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THE
BARDS OF THE BIBLE.
BY
GEOEGE GILFILLAN.
NEW YORK :
HARPEU & BROTHERS,
82 CLIFF STREET.
1851.
p'
§
f
PREFACE
The succeeding work does not profess to be an elab-
orate or full account of the mechanical structure of
Hebrew poetry, nor a work of minute and verbal criti-
cism. In order that the book may be tried by its own
pretensions, the author deems it necessary to premise
that, while containing much literary criticism, and a
considerable proportion of biographical and religious
matter, and while meant to develop indirectly a sub-
sidiary argument for the truth and divinity of the Bible,
its main ambition is to be a Prose Poem, or Hymn, in
honor of the Poetry and Poets of the inspired volume,
although, as the reader will perceive, he has occasion-
ally diverged into the analysis of Scripture characters,
and more rarely into cognate fields of literature or of
speculation.
It may, perhaps, be asked why he has not conform-
ed to the common practice of printing his poetical quo-
tations from Scripture, as poetry^ in their form of par-
allelism. His answer is merely, that he never could
bring himself to relish the practice, or to read with
pleasure those translations of the Bible where it was
used. Even favorite passages, in this guise, seemed
new and cold to him. This, of course, was in some
3957€1
IV PREFACE.
measure, he knew, the effect of associations ; but such
associations, he knew also, were not confined to him.
He may say this the more fearlessly, as translations
of the great master-pieces of foreign literature into
plain English prose are becoming the order of the
day.
He has also to explain, that two, or, at the most,
three passages are here repeated from his *' Gralleries,'*
for the reason, simply, that they at first belonged to a
rough draft of the present work, which he began to
draw out before his " First Gallery" appeared. They
are now restored to their original position
Dundee, November 14, 1850.
CONTENTS.
■4 * »
PAGS
INTRODUCTION, . . ix
CHAPTER I.
CIRCUMSTANCES CREATING AND MODIFYING OLD TESTAMENT
POETRr, . . ■ 23
CHAPTER 11.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HEBREW POETRY, . . 42
CHAPTER III.
VARIETIES OF HEBREW POETRY, . . . . , 68
CHAPTER ly.
POETRY OF THE PENTATEUCH, . . . . , 69
CHAPTER V.
POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB, , 76
CHAPTER YI.
POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS, ..... 96
CHAPTER YII.
tOETRT OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS, 114
VI
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VIII.
SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY,
PAGE
130
CHAPTER IX.
INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPHETIC BOOKS,
145
ISAIAH,
JEREMIAH,
EZEKIEL,
DANIEL,
CHAPTER X.
160
154
159
166
JONAH,
AMOS,
HOSEA,
JOEL,
MIGAH,
NAHUM,
ZEPHANIAH
HABAKKUK
OBADIAH,
HAGGAI,
ZECHARIAH
MALACHI, .
CHAPTER XL
THE MINOR PROPHETS
173
181
186
189
194
199
200
203
207
209
211
214
CHAPTER XII.
CIRCUMSTANCES MODIFYING NEW TESTAMENT POETRY,
217
CHAPTER Xm.
POETRY OF THE GOSPELS, ....
242
CONTENTS. VU
CHAPTER XIV.
PAGE
PAUL, ' 247
CHAPTER XV.
PETER AND JAMES, *] 270
CHAPTER XVI.
JOHN, 280
CHAPTER XVII.
COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES, AND EFFECTS OF SCRIP-
TURE POETRY, • . 296
CONCLUSION.
FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE, . . . . . 328
SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER.
THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE, . • . 352
INTRODUCTION.
That so much of Scripture should be written in the
language of poetry, has excited some surprise, and cre-
ated some inquiry ; and yet in nothing do we perceive
more clearly than in this, the genuineness, power,
and divinity of the oracles of our faith. As the lan-
guage of poetry is that into which all earnest natures
are insensibly betrayed, so it is the only speech which
has in it the power of permanent impression. As it
gives two ideas in the space of one, so it writes these
before the view, as with the luminousness of fire. The
language of the imagination is the native language of
man. It is the language of his excited intellect — of
his aroused passions — of his devotion — of all the
higher moods and temperaments of his mind. It was
meet, therefore, that it should be the language of his
revelation from G-od. It was meet that, when man
was called into the presence of his Maker, he should
not be addressed with cold formality, nor in words of
lead, nor yet in the harsh thunder of peremptory com-
mand and warning, but that he should hear the same
figured and glowing speech, to which he was accus-
tomed, flowing in mellower and more majestic accents
from the lips of his G-od.
INTRODUCTION.
The language of poetry has, therefore, become the
language of the inspired volume. The Bible is a
mass of beautiful figures — its words and its thoughts
are alike poetical — it has gathered around its central
truths all natural beauty and interest — it is a temple,
with one altar and one God, but illuminated by a
thousand varied lights, and studded with a thousand
ornaments. It has substantially but one declaration
to make, but it utters it in the voices of the creation.
Shining forth from the excellent glory, its light has
been reflected on a myriad intervening objects, till it
has been at length attempered for our earthly vision.
It now beams upon us at once from the heart of man
and from the countenance of nature. It has arrayed
itself in the charms of fiction. It has gathered new
beauty from the works of creation, and new warmth
and new power from the very passions of clay. It has
pressed into its service the animals of the forest, the
flowers of the field, the stars of heaven, all the ele-
ments of nature. The lion spurning the sands of the
desert, the wild roe leaping over the mountains, the
lamb led in silence to the slaughter, the goat speeding to
the wilderness, the rose blossoming in Sharon, the lily
drooping in the valley, the apple-tree bowing under its
fruit, the great rock shadowing a weary land, the river
gladdening the dry place, the moon and the morning
star, Carmel by the sea, and Tabor among the moun-
tains, the dew from the womb of the morning, the
rain upon the mown grass, the rainbow encompassing
the landscape, the light God's shadow, the thunder
His voice, the wind and the earthquake His footsteps
— all such varied objects are made as if naturally de-
signed from their creation to represent Him to whom
INTRODUCTION. XI
the Book and all its emblems point. Thus the quick
spirit of the Book has ransacked creation to lay its
treasures on Jehovah's altar — united the innumerable
rays of a far-streaming glory on the little hill, Calvary
— and woven a garland for the bleeding brow of Im-
manuel, the flowers of which have been culled from
the gardens of a universe.
This praise may seem lofty, but it is due to the
Bible, and to it alone — because it only, of all poems,
has uttered in broken fullness, in finished fragments,
that shape of the universal truth which instantly in-
carnates itself in living nature — fills it as a hand a
glove — impregnates it as a thought a word — peoples
it as a form a mirror. The truth the Bible teaches is
not indeed the absolute, abstract, entire truth ; but it
is (in our judgment, and as it shall yet be more fully
understood) the most clear, succinct, consistent, broad,
and practical representation of the truth which has
ever fallen, or which in this world ever shall fall, upon
the fantastic mirror of the human heart, or of nature,
and which from both has compelled the most faithful
and enduring image. It does not occupy the whole
compass of the sky of the infinite from which it pro-
ceeds ; it does not waylay all future, any more than
all past emanations from that region ; but it covers,
and commands as a whole, that disk of the finite over
which it bends. It is, as thp amplest, clearest, and
highest word ever spoken to man, entitled to command
our belief, as well as, through the fire and the natural
graces of the utterance, to excite our admiration, and
comes over the world and man, not as a suppliant, but
as a sovereign — not the timid^ but (in the old sense)
Xll INTRODUCTION.
the tyrannous ruler of our earthly night, '^ until the
day dawn, and the day-star arise in our hearts."
"Without entering into the vexed and vexatious
question of verbal inspiration — without seeking mi-
nutely to analyze that abysmal word — inspiration — or
to examine the details of a controversy which is little
more than begun — we would, as a proper preliminary
to our future remarks, thus express more explicitly,
though shortly, our general belief as to what the
Bible is, and what is its relative position to men and
to other works.
The Bible is not then, to commence with negatives,
a scientific book ; its intention is not to teach geology
or astronomy, any more than meteorology or conchol-
ogy ; its allusions to the subjects of science are inci-
dental, brief, glancing for a moment to a passing topic,
and then rapidly returning to its main and master
theme. Not only so, but its statements seem often to
coincide with floating popular notions, as well as to
clothe themselves in popular language, while they
never fail, through their wonted divine alchymy, to
deduce from them lessons of moral truth and wisdom.
It is not a full but a fragmentary record even of that
part of man's history to which it confines itself. It is
not a moral or metaphysical treatise ; and, of logical
analysis or deduction, it has (save in Paul's Epistles)
little or none. The most religious, it is the least
theological of books, so far as theology means a con-
scious, compact, distinctly enounced, and elaborately
defended system. An artistic work it can scarcely be
called, so slight is the artifice of its language and
INTRODUCTION. XlU
rKytlimical construction. It is rude in speecli, though,
not in knowledge. What then is the Bible ? It is, as
a history, the narrative of a multitude of miraculous
facts, which skepticism has often challenged, but never
disproved, and which, to say the least, must now re-
main unsolved phenomena— the aerolites of history —
speaking like those from the sky of an unearthly re-
gion — the narrative, too, of a life (that of Jesus) at
once ideally perfect, and trembling all over with hu-
manity, really spent under this sun, and yet lit along
its every step and suffering by a light above it — a life
which has since become the measure of all other lives,
the standard of human and of absolute perfection — the
ideal at once ofma7i atid of God. As a poem — moral
and didactic — it is a repertory of divine instincts — a
collection of the deepest intuitions of truth, beauty,
justice, holiness — the past, the present, the future —
which, by their far vision, the power with wliich they
have stamped themselves on the belief and heart, the
hopes and fears, the days and nights of humanity,
their superiority to aught else in the thoughts or words
of man, their consistency with themselves, their adap-
tation to general needs, their cheering influence, their
progressive development, and their close-drawn con-
nection with those marvelous and unshaken facts —
are proved divine in a sense altogether peculiar and
alone.
In its relation to man, the Bible therefore stands
thus : — It is the authority for the main principle of his
belief ; it is the manual of the leading rites and prac-
tices of his worship ; as the manifold echo of the voice
of his conscience, it constitutes the grand standard of
XIV INTRODUCTION.
his morality; it is his fullest and most authentic mis-
sive from his Maker ; it is his sole torch into the
darkness of the unseen world ; all his science, his art,
and his philosophy, it aims at, and, at last (in the
course of its own development, for it is ''a fire unfold-
ing itself"), shall succeed in drawing into harmony
with its principles ; and of his poetry, it is the loftiest
reach. Thus, it is designed at once to command and
to charm, to subdue and to sublimate, the mind of
man ; to command his belief into obedience — to charm
his heart and his imagination — to subdue his moral
nature — and to sublimate the springs of his hope and
joy ; predestined, too, to move along with his progress,
but to move as did the fiery pillar with the armies of
Israel, above and before him — his guide as well as
companion, directing his motions, while attending his
march. Its power over man has, need we say ? been
obstinately and long resisted — but resisted in vain.
For ages, has this artless, loosely-piled, little book been
exposed to the fire of the keenest investigation — a fire
which meanwhile has consumed contemptuously the
mythology of the Iliad, the husbandry of the Greorgics,
the historical truth of Livy, the fables of the Shaster,
the Talmud, and the Koran, the artistic merit of many
a popular poem, the authority of many a work of phi-
losophy and science. And yet, there the Bible lies,
unhurt, untouched, with not one of its pages singed—
with not even the smell of fire having passed upon it.
Many an attempt has been made to scare away this
*' Fiery Pillar" of our wanderings, or to prove it a
mere natural product of the wilderness ; but still,
night after night, rises — like one of the sure and ever-
shining stars — in the vanguard of the great march of
INTRODUCTION. XV
man, the old column, gliding slow, but guiding cer-
tainly to future lands of promise, both in the life that
is, and in that which cometh hereafter.
In relation to other books, the Bible occupies a pe-
culiar and solitary position. It is independent of all
others ; it imitates no other book ; it copies none ; it
hardly alludes to any other, whether in praise or
blame ; and this is nearly as true of its later portions,
when books were common, as of its earlier, when
books were scarce. It proves thus its originality and
power. Mont Blanc does not measure himself with
Jura ; does not name her, nor speak, save when in
thunder he talks to her of Grod. Then only, too, does
she
" Answer from her misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps."
John never speaks of Plato, nor Paul of Demosthenes,
nor Jesus of any writer, save Moses and the Prophets.
In those great heights, you feel blowing round your
temples, and stirring your hair, the free, original, an-
cient Breath of the upper world, unconventional, un-
mixed, and irresistible, as the mountain tempest. It
is a book unlike all others — the points of difference
being these, among many more : — First, There is a
certain grand unconsciousness, as in Niagara, speak-
ing now in the same tone to the tourists of a world,
as when she spoke to the empty wilderness and the
silent sun ; as in the Himalayan Hills, which cast the
same look of still sovereignty over an India unpeopled
after the Deluge, as over an India the hive of swelter-
ing nations. Thus burst forth, cries of nature — the
XVI INTRODUCTION.
voices of the Prophets ; and thus do their eyes, from
the high places of the world, overlook all the earth.
You are aware, again, in singular union with this pro-
found unconsciousness and simplicity, of a knowledge
and insight equally profound. It is as though a child
should pause amid her play, and tell you the secrets
of your heart, and the particulars of your after history.
The bush beside your path suddenly begins to sigh
forth an oracle, in " words unutterable." That un-
conscious page seems, like the wheel .in Ezekiel's
vision, to be "full of eyes;" and, open it wherever
you may, you start back in surprise or terror, feeling
" this book knows all about us ; it eyes us meaningly ;
it is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of our
hearts." Those herdsmen, vinedressers, shepherds,
fishermen, and homeless wanderers, are coeval with
all time, and see the end from the beginning. You
perceive, again, the presence of a high and holy pur-
pose pervading the Book, which is to trace and pro-
mulgate the existence of certain spiritual laws, origin-
ally communicated by Grod, developed in the history
of a peculiar people, illustrated by the ruin of nations,
proclaimed in a system of national religion and na-
tional poetry, and at last sealed', cemented, and spread
abroad through the blood and Gospel of One who had
always been expected, and who at last arrived — the
Christ promised to the Fathers. It is this which
renders the Bible, in all its parts, religious and holy ;
casts over its barest portions such an interest as the
shadow of the fiiery Pillar gave to the sand and shrubs
over which it passed — makes what otherwise appear
trifles, great as trappings of Godhead — and extracts
from fiction and fable, from the crimes of the evil and
INTRODUCTION. XVll
the failings of the good, aid to its main object, and
illustration of its main principles. You find yourself
again in the presence of a '^ true thing." We hear
of the spell of fiction, but a far stronger spell is that of
truth ; indeed, fiction derives its magic from the quan-
tity of truth it contrives to disguise. In this book,
you find truth occasionally, indeed, concealed under
the garb of allegory and fable, but frequently in a form
as naked and majestic as Adam when he rose from the
greensward of Eden. *' This is true," we exclaim,
*' were all else a lie. Here, we have found men, ear-
nest as the stars, speaking to us in language which,
by its very heat, impetuosity, unworldliness, fearless-
ness, almost if not altogether imprudence, severity,
and grandeur, proves itself sincere, if there be sin-
cerity in earth or in heaven." Once more, the Bible,
you feel, answers a question which other books can not.
This — the question of questions, the question of all
ages — is, in our vernacular and expressive speech,
'' What shall I do to be saved r ^' How shall I be
peaceful, resigned, holy, and hopeful here, and how
happy hereafter, when this cold cloak — the body — has
fallen off from the bounding soul within." To this,
the '' Iliad" of Homer, the Plays of Shakspeare, the
*' Celeste Mechanique" of La Place, and the Works
of Plato, return no proper reply. To this immense
query, the Book has given an answer, which may
theoretically have been interpreted in various ways,
but which, as a practical truth, he who runs may read ;
which has satisfied the souls of millions; which none
ever repented of obeying ; and on which many of the
wisest, the most learned, the most slow of heart to
believe, as well as the ignorant and simple-minded.
