it is high, I cannot 
 attain unto it. 
 
 7 Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee 
 from thy presence ? 
 
 8 If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there ; if I make my bed 
 in hell, behold, thou art there. 
 
 9 If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the utter- 
 most parts of the sea ; 
 
 10 Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall 
 hold me. 
 
 1 1 If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me ; even the night 
 shall be light about me. 
 
 1 2 Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee ; but the night 
 shineth as the day ; the darkness and the light are both alike to 
 thee. 
 
 13 For thou hast possessed my reins ; thou hast covered me in 
 my mother's womb. 
 
 14 I will praise thee ; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made ; 
 marvellous are thy works ; and that my soul knoweth right well. 
 
 15 My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in 
 secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. 
 
 1 6 Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and 
 in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance 
 were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.
 
 PROVERBS 2. 33 
 
 1 7 How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God ! how 
 great is the sum of them ! 
 
 1 8 If I should count them, they are more in number than the 
 sand ; when I awake, I am still with thee. 
 
 19 Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God; depart from me 
 therefore, ye bloody men. 
 
 20 For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies 
 take thy name in vain. 
 
 2 1 Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee ? and am not I 
 grieved with those that rise up against thee ? 
 
 22 I hate them with perfect hatred ; I count them mine enemies. 
 
 23 Search me, O God, and know my heart ; try me, and know 
 my thoughts ; 
 
 24 And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in 
 the way everlasting. 
 
 Proverbs 2. 
 
 THE WAYS OF WISDOM. 
 
 MY son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my com- 
 mandments with thee ; 
 
 2 So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine 
 heart to understanding ; 
 
 3 Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice 
 for understanding ; 
 
 4 If thou seekest her as silver, and searches! for her as for hid 
 treasures ; 
 
 5 Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find 
 the knowledge of God. 
 
 6 For the LORD giveth wisdom ; out of his mouth cometh 
 knowledge and understanding. 
 
 7 He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous ; he is a 
 buckler to them that walk uprightly. 
 
 8 He keepeth the paths of judgment, and preserveth the way 
 of his saints.
 
 34 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 9 Then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment, and 
 equity, yea, every good path. 
 
 10 When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is 
 pleasant unto thy soul ; 
 
 1 1 Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee ; 
 
 1 2 To deliver thee from the way of the evil man, from the man 
 that speaketh frovvard things ; 
 
 13 Who leave the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of 
 darkness ; 
 
 14 Who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the frowardness of 
 the wicked ; 
 
 15 Whose ways are crooked, and they froward in their paths ; 
 
 1 6 To deliver thee from the strange woman, even from the 
 stranger which flattereth with her words ; 
 
 1 7 Which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the 
 covenant of her God. 
 
 1 8 For her house inclineth unto death, and her paths unto the 
 dead. 
 
 19 None that go unto her return again, neither take they hold 
 of the paths of life. 
 
 20 That thou mayest walk in the way of good men, and keep 
 the paths of the righteous. 
 
 2 1 For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall 
 remain in it. 
 
 22 But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the 
 transgressors shall be rooted out of it. 
 
 Proverbs 3. 
 
 THE GAIN OF WISDOM. 
 
 MY son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my 
 commandments ; 
 
 2 For length of clays, and long life, and peace, shall they add 
 to thee.
 
 PROVERBS 3. 35 
 
 3 Let not mercy and truth forsake thee ; bind them about thy 
 neck ; write them upon the table of thine heart ; 
 
 4 So shalt thou find favor and good understanding in the 
 sight of God and man. 
 
 5 Trust in the LORD with all thine heart ; and lean not unto 
 thine own understanding. 
 
 6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. 
 
 7 Be not wise in thine own eyes ; fear the LORD, and depart 
 from evil. 
 
 8 It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones. 
 
 9 Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the firstfruits 
 of all thine increase ; 
 
 10 .So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses 
 shall burst out with new wine. 
 
 1 1 My son, despise not the chastening of the LORD ; neither be 
 weary of his correction 
 
 1 2 For whom the LORD loveth he correcteth ; even as a father 
 the son in whom he delighteth. 
 
 13 Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that 
 getteth understanding ; 
 
 14 For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of 
 silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. 
 
 15 She is more precious than rubies; and all the things thou 
 canst desire are not to be compared unto her. 
 
 1 6 Length of days is in her right hand ; and in her left hand 
 riches and honor. 
 