XVlll INTRODUCTIOIf.
have at last been content to lean their living confi-
dence and their dying peace.
I
' The Book, we thus are justified in proclaiming to
be superior to all other books that have been, or are,
or shall ever be on earth. And this, not that it fore-
stalls coming books, or includes all their essential
truth within it; nor that, in polish, art, or instant
effect, it can be exalted above the written master-pieces
of human genius ; — what comparison in elaboration,
any more than what comparison in girth and great-
ness, between the cabinet and the oak ; but it is, that
the Bible, while bearing on its summit the hues of a
higher heaven, overtopping with ease all human struc-
tures and aspirations — in earth, but not of it — com-
municating with the omniscience, and recording the
acts of the omnipotence, of Grod — is at the same time
the Bible of the poor and lowly, the crutch of the
aged, the pillow of the widow, the eye of the blind,
the " boy's own book," the solace of the sick, the light
of the dying, the grand hope and refuge of simple,
sincere, and sorrowing spirits ; — it is tlds which at once
proclaims its unearthly origin, and so clasps it to the
great common heart of humanity, that the extinction
of the sun were not more mourned than the extinction
of the Bible, or than even its receding from its present
pride of place. For, while other books are planets
shining with reflected radiance, this book, like the
sun, shines with ancient and unborrowed ray. Other
books have, to their loftiest altitudes, sprung from
earth ; this book looks down from heaven high. Other
books appeal to understanding or fancy ; this book to
conscience and to faith. Other books seek our atten-
INTRODUCTION. XlX
tion ; tliis book demands it — it speaks with authority,
and not as the Scribes. Other books gUde gracefully
along the earth, or onward to the mountain-summits
of the ideal ; this, and this alone, conducts up the
awful abyss which leads to heaven. Other books,
after shining their little season, may perish in flames,
fiercer than those which destroyed the Alexandrian
Library ; this must, in essence, remain pure as gold,
but unconsumable as asbestos, in the general confla-
gration. Other books may be forgotten in a universe
where suns go down and disappear, like bubbles in
the stream ; the memory of this book shall shine as
the brightness of that eternal firmament, and as those
higher stars, which are forever and ever.
It is of the Bible, not as a revelation of special^ but
as a poem embodying general truth, that we propose
in the following work to speak. Our purpose is not
to expound its theological tenets, nor its ritual worship
(except so far as these modify the imaginative tenden-
cies and language of the writers), but to exhibit, in
some degree, the beauty of the poetic utterance which
the writers have given to their views and feelings. To
this task we proceed, not merely at the instance of
individuals whom we are proud to call friends, but be-
cause we feel that it has not been as yet accomplished
adequately, or in accommodation to the spirit of the
age. Every criticism on a true poem should be it-
self a poem. "We have many excellent, elaborate, and
learned criticisms upon the Poetry of the Bible ; but
the fragmentary essay of Herder alone seems to ap-
proach to the idea of a prose poem on the subject. A
new and fuller eflbrt seems to be demanded. Writers,
XX INTRODUCTION.
too, far more adapted for the work than we, have di-
verged from it in various directions. Some have laud-
ably devoted themselves to building up anew, and in
a more masterly style, the evidences of the authenti-
city and truth of Scripture ; others are employed in re-
butting the startling objections to the Bible which
have arrived from across the Grerman Ocean. Many
are redarguing the whole questions of supernatural
inspiration and the Scripture canon from their founda-
tions ; some are disposed to treat Bible poetry as some-
thing above literary criticism ; and others as some-
thing beneath it. The majority seem, in search of
mistakes, or in search of mysteries, to have forgotten
that the Bible is a poem at all.
We propose therefore to take up this neglected
theme — the Bards of the -Bible ; and in seeking to de-
velop their matchless merit as masters of the lyre —
to develop, at the same time, indirectly, a subordinate
though strong evidence that they are something more
— the rightful rulers of the belief and the heart of
man. Perhaps this subject may not be found alto-
gether unsuited to the wants of the age. If properly
treated, it may induce some to pause before they seek
any longer to pull in vain at the roots of a thing so
beautiful. It may teach others to prize that Book
somewhat more for its literature, which they have
all along loved for its truth, its holiness, and its adap-
tation to their nature. It may strengthen some falter-
ing convictions, and tend to withdraw enthusiasts
from the exclusive study of imperfect modern and
morbid models to those great ancient masters. It
may, possibly, through the lesson of infinite beauty,
INTRODUCTION. XXX
successfully insinuate that of eternal truth into some
souls hitherto shut against one or both ; and as thou-
sands have been led to regard the Bible as a book of
genius, from having first thought it a book of God, so
in thousands may the process be inverted ! It will,
in any case, repay, in a certain measure, our debt to
that divine volume, which, from early childhood, has
hardly ceased for a day to be our companion — which
has colored our imagination, commanded our belief,
impressed our thought, and steeped our language —
which, so familiarized to us by long intimacy, has be-
come rather a friend than a fiery revelation — to the
proclamation of which, as containing a G-ospel of
Peace, we have devoted the most valued of our years
— and to the illustration of which, as a word of un-
equaled genius, we now devote those pages, commend-
ing them to the Great Spirit of the Book.
THE BARDS OF THE BIBLE.
CHAPTER I.
CIRCUMSTANCES CREATING AND MODIFYING OLD
TESTAMENT POETRY.
The admitted principle that every poet is partly the creator
and partly tlie creature of circumstances, applies to the Hebrew
Bards, as to others. But it is also true that the great poet is
more the creator than the creature of his age, and of its influ-
ences. And this must with peculiar force apply to those for
whom we claim a certain supernatural inspiration, connected
with their poetic afflatus, in some such mysterious way as the
soul is connected, though not identified, with the electric fluid
in the nerves and brain. What such writers give must be in-
comparably more than what they get from their country or
their period. Still it is a very important inquiry, what events
in Old Testament history, or what influences from peculiar doc-
trines, from Oriental scenery, or from the structure of the He-
brew language and verse, have tended to awaken or modify
their strains, and to bring into play those occasional causes
which have lent them their mystic and divine power ? This is
the subject of the present chapter, and we may further premise,
that whenever even poetic inspiration is genuine, it never de-
tracts from its merit to record the occasions which gave it birth,
the sparks of national or individual feeling from which it ex-
ploded, or the influence of other minds in lighting its flame,
24 CIRCUMSTANCES CRLATING AND MODIFYINa
and can much less when it is the " authentic fire" of heaven, of
which we speak.
The first circumstance we mention, is no less than the crea-
tion itself, as it appeared to the Jewish mind. The austere
simphcity of that remarkable verse of Genesis, "In the begin-
ning God created the heavens and the earth," sounds a fitting
keynote to the entire volume. Never shall we forget the emo-
tion with which we read those words for the first time in the
original tongue. The words themselves, perhaps the earliest
ever written — their information so momentous — the scene to
which, in their rugged simplicity, they hurried us away, gave
them a profound and almost awful interest ; and we sat silent
and motionless, as under the response of an oracle on which out
destiny depended. Longinus has magnified the poetry of the
divine exclamation, " Let there be light, and there was light ;"
but on our feelings the previous statement had a greater eflfect,
throwing us back into the gulf of ages, and giving us a dim
retrospect of gigantic cycles rolling forward in silence. The his-
tory of the creation indeed is all instinct with poetry. As includ-
ing an account of the preparations for the reception of man, how
beautifully does it evolve. How, like a drama, where the interest
deepens toward the conclusion, does it, step by step, awaken and
increase our attention and curiosity. First, the formless deep
arises — naught seen but undefined and heaving waters, and
naught heard but above the surge the broodings of the Eternal
Spirit. Then light flashes forth, like some element already existing
in all things, though vailed, so instantaneous in its appearance.
Then, the firmament arises, dividing the waters from the waters.
Then, heaving up from its overhanging seas, the dry land shows
its dark earthy substance, to bear the feet of man. Then in the
sky, globes, collecting and condensing the scattered light, shine
forth to number the years and direct the steps of man. Then
the waters, under the genial warmth, begin to teem with life,
and the earth to produce its huge offspring, and to send up, as
" in dance," its stately and fruit-bearing trees, to feed the appe-
tite and relieve the sohtude of man. And then, the preparations
OLD TESTAMENT POETRY. 25
for his coming being complete, lie appears. The stage having
been swept, and garnished, and lighted up, the great actor steps
forward. " And on the sixth day God said, let us make man
in our own image." How magnificent these preparations ! how
fine their gradations ! and how deep and mystical the antithesis
between the scale on which they had been conducted and the
result in which they had issued, in the appearance, amid all
that vast and costly theatre, of a child of clay. And how does
the contrast swell, instead of narrowing, when we believe, with
the geologists, that innumerable centuries had in these prepara-
tions been expended ! The impulse given to the imagination
of the Jews, through their conceptions of the creation, was
great, and the allusions of their poets to it afterward are nume-
rous, Solomon, for instance, in his personification of Wisdom,
describes it in language lofty as that of Moses. " When he ap-
pointed the foundations of the earth, then was I by him, as one
brought up with him." Job abounds in reference to this cardi-
nal truth. Isaiah, speaking in the person of God, and throwing
down a gantlet to all the heathen deities, says, " I have made
the earth, and created man upon it. I, even my hands, have
stretched out the heavens." Thus does this primal truth or fact
of Scripture flash down light and glory over all its pages, and the
book may be said to stand in the brightness of its opening verse.
Another event teeming with poetry, and which had no small
effect on the Jewish imagination, was the flood. The tradition
of a flood is found in all nations, but often in company with
ludicrous images and circumstances which mar its sublimity.
It is described by Moses with even more than his usual bareness,
and almost sterile simplicity. His language scarcely ever rises,
save when he speaks of the " windows of heaven being opened,"
above the level of prose; not another figure in the narrative
confesses his emotion at the sight of deluge enwrapping the
globe — the yell of millions of drowning and desperate men and
animals contending with the surge of the sea — the mountains
of earth overtopped by the aspiring waters — the sun retiring
from the sight, as if in grief and forever — ^and, amid all this
B
26 CIRCUMSTAITCES CREATING AND MODIFYING
assemblage of terrors, the one vessel rising majestic and alone,
through whose windows look forth Seth's children, their eyes
dimmed and darkened with tears. And yet the bare truth of
the flood, sown in the hearts of the Hebrews, became a seed of
poetry. The flood put a circle of lurid glory round the head of
their God ; it awed the patriarchs in their midnight tents — it
gave a new charm and beauty to the " rainbow which encora-
passeth the heavens with a glorious circle, and the hands of the
Most High have bended it." It brought out all the possible
grandeur of the element of water. Frequent are the allusions to it
in after days. "The Lord," says David, "sittoth upon the fl.oods,"
alluding not altogether to the swellings of Jordan, nor to the
sweUings, seen from Carmel, of the Mediterranean, but to that
ocean without a shore, on which his eye saw the Jehovah seated,
his wings the winds, his voice the thunder of the sea-billows,
his feet feathered with lightnings, and his head lost in the immen-
sity of o'er-canopying gloom. Again, saith Isaiah, in the name
of the Almighty, "this is as the waters of Noah unto me, for
as I have sworn that the waters of Noah shall go no more over
the earth, so have I sworn not to be wroth with thee." And,
besides other allusions, we find Peter speaking of God bringing
in a " flood upon the world of the ungodly." Thus do the
" waters of Noah" send down a far deep voice, which is poetry,
into the depths of futurity ; and there is no topic, even yet, which,
if handled with genius, is so sure to awaken interest and emotion.
Passing over the events connected with the confusion of
tongues and the dispersion of the human race — the histories of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — the romantic story of Joseph and
his brethren — the wondrous phenomena attending the departure
of Israel from Egypt, we pause at Sinai, the center of the
ancient system. There was enacted a scene fitted to produce,
in the first instance, an alarm and awe inconsistent with the
•sublime, but ultimately to create of itself a volcanic stream of
national imagination, rising from the roots of the savage hill.
Sinai, bare, dark, craggy, in itself, surrounded suddenly by a
mantle of gloom, and crowned above all other hills with a dia-
OLD TESTAMENT POETRY. 2T
dem of fire — a fierce wind blowing in restless eddies aroimd it
— torrents of rain descending through the darkness — the light-
nings of God playing upon the summit — thunders crashing in-
cessantly — the trumj) which shall call the dead to judgment,
sending forth a preliminary note, and causing the mountain to
thrill and tremble — and heard at intervals, above all, the very
voice of the Eternal — the millions of Israel standing silent on
the plain, awe and wonder casting a shadow over their faces —
and, amid all this, one lonely man going up the hill, and quak-
ing as he goes — the utterance of the fiery law from amid the
gloom — the Amen of the tribes — the seclusion of Moses wdth
Jehovah, for forty days, on the top of the mount — the finger of
God, the same finger which, dipping itself in glory, had touched
the firmament, and left as its trace the sun, writing the ten pre-
cepts on the two tables — the passing (*f the Lord before Moses,
as he hasted and threw himself on the ground — the descent of
the favored man, with his face shining out the tidings where
he had been — all this taken together, while calculated to cast a
salutary terror down to remote ages, and to make the children,
among the willows of Canaan, to tremble at the name of Sinai,
was fitted, too, to produce a peculiar and terrible poetry. We
find, accordingly, the shadow of Horeb communicating influence
to almost all the Hebrew prophets. It was unquestionably in
David's eye, wdien he sung that highest of his strains, the 18th
Psalm, which has carried our common metrical versions of it to
unwonted pitches of power : —
" On cherub and on cherubim
Full royally he rode,
And on the wings of mighty winds
Came flying all abroad,"
It was in Daniel's view, when he described the fiery stream
going before the Ancient of Days. The prayer of Habakkuk
is a description of the same scene. " God came from Teman,
and the Holy One from Mount Paran. His glory covered the
heavens, and the earth was full of his praise.
28 CIRCUMSTANCES CREATING AND MODIFYING
wlien turning his back on the mount that might be touched,
seems to linger in admiration of its grandeur, and his descrip-
tion of it is full of jDoetrj. It is hardly too much to say that
the genius of the race was kindled at the fires of Sinai.
AVe mention, as another powerful stimulus to the imagina-
tion of the Jews, the peculiar economy of that peculiar people.
This, what with the thunders amid which it was cradled — the
meteors which, as a cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night,
guided and guarded it — the miracles which, like a supernatural
circle, hedged it in — the mysteries of its tabernacle — the un-
earthly brightness of that Shechinah which filled its holy of
holies — the oracular luster shining around its priests — the pomp,
the solemnity, and the minuteness of its sacrifices — the wailing
cadences, the brisker measures, blended wdth the awful bursts
of its minstrelsy — the temple, with its marble and gold, its pin-
nacles turned, like the fingers of suppliant hands, to heaven —
its molten sea, and bulls of brass — its "carved angels, ever
eager-eyed," shapes of celestial sculpture — its mercy-seat, so
overshadowed, so inviolable, so darkened, amid its glories, by
a penumbra of divine anger — the atmosphere of holiness suf-
fused, like strange sunshine, over every bell and breastplate,
candlestick and cherub — the typical character which filled even
the solitudes of the place with meaning, and shook them with
silent eloquence — the feeling of expectancy and the air of pro-
phecy which reigned over the whole — all this exerted an influ-
ence over the imagination as well as the faith, and cast a more
than mortal poetry around a system of ceremonies so unique and
profound. Hence the merest details, in Leviticus and Exodus,
of these rites, become instinct with imagination, and need
neither verse nor figure to add to their naked greatness.