 17 Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are 
 peace. 
 
 1 8 She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her, and 
 happy is every one that retaineth her. 
 
 1 9 The LORD by wisdom hath founded the earth ; by under- 
 standing hath he established the heavens. 
 
 20 By his knowledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds 
 drop down the dew. 
 
 2 1 My son, let not them depart from thine eyes ; keep sound 
 wisdom and discretion :
 
 36 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 22 So shall they be life unto thy soul, and grace to thy neck. 
 
 23 Then shalt thou walk in thy way safely, and thy foot shall 
 not stumble. 
 
 24 When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid ; yea, thou 
 shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet. 
 
 25 Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of 
 the wicked, when it cometh. 
 
 26 For the Lord shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy 
 foot from being taken. 
 
 2 7 Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is 
 in the power of thine hand to do it. 
 
 28 Say not unto thy neighbor, Go, and come again, and to 
 morrow I will give ; when thou hast it by thee. 
 
 29 Devise not evil against thy neighbor, seeing he dwelleth 
 securely by thee. 
 
 30 Strive not with a man without cause, if he have done thee 
 no harm. 
 
 31 Envy thou not the oppressor, and choose none of his ways. 
 
 32 For the froward is abomination to the LORD ; but his secret 
 is with the righteous. 
 
 33 The curse of the LORD is in the house of the wicked ; but 
 he blesseth the habitation of the just. 
 
 34 Surely he scorneth the scorners ; but he giveth grace unto 
 the lowly. 
 
 35 The wise shall inherit glory ; but shame shall be the promo- 
 tion of-fools. 
 
 Proverbs 8. 
 
 THE INVITATION OF WISDOM. 
 
 DOTH not wisdom cry ? and understanding put forth her 
 voice ? 
 
 2 She standeth in the top of high places, by the way in the 
 places of the paths.
 
 PROVERBS. 8. 37 
 
 3 She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming 
 in at the doors : 
 
 4 Unto you, O men, I call ; and my voice is to the sons of man. 
 
 5 O ye simple, understand wisdom ; and, ye fools, be ye of an 
 understanding heart. 
 
 6 Hear ; for I will speak of excellent things ; and the opening 
 of my lips shall be right things. 
 
 7 For my mouth shall speak truth ; and wickedness is an abom- 
 ination to my lips. 
 
 8 All the words of my mouth are in righteousness ; there is 
 nothing froward or perverse in them. 
 
 9 They are all plain to him that understandeth, and right to 
 them that find knowledge. 
 
 10 Receive my instruction, and not silver ; and knowledge 
 rather than choice gold. 
 
 11 For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that 
 may be desired are not to be compared to it. 
 
 12 I wisdom dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of 
 witty inventions. 
 
 13 The fear of the LORD is to hate evil ; pride, and arrogancy, 
 and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate. 
 
 14 Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom ; I am understanding; 
 I have strength. 
 
 15 By me kings reign, and princes decree justice. 
 
 1 6 By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the 
 earth. 
 
 1 7 I love them that love me ; and those that seek me early 
 shall find me. 
 
 1 8 Riches and honor are with me; yea, durable riches and 
 righteousness." 
 
 19 My fruit is better than gold, yea, than fine gold; and my 
 revenue than choice silver. 
 
 20 I lead in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths 
 of judgment ; 
 
 21 That I may cause those that love me to inherit substance ; 
 and I will fill their treasures.
 
 38 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 22 The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before 
 his works of old. 
 
 23 I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever 
 the earth was. 
 
 24 When there were no depths, I was brought forth ; when 
 there were no fountains abounding with water. 
 
 25 Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I 
 brought forth ; 
 
 26 While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor 
 the highest part of the dust of the world. 
 
 2 7 When he prepared the heavens, I was there ; when he set a 
 compass upon the face of the depth ; 
 
 28 When he established the clouds above; when he strength- 
 ened the fountains of the deep ; 
 
 29 When he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should 
 not pass his commandment ; when he appointed the foundations 
 of the earth ; 
 
 30 Then I was by him, as one brought up with him ; and I was 
 daily his delight, rejoicing always before him ; 
 
 31 Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my de- 
 lights were with the sons of men. 
 
 32 Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children; for blessed 
 are they that keep my ways. 
 
 33 Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not. 
 
 34 Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my 
 gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. 
 