Among the doctrines peculiar to the Jews, and inspiring
their genius, we may enumerate the unity of the divine nature,
their idea of the divine omnipresence, their expectation of a
Messiah, their doctrine of a millennium, and their views of a
future state. The doctrine of divine unity, by collecting all the
scattered rays of beauty and excellence, from every quarter of
OLD TESTAMENT POETRY. 29
the universe, and coiicleiising them into one overpowering con-
ception, by tracing the innumerable rills of thought and feeling to
the fountain of an infinite mind, surpasses the most elegant and
ethereal polytheism immeasurably more than the sun does the
" cinders of the element." However beautiful the mythology
of Greece, as interpreted by Wordsworth — however instinct it
was with imagination — although it seemed to breathe a super-
natural soul into the creation, to rouse and startle it all into life,
to fill the throne of the sun with a divine sovereign, to hide a
JSTaiad in every fountain, to crown every rock with an Oread, to
deify shadows and storms, and to send sweeping across the waste
of ocean a celestial emperor — ^it must yield without a struggle
to the thought of a great One Spirit, feeding by his perpetual
presence the lamp of the universe, speaking in all its voices, lis-
tening in all its silence, storming in its rage, reposing in its calm,
its light-the shadow of his greatness, its gloom the hiding-place
of his power, its verdure the trace of his steps, its fire the breath
of his nostrils, its motion the circulation of his untiring energies,
its warmth the effluence of his love, its mountains the altars of
his worship, and its oceans the mirrors where he beholds his
form, " glassed in tempests." Compared to those conceptions,
how does the fine dream of the Pagan Mythus melt away —
Olympus, with its multitude of stately celestial natures, dwindle
before the solitary immutable throne of Jehovah — the poetry
as well as the philosophy of Greece shrink before the single
sentence, " Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord" — and
Wordsworth's description of the origin of its multitudinous gods
Igoks tame beside the mighty lines of Milton —
"The oracles are dumb,
N"o voice or hideous hum,
Runs tlirough the arched roof, in words deceiving.
Apollo, from his shrine,
Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
'No nightly trance, or breathed spell.
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.
30 CIRCUMSTANCES CREATING AND MODIFYING
He feels from Judah's land,
The dreadful Infant's hand.
The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn.
Nor all the gods beside,
Longer dare abide,
Nor Typhon huge, ending in snaky t^vine.
Our Babe, to show his Godhead true.
Can, in his swaddling bands, control the damned crew.'*
Closely connected with tliis doctrine of divine unity, is that
of divine omnipresence. To the Hebrews, the external universe
is just a bright or black screen concealing God. All things are
full of, yet all distinct from, him. That cloud on the mountain
is his covering ; that muttering from the chambers of the thunder
is his voice ; that sound on the top of the mulberry-trees is his
" going ;" in that wind, which bends the forest or curls the clouds,
he is walking ; that sun is his still commanding eye — Whither
can they go from his Spirit ? whither can they flee from his
presence ? At every step, and in every circumstance, they feel
themselves God-inclosed, God-filled, God-breathing men, with
a spiritual presence lowering or smiling on them from the sky,
sounding in wild tempest, or creeping in panic stillness across
the surface of the earth ; and if they turn within, lo ! it is there
also — an " Eye" hung in the central darkness of their own hearts.
Hence the muse of the Hebrew bard is not Dame Memory, nor
any of her syren daughters, but the almighty, all-pervading
Spirit himself, who is at once the subject, the auditor, and the
inspirer of the song.
What heart, in what age or country, has not, at some time
or other, throbbed in the expectation of a Messiah, a " Coming
One," destined to right the wrongs, stanch the wounds, explain
the mystery, and satisfy the ideal, of this wondrous, weary,
hapless, and " unintelligible" world — who shall reconcile it to
itself, by giving it a purer model of life, and a nobler principle
of action — who shall form a living link, wedding it to the high
and distant heaven — who shall restore the skies, the roses, and
the hearts of Eden, and instruct us, by his plan of reconcilia-
OLD TESTAMENT POETRY. 31
tion, that the fall itself was a stage in the triumph of man ? Hu-
manity has not only desired, but has cried aloud for his coming.
The finest minds of the Pagan world hav^e expressed a hope, as
well as a love of his appearing ; it might indeed be proved that
this " Desire of all Nations" lies at the foundation of all human
hope, and is the preserving salt of the world. From earth to
heaven, the question was for ages reverberated, " Who is worthy
to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof V And for ages,
all earnest men wept much because the volume remained shut.
But in the minds of the Jews, this feeling dwelt with peculiar
intensity and concentration. It rendered every birth a possible
epoch ; it hung a spell over every cradle. The Desire of all
Nations was, in a profound sense, the desire of Jewish females.
From the heart, it passed naturally into the imagination, and
from thence into the poetry of the land, which is rarely so sub-
hme as when picturing tlie character and achievements of the
Desired and Expected One. This desire, in what singular
circumstances was it fulfilled ! The earth was at rest and still.
The expectation of many ages had come to its height. In the
hush of that universal silence, w^e may imagine the hearts of all
nations panting audibly, with strong and intolerable longing.
And when the expectation was thus at the fullest, its object ar-
rived. And where did the Desire of all Nations appear ? Did
he lift up his head in the palaces of Rome, or the porticoes of
Athens ? No ; but he came where the desire was beating most
strongly — to the core of the great heart which was panting for
him — to the village of Bethlehem, in the midst of Judea, and
the neighborhood of Jerusalem. And how came he ? Was
it in fire and glory, robed in a mantle of tempest, and with em-
broideries of lightning ? No ; but as a weeping babe ! " To
us a child''' was given. And all who liad entered into the
g\enuine spirit of the ancient poetic announcements, felt this to
be " very good."
The doctrine of a millennium must surely have been a pure
emanation from Heaven. As a mere dream, we could conceive
it crossing the brain of a visionary, or quickening the eager pen
32 CIRCUMSTANCES CREATING AND MODIFYING
of a poet as lie wrote it down. But, as a distinct, prominent,
and fixed prospect, in the onward view of the philanthropist —
as any thing more than a castle in the clouds — it seems to have
been let down, like Jacob's ladder, from a higher region. Even
granting that it was only a tradition which inspired Virgil's
Pollio, it was probably a tradition which had floated from above.
To the same region we may trace the allusions to a millen-
nium, which may be found, more or less distinctly, in the
many mythologies of the world. But in Scripture alone do
we find this doctrine inwrought with the whole system, per-
vading all its books, and, while thoroughly severed, on the one
hand, from absurdity and mysticism, expressed, on the other, in
a profusion of figure, and painted in the softest and richest
colors. Did the idea of a happy world, whether communi-
cated to the soul of Virgil by current tradition, or caught from
the hps of some wandering Jew, or formed by the mere projec-
tion of the favorite thought of a golden age upon the canvas
of the future, raise him for a time above himself, and inspire one
strain matchless among Pagan poets ? What a provision, then,
must have been made for the production of a world of poetry,
from the thick gleams and glimpses of distant glory, scattered
over the pages of all the bards of Israel ! How sublime the con-
ception, in its own original fountains, reposing under the tree
of life, the leaves of which are for the healing of the nations !
and especially as we find it flaming around the lips of the
prophets of God, who, seeing in the distance the wolf dwelling
with the lambj and the leopard with the kid ; the mountain of
the Lord's house exalted above the mountains and established
above the hills ; the New Jerusalem coming down from God,
as a bride adorned for her husband ; earth uplifted from the
neighborhood of hell to that of heaven ; the smoke of its every
cottage rising like the smoke of an altar ; peace brooding on its
oceans ; righteousness running in its streams ; and the very bells
of its horses, bearing " Hohness to the Lord" — leaped up exult-
ing at the sight, and sent forward, from their watch-towers, a
far cry of recognition and enthusiasm, " Arise, shine ; for thy
OLD TESTAMENT POETRY. S3
light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee."
" Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their
windows ?" " The sun shall be' no more thy light by day ;
neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee. Thy
sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw it-
self, for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of
thy mourning shall be ended." Who, but writers in the highest
sense inspired, could often assume, or long sustain, such strains
as these? Who, but they, could keep so steadily separate
from the deep clouds of the present a prospect so distinct and
sublime ? Who, uninfluenced by the Spirit of the Lord, would
have dared, not merely as a poetic conception, but as a pro-
phetical announcement, to predict what all history and all ex-
perience would seem to stamp with the wildest pnnt of LTtopia ?
"Few, few have striven to make earth heaven," but as few% un-
enlightened from on high, have ever long grasped or detained
the brilliant possibility. It seems, at least, the last refinement
of philosophical conjecture. And yet, in the Hebrew prophets,
we find it closing every vista, irradiating every gloom, lying,
like a bright western heaven, at the termination of every pro-
phetic day ; coloring the gorgeous page of Isaiah ; gleaming
through the willows where Jeremiah had hung his harp ; glaring
on the wild eye of Ezekiel, who turns from his wheels, " so high
that they were dreadful," to show the waters of the sanctuary
becoming an immeasurable and universal stream ; mingling
with the stern denunciations of Micah \ tinging with golden
edges the dreams of Daniel ; and casting transient rays of
transcendent beauty amid the obscure .and troubled tragedy of
the Apocalypse.
With respect to a future state, the conceptions of the heathens
were not only imperfect and false, but gross and coarse. In that
dreary Tartarus, there were indeed many statuesque forms and
noble faces marked out from amid the general haze, and visible
in the leaden light. There was poetry in the despairing thirst
of Tantalus ; poetry in the eternal stone, wet with the eternal
sweat of Sisyphus ; poetry in the daughters of Danaus filhng up
34 CIRCUMSTANCES CREATING AND MODIFYING
the same everlasting sieve ; poetry in that grim figure of Ajax,
silent in the shades, and also in that pale form of Dido, gliding
from the e}' e of her lover into the gloom ; poetry clustering
round the rock of Theseus, and the wheel of Ixion. In their
pictures of Elysium, too, there was a soft and melancholy en-
chantment, most beauteous, yet most rueful to feel. It was
" sunlight sheathed." It was heaven, with a shade, not un-
allied to earth, vailing its brightness. There might be, to quote
Wordsworth imitating Virgil,
*' An ampler ether, a diviner air,
And fields invested with purpurea! gleams,
Climes "which the sun, who sheds the brightest day
Earth owns, is all unworthy to survey."
But surely the radiance had not that spirituality, or solemn
beauty, which characterizes our heaven.* The agonies, too,
were monotonous attitudes of material woe ; they lacked dignity
and relief; sculptured with rude power, they were sculptured in
rock ; their line was too uniform and too black ; they lacked
those redeeming touches which, like white streaks upon marble,
mingle with, and carry off, the uniform intensity of gloom. All
wretchedness lay upon them ; but it was a silent not an eloquent
misery. Despair looked through them ; but it was dumb, deaf,
and dead. Eternity brooded over the whole ; but it was dull
and idle, hke the calm, sullen face of a marsh or moorland, not
the living look of a mountain or of the sea. There is no change,
no " lower deep conducting to a yet lower," in a descending
series. Intercourse with other worlds there is little or none.
The region is insulated in its misery — " beyond the beams of
noon, and eve's one star." No stray angel looks down sud-
denly, hke a sunbeam, into its darkness. No grand procession
comes from afar, to look and wonder at its miseries. It is a
neglected ruin, rather than a prison of pain. Such is the heathen
hell, as discovered to us, by Virgil, but especially by Homer.
* We speak here not so much of the Jewish as of the Christian
notions of the future state.
OLD TESTAMENT POETRY. 35
How different, and how much more striking, the ghmpses in
Scripture, penciled, as through chinks in the wall of the man-
sion of the second death ! Its locality is untold, its creation and
date are left in obscurity, its names are various — but all rather
\7ails than discoveries of what seems elaborately concealed. It
-s hell, the hidden or sunken place ; it is Gehenna, Tophet ; it
IS a smoke ascending, as if to darken the universe ; it is a lake
burning with fire and brimstone, but of which the interior is
unseen ; it is a pit bottomless, a fire unquenchable, a worm un-
dying, a death — the second and the last ; it is " without," yet
not unvisited or unseen ; they shall be tormented in the pres-
ence of the Lamb and the holy angels ; they shall go forth,
and look on the carcasses of them that are slain, whose worm
dieth not. This is all, or nearly all we know of it. And yet
how unspeakably tremendous ! Like the disjointed words upon
the wall (in Coleridge's " Dream") taken singly, each word is a
riddle — put them together, and what a lesson of lurid terror do
they combine to teach ! And from such pregnant expressions
have come forth, accordingly, all the sublime and dreary dreams
of after-poetry, the savage sculpture of Dante, Milton's broad
pictures,. Pollok's bold sketch, and the whole gallery of gloomy
visions which may be found in our great religious prose-authors,
from Jeremy Taylor to Thomas Aird.
The next influence we mention, as operating on the Hebrew
poets, is the climate and scenery of their country. To be sus-
ceptible of such skyey influences is one main distinction between
genius and mere talent, and also between the enthusiast sfnd
the fanatic. There is a vulgar earnestness which, while address-,
ing a multitude amid the most enchanting scenery, and at the
spiritual hour of evening, would feel no elevation, but bellow on
as before, susceptible only to the animal sympathy arising from
the concourse of human beings, and not at all to the gradual
shading in of the sky over that sea of faces, to the voice of the
distant streams, and to the upper congregation of the stars, com-
ing out, as if they too would listen to the Gospel of glad tidings.
Not thus was Paul unaware of the scene, at Mars Hill, as he
36 CIRCUMSTAXCES CREATING AND MODIFYINa
preached Jesus and the resurrection. TSTot thus iixhfferent was
Edward Irving to the glories of the Frith of Forth, as again and
again, in the open air and in full view of them, "rolled the
rich thunder of his awful voice," to thousands of silent men.
Even the more literal soul of Whitefield caught occasionally in
such scenes a glow of enthusiasm, and the coarse current of his
thought and diction was tinged with a gleam of poetry. It is
vain to say that some men will, nay, ought to be so swallowed
up in their subject, as to remember nothing besides. Religion,
on the contrary, is a subject which, if properly presented, will
challenge, as its own, alike the splendors of earth and heaven,
and the voice of the true poet-preacher will appear, as it rises
and swells with the theme, worthy of concerting with the eldest
harmonies of nature. Those modes, on the other hand, of pre-
senting rehgious truth, which, amid beautiful scenery and seasons
of special spiritual interest, seem harsh, hard, unsuitable, which
jar upon the musical sweetness and incense breathing all around,
and of which the echo sounds from above like a scream of
laughter, contradiction, and scorn, are therein proved to be im-
perfect, if not false. They are not in unison with the spirit of
the surrounding universe, but are rejected and flung back by it
as foul or rabid felsehoods.
The Hebrew prophets lived in the eye of nature. We always
figure them with cheeks embrowned by the noons of the East.
The sun had looked on them, but it was lovingly — the moon
had " smitten" them, but it was with poetry, not madness —
they had drank in fire, the fire of Eastern day, from a hundred
sources — from the lukevi^arm brooks of their land, from the rich
colors of their vegetation, from their mornings of unclouded
brightness, from their afternoons of thunder, from the large stars
of their evenings and nights. The heat of their climate was
strong enough to enkindle but not to enervate their frames,
inured as they were to toil, fatigue, fasting, and frequent travel.
They dwelt in a land of hills and valleys, of brooks and streams,
of spots of exuberant vegetation, of iron-ribbed rocks and moun-
tains — a land, on one side, dipping down in the Mediterraneaa
OLD TESTAMENT POETRY. 37
Sea, on another, floating up into Lebanon, and on the others,
edged by deserts, teeming at once with dreadful, scenery and
secrets — through which had passed of old time the march of the
Almighty, and where his anger had left for its memorials, here,
the sandy sepulcher of those thousands whose carcasses fell in
the wilderness, and there, a whole Dead Sea of vengeance,
lowering amid a desolation, fit to be the very gateway of hell
— standing between their song and subject-matter, and such a
fiery clime, and such stern scenery — the Hebrew bards were
enabled to indite a language more deeply dyed in the colors
of the sun, more intensely metaphorical, more faithfully tran-
scriptive of nature, a simpler, and yet larger utterance, than
ever before or since rushed out from the heart and tongue of
man.