 35 For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favor 
 of the LORD. 
 
 36 But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul ; all 
 they that hate me love death.
 
 PROVERBS 12. 39 
 
 Proverbs 12. 
 
 THE RIGHTEOUS AND THE WICKED. 
 
 WHOSO loveth instruction loveth knowledge ; but he that 
 hateth reproof is brutish. 
 
 2 A good man obtaineth favor of the LORD ; but a man of 
 wicked devices will he condemn. 
 
 3 A man shall not be established by wickedness ; but the root 
 of the righteous shall not be moved. 
 
 4 A virtuous women is a crown to her husband ; but she that 
 maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones. 
 
 5 The thoughts of the righteous are right ; but the counsels of 
 the wicked are deceit. 
 
 6 The words of the wicked are to lie in wait for blood ; but the 
 mouth of the upright shall deliver them. 
 
 7 The wicked are overthrown, and are not ; but the house of 
 the righteous shall stand. 
 
 8 A man shall be commended according to his wisdom ; but he 
 that is of a perverse heart shall be despised. 
 
 9 He that is despised, and hath a servant, is better than he that 
 honoreth himself, and lacketh bread. 
 
 10 A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast ; but the ten- 
 der mercies of the wicked are cruel. 
 
 1 1 He that tilleth his land shall be satisfied with bread ; but he 
 that followeth vain persons is void of understanding. 
 
 1 2 The wicked desireth the net of evil men ; but the root of 
 the righteous yieldeth fruit. 
 
 1 3 The wicked is snared by the transgression of his lips ; but 
 the just shall come out of trouble. 
 
 14 A man shall be satisfied with good by the fruit of his mouth ; 
 and the recompense of a man's hands shall be rendered unto him. 
 
 1 5 The way of a fool is right in his own eyes ; but he that 
 hearkeneth unto counsel is wise. 
 
 1 6 A fool's wrath is presently known ; but a prudent man cov- 
 ereth shame.
 
 40 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 1 7 He that speaketh truth showeth forth righteousness ; but a 
 false witness deceit. 
 
 1 8 There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword ; but 
 the tongue of the wise is health. 
 
 1 9 The lip of truth shall be established for ever ; but a lying 
 tongue is but for a moment. 
 
 20 Deceit is in the heart of them that imagine evil ; but to the 
 counsellors of peace is joy. 
 
 21 There shall no evil happen to the just; but the wicked 
 shall be filled with mischief. 
 
 22 Lying lips are abomination to the LORD; but they that deal 
 truly are his delight. 
 
 23 A prudent man concealeth knowledge ; but the heart of 
 fools proclaimeth foolishness. 
 
 24 The hand of the diligent shall bear rule ; but the slothful 
 shall be under tribute. 
 
 25 Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop ; but a good 
 word maketh it glad. 
 
 26 The righteous is more excellent than his neighbor ; but the 
 way of the wicked seduceth them. 
 
 2 7 The slothful man roasteth not that which he took in hunting ; 
 but the substance of a diligent man is precious. 
 
 28 In the way of righteousness is life ; and in the pathway 
 thereof there is no death. 
 
 Isaiah 58. 
 
 TRUE AND FALSE RELIGION. 
 
 CRY aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and 
 show my people their transgression, and the house of 
 Jacob their sins. 
 
 2 Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a 
 nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of 
 their God ; they ask of me the ordinances of justice ; they take 
 delight in approaching to God.
 
 ISAIAH jS. 41 
 
 3 Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? 
 wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowl- 
 edge ? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact 
 all your labors. 
 
 4 Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the 
 fist of wickedness ; ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make 
 your voice to be heard on high. 
 
 5 Is it such a fast that I have chosen ? a day for a man to afflict 
 his soul ? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread 
 sackcloth and ashes under him ? wilt thou call this a fast, and an 
 acceptable day to the LORD? 
 
 6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen ? to loose the bands of 
 wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed 
 go free, and that ye break every yoke ? 
 
 7 Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring 
 the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the 
 naked, that thou cover him ? and that thou hide not thyself from 
 thine own flesh? 
 
 8 Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine 
 health shall spring forth speedily, and thy righteousness shall go 
 before thee ; the glory of the LORD shall be thy rearward. 
 