And not merely were there thus certain general features
connected with the leading events in Old Testament history,
with the peculiar doctrines of the Jews, and with the climate
and scenery of their country, which secured the existence of
poetry, but the very construction and characteristics of the
Hebrew tongue were favorable to its birth. Destitute of the
richness and infinite flexibility of the Greek, the artificial state-
liness and strength of the Latin, and the varied resources and
borrowed beauties of modern languages, Adam's tongue — the
language of the early giants of the species — was fitted, beyond
them all, for the purposes of lofty poetry. It was, in the first
place, as Herder well calls it, an abyss of verhs ; and there is no
part of speech so w^ell adapted as the verb to express motion,
energetic action, quick transition, and strong endurance. This
language was no quiet or sullen sea, but all ahve, speaking,
■surging, now bursting in breaker, and now heaving in long
deep swell. Its adjectives were borrowed from verbs, served
their purposes, and did their work ; and, though barren in ab-
stract terms, it was none the less adapted for the purposes of
poetry ; for it abounded in sensuous terms — it swarmed with
words descriptive of the objects of nature. It contains, amid
its apparent inopia verborum, more than two hundred and fifty
38 CIRCUMSTANCES CREATING AND MODIFYING
botanical terms ; and, then, its utterance, more than that of any
other tongue, was a voice from the heart. We sometimes hear
orators wlio appear to speak with the iungs, instead of the hps ;
but the Hebrews heaved up their rage and their joy, their grief
and their terror, from the depths of their hearts. By their fre-
quent use, too, of the present tense, they have unconsciously
contributed to the picturesque and powerful effect of their
writings. This has quickened their every page, and made their
words, if we may so speak, to stand on end.
It may, indeed, be objected to Hebrew poetry, that it has no
regular rhythm, except a rude parallelism. What then ? Must
it be, therefore, altogether destitute of music ? Has not the
rain a rhythm of its own, as it patters on the pane, or sinks on
the bosom of its kindred pool ? Hath not the wind a harmony,
as it bows the groaning woods, or howls over the mansions of
the dead ? Have not the waves of ocean their wild base ?
Has not the thunder its own " deep and dreadful organ-pipe ?"
Do they speak in rhyme? Do they murmur in blank verse?
Who taught them to begin in Iambics, or to close in Alexan-
drines ? And shall not God's own speech have a peculiar note,
no more barbarous than is the voice of the old woods or the
older cataracts ?
Besides, to call parallelism a coarse or uncouth rhythm, be--
trays an ignorance of its nature. Without entering at large
on the subject of Hebrew versification, we may ask any one,
who has paid even a slight attention to the subject, if the
effect, whether of the gradational parallel, in which the second
or responsive clause rises above the first, like the round of a
ladder, as in the 1st Psalm —
" Blessed is the man
That hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stood in the way of sinners :
And hath not sat in the seat of the scornful ;"
or the antithetical parallel, in which two lines con-espond with
each other, by an opposition of terms and sentiments, as in the
words —
OLD TESTAMENT POETRY. 39
" The memory of the just is blessed,
But the name of the wicked shall rot ;"
or the constructive parallel, in which word does not answer to
word, nor sentence, as equivalent or oj^posite, but there is a cor-
respondence and equahty between the different propositions, in
the turn and shape of the whole sentence, and of the construc-
tive parts — noun answering to noun, verb to verb, negative to
negative, interrogation to interrogation, as in the 19th Psalm —
" The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul ;
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple ;"
or, finally, the introverted parallel, in which, whatever be the
number of lines, the first runs parallel with the last, the second
with the penultimate, and so throughout, such as —
" My son, if thine heart be wise,
My heart shall rejoice, even mine ;
Yea, my reins shall rejoice
When thy lips speak right things — "
We ask, if the effect of all these, perpetually intermingled as
they are, be not to enliven the composition, often to give dis-
tinctness and precision to the train of thought, to impress the
sentiments upon the memor}^, and to give out a harmony,
which, if inferior to rhyme in the compression produced by the
difficulty (surmounted) of uniting varied sense with recurring
sound, and in the pleasure of surprise ; and to blank verse, in
freedom, in the effects produced by the variety of pause, and in
the force of long and linked passages, as well as of insulated lines,
is less slavish than the one, and less arbitrary than the other ?
Unlike rhyme, its point is more that of thought than of lan-
guage ; unlike blank verse, it never can, however managed, de-
generate into heavy prose. Such is parallelism, which generally
forms the differential quality of the poetry of Scripture, although
there are many passages in it destitute of this aid, and which yet
in the spirit they breathe, and the metaphors by which they are
garnished, are genuine and high poetry. And there can be little
40 CIRCUMSTANCES CREATING AND MODIFYINa
question, that in the parallelism of the Hebrew tongue we can
trace many of the peculiarities of modern writing, and in it find
the fountain of the rhythm, the pomp, and antithesis, which
lend often such grace, and always such energy, to the style of
Johnson, of Junius, of Burke, of Hall, of Chalmers — indeed, of
most writers who rise to the grand swells of prose-poetry.
Ere closing this chapter, we may mention one other curious
use of parallelism by the Jewish poets. As it is, confessedly,
the key to the tower of Hebrew verse, and as, in one species of
it, between every two distichs, and every two parts of a sentence,
there is an alternation, like the backward and forward move-
ments of a dance, so the sacred writers keep np a similar inter-
change between the vast concave above and the world below.
Mark this in the history of the creation. At first, there is dark-
ness above and darkness below. Then, as the earth is enlight-
ened, the sky is illumined too ; the earth is brought forth from
the grave of chaos ; the heaven is uplifted in its " terrible crys-
tal ;" and, ere the earth is inhabited, the air is peopled. Again,
as to their present state, the heaven is God's throne, the earth his
footstool — grandeur sits on the one, insignificance cowers on the
other ; power resides above in the meteors, the storms, the stars,
the lightnings, the sunbeams — passive weakness shrinks and
trembles below. The one is a place, nay, a womb of glory,
from which angels glide, and Deity himself at times descends.
The other is a tomb, an Aceldama, a Golgotha ; and yet, though
the one, in com'parison with the other, be so groveling and
mean, taken in connection with the other, it catches and reflects
a certain degree of glory. It has no light in itself, but the sun
condescends to shine upon it, to gild its streams and to touch
its mountains, as with the finger of God. It is a footstool, but
it is God's footstool. It is a tomb, but a tomb set in the
blue of heaven. It has no power in itself, but it witnesses
and feels the energies of the upper universe. It is not the habi-
tation of demons, or angels, or God : but angels rest their feet
upon its hills, demons walk to and fro through its wastes, and
God has been heard sometimes in its groves or gardens, in the
OLD TESTAMENT POETRY. 41
cool wind of the day. Hence, while righteousness looks down
from heaven, truth springs from earth. Hence, the prophet,
after saying, " Give ear, O ye heavens ! and I will speak," adds,
" and hear, O earth ! the words of my mouth." So much for
this mighty prophetical dance or parallelism between earth and
heaven."^"
* See, on this subject, Herder's " Spirit of Hebrew Poetry."
CHAPTER 11.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HEBREW POETRY.
At the hazard of retreading here and there our own steps in the
Introduction, we must speak separately of the general character-
istics of Hebrew poets. To the first we intend to name of these,
we have referred already — it is their figurative language. Like
the swan on still St. Mary's Lake, each thought "floats double,"
— each birth is of twins. It is so with all high thoughts, ex-
cept, perhaps, those of geometrical abstraction. The -proof of
great thoughts is, will they translate into figured and sensuous
expression? will nature recognize, own, and clothe them, as
if they were her own ? or must they stand, small, shivering,
and naked, before her unopened door ? But here we must make
a distinction. Many thoughts find, after beating about for,
natural analogies — they strain a tribute. The thought of genius
precedes its word, only as the flash of the lightning the roar of
the near thunder ; nay, they often seem identicaL Now, the
images of Scripture are peculiarly of this description. The
connection between them and their wedded thoughts seems
necessary. With this is closely connected the naturalness of
Scripture figure. No critical reproach is more common, or more
indiscriminate, than that which imputes to writers want of na-
ture. For nature is often a conventional term. What is as
natural to one man as to breathe, would be, and seems, to an-
other, the spasm of imbecile agony. Consequently, the ornate
writer can not often believe himself ornate, can not help thinking
and speaking in figure, and is astonished to hear elaboration im-
puted to passages which have been literally each the work of an
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HEBREW POETRY. 43
hour. But all modern styles are more or less artificial. Their
lire is in part a false fire. The spirit of those unnaturally ex-
cited ages, rendered feverish by luxuries, by stimulants, by un-
certainties, by changes, and by raging speculation, has blown
sevenfold their native ardor, and rendered its accurate analysis
difficult. Whereas, the fire of the Hebrews — a people living on
corn, water, or milk — sitting under their vine, but seldom tast-
ing its juice — dwelling alone, and not reckoned among the nations
— ^surrounded by customs and manners ancient and unchangeable
as the mountains, — a fire fed chiefly by the still aspects of their
scenery, the force of their piety, the influences of their climate,
the forms of their worship, and the memories of their past — was
a fire as natural as that of a volcano. The figures used are just
the burning coals of that flame, and come forth in brief, impet-
uous, impatient volleys. There is scarcely any artifice or even
art in their use. Hebrew art went no farther than to construct
a simple form of versification. The management of figures, in
what numbers they should be introduced, from what objects
drawn, to what length expanded, how often repeated, and how
so set as to tell most powerfully, was beyond or beneath it.
Enough that the crater of the Hebrew bosom was never empty,
that the fire was always there ready to fill every channel pre-
sented to it, and to change every object it met into itself.
The figures of the Hebrews were very numerous. Their
country, indeed, was limited in extent, and the objects it con-
tained, consequently, rather marked than manifold. But the
" mind is its own place," and from that land flowing with milk
and honey, what a rich herbarium^ aviary^ menagei'ie, have the
bards of the Bible collected and consecrated to God ! We re-
call not our former w^ord, that they have ransacked creation
in the sw^eep of their genius ; for all the bold features and main
elements of the world, enhanced, too, by the force of enthusiasm,
and shown in a light which is not of the earth, are to be found
in them. Their images are never forced out, nor are they
sprinkled over the page with a chariness, savoring more of
poverty than of taste, but hurry forth, thick and intertangled^
44 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HEBREW POETRY.
like sparks from the furnace. Each figure, too, proceeding as
it does, not from the playful mint of fancy, but from the solemn
forge of imagination, seems sanctified in its birth, an awful and
holy, as well as a lovely thing. The flowers laid on God's
altar have indeed been gathered in the gardens and wildernesses
of earth, but the dew and the divinity of Heaven are resting on
every bud and blade. It seems less a human tribute than a
selection from the Godlike rendered back to God.
We name, as a second characteristic of Hebrew poetry, its
simphcity. This approaches the degree of artlessness. The
Hebrew poets were, indeed, full-grown and stern men, but they
united with this quality a certain childlikeness, for which, at
least, in all its simplicity, we may search other literatures in
vain. We find this in their selection of topics. Subjects ex-
ceedingly dehcate, and, to fastidious civilization, offensive, are
occasionally alluded to with a plainness of speech springing from
perfect innocence of intention. The language of Scripture, like
the finger of the sun, touches uncleanness, and remains pure.
" Who can touch pitch, and not be defiled ?" The quiet, holy
hand of a Moses or an Ezekiel can. The proof is, that none
of the descriptions they give us of sin have ever inflamed
the most inflammable imagination. Men read the 20th chapter
of Leviticus, and the 23d of Ezekiel, precisely as they witness
the unwitting actions of a child ; nay, they feel their moral sense
strengthened and purified by the exposures of vice which such
passages contain. The Jewish writers manifest this simplicity,
too, in the extreme width and homeliness of their imagery.
They draw their images from all that interests man, or that bears
the faintest reflection of the face of God. The willow by the
water-courses, and the cedar on Lebanon — the ant and the levia-
than — the widow's cruse of oil and Sinai's fount of fire — the
sower overtaking the reaper, and God coming from Teman and
from Paran — Jael's tent-nail, and Elijah's fiery chariot — boys
and girls playing in the streets of Jerusalem — and those angels
that are spirits, and those ministers that are flames of fire ; yea,
meaner obiects than any of these are selected impartially to
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HEBREW POETRY. 45
illustrate the great truths which are the subjects of their song.
The path of every true poet should be the path of the sun rays,
which, secure in their own purity and directness, pass, fearless as
the spirit of a child, through all deep, dark, intricate, or unholy
places — equally illustrate the crest of a serpent and the wing of
a bird — pause on the summit of an ant-hillock, as on the brow
of Mont Blanc — take up as a " little thing" alike the crater and
the shed cone of the pine — and after they have, in one wide char-
ity, embraced all shaped and sentient things, expend their waste
strength and beauty upon the inane space beyond. Thus does the
imagination of the Hebrew bard count no subject too low, and
none too high, for its comprehensive and incontrollable sweep.
Unconsciousness we hold to be the highest style of simplicity
and of genius. It has been said, indeed, by a high authority
(the late John Sterling), that men of genius are conscious, not
of what is peculiar in the individual, but of what is universal
in the race ; of what characterizes not a man, but Man — not
of their own individual genius, but of God, as moving within
their minds. Yet, what in reality is this, but the unconscious-
ness, for which we would contend ? When we say that men
of genius, in their highest moods, are unconscious, we mean,
not that these men become the mere tubes through which
a foreign influence descends, but that certain lofty emotions
or ideas so fill and possess them, as to produce temporary for-
getfulness of themselves, except as the passive though intel-
ligent instruments of the feeling or the thought. It is true,
that afterward self may suggest the reflection — " the fact that
we have been 'selected to receive and convey such melodies
proves our breadth and fitness ; it is from the oak, not the
reed, that the wind elicits its deepest music." But, in the
first place, this thought never takes place at the same time
with the true afflatus, and is almost inconsistent with its
presence. It is a mere after-inference ; an inference, secondly,
which is not always made ; nay, thirdly, an inference which
is often rejected, when the poet off" the stool feels tempted to
regard with suspicion or shuddering disgust the results of his
40 GENEHAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HEBREW POETRY.
raptured hour of inspiration. Milton seems to have shrunk
back at the retrospect of the height he had reached in the
" Paradise Lost," and preferred his " Paradise Regained."
Shakspeare, on the other hand, having wrought his tragic
miracles under a more entire self-abandonment, becomes, in
his Sonnets, owinsj to a reflex act of sac^acity, aware of what
feats he had done. Bunyan is carried on through all the
stasfes of his immortal Pilo-rimao-e like a child in the leadins^-
strings of his nurse ; but, after looking back upon its com-
pleted course, begins, with all the harmless vanity of a child
(see his prefatory poem to the second part), to crow over the
achievement. Thus all gifted spirits do best when they " know
not what they do." The boy Tell
" "Was great, nor knew how great he was."
But, if this be true of men of genius, it is still more char-
acteristic of the Bards of the Bible ; for they possess perfect
passive reception in the moment of their utterance, and have
given no symptoms of that after self-satisfaction wdiich it were
hard to call, and harder to distinguish from, literary vanity. The
head reels at the thought of Isaiah weighing his " Burdens" over
ao-ainst the odes of Deborah or David ; or of Ezekiel measuring
his intellectual stature with that of Daniel. Like many even-
ing rivers of different bulks and channels, but descending from
one chain of mountains, swollen by one rain, and meeting in
one valley, do those mighty prophets lift up their unequal,
unemulous, unconscious, but harmonious and heaven-seeking
voices.