 9 Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer ; thou shalt 
 cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the 
 midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speak- 
 ing vanity ; 
 
 i o And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the 
 afflicted soul ; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy dark- 
 ness be as the noon day ; 
 
 1 1 And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy 
 soul in drought, and make fat thy bones ; and thou shalt be like a 
 watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. 
 
 12 And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste 
 places ; thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations ; 
 and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer 
 of paths to dwell in. 
 
 13 If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy
 
 42 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS, 
 
 pleasure on my holy day ; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy 
 of the LORD, honorable ; and shalt honor him, not doing thine 
 own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own 
 words ; 
 
 14 Then shalt thou delight 'thyself in the LORD, and I will 
 cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed 
 thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father ; for the mouth of the 
 LORD hath spoken it. 
 
 Matthew 5. 
 
 THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 
 
 AND seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain ; and 
 when he was set, his disciples came unto him ; 
 
 2 And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, 
 
 3 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of 
 heaven. 
 
 4 Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. 
 
 5 Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. 
 
 6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteous- 
 ness, for they shall be filled. 
 
 7 Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. 
 
 8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 
 
 9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the 
 children of God. 
 
 10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' 
 sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 1 1 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute 
 you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my 
 sake. 
 
 1 2 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in 
 heaven ; for so persecuted they the prophets which were before 
 you. 
 
 13 Ye are the salt of the earth ; but if the salt have lost his
 
 MATTHEW s. 43 
 
 savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for 
 nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. 
 
 14 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill 
 cannot be hid. 
 
 15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, 
 but on a candlestick ; and it giveth light unto all that are in the 
 house. 
 
 1 6 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your 
 good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. 
 
 1 7 Think not that J am come to destroy the law, or the proph- 
 ets ; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 
 
 1 8 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one 
 jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be ful- 
 filled. 
 
 19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least com- 
 mandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in 
 the kingdom of heaven ; but whosoever shall do and teach them, 
 the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall 
 exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in 
 no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 2 1 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou 
 shalt not kill, and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the 
 judgment ; 
 
 2 2 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother 
 without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment, and whoso- 
 ever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the coun- 
 cil ; but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. 
 
 23 Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there re- 
 memberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, 
 
 24 Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way ; first 
 be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. 
 
 25 Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art in the 
 way with him ; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the 
 judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast 
 into prison.
 
 44 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 26 Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out 
 thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing. 
 
 2 7 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou 
 shalt not commit adultery ; 
 
 28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to 
 lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his 
 heart. 
 
 29 And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it 
 from thee ; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members 
 should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. 
 
 30 And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from 
 thee ; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should 
 perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. 
 
 31 It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let 
 him give her a writing of divorcement : 
 
 32 But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his 
 wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit 
 adultery ; and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced com- 
 mitteth adultery. 
 
 33 Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old 
 time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the 
 Lord thine oaths ; 
 
 34 But I say unto you, Swear not at all ; neither by heaven, for 
 it is God's throne ; 
 
 35 Nor by the earth, for it is his footstool ; neither by Jerusa- 
 lem, for it is the city of the great King. 
 
 36 Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst 
 not make one hair white or black. 
 
 3 7 But let your communication be, Yea, yea ; Nay, nay ; for 
 whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. 
 
 38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, 
 and a tooth for a tooth ; 
 
 39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil ; but whosoever 
 shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. 
 
 40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy 
 coat, let him have thy cloak also.
 
 MATTHEW 6. 45 
 
 41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him 
 twain. 
 
 42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would bor- 
 row of thee turn not thou away. 
 
 43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor, and hate thine enemy. 
 
 44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse 
 you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which de- 
 spitefully use you and persecute you ; 
 
 45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in 
 heaven ; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the 
 good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. 
 
 46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye ? 
 do not even the publicans the same ? 
 
 47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than 
 others? do not even the publicans so? 
 
 48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in 
 heaven is perfect. 
 
 Matthew 6. 
 
 THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 
 
 TAKE heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen 
 of them ; otherwise ye have no reward of your Father 
 which is in heaven. * 
 
 2 Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trum- 
 pet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the 
 streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, 
 They have their reward. 
 
 3 But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what 
 thy right hand doeth, 
 
 4 That thine alms may be in secret ; and thy Father which 
 seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly. 
 
 5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites
 
 46 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 are ; for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the 
 corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say 
 unto you, They have their reward. 
 
 6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when 
 thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret ; 
 and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. 
 
 7 But when ye pray use not vain repetitions, as the heathen 
 do ; for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. 
 
 8 Be not ye therefore like unto them ; for your Father know- 
 eth what things, ye have need of, before ye ask him. 
 
 9 After this manner therefore pray ye : Our Father which art 
 in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. 
 
 10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in 
 heaven. 
 
 1 1 Give us this day our daily bread. 
 
 1 2 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. 
 
 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil; 
 For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. 
 Amen. 
 
 14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father 
 will also forgive you ; 
 
 15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your 
 Father forgive your trespasses. 
 
 1 6 Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad 
 countenance ; for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear 
 unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 
 
 1 7 But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy 
 face ; 
 
 1 8 That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father 
 which is in secret ; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall 
 reward thee openly. 
 
 19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth 
 and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal ; 
 
 20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither 
 moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through 
 nor s\eal ;
 
 MATTHEW 6. 47 
 
 21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. 
 
 22 The light of the body is the eye ; if therefore thine eye be 
 single, thy whole body shall be full of light. 
 
 23 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of dark- 
 ness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great 
 is that darkness ! 
 
 24 No man can serve two masters ; for either he will hate the 
 one, and love the other, or else he will hold to the one, and 
 despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. 
 
 25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what 
 ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink ; nor yet for your body, what 
 ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body 
 than raiment? 
 
 26 Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do 
 they reap nor gather into barns ; yet your heavenly Father feed- 
 eth them. Are ye not much better than they ? 
 
 2 7 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his 
 stature ? 
 
 28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies 
 of the field, how they grow ; they toil not, neither do they spin ; 
 
 29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory 
 was not arrayed like one of these. 
 
 30 Wherefore if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to 
 day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much 
 more clothe you, O ye of little faith? 
 
 31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, 
 What shall we drink ? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed ? 
 
 32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek;) for your 
 heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. 
 
 33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness ; 
 and all these things shall be added unto you. 
 
 34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow 
 shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day 
 is the evil thereof.
 
 48 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 Matthew 7. 
 
 THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 
 
 JUDGE not, that ye be not judged. 
 2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged ; and 
 with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. 
 
 3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's 
 eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye ? 
 
 4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the 
 mote out of thine eye ; and behold, a beam is in thine own eye ? 
 
 5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, 
 and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy 
 brother's eye. 
 
 6 Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your 
 pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and 
 turn again and rend you. 
 
 7 Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; 
 knock, and it shall be opened unto you ; 
 
 8 For every one that asketh receiveth ; and he that seeketh 
 findeth ; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. 
 
 9 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will 
 he give him a stone ? 
 
 10 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? 
 
 11 .If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto 
 your children, how much more shall your Father which is in 
 heaven give good things to them that ask him ? 
 
 12 Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should 
 do to you, do ye even so to them ; for this is the law and the 
 prophets. 
 
 13 Enter ye in at the strait gate; for wide is the gate, and 
 broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be 
 which go in thereat ; 
 
 14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which 
 leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
 
 MATTHEW 7. 49 
 
 15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's 
 clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. 
 
 1 6 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes 
 of thorns, or figs of thistles ? 
 
 1 7 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit ; but a 
 corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. 
 
 1 8 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a cor- 
 rupt tree bring forth good fruit. 
 
 19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, 
 and cast into the fire. 
 
 20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. 
 
 21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into 
 the kingdom of heaven ; but he that doeth the will of my Father 
 which is in heaven. 
 
 22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not 
 prophesied in thy name, and in thy name have cast out devils, 
 and in thy name done many wonderful works ? 
 
 23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you ; depart 
 from me, ye that work iniquity. 
 
 24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and 
 doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his 
 house upon a rock ; 
 
 25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the 
 winds blew, and beat upon that house ; and it fell not ; for it was 
 founded upon a rock. 
 
 26 And everyone that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth 
 them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house 
 upon the sand ; 
 
 27 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds 
 blew, and beat upon that house ; and it fell ; and great was the 
 fall of it. 
 
 28 And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, 
 the people were astonished at his doctrine ; 
 
 29 For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the 
 scribes.
 
 50 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 The Acts 26. 
 
 PAUL BEFORE AGRIPPA. 
 