We notice next the boldness, which is not inferior to the
beauty of their speech. They use liberties, and dare darings,
■which make us tremble. One is reminded, while reading
their words, of the unhinged intellect of the aged King of
England, loosened from all law, delivered from all fear, having
cast off every weight of custom, conventionalism, even reason,
ranging at large, a fire-winged energy, free of the universe,
exposing all the abuses of society, and asking strange and
GERNRAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HEBREW POETRY. 47
unbidden questions at the Deity himself. Thus, not in frenz}%
but in the height of the privilege of their peculiar power, do
the Hebrew Prophets often invert the torrent of their argument
and expostulation, curving it up from earth to heaven — from
Man to God. Hear the words of Jeremiah — " O the Hope of
Israel, the Savior thereof in time of trouble, why shouldst
thou be as a stranger in the land, and as a wayfaring man,
that turneth aside to tarry for a night ? Why shouldst thou
be as a man astonished, as a mighty man that can not save ?
Do not abhor us, for thy name's sake. Do not disgrace the
throne of thy glonjP Or hear Job — " I know now that God
hath overthrown me, and hath compassed me with his net.
Behold, I cry out of ivrong^ but I am not heard. I cry aloud
but there is no judgment. Why do ye persecute me as God,
and are not satisfied with my flesh ?" Or listen to Jonah's
irony, thrown up in the very nostrils of Jehovah — "I knew
that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and
of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil ; therefore, now,
O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me." These ex-
pressions, amid many similar, suggest the memory of those
sublimest of uninspired words —
" Ye heavens,
If ye do love old men, if yonr sweet sway
Hallow obedience, if yourselves are old,
Make it your cause, avenge me of my daughters."
Surely, there is in such words no irreverence or blasphemy.
I^ay, on those moments, when prayer and prophecy transcend
themselves, when the divine within, by the agony of its ear-
nestness, is stung up almost to the measure and the stature of
the divine above — when the soul rises in its majestic wrath,
like " thunder heard remote" — is it not then that men have
reached all but their highest point of elevation possible to them
on earth, and felt as if they saw
" God face to face, nor yet were blasted by his brow V
48 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HEBREW POETRY.
Very different, however, this sjairit, from that of some modern
poets, wlio have
" Rushed in -where angels fear to tread •"
and, under the mask of fiction, have taken the opportunity of
venting their spleen or personal disgust in the face of God.
Without entering on the great enigma of the " Faust," or ven-
turing to deny that Goethe's real purpose was reverence, we
question much if the efifect of his opening scenes in heaven, be
not to produce a very opposite and pernicious feeling. Byron,
again, at one tim« stands in the august presence-chamber, like
a sulky, speechless fiend, and, at another, asks small uneasy
questions, like an ill-conditioned child. Dante and Milton alone,
on this high platform, unite a thorough consciousness of them-
selves, with a profound reverence for him in whose presence
they stand ; they bend before, but do not shrivel up in his
sight ; they come slowly and softly, but do not steal, into his
presence. We must not stop to do more than allude to those
modern caricaturists of Milton and Byron, who, in the guise of
prodigious pietism, display a self-ignorance and self-conceit
which are almost blasphemy, and who, as their plumes vain-
gloriously bristle up and broaden in the eye of Deity, and as
their harsh ambitious scream rises in his ear, present a spectacle
which we know not whetlier to call more ludicrous or more
horrible.
But the boldness of the Hebrew bards, which we panegyrize,
extends to more than their expressions of religious emotion — ^it
extends to all their sentiment, to their style, and to their bear-
ing. " They know not to give flattering titles ; in so doing,"
they feel " that their Maker would soon take them away." With
God vertical over their head in all their motions, miserable
courtiers and sycophants they would have made, even if such
base avenues to success had been always open before them.
They are the stern rebukers of wickedness in high places, the
unhired advocates of the oppressed and the poor ; and fully do
they purchase a title to the charge of being " troublers of Israel,"
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HEBREW POETRY, 49
disturbing it as the hurricane the elements and haunts of the
pestilence. All classes, from the King of Samaria to the drun-
kard of Ephraim — from the Babylonian Lucifer, son of the
morning, to the meanest, mincing, and wanton-eyed daughter of
Zion, with her round tire, like 'the moon — kings, priests, peas-
antry, goldsmiths, and carpenters — men and women, country-
men and foreigners, must listen and tremble, when they smite
with their hand and stamp with their foot. In them the moral
conscience of the people found an incarnation, and stood at
the corner of every street, to deplore degeneracy, to expose
imposture, to blast the pretenses and the minions of despotism,
to denounce every kind and degree of sin, and to point, with a
finger which never shook, to the unrepealed code of Moses, and
to the law written on the fleshly tablets of the heart, as the
standards of rectitude. Where, in modern ages, can we find a
class exerting or aspiring to such a province and such a power ?
Individuals of prophetic mood we have had and have. We have
had a Milton, " wasting his life" in loud or silent protest against
that age of " evil days and evil tongues" on which he had fallen.
We have had a Cowper, lifting up "Expostulations," not un-
heard, to his degraded country. We have had an Edward
Irving, his " neck clothed with thunder," and his loins girt with
the "spirit and the povv^er of Elias," pealing out harsh truth, till
he sank down, wearied and silent, in death. We have had a
poor, bewildered Shelly, with eyes open to the disease, shut to
the true remedy, sincere, beautiful, and lost, as a lunatic angel,
yet with such melody in many of his words, that all men wept
to hear them. We have still a Thomas Carlyle, who, from the
study, where he might have trained himself for a great artist,
has come forth, and, standing by the w^ayside, has uttered the
old laws of justice and of retribution, with such force and ear-
nestness that they seem new and burning " burdens," as if
from the mountains of Israel. But we have not, and never have
had, a class, anointed and consecrated by the hand of God to the
utterance of eternal truth, as immediately taught them from be-
Jiind and aSoi^e-^speaking, moving, looking, gesticulating, and
Q
50 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HEBREW POETRY.
acting, "as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." Our poets
have, in general, been beautiful mirrors of the beautiful, elegant
and tuneful minstrels that could play well on an instrument,
and that were to the world as a " very lovely song," — what else
our Rogerses and Moores ? — not men persecuted and chased into
action and utterance, by the apparition behind them of the
true. Our statesmen, as a class, have been cold temporizers,
mistaking craft for wisdom, success for merit, and the putting
off the evil day for success. Our mental philosophers have done
little else than translate into ingenious jargon the eldest senti-
ments and intuitive knowledge of humanity — they have taught
men to lisp of the Infinite by new methods, and to babble of the
Eternal in terms elaborately and artistically feeble. Our preach-
ers, as a body, have been barely faithful to their brief, and they
have found that brief in the compass of a confession, rather than
in the pages of the Bible, shown and expounded in the light of
the great God-stricken soul within. But our prophets, where
are they ? Where many who resemble those wild, wandering,
but holy flames of fire, which once ran along the highways,
the hills, and the market-places of Palestine ? Instead, what
find we ? For the most part, an assortment of all varieties of
scribbling, scheming, speculating, and preaching machines, the
most active of whose movements form the strongest antithesis
to true life. Even the prophetic men among us display rather
the mood than the insight of prophecy — rather its fire than its
light, and rather its fury than its fire — rather a yearning after,
than a feehng of the stoop of the descending God. We are
compelled to take the complaint of the ancient seer, with a yet
bitterer feeling than his —
" Our signs we do not no-w behold
There is not us among
A prophet more, nor any one
That knows the time how long."
And we must even return, and sit at the feet of those bards of
Israel, who, apart from their supernatural pretensions — as teach-
ers, as poets, as truthful and earnest men— stand as yet alone,
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HEBREW POETRY. 51
' unsurmounted and unapproached — tlie Himalayan mountains
of mankind.
Speaking out fearless sentiments, tlieir language is " loud and
bold." It abounds in personifications, interrogations, apos-
trophes, hyperboles, sudden and violent transitions, figures be-
gun to be bi'oken off, fierce, insulated, and ragged exclamations,
all those outlets of strong emotion which rhetoric has since been
occupied in measuring and squaring. It is a compound of the
language of poetry, oratory, and prayer. Its vehemence, ar-
dor, simplicity, picturesque and poetic character, as well as its
divine' worth, have carried it safe through every ordeal of trans-
lation ; it has mixed with the stream of every language unin-
jured, nay, has finely colored the literary style of Europe.
The charm which Scripture quotation adds to writing, let those
tell who have read Milton, Bunyan, Burke, Foster, Southey,
Croly, Carlyle, Macaulay, yea, and even Byron, all of whom
have sown their pages with this " orient pearl," and brought
thus an impulse from divine inspiration, to add to the effect of
their own. Extracts from the Bible always attest and vindicate
their origin. They nerve what else in the sentences in which
they occur is pointless ; they clear a space for themselves, and
cast a wide glory around the page where they are found.
Taken from the classics of the heart, all hearts vibrate more or
less strongly to their voice. It is even as David felt of old to-
ward the sword of Goliath, when he visited the high-priest, and
said, "There is none like that, give it me;" so writers of true
taste and sympathies feel on great occasions, when they have
certain thoughts and feelings to express, a longing for that sharp
two-edged sword, and an irresistible inclination to cry, " None
like that, give it us ; this right Damascus blade alone can cut
the way of our thought into full utterance and victory."
And did the bearing of those inspired men correspond with,
their sentiments and speech ? It did. The Hebrew prophet,
in his highest form, was a solitary and salvage man, residing
with lions, when he was not waylaying kings, on whose brow
the scorching sun of Syria had charactered its fierce and swarthy
52 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HEBREW POETRY.
hue, and whose dark eye swam with a fine insanity, gathered
from sohtary communings with the sand, the sea, the moun-
tains, and the sky, as well as with the hght of a divine aflflatus.
He had lain in the cockatrice's den ; he had put his hand on the
hole of the asp ; he had spent the night on lion-surrounded
trees, and slept and dreamed amid their hungry roar ; he had
swam in the Dead Sea, or haunted, like a ghost, those dreary
caves which lowered around it ; he had drank of the melted snow
on the top of Lebanon ; at Sinai, he had traced and trod on the
burning footprints of Jehovah ; he had heard messages at mid-
night, which made his hair to arise, and his skin to creep ; ho
had been wet with the dews of the night, and girt by the
demons of the wilderness ; he had been tossed up and down,
like a leaf, upon the strong and veering storm of his inspira-
tion. He was essentially a lonely man, cut oflf, by gulf upon
gulf, from tender ties and human associations. He had no
home ; a wife he might be permitted to marry, but, as in the
case of Hosea, the permission might only be to him a curse, and
to his people an emblem, and when (as in the case of Ezekiel)
her death became necessary as a sign, she died, and left him in
the same austere seclusion in which he had existed before. The
power which came upon him cut, by its fierce coming, all the
threads which bound him to his kind, tore him from the plow,
or from the pastoral solitude, and hurried him to the desert, and
thence to the foot of the throne, or to the wheel of the triumphal
chariot. And how startMng his coming to crowned or conquer-
ing guilt ! Wild from the wilderness, bearded like its lion-
lord ; the fury of God glaring in his eye ; his mantle heaving
to his heaving breast ; his words stern, swelling, tinged on their
edges with a terrible poetry ; his attitude dignity ; his gesture
power — how did he burst upon the astonished gaze ; how swift
and solemn his entrance ; how short and spirit-like his stay ;
how dreamy, yet distinctly dreadful, the impression made by his
words long after they had ceased to tingle on the ears ; and how
mysterious the solitude into which he seemed to melt away !
Poet, nay prophet, were a feeble name for such a being. He
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HEBREW POETRY. 53
was a momentary incarnation — a meteor kindled at the eye, and
blown on the breath, of the Eternal.
To much of this description all the prophets answer ; but we
have had in our eye principally Elijah, whom God testified to be
the greatest of the family, by raising him to heaven. Sudden
as a vision of the night, he stands up before Ahab, the evil King
of Israel, and the historian no more thinks of recounting his an-
cestry, than he would of tracing that of a dream. He delivers
his message, and instantly retires from the scene. We see him,
however, a little afterward, in a poor widow's dwelling ; and
lo ! he breathes upon her handful of meal, and blesses her cruse
of oil, and they are multiplied a thousandfold ; and when death
stops the dearer fountain of her son's life, he has but to bow
himself three times upon the child, and the spring shut up softly
opens again. He appears after this on Carmel — meet pedestal
for a statue so sublime ! He had previously burst a second
time into Ahab's presence, and, careless of the exclamation,
" Art thou he that troublest Israel ?" had challenged him, and
Baal, his god, and Baal's prophets, four hundred and fifty, and
the proj^hets of the groves, four hundred, to meet him on Car-
mel, and have the question of the land and of the age — is Baal
or is Jehovah God ? — there decided, by an appeal to the ancient,
the chainless, the impartial element of fire. It is the question
of this age, too ! Show us the fire of heaven, still burning and
vestal, in any church, and it sufficeth us ; for Christ came to
send fire upon earth, and what will we, if it have gone out
in white and barren ashes ? The God that answereth by fire
answered Elijah, and the sun, his archer, loosened a ray which
consumed burnt-sacrifice, wood, stones, dust, and licked up the
water that was in the trench. We see him next, a girt and
glorious homicide, standing at the brook Klshon, and th^-e, with
knife moving to the music of God's voice, slaying the false pro-
phets, " heaps upon heaps." We again find him compeUing
clouds and rain from the brassy sky, and, " through fire and
water," running before Ahab's chariot, to the entrance of Jez-
reel. We follow him, then, a fugitive from Jezebel's vengeance,
54 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HEBREW POETRY.
on liis way toward Horeb, the mount of God ; fed by an angel ;
lodging in a cave ; bearing afar off the voice of Jehovah ; watch-
ing the couriers of the divine coming — the wind, the earthquake,
the fire ; and at last made aware of that coming itself, in the
still small voice, and covering his face with a mantle, as he came
out to the mouth of the cave. Instructed in the duties he had
to perform during his brief remaining career, cheered by the
tidings of seven thousand who had not bent the knee to Baal,
and prepared by that celestial colloquy for the great change at
hand, we see him returning to the haunts of men — anointing
Elisha his successor — once more " finding" guilty Ahab, who
trembles in his presence more than if the ghost of Naboth had
stood up before him — and, as his last public act, bringing down
new forks of flame upon the fifties and their captains, who in
vain sought him to prophesy health and life to the dying Aha-
ziah. We see him, then, turning his slow majestic steps* to-
ward the Jordan, oft reverting his eyes to the mountains of his
native land, which he is leaving forever; shaking off by his
stride like gossamer the inquisitive sons of the prophets, till
Elisha and he are seen moving on alone ; his eye waxing
brighter, and his step quicker, and his port loftier, as he talks
to his companion, and approaches the stream ; standing for a
moment silent on its brink — lifting then his mantle, wrapping
it together, smiting the waters, and they part hither and thither ;
resuming, on the other side, the high converse, but now, with
eager glances cast ever and anon onward ; at length, meeting
the fiery chariot, mounting it, as a king his car, and carried,
without a moment's delay, in a rushing whirlwind upward —
his mantle falling, and Elisha exclaiming, '' My fiither, my
father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof!" We
may ngi»t farther or fully follow his triumphal progress, but,
doubtless, as like a prince he had mounted the chariot, so with
prince-like majesty did he direct the fiery steeds, gaze around
on the peopled wilderness of worlds, outstrip the comet's glow-
ing wheel, rise above the sun, and the sun's sun, and every sys-
tem from which the sun's system is visible, cross the firmaments
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HEBREW POETRY. 55
of space, pass tbrough the gates into the city, enter amid the
rising, welcoming, and wondering first-born of heaven, and at
last merge in the engulfing glorj- of the great white throne.
Sucii honor have not all God's saints, nor have had all his
prophets. But surely here the dignity of the prophetic office
came to its height, when, in the fullness of its discharge, it
swelled up into heaven, and when he^who, in the native gran-
deur of his commission, had walked among men as a being of
another race, was lifted up before his time, like a pearl from the
dust, and added to an immortal and sinless company.
We mention as the last general characteristic of Hebrew
poetry, its high moral tone and constant religious reference.
Without occu[r)-ing the full position of Dr. Johnson, in his cele-
brated ex cathedra and d i:>riori sentence against sacred poetry,
we are forced to admit that, of sacred poetry, in its higher ac-
ceptation, we have had little, and that our sacred poets are few.
There are, we think, but three poets — Dante, Milton, and Cowper
— entitled at once to the terms sacred and great. Giles and
Phineas Fletcher, James and Robert Montgomery, Milman,
PoUok, Trench, and Keble, are sacred poets, and much of their
poetry is true and beautiful ; but the shy epithet "great" will
hardly alight on any one of their heads. Spenser, Cowley,
Pope, Addison, Scott, Wordsworth, Wilson, Coleridge, and
Southey, have all written sacred poems (Coleridge's Hymn to
Mont Blanc, and Scott's Hymn of Rebecca, in Ivanhoe, are sur-
passed only by the Hebrew bards) ; but none of them is prop-
erly a sacred poet. For some of the best of our sacred veises,
we are indebted to such men as Christopher Smart, John Logan,
and William Knox. Of the tribe of ordinary hymn writers,
whose drawl and lisping drivel — whose sickening sentimen-
talisra — whose unintentional blasphemies of familiarity with
divine things and persons — whose profusion of such fulsome
epithets as "sweet Jesus," "dear Lord," "dear Christ," &c.,
render them so undeservedly popular, what need we say, un-
k'ss it be to express our surprise that a stern Scottish taste,
accustomed to admire the " Dies L'cie," our own rough but
5Q GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HEBREW POETRY.
manly version of the Psalms, and our own simple and im-
pretending Paraphrases, should dream of introducing into our
sanctuaries the trash commonly known as hymns! The writer
of sacred poetry should be himself a sacred poet, for none else
can continuously, or at large, wi'ite what both the critic and the
Christian will value, though for different reasons — the Christian
for its spirit and tendency, the critic for its thorough artistic
adaptation to the theme.
The Hebrew poet was nothing, if not sacred. To him, the
poetical and the religious were almost the same. Song was the
form instinctively assumed by all the higher moods of his wor-
ship. He was not surprised into religious emotion and poetry
by the influence of circumstances, nor stung into it by the
pressure of remorse. He was not religious only when the organ
was playing, nor most so — like Burns and Byron — on a sun-
shiny day. Religion was with him a habitual feeling, and from
the joy or the agony of that feeling poetry broke out irrepres-
sibly. To him, the question " Are you in a religious mood to-
day ?" had been as absurd as " Are you alive to-day ?" for all
his moods — whether high as heaven or low as hell — whether
wretched as the penitence of David, or triumphant as the rap-
ture of Isaiah — were tinged with the religious element. From
God he sank, or up to him he soared. The grand theocracy
around ruled all the soul and all the song of the bard. Wher-
ever he stood — under the silent starry canopy, or in the congre-
gation of the faithful — musing in solitary spots, or smiting, with
high, hot, rebounding hand, the loud cymbal — his feeling was,
" How dreadful is this place ! this is none other but the house
of God, and this is the gate of heaven." In him, surrounded
by sacred influences, haunted by sacred recollections, moving
through a holy land, and overhung by a heavenly presence, re-
ligion became a passion, a patriotism, and a poetry. Hence,
the sacred song of the Hebrews stands alone ; and hence we may
draw the deduction, that its equal we shall never see again, till
again religion enshrine the earth with an atmosphere as it then
enshrined Palestine — till poets are the organs, not only of their
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HEBREW POETRY. 57
personal belief, but of the general sentiment around them, and
have become but the high-priests in a vast sanctuary, where all
shall be worshipers, because all is felt to be divine. How this
high and solemn reference to the Supreme Intelligence and Great
Whole comes forth in all the varied forms of Hebrew poetry !
Is it the pastoral ? — The Lord is the shepherd. Is it elegy ?
— It bewails his absence. Is it ode ? — It cries aloud for his re-
turn, or shouts his praise. Is it the historical ballad ? — It re-
counts his deeds. Is it the penitential psalm ? — Its- climax is,
" Against thee only have I sinned." Is it the didactic poem ?
—Running down through the w^orld, like a sythed chariot, and
hewing down before it all things as vanity, it clears the way to
the final conclusion, " Fear God, and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man." Is it a " burden," tossed,
as from a midnight mountain, by the hand of lonely seer, to-
ward the lands of Egypt and Babylon ? — It is the burden of
the Lord ; his the handful of devouring fire flung by the fierce
prophet. Is it apologue, or emblem ? — God's meaning hes in
the hollow of the parable ; God's eye glares the " terrible crys-
tal" over the rushing wheels. Even the love-canticle seems to
rise above itself, and behold a greater than Solomon, and a
fairer than his Egyptian spouse, are here. Thus, from their
poetry, as fi'om a thousand mirrors, flashes back the one awful
face of their God.
CHAPTER III.
VARIETIES OF HEBREW POETRY.
It is common for a new writer on any subject to commence
his work with open, or with gently insinuated, depreciation of
those who have preceded him, or, at least, in the course of it,
to " damn them with faint praise," or to hint and hesitate out
strong but suppressed dislike. Not in conformity with this
custom, we propose to commence this chapter by candidly char-
acterizing the principal writers on Hebrew poetry, with whom
we are acquainted.
By far the most generally known of those writers is Bishop
Lowth, the fourth edition of whose " Lectures on the Sacred
Poetry of the Hebrews," translated from the Latin by G.
Gregory, F.R.S., with notes by Michaelis and others, now lies
before us. To use a term which this author himself employs
ad nauseam^ Lowth's book is a very " elegant" production. It
is written in a round, fluent, and perspicuous style ; abounds in
learning and ingenious criticism ; is full to overflowing of speci-
mens selected, and in general re-translated, from the Hebrew
bards ; shows a warm love for their more prominent excel-
lencies, and an intimate knowledge of their mechanical struc
ture ; and did good service for their fame when first publisli^d
To say, however, that it is ever more than " elegant," or evei
rises to the " height of its great argument," were to compliment
it too highly. It contains, indeed, much judicious criticism,
some good writing, and a few touches of highly felicitous pane-
gyric ; but, as a whole, it is tame almost to mediocrity — squares
the Hebrew poetry too much by the standard of the Greek and
VARIETIES OF HEBREW POETRY. { 69
Latin classics — displays little or no kindred genius—dilutes and
deadens the portions of the Bible it professes to render into
English verse — bears too decidedly the stamp of the eighteenth
century — and does not at all fulfill its own expressed ideal, "He
who would feel the peculiar and interior elegances of the He-
brew poetry, must imagine himself exactly situated as the
persons for whom it was written, or even as the writers them-
selves — he is to feel as a Hebrew, to read Hebrew as the He-
-brews would have read it." Lowth is very little of a Hebrew,
and the point of view he occupies is for below the level of the
" hills of holiness." His criticism bears not even the proportion
to the subject which Pope's " Messiah" does to its original ; it
wants subtilty, power, and abandonment. Much of his general
preliminary matter is now obsolete, and the account which he
gives of the individual writers is meager. He supplies a series
of anatomical sketches, not of living portraits. He is to David
and Isaiah what Warton was to Shakspeare, or Blair to Homer
and Virgil. His translator has not been able altogether to
overcome the air of stiffness which, adheres to all English ver-
sions from the Latin. Nor do the notes by Michaelis add much
to the book's value. They have, indeed, much learning, but
their literary criticism is alike despicable and profane. " Eze-
kiel," says our learned Theban, "does not strike with admiration,
nor exhibit any trait of sublimity." Truly, over such a critic
all the wheels of Chebar would roll in vain, for what impression
can be made on insensate and infidel dust ? Even a mule
would be awe-struck in the gorge of Glencoe, but a mule is only
a relation to Michaelis. His translator sounds a deeper deep,
and actually accuses Ezekiel of the bathos !
Such was the criticism of the past age. Rarely did it reach,
in any of its altitudes of praise, a term higher than the afore-
said " elegant" — a term which, while accurately measuring
Pope and Addison, looks, when connected with Moses and
Isaiah, ludicrously inadequate. The age, of which this was
the superlative, could scarcely measure the poetry of that which
60 VARIETIES OF HEBREW POETRY.
saw and sung the highest beauty and the loftiest grandeu
embracing each other in the Temple under the shadow of
" Jehovah thundering out of Zion, throned
Between the cherubim."
Lowth, to do him justice, deserved better company than
Michaelis or Gregory. His step round the awful sanctities of
Hebrew song is the light and trembhng step of a timid lover;
and, for the sake of his love and sincerity, much must be for-
given him, even although the oblivion demanded for his faults
should at last engulf his merits too. Yet, as an inscription
on a tombstone is often read, and is sometimes spared, for its
Latinity, it may be hoped that so many fine and rolling periods,
in the tongue of Cicero, shall long resist decay, even after they
have ceased to be regarded with the former degree of respect
and admiration.
Herder was a man of " another spirit ;" and his report of the
good land of Hebrew poetry, compared to Lowth's, is that of a
Caleb or Joshua, to that of an ordinary Jewish spy. He does
not climb from Parnassus to Lebanon, but descends on it from
the " mountains of the East" — from a keen admiration and in-
timate knowledge of the spirit and genius of all <iriental tribes
and poets. He " feels as a Hebrew, and has read Hebrew as
the Hebrews read it." He has himself a winged soul, and can
transport his reader along with him into the very heart of a
former age, enabling him to realize its old life, to feel its old
habits hanging softly around him, to throb with its old ambi-
tions, to talk fluently its old language, and to climb as far up
as the mists of its old prejudices. Thus to plunge into the past
was competent only to a " diver lean and strong ;" and Herder,
so far, has done it nobly. He has developed, in a masterly
manner, the sources from which Hebrew poetry sprung ; the
ideas of God, nature, man, and the future world, which it rep-
resented, and the influences radiated upon it from the heat
of the Hebrew climate and the impassioned temperament of the
Hebrew bosom. He has defended, too, with force and gusto,
the form of Hebrew versification, and the copiousness of its
VARIETIES OF HEBREW POETRY. 61
diction. His versions of particular passages are always spirited
and poetical. Above all, he catches fire from his theme, and
the commentary is often only a " little lower" than the text.
Still, the book is a fragment. The author never filled up its
outhne. JSTeither the larger nor lesser prophets are included in
it. A shade of neologism will always mar its eflfect on the
popular British mind. Kor will that be enhanced, when it is
known that the author, ere his death, modified many of its
Yiews, rehnquished, in a great measure, his taste for the simple,
primitive, and unconscious kinds of poetry, and adopted, in
exchange, a preference for cultured and classical song. Such,
however, is the power of poetic enthusiasm, that the heretic
Herder dismisses his intelligent readers with a profounder reve-
rence for the Scriptures, as well as a keener sense of their poetic
beauty, than the British bishop, nor Can his work ever cease
to fill a niche, and attract admirers of its own. It is a true and
a beautiful thing, and must be a "joy forever."
With the third of the three works, which have constituted
epochs in the modern criticism of Hebrew poetry — that, namely,
of Dr. Ewald — we have but recently become acquainted. It
avows great pretensions to minute accuracy and profound in-
vestigation, and seems, indeed, as a scientific treatise, incom-
parably better than either of its predecessors. But its literature
is not quite equal to its knowledge. Its criticism is too often
verbal ; more regard is paid to the vestments, or to the body,
than to the spirit of the various strains ; it systematically sacri-
fices the later to the earlier literature of the Hebrews ; compared
to Herder, its tone is cold ; and its many German peculiarities
can never permit it to be naturalized in our country, invaluable
as it must remain to the Scriptural scholar and the critic.
Besides these, we know nothing of much mark on the sub-
ject, except the brilliant sketches of Eichhorn ; the well-written,
compact, and rapid biographies of the various bards in Dr. Eadie's
" Biblical Cyclopaedia ;" and an interesting little volume by Dr.
Macculloch of Greenock, entitled, " Literary Characteristics of
the Scriptures."
62 VARIETIES OF HESREW POETRY.
The principal of the different writers thus enumerated and
characterized have differently classified the varieties of Hebrew
poetry.
Dr. Lowth divides it into prophetic, elegiac, didactic, lyric,
idylHc, and dramatic. To this arrangement, some objections
may be stated. First, It is not a natural arrangement, seeing
that lyrical poetry unquestionably preceded all the others.
Secondly, It is not an accurate or logical arrangement, since,
1st, It is difficult to distinguish idyllic from lyric poetry — the
one is but a species of the other ; and since, 2d]y, prophetic
poetry, so far from being distinct from any, included by turns
all the enumerated varieties. Dr. Lowth, too, excludes Jonah
and Daniel from the list of prophet-poets, because their writings
have no metrical structure or poetical style — a canon which
would degrade to dusty prose the " Be light" of God, and the
golden rule of Christ.
Herder's division is very general. Hebrew poetry, with him,
consists of two leading forms — the figurative speech and the
song. The most eloquent writers in the first kind were the
prophets, and the most sublime lyrical effusions were the songs
of the Temple. He adds, " Whether these two kinds were ex-
panded into ampler forms, as the drama and heroic poetry, will
be shown hereafter." That hereafter never fully came, although,
from hints he throws out, he did find the heroic poem in the
history written by Moses, and the drama in Solomon's Song
and Job.
Dr. Ewald's arrangement is much more logical than Lowth's,
and more minute than Herder's. It deserves, therefore, a some-
what fuller analysis. He commences by combating the common
notion, that epic poetry is the earliest. It is often, indeed, the
first written, but has probably been preceded by lyrics, which
have vanished without leaving a trace. N'ay, in some nations,
it is quite unknown ; but no nation has wanted its early lyrical
poetry, whether preceding or cotemporaneous with the epic.
The lyric, therefore, must be the earlier of the two. There are,
besides, special reasons connected with the temperament and
VARIETIES OF HEBREW POETRY. 63
faith of the Hebrews, why lyrics should have had the start of
epics. The epic requires " tranquillity and reserve of thought,
self-possessed art, and rigid restraint of enthusiasm ;" whereas
*' suddenness of emotion and act, intensity and vivacity of simple
and impressible feehngs, the highest tension and rapid collapse
X)f imagination," are characteristic of the Hebrew nation. The
epic poet, moreover, is " aided by a rich, developed, and, at the
same time, pliable mythology ; whereas, the religion of the
Hebrews is very grave and austere" (and, Ewald might have
added, " true'''), " and leaves little room for poetic conception."
As lyrical poetry was first, so it continued, for a long time, sole
occupant of the field. Ewald describes it as possessing the
widest compass, and reflecting the whole life of the nation at
all times and in all circumstances ; as having its essential
peculiarity in its musical form of utterance and dehvery — it was
immortal thought married to vocal or instrumental melody ;
and as divided, according to its subjects, into various species :
such as the hymn which commemorated some joyful or great
event, witness the 29th, 46th, and 48th Psalms ; the dirge, such
as David's lament for Saul and Jonathan, and such songs of
mourning for the calamities of the land, as the 44th, 60tb, and
'73d Psalms ; the dithyrambic, an irregular, wild, and excited
strain, the sole specimens of which occur in the 7th Psalm and
in the 3d chapter of Habakkuk ; the love-song, such as the
45th Psalm; the prayer, in which, as in the 17th, 86th, and
102d Psalms, the devotional prevails over the poetical element;
and, lastly, the sententious, satiric song, to be met with in the
14th, 58th, and 82d Psalms, and which constitutes a link con-
necting the lyrical with the second variety of Hebrew poetry.