 THEN Agrippa said unto Paul, Thou art permitted to speak 
 for thyself. Then Paul stretched forth the hand, and 
 answered for himself : 
 
 2 I think myself happy, king Agrippa, because I shall answer 
 for myself this day before thee touching all the things whereof I 
 am accused of the Jews, 
 
 3 Especially because I know thee to be expert in all customs 
 and questions which are among the Jews ; wherefore I beseech 
 thee to hear me patiently. 
 
 4 My manner of life from my youth, which was at the first 
 among mine own nation at Jerusalem, know all the Jews ; 
 
 5 Which knew me from the beginning, if they would testify, 
 that after the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee. 
 
 6 And now I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise 
 made of God unto our fathers ; 
 
 7 Unto which promise our twelve tribes, instantly serving God 
 day and night, hope to come. For which hope's sake, king Agrippa, 
 I am accused of the Jews. 
 
 8 Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that 
 God should raise the dead ? 
 
 9 I verily thought with myself that I ought to do many things 
 contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 
 10 Which thing I also did in Jerusalem ; and many of the 
 saints did I shut up in prison, having received authority from the 
 chief priests ; and when they were put to death, I gave my voice 
 against them. 
 
 1 1 And I punished them oft in every synagogue, and compelled 
 them to blaspheme ; and being exceedingly mad against them, I 
 persecuted them even unto strange cities. 
 
 1 2 Whereupon as I went to Damascus with authority and com- 
 mission from the chief priests,
 
 THE ACTS 26. 51 
 
 13 At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, 
 above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them 
 which journeyed with me. 
 
 14 And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice 
 speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, 
 why persecutest thou me ? it is hard for thee to kick against the 
 pricks. 
 
 15 And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus 
 whom thou persecutest. 
 
 1 6 But rise, and stand upon thy feet ; for I have appeared unto 
 thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both 
 of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the 
 which I will appear unto thee ; 
 
 1 7 Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto 
 whom now I send thee, 
 
 1 8 To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, 
 and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive 
 forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sancti- 
 fied by faith that is in me. 
 
 19 Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the 
 heavenly vision : 
 
 20 But showed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, 
 and throughout all the coasts of Judea, and then to the Gentiles, 
 that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for 
 repentance. 
 
 2 1 For these causes the Jews caught me in the temple, and went 
 about to kill me. 
 
 22 Having therefore obtained help of God, I continue unto this 
 day, witnessing both to small and great, saying none other things 
 than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come : 
 
 23 That Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that 
 should rise from the dead, and should show light unto the people, 
 and to the Gentiles. 
 
 24 And as he thus spake for himself, Festus said with a loud 
 voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make 
 thee mad.
 
 52 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 25 But he said, I am not mad, most noble Festus, but speak 
 forth the words of truth and soberness. 
 
 26 For the king knoweth of these things, before whom also I 
 speak freely ; for I am persuaded that none of these things are 
 hidden from him ; for this thing was not done in a corner. 
 
 27 King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets? I know that 
 thou believest. 
 
 28 Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to 
 be a Christian. 
 
 29 And Paul said, I would to God that not only thou, but also 
 all that hear me this day, were both almost, and altogether such as 
 I am, except these bonds. 
 
 30 And when he had thus spoken, the king rose up, and the 
 governor, and Bernice, and they that sat with them ; 
 
 31 And when they were gone aside, they talked between them- 
 selves, saying, This man doeth nothing worthy of death or of 
 bonds. 
 
 32 Then said Agrippa unto Festus, This man might have been 
 set at liberty, if he had not appealed unto Caesar. 
 
 i Corinthians 13. 
 
 LOVE BEYOND ALL THINGS. 
 
 THOUGH I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, 
 and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a 
 tinkling cymbal. 
 
 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all 
 mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so 
 that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 
 
 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and 
 though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it pro- 
 fiteth me nothing. 
 
 4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind ; charity envieth not ; 
 charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
 
 / CORINTHIANS i 5 . 53 
 
 5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not 
 easily provoked, thinketh no evil ; 
 
 6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ; 
 
 7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, 
 endureth all things. 
 
 8 Charity never faileth ; but whether there be prophecies, they 
 shall fail ; whether there be tongues, they shall cease ; whether 
 there be knowledge, it shall' vanish away. 
 
 9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. 
 
 10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is 
 in part shall be done away. 
 
 1 1 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a 
 child, I thought as a child ; but when I became a man, I put away 
 childish things. 
 
 1 2 For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to 
 face ; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I 
 am known. 
 
 1 3 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three ; but the 
 greatest of these is charity. 
 
 i Corinthians 15. 
 
 THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 
 
 MOREOVER, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which 
 I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and 
 wherein ye stand ; 
 
 2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I 
 preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. 
 
 3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, 
 how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, 
 
 4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day 
 according to the scriptures, 
 
 5 And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve ; 
 
 6 After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at
 
 54 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 once, of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some 
 are fallen asleep ; 
 
 7 After that, he was seen of James ; then of all the apostles ; 
 
 8 And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of 
 due time. 
 
 9 For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be 
 called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 
 
 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am; and his grace 
 which was bestowed upon me was not in vain ; but I labored 
 more abundantly than they all ; yet not I, but the grace of God 
 which was with me. 
 
 1 1 Therefore whether it were I or they, so we preached, and so 
 ye believed. 
 
 1 2 Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how 
 say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead ? 
 
 13 But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ 
 not risen ; 
 
 14 And if Christ be no}: risen, then is our preaching vain, and 
 your faith is also vain. 
 
 15 Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we 
 have testified of God that he raised up Christ ; whom he raised 
 not up, if so be that the dead rise not. 
 
 1 6 For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised ; 
 
 1 7 And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain ; ye are yet in 
 your sins. 
 
 1 8 Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. 
 
 19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men 
 most miserable. 
 
 20 But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first- 
 fruits of them that slept. 
 
 21 For since by man came death, by man came also the resur- 
 rection of the dead. 
 
 22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made 
 alive. 
 
 23 But every man in his own order ; Christ the firstfruits, after- 
 ward they that are Christ's at his coming.
 
 i CORINTHIANS /j. 55 
 
 24 Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the 
 kingdom to God, even the Father ; when he shall have put down 
 all rule and all authority and power. 
 
 25 For he must reign till he hath put all enemies under his 
 feet. 
 
 26 The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. 
 
 27 For he hath put all things under his feet. But when "he 
 saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is 
 excepted, which did put all things under him. 
 
 28 And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall 
 the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under 
 him, that God may be all in all. 
 
 29 Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if 
 the dead rise not at all ? why are they then baptized for the dead ? 
 
 30 And why stand we in jeopardy every hour? 
 
 31 I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our 
 Lord, I die daily. 
 
 32 If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at 
 Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? let us eat 
 and drink, for to morrow we die. 
 
 33 Be not deceived ; evil communications corrupt good man- 
 ners. 
 
 34 Awake to righteousness, and sin not ; for some have not the 
 knowledge of God ; I speak this to your shame. 
 
 35 But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and 
 with what body do they come ? 
 
 36 Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except 
 it die ; 
 
 37 And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that 
 shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other 
 grain ; 
 
 38 But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to 
 every seed his own body. 
 
 39 All flesh is not the same flesh ; but there is one kind of flesh 
 of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of 
 birds.
 
 56 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 40 There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial ; but 
 the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is 
 another. 
 
 41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the 
 moon, and another glory of the stars ; for one star differeth from 
 another star in glory. 
 
 42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in cor- 
 ruption, it is raised in incorruption ; 
 
 43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory ; it is sown in 
 weakness, it is raised in power ; 
 
 44 It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. 
 There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. 
 
 45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living 
 soul ; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. 
 
 46 Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which 
 is natural ; and afterward that which is spiritual. 
 
 47 The first man is of the earth, earthy ; the second man is the 
 Lord from heaven. 
 
 48 As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy ; and as 
 is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. 
 
 49 And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also 
 bear the image of the heavenly. 
 
 50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit 
 the kingdom of God ; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. 
 
 5 1 Behold, I show you a mystery ; We shall not all sleep, but 
 we shall all be changed, 
 
 5 2 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump ; 
 for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incor- 
 ruptible, and we shall be changed. 
 
 53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this 
 mortal must put on immortality. 
 
 54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and 
 this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to 
 pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. 
 
 55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy 
 victory ?
 
 JAMES 4. 57 
 
 56 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the 
 law. 
 
 57 But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through 
 our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unrnove- 
 able, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye 
 know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. 
 
 James 4. 
 
 SUNDRY PRECEPTS. 
 
 FROM whence come wars and fightings among you? come 
 they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your mem- 
 bers? 
 
 2 Ye lust, and have not ; ye kill, and desire to have, and 
 cannot obtain ; ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask 
 not. 
 