This Ewald calls gnomic poetry. In it, feeling is solidified
into sentiment; general truths take the place of individual im-
pressions; lyric rapture is exchanged for almost philosophic
ealm ; the style becomes less diffuse, and more sententious ;
the form of verse remains, but the accompaniments of song and
music are abandoned and forgotten. The rise of this poetry
testifies to the advance of a people in the power of generaliza-
64 VARIETIES OF HEBREW POETRY.
tion, and shows that a quantity of experience has been accu-
mulated into a national stock. In Israel, it commenced with
Solomon. Lyric poetry is a spray which rises from troubled
■waters, such as rolled in David's time ; but gnomic poetry is
the calm ripple upon an ocean of peace. It necessarily united
itself with the floating proverbial literature of the country. From
simple sententiousness it gradually swelled into oratory, snatched
up fitfully the lyre it had thrown aside, or diverged into dra-
matic form, touching thus upon the third variety of Hebrew
song. This is the drama. No regular shape of it, indeed, nor
any approximation to a theater, a stage, or the many arts and
contrivances connected with it, are to be found among the He-
brews. But the simple beginning and foundation of dramatic
poetry may be traced in their poetry. This Ewald finds in
the Song of Songs, " which appears as if designed for a stage,
albeit a very simple one, which develops winged speeches of
several persons, a complete action, and in the course of the
whole admits definite pauses of the action, which are only
suited to the drama." Job, too, seems to him a sublime drama,
which, in comparison with the Song, may be called a tragedy.
Proceeding at some length to analyze the Song, he finds in
it various characters — a chorus, an action, a happy termina-
tion, and a strong and lively moral. In this he is very suc-
cessful; but his preconception as to the late origin of the
book of Job, leads him to over-estimate the art, and somewhat
to underrate the natural force and genius of that marvelous
poem.
For epic poetry, he searches in vain, amid the earlier por-
tions of the Hebrew literature, but descries its late beginnings,
in Tobit, Judith, and some other of the apocryphal books.
Such is Ewald's classification. It is excellent in some things,
but, in the first place, it omits altogether the prophetic writers.
These Ewald appears to regard as the orators of the land, rather
than as its noblest and loftiest poets. Secondly, it slurs over
the truly epical character of the historical books of the Old
Testament. Is not Exodus itself a great epic, as well as a true
VARIETIES OF HEBREW POETRY. 65
history, containing all the constituents of that species of poetry ?
Thirdly, It rather oddly finds the commencement, if not the
climax, of the degeneracy of Hebrew literature in the book of
Job, which bears internal evidence of being the earliest as well
as the most sublime poem in the w^orld. We wonder Ewald had
not also sought to prove that "Prometheus Yinctus" was writ-
ten after the subjugation of Greece by the Romans. We fancy
a subtile critic, in the thirtieth century, starting the theory that
"Macbeth" was translated from the German of Kotzebue, and
falsely imputed to Shakspeare ! Fourthly, Ewald's principle of
arrangement excludes altogether the prose-poetry of Scripture
— not the least interesting and impressive — which abounds in
the historical books, and constitutes the staple of the entire
volume.
Without intending strictly to abide by it in our after-chap-
ters, we may now propound a division of our own. We would
arrange Hebrew poetry under the two general heads of Song
and Poetic Statement. We give the particulars which fall
under this general division.
We have first Song —
Exulting — in odes of triumph — Psalm cl.
Insulting — in strains of irony and invective — Psalm cix.
Mourning — over calamities — Psalm Ixxi., Lamentations.
"Worshiping — God — Psalni civ.
Loving — in friendly or amatory songs — Psalm xlv.
Pv,eflecting — in gnomic or sententious strains — Psalm cxxxix., Proverbs.
Interchanging— in the varied persons and parts of the simple drama —
Job and Song.
Wildly-luxuriating — as in Psalm vii., Habakkuk iii.
ISTarrating — the past deeds of God to Israel, the simple epic — Psalm
Ixxviii., Exodus, ti'C.
Predicting — the future history of the church and the world — Prophetic
Writings.
We have second, Poetical Statement, or Statement —
1st, Of poetic facts (creation, (fee).
2d, Of poetic doctrines (God's spirituahty).
66 VARIETIES OF. HEBREW POETRY.
8d, Of poetic sentiments, with or without figurative language (golden
rule, (fee).
4th, Of poetic symbols (in Zechariah, Pi,evelation, (fee).
Ill su}>port of this division, we maintain, first, that it is com-
prehensive, including every real species of poetry in Scripture
— including, specially, the prophetic writings, the New Testa-
ment, and that mass of seed poetry in which the Book abounds,
apart from its professedly rhythmical and figured portions.
Song and statement appear to include the Bible between them,
and the statement is sometimes more poetical than the song.
If aught evade this generalization, it is the argument which is
charily sprinkled throughout the Epistles of Paul. Even that is
logic defining the boundaries of the loftiest poetry. All else, from
the simple narrations of Ezra and Nehemiah, up to the 'inost
ornate and oratorical appeals of the prophets, is genuinely poetic,
and ought by no means to be excluded from the range of our
critical explication and panegyric. Surely the foam on the
brow of the deep is not all its poetry, is not more poetical than
the vast billows on which it swells and rises, and rather typifies
than exhausts the boundless power and beauty which are be-
low. " God is a spirit," or " God is love," contains, each sen-
tence, a world of poetic beauty, as well as divine meaning. In-
deed, certain prose sentences constitute the essence of all the
poetry in the Scriptures. Round the rule " Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and all thy
mind, and all thy strength, and thy neighbor as thyself,"
revolve the moral beauties and glories of both Testaments ;
its praises are chanted alike by Sinai's thunders and the temple
songs ; round it cluster the Psalms, and on it hang the Pro-
phets. What planetary splendors gather and circle about
the grand central truth contained in the opening verse, " In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth," and about
the cognate statement, "The Lord our God is one Lord!" And
how simple that sentence which unites the psalmodies of earth
and of heaven in one reverberating chorus, " Worthy is the
Lamb that was slain !" Truly the songs of Scripture are mag-
VARIETIES OF HEBREW POETRY. 67
nificent, but its statements are " words unutterable," ■which it is
not possible for the tongue of man to utter I
Secondly, Our division is simple, and is thus better fitted to the
simplicity of the Hebrew poetrj^ It disguises less elaborately,
and dresses less ostentatiously, the one main thing which lies
within all the rhythmical books of the Bible. That one thing
is lyrical impulse and fire. " Still its speech is song," whether
one or many speakers be introduced, and whether that song
mourn or rejoice, predict or instruct, narrate or adore. The
Song of Solomon is a song, not a drama ; or let us call it a
dramatic song. Job is a lyrical drama, or dramatic lyric. The
histories are song-sprinkled narratives, facts moving to the sound
of music and dancing. And the prophets seem all to stand,
like Elisha, beside the kings of Israel and Judah, each one with
a minstrel's harp beside him, and to it and the voice of accom-
panying song, there break the clouds and expand the land-
scapes of futurity.
This lyrical impulse was not, however, the mere breath of
human genius. It was the " wind of God's mouth," the im-
mediate effect of a divine afflatus. This, former critics too much
overlook. They find art where they ought to find inspiration ;
or they cry out " genius," when they ought to say, with solemn
reverence and whispered breath, " God." And by preserving,
more entirely than others, the lyrical character of all Hebrew
poetry, we supply this third reason for the adoption of our clas-
sification — It links the effect more closely with its cause — it ex-
hibits all Hebrew song, whether simple or compound, from
Moses down to Malachi, as stirred into being by one Great
Breath — finding in the successive poets and prophets, so many
successive lyres for the music, soft or stormy, high or low, sad
or joyful, which it wished to discourse. To say that all those lyres
were natively of equal sweetness or compass, or that the Breath
made them so— that all those poets were naturally, or by inspi-
ration, alike eloquent and powerful, were to utter an absurdity.
But is it less absurd to suppose a systematic decline in the fit-
ness and fullness of the lyres — in the eloquence and power
68 VARIETIES OF HEBREW POETRY.
of the propliets — when we remember, first, that Habakkuk,
Haggai, and Zechariah, belonged to this hitter class ; when we
remember, secondly, that the latter day of Judah exhibited crises
of equal magaitii-de, and as w^orthy of poetic treatment, as its
earlier; when we remember, thirdly, that the great event, the
coming of Christ, to which all the prophets testified, was more
clearly revealed to the last of the company ; and when we re-
member, fourthly, that the power who overshadowed Malachi,
was the same who inspired Moses — his eye no dimmer, his ear
no heavier, his hand no shorter, and his breath no feebler than
of old i No ! the peculiar prophetic and poetic influence did
not gradually diminish, or by inches decay ; but whether owing
to the sin of the people, or to the sovereignty of God, it seems
to have expired in an instant. Prophecy went down at once,
like the sun of the tropics, leaving behind it only such a faint
train of zodiacal light as we find in the apocryphal books; nor
did it re-appear, till it assumed the person of the Prophet of
Galilee, and till he who in times past spoke nnto the fathers,
by the prophets, did, in the last days, speak unto us by his
own Son.
CHAPTER lY.
POETRY OF THE PENTATEUCH.
We have intimated already, that, thougli we have, in the
former chapter, chissitied Hebrew poetry under certain generic
heads, we deem it best, in our future remarks, to pursue the
method of following; it do^\^l as we find it in the various writinofs
of Scripture. Such a method will secure variety, will lead to
an informal history of the progress of Bible poetry, and prevent
any of its prominent writers being overlooked, or lost amid
vague and general description.
We meet, first, with that singular collection of books called
the Pentateuch — or Five Books of Moses — books which, though
containing few professedly poetical passages, are steeped through-
out in the essence of poetry.
In the catalogue of Israel's prophetic bards, Moses stands
earliest. Poets, indeed, and poetry there had been before him.
Some of those aboriginal songs, such as Lamech's speech to
his wives, and Jacob's dying words, Moses has himself pre-
served ; but he undoubtedly was the Homer, as well as the
Solon of his country. We never can separate his genius from
his character, so meek, yet stern ; from his appearance, so
gravely commanding, so spiritually severe ; from his law,
"girt with dark thunder and embroidered fires;" and from
certain incidents in his history — his figure in the ark, when, at
the sight of the strange, richly-attired lady, " Behold the babe
wept" — his attitude beside the bush that burned in the wilder-
ness — his sudden entrance into the presence of Pharaoh — his
lifting up, with that sinewy, swarthy hand, the rod over the
•^0 POETRY OF THE PENTATEUCH.
Red Sea — his ascent up the black precipices of Sinai — his
death on Pisgah, with the promised land full in view— his
mystic burial in a secret vale by the hand of the Eternal — his
position, as the leader of the great Exodus of the tribes, and
the founder of a strict, complicated, and magnificent polity —
all this has given a supplemental and extraordinary interest to
the writings of Moses. Their sublimity arises generally from
the calm recital of great events. He is the sternest of all the
Scripture writers, and the most laconic. His writings may be
called hieroglyphics of the strangest and greatest events in the
early part of the world's history. Summing up the work of
innumerable ages in the one pregnant sentence with which the
book begins, he then maps out in a chapter the arrangements
of the present form of the creation, gives the miniature of the
original condition of earth's happy inhabitants, and the hiero-
glyphics of their fall ; runs rapidly across the antediluvian pa-
triarchs ; gives, graphically, but simply, the grand outlines of
the deluge ; traces to a short distance the diverging rivers of
empire which flowed from the ark ; and embarks, in fine, upon
the little, but widening stream of the story of Seth's children.
When he begins to be anecdotical, the anecdotes are culled
from a vast space of ground, which he leaves untouched. He
is not a minute and full-length biographer, and never, till he
comes to the details of the legal system, does he drop his
Spartan garb of short and overleaping narrative, and become
simply, yet nobly, diffuse. His style of writing resembles the
characters sculptured on the walls of Egyptian temples, lower-
ing over the gates of Thebes, or dim-discovered amid the
vaults of the Pyramids, whence he, who afterward "refused
to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter," drunk in the first
draught of inspiration, to be renewed again and again, at
holier fountains, till, sublimed by it, he dared to climb a
quaking Sinai, and to front a fire-girt God. His style, col-
ored by early familiarity with that strange, silent tongue,
partakes here and there of certain of its qualities, its intri-
cate simplicity, its " language within language" of allegorical
POETRY OF THE PENTATEUCn.
71
meaning, and resembles tlie handwriting- of him who wrote on
the wall of the Babylonian palace — " Mene, mene, tekel,
upharsin."
As a narrator, Moses makes a word or two do the work of
pictures. Nor is this word always an snog msgoev — a word
rolled together like a double star — but often a plain, unmeta-
phorical tei-m, which quakes under the thought or scene it de-
scribes. The pathos or the grandeur, instead of elevating and
enkindling his language, levels and sinks it. His language
may be called the mere transparent window through which
the " immeasurable calm" — the blue of immensity — looks in.
Certainly it is the least figurative of all the Scripture styles.
Its simphcity is deeper than that of age's unmoved narratives ;
it is rather that of infancy, telling some dreadful tale in an
undertone, and with upcast looks of awe. It is as if Moses,
at the feet of that simulacrum of Deity which he saw on the
mount, had become a child ; as if the Glory, which might
have maddened others, had only sunk him down into the ark
of bulrushes again. And, from that hour, dropping all the
learning of the Egyptians, the mystic folds of which he had
wrapped around him, he is content to be the mere instrument
in the Divine hand, and becomes, that meekest man — a boy
repeating with quivering voice and heart the lesson his father
has taught him. Hence the Fall is recounted without a
word of comment or regret ; the sight of an ocean-world
starts up but one expression which looks like a metaphor — the
" windows of heaven ;" the journe}^ of Abraham, going forth,
not knowing whither he went, in search of a far country — the
most momentous journey in the history of m-an — is told as
succinctly and quietly, as are afterward the delinquencies
of Er and Judah ; through a naked narrative, bursts the deep
pathos involved in the story of Joseph ; and how telescopic, in
its clear calmness, his view of the Ten Plagues, sweeping
in their course between the Nile of raging blood and the cry
which proclaimed the findings of that fearful morning, when
there was not a house but there was one dead — the whole
'72 POETRY OF THE PENTATEUCH.
dread circle of desolation, mourning, and woe. And oven wlien
he brings us in sight of Sinai — the proud point in his life —
the center of his system — the scene, too, of his sublime agony,
for there did he not exceedingly fear and quake ? — his descrip-
tion is no more than the bare transcript of its terrors. They
are not grouped together, as by Paul afterward ; and far less
are they exaggerated by rhetoiical artifice.
This is the way in which he represents the fierce splen-
dors which gathered around Sinai as the Ancient One de-
scended : " And it came to pass, on tiie third day, in the morn-
ing, that there were thunders, and hghtnings, and a thick cloud
upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud,
so that all the people which were in the camp trembled. And
Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with
God, and they stood at the nether part of the mount. And
Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord de-
scended upon it in fire ; and the smoke thereof ascended as the
smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And
when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder
and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him b}' a voice."
Nor did this intense simplicity betray any lack of poetical
sensibility, or prove Moses a mere stony legislator, fitly typified
by the cold tables which received and cooled the red dropping
syllables of the "Fiery Law." That, on the contrary, he was
actuated by a subHme lyric afflatus, which moved him at times,
we have ample evidence in the odes which are found sprinkled
through his books. Witness the pean of exultation which,
chanted by the voices and cymbals of the millions of Israel,
sung the requiem of Pharaoh and his "Memphian Chivalry;"
and where, even as the naked storm of vocal sound intermarried
and incarnated itself in timbrels and dances, so did the emotions
of the lyrist clothe themselves in thick and vaulting imagery.
In another strain — more subdued, more melting — does he, in
the 90th Psalm, pour out the common plaint of all ages, over
the shortness and fraiUy of life. But deepest the touch of
poetry left on his last song, when, in his enthusiasm, he calls
POETRY OF THE PENTATEUCH. 73
on heaven and earth to give audience tahis words, and proceeds
to utter what might compel the attention of both, in a song that
might be set to the sphere music, or sung in that floating
melody — those " mystic snatches of harmonious sound" — which
poets say sometimes visit this sad world, smooth its air, appease
its hungry restlessness, and strike invisible, unaccountable, but
short-lived joy, through all its withered veins.