 3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may 
 consume it upon your lusts. 
 
 4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friend- 
 ship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will 
 be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. 
 
 5 Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that 
 dwelleth in us lusteth to envy? 
 
 6 But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God 
 resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. 
 
 7 Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil, and 
 he will flee from you. 
 
 8 Draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse 
 your hands, ye sinners ; and purify your hearts, ye double 
 minded. 
 
 9 Be afflicted, and mourn and weep ; let your laughter be 
 turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness.
 
 58 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 10 Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift 
 you up. 
 
 1 1 Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh 
 evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the 
 law, and judgeth the law ; but if thou judge the law, thou art not 
 a doer of the law, but a judge. 
 
 1 2 There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy : 
 who art thou that judgest another ? 
 
 13 Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go 
 into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and 
 get gain ; 
 
 14 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For 
 what is your life ? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little 
 time, and then vanisheth away. 
 
 15 For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, 
 and do this, or that. 
 
 1 6 But now ye rejoice in your boastings; all such rejoicing is 
 evil. 
 
 1 7 Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it 
 not, to him it is sin. 
 
 Revelation 5. 
 
 THE NEW SONG. 
 
 AND I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne 
 a book written within and on the backside, sealed with 
 seven seals. 
 
 2 And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who 
 is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof ! 
 
 3 And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, 
 was able to open the book, neither to look thereon. 
 
 4 And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to 
 open and to read the book, neither to look thereon. 
 
 5 And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not ; behold, the
 
 RE VELA TION 5. 59 
 
 Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to 
 open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof. 
 
 6 And I beheld, and lo, in the midst of the throne and of the 
 four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it 
 had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the 
 seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth. 
 
 7 And he came and took the book out of the right hand of 
 him that sat upon the throne. 
 
 8 And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four 
 and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of 
 them harps, and golden vials full of odors, which are the prayers 
 of saints. 
 
 9 And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take 
 the book, and to open the seals thereof; for thou wast slain, and 
 hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and 
 tongue, and people, and nation ; 
 
 10 And hast made us unto our God kings and priests ; and we 
 shall reign on the earth. 
 
 1 1 And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round 
 about the throne and the beasts and the elders ; and the number 
 of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of 
 thousands ; 
 
 12 Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was 
 slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and 
 honor, and glory, and blessing. 
 
 13 And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, 
 and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are 
 in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and 
 power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the 
 Lamb for ever and ever. 
 
 14 And the four beasts said, Amen. And the four and twenty 
 elders fell down and worshipped him that liveth for ever and 
 ever.
 
 60 BIBLICAL SELECTIONS. 
 
 Revelation 6. 
 
 THE SEVEN SEALS, 
 
 AND I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I 
 heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four 
 beasts saying, Come and see. 
 
 2 And I saw, and behold a white horse ; and he that sat on 
 him had a bow ; and a crown was given unto him ; and he went 
 forth conquering, and to conquer. 
 
 3 And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the 
 second beast say, Come and see. 
 
 4 And there went out another horse that was red ; and power 
 was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, 
 and that they should kill one another ; and there was given unto 
 him a great sword. 
 
 5 And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third 
 beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse ; 
 and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. 
 
 6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A 
 measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a 
 penny ; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine. 
 
 7 And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice 
 of the fourth beast say, Come and see. 
 
 8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse ; and his name that 
 sat on him was death, and Hell followed with him. And power 
 was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with 
 sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of 
 the earth. 
 
 9 And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar 
 the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for 
 the testimony which they held ; 
 
 10 And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, 
 O LORD, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood 
 on them that dwell on the earth?
 
 REVELATION 6. 61 
 
 1 1 And white robes were given unto every one of them ; and it 
 was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, 
 until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be 
 killed as they were, should be fulfilled. 
 
 12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and lo, 
 there was a great earthquake ; and the sun became black as 
 sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood ; 
 
 13 And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a 
 fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty 
 wind. 
 
 14 And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled 
 together ; and every mountain and island were moved out of their 
 places. 
 
 15 And when the kings of the earth, and the great men, and 
 the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and 
 every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens 
 and in the rocks of the mountains ; 
 
 1 6 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide 
 us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the 
 wrath of the Lamb ; 
 
 1 7 For the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be 
 able to stand?
 
 UCSB LIBKARl
 
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