Moses we have called the Homer of his country ; nor is the
epithet inappropriate, when we remember that both unite to
simplicity that subhmity which flames out of it, like volcanic
fire starting from a bare and bleak surface — that pathos which
searches, in perfect unconsciousness, the inmost depths of the
soul — and that air of Eld, which in both leads back our thoughts
to primitive and perished ages, when the human heart, the
human soul, the human size, were larger than now — when the
heavens were nearer, the rddes clearer, the clouds more gorgeous,
the foam of the sea brighter, the fat of the earth richer, than in
our degenerate days — when the sense of the ideal and the infi-
nite, of the things unseen and eternal, still overtopped the seen,
the tangible, and the temporal — when in our groves were still
seen the shadows of angels, and on our mountains the smoking
footsteps of God.
The effect of Moses upon the history of Hebrew poetry was,
as Herder shows, manifold. In the first place, his deeds — the
plagues he sent on Egypt, the passage of the Red Sea, the
march through the wilderness, the wars in which he led the
people to triumph — furnished fine poetical subjects, of which
after-writers availed themselves. His whole system, too, was
poetry organized, and hence sprung the songs of the sanctuary
n David's and yet later days. Secondly, his own poems,
though few, were very striking, and, both from their own power
and as proceeding from the great legislator, were calculated to
exert an influence on after-poets, who, indeed, made them their
models. And, thirdly, Moses even provided for the revival of
sacred poetry in times of declension, by the privilege he gave
and secured to the prophets. They were the proper successors
D
74 POETRY OF THE PENTATEUCH.
of Moses — " watchmen who, when the priests were silent and
the great tyrannical," spoke in startling truth and in poetic form
to the heart and conscience of the land. Moses was the leader
of this noble band, and his deep voice found in them a multi-
tude of echoes, till, in Malachi, it died away in the muttering
of the word " curse," which, closes the Old Testament record.
One great image in Moses we must not overlook. It is at
the crisis of the passage of the Red Sea, where, as the Egyp-
tians are pressing down the dry channels, and treading in the
shadows, and just fixing their grasp upon their foes, the Lord,
through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, looks unto the
host of the Egyptians, and troubles them. That pillar shapes
itself into an eye, which sends a separate dismay into each
Egyptian heart, and all is felt to be lost. We find two imita-
tions of this in modern poetry — one by Coleridge, in his " Odo
on the Departing Year," where he prays God to
** Open his eye of fire from some uncertain cloud ;"
and another, in the " Curse of Kehama," where, after the " Man
Almighty," holding his Amreeta cup, had exclaimed —
" Now, Seeva, look to thine abode !
Henceforth, on equal footing, we engage
Alike immortal now, and we shall wage
Our warfare, God to God,"
it is added, when the cup is drank —
" Then Seeva opened on the accursed one
His eye of anger — upon him alone
The wrath-beam fell. He shudders, but too late."
Thus, by far the sublimest passage in Southey's poetry seems
colored by, if not copied from, Scripture. PharaoKs eye meet-
ing JeliovaKs in that grim hour— what a subject for John
Martin, or for David Scott, had he been alive !
Herder has not failed to notice the air of solitude which
breathes about the poetry, as it did about the character, of
Moses. He was the loneliest of men : lonely in his flight from
POETRY OF THE PENTATEUCH. '75
Egypt — lonely while herding his flock in the wilderness — lonely
while cUaibing Mount Sinai — lonely on the summit, and lonely
when descending the sides of the hill — lonely in his death, and
lonely in his burial. Even while minghng with the multitudes
of Israel, he remained secluded and alone. As the glory which
shone on his face insulated him for a time from men, so did all
his life his majestic nature. He was among men, but not of
them. Stern incaniation of the anger of Omnipotence, thy con-
genial companions were not Aaron, nor Joshua, nor Zipporah,
but the rocks and caves of Horeb, the fiery pillar, the bush,
burning, the visible glory of the sanctuary, the lightning-
wreaths round Sinai's sullen brow, and all other red symbols
of Jehovah's presence I With such, like a kindred fire upon one
funeral pile, didst thou gloomily embrace and hold still com-
munion ! Shade of power not yet perished — sole lord of milHons
still, wielding the two tables as the scepters of thy extant sov-
ereignty, with thy face flashing back the splendors of the Divine
eye, and seeming to descend evermore thy " Thunder-hill of
Fear" — it is with a feehng of awful reverence that we bid thee
farewell !
CHAPTER V.
POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB.
Be tlie author of the book of Job who he may, he was not
Moses. Nothing can be more unhke the curt and bare sim-
phcity of Moses' style, than the broad-blown magnificence of
Job. It is like one severe feather, compared to the outspread
wing of an eagle. Moses had seen many countries and many
men, had studied many sciences, and passed through numerous
adventures, which tamed, yet strung his spirit. The author of
Job is a contemplative enthusiast, who, the greater part of his
life, had been girt in by the rocks of his country, and who,
from glowing sand below, and ghttering crag around, and torrid
sky above, had clothed his spirit and his language with a bar-
baric splendor. He is a prince, but a prince throned in a wil-
derness — a sage, but his wisdom has been taught him in the
library of the everlasting hills — a poet, but his song is untaught
and unmodified by art or learning, as that in which the night-
ingale hails the hush of evening. The geography of the land
of Job is a commentary on its poetry. Conceive a land lorded
over by the sun, when lightning, rushing in, hke an angry
painter, did not dash his vn\d colors "across the landscape ; a
land ever in extremes — now dried up as in a furnace, now
swimming with loud waters — its sky the "brightest or the black-
est of heavens — desolate crags rising above rank vegetation-
beauty adorning the brow of barrenness — shaggy and thunder-
split hills surrounding narrow valleys and water-courses ; a land
for a great part bare in the wrath of nature, when not swaddled
iu sudden tempest and whirlwind ; a land of lions, and wild
POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB. V7
goats, and wild asses, and ostriches, and hawks stretching to-
ward the south, and horses clothed with thunder, and eagles
making their nests on high ; a land through whose transparent
air night looked down in all her queenlike majesty, all her
most lustrous ornaments on — the south blazing through all its
chambers as w^ith solid gold — the north glorious with Arcturus
and his sons — the zenith cpowning the heavens with a diadem
of white, and blue, and purple stars. Such the land in which
this author lived, such the sky he saw ; and can we wonder
that poetry dropped on and from him, like rain "from a thick
tree ; and that grandeur — a grandeur almost disdaining beauty,
preferring firmaments to flowers, making its garlands of the
whirlwind — became his very soul. The book of Job shows a
mind smit with a passion for nature, in her simplest, most soli-
tary, and elementary forms — gazing perpetually at the great
shapes of the material universe, and reproducing to us the in-
fant infinite wonder with which the first inhabitants of the
world must have seen their first sunrise, their first thunder-
storm, their first moon waning, their first midnight heaven ex-
panding, like an arch of triumph, over their happy heads. One
object of the book is to prophesy of nature — to declare its tes-
timony to the Most High — to unite the leaves of its trees, the
wings of its fowls, the eyes of its stars, in one act of adoration
to Jehovah. August undertaking, and meet for one reared in
the desert, anointed with the dew of heaven, and by God him-
self inspired.
If any one w^ord can express the merit of the natural descrip-
tions in Job, it is the word gusto. You do something more
than see his behemoth, his war-horse, and his leviathan : you
touch, smell, hear, and handle them too. It is no shrrziow of
the object he sets before you, but the object itself, in its length,
breadth, height, and thickness. In this point, he is the Land-
seer of ancient poetry, and something more. That great painter
seems, every one knows, to become the animal he is painting —
to intermingle his soul for a season with that of the stag, the
horse, or the bloodhound. So Job, with the war-horse, swal-
•^8 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB.
lows the ground with fierceness and rage — with behemoth, moves
his tail hke a cedar — with the eagle, smells the slain afar off,
and screams with shrill and far-heard joy. In the presence
of Landseer's figures, you become inspired by the pervading*
spirit of the picture — you start back, lest his sleeping blood-
hound awake — you feel giddy beside his stag on the brow of
the mountain — you look at his greyhound's beauty, almost with
the admiration which he might be supposed to feel, glancing at
his own figure, during his leap across the stream. Job's ani-
mals seem almost higher than nature's. You hear God describ-
ing and panegyrizing his own works, and are not ashamed to
feel yourself pawing and snorting with his charger — carrying
away your wild scorn and untamable freedom, with the ostrich,
into the wilderness — or, with behemoth, drawing in Jordan into
your mouth. It may be questioned if Landseer has the very
highest imagination — if he be not rather a literal than an ideal
painter — if he could, or durst, go down after Jonah into the
whale, or exchange souls with the mammoth or megatherium ?
Job uniformly transcends, while sympathizing with his subjects
— casts on them a light not their own, as from the " eyelids of
the morning ;" and the greater the subject is, he occupies and
fills it with the more ease : he dandles his leviathan like a kid.
Landseer we have charged, elsewhere, with almost an inhuman
sympathy with brutes ; and a moral or religious lesson can with
difficulty be gathered from his pictures — his dying deer M^ould
tempt you, by their beauty, to renew the tragedy ; but Deus est
anima hrutorum hangs suspended over Job's colossal drawings,
and, as in fable, all his animals utter a moral while passing on
before you. Near those descriptions of his, we can place noth-
ing in picture, prose, or poetry, save such lines in Milton as
that describing leviathan —
" Whom God
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream ;"
or Blake's lines —
" Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In tlie deserts of the niarht.
POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB. ^9
"What immortal hand or eye
Framed thy fearful symmetry ?"
Besides those natural descriptions, the poetic elements in Job
may be included under the following: — The scene in heaven,
the calamities of Job, his first expression of anguish, the vision
of Eliphaz, the moral pictures which abound, the praise of Wis-
dom, the entrance of the Deity, the beauty of the close, and,
above all, the great argument pervading the whole. The scene
in heaven has always been admired, and often imitated. It
struck Byron much ; particularlj^ the thought of Satan being
actually brought back, as by an invisible chain, to the court of
heaven, and compelled to witness its felicity, and subserve the
purposes of God. Shelley, again, meditated a tragedy on the
subject, which would have been, probably^, a very daring and
powerful accommodation of Job to his own unhappy notions.
Goethe, in his " Faust," and Bayley, in his " Festus," have both
imitated this scen€. It abound^ at once in poetic interest and
profound meaninp^. Job has previously been pictured sitting in
peace and prosperity under his vine and fig-tree. He has little
about him to excite any peculiar interest. Suddenly the blue
curtain of the sky over his head seems to open, the theater of
the highest heaven .expands, and of certain great transactions
there he becomes the unconscious center. What a background
now has that still figure ! Thus every man always is the hero
of a triumph or a tragedy as wide as the universe. Thus
"each" is always linked to "all." Thus above each world, too,
do heaven and hell stand continually, like the dark and the
bright suns of astronomy, and the planets between them. In
that highest heaven, a' da}'' has dawned of solemn conclave.
From their thousand missions of justice and mercy return the
sons of God, to report their work and their tidings ; and inas-
much as their work has been done, their aspects are equally
tranquil, whether their tidings are evil or good. But, behind
them,
" A spirit of a different aspect waved
His ■wings, lijje thunderclouds, above some coast,
80 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB.
"Whose barren beach with frequent wrecks is paved;
His brow was like the deep when tempest- tost."
He is a black spot in this " feast of charity," a scowl amid this
splendor, and yet acts as only a foil to its beauty and bright-
ness. Thus all things and beings are in perpetual communica-
tion with their center — God ; thus even evil brings in its dark,
barbaric tribute, and lays it down at his feet, and there is no
energy in the universe so eccentric as not to have a path and
perihelion around the central sun.
Turning aside from the multitude of worshipers, the Al-
mighty questions the grim spirit, " Whence coniest thou ?" —
not, in surprise, " thou here ?" but, in inquiiy, " ivhence hast
thou now come ?" The reply is, " From going to and fro in
the earth." Yes ! the earth seems ever that spot of creation
round which hifyher Intel] io-ences throno- not on account of the
paltry stakes of battles and empires being played therein, but
because there a mightier game, as to the reconciliation of man
with God (thrilHng, though simple words ! words containing in
them the problem of all theology !), is advancing with dubious
aspect, though with certain issue. One man in the land of Uz
seems to have attained the solution of that problem. He is at
once virtuous and prosperous. .Adored by men, he adores God.
He is wise, without any special inspiration. He is perfect, but
not through suffering. He is clean, without atonement. This
man is pointed out by God to Satan, " Behold the type of the
Good Man ! what thinkest thou of him ? Canst thou perceive
any flav; in his character ? Is he not at once great and good ?"
The subtile spirit rejoins " that he has never been tried. He is
pious because prosperous ; let afflictions strip away his green
leaves, and they will discover a skeleton stretching out arms of
defiance to heaven ; or should the tree, remaining itself unrau-
tilated, though stripped of its foliage, droop in submission, yet
let its trunk be touched and blasted, curses will come groaning
np from the root to the topmost twig, and, falling, it will bow
in blasphemy, not in prayer." AVhat is this, but a version of
the fiendish insinuation, that there is no real worth or virtue in
POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB. 8t:
man but circumstances may overturn ; that religion is just a form
of refined selfishness ; and that no mode of dealing, whether
adverse or prosperous, on the part of God, can produce the de-
sired reconciliation. And the purpose of the entire after-book
is, in reply, to prove that afiuiiction, while stripping the tree,
and even touching its inner life, only confirms its roots — that
affliction not only tries, but purifies and tends to perfect, the
suflferer — that individual suffering does not furnish an adequate
index to individual culpability — that the tendency of suffering is
to throw back the sufferer into the arms of the Great Inflictor, and
to suggest the necessity of the medium which can alone complete
reconciliation, that, narael}^ of intercessory sacrifice — that there
is something higher than peace or happiness — and, finallv, that
all this casts a softening and clearing luster upon the sad mys-
teries of the world, as well as proves the necessity, asserts the
possibility, assigns the means, and predicts the attainment, of
final reconciliation. But this reply^ which is the argument of
the poem, falls to bo considered afterward. The two first
chapters are a full statement, in concrete form, of the grand
difficulty.
The thick succession of Job's calamities is one of the most
striking passages in the poem. The conduct of Ford's heroine,
who continues to dance on while news of " death, and death,
and death," of brother, friend, husband, are brought her in suc-
cession, her heart, the while, breaking in secret, has been much
admired. But princelier still, and more natural, the figure of the
patient patriarch, seated at his tent-door, and listening to mes-
sage after message of spoil, conflagration, ruin, and death, till,
in the course of one curdling hour of agony, he finds himself
flockless, serfless, childless, a beggar and a wreck amid all the
continued insignia of almost royal magnificence. But his heart
breaks not. He does not dash away into the wilderness. He
does not throw himself on the ground. He does not tear his
white hair in agony. AVith decent and manly sorrow, he in-
deed shaves his head, and rends, after the custom of his coun-
try, his raiment. But his language is, " Naked came I out of
82 tOETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB.
my motlier's womb, and naked shall I return tliither ; tlie Lord
gave, and the Lord hath taken away ; blessed be the name of
the Lord." From some clime of eternal calm seem those ac-
cents to descend. TJie plaints of Prometheus and Lear come
from a lower region. The old tree has been sliorn by a swift-
running and all-encompassing fire of its ftiir foliage : but it has
bent its head in reverence before the whirlwind, ere it passed
away. In sculpture, there are a silence and a calm which, in na-
ture, are only found in parts and parcels — a stillness within
stillness — the hushing of a hush. But not sculpture itself can
fully express the look of resignation (as if all calamity were
met and subdued by it) which Job's countenance returned to that
sky of ruin which suddenly lowered over the tent of his fathers.
But, alas ! all calamity was not met and subdued by it.
Other griefs were in store, and the iron must enter into his
soul. His patient resolve, firm as the "sinew" of leviathan,
was at last subdued ; and there broke forth from him that tre-
mendous curse, which has made the third chapter of Job dear
to all the miserable. Who can forget the figure of Swift, each
revolving birthday, retiring into his closet, shutting the door
behind him — not to fast or to pray, but to read this chapter, per-
haps, with wild sobs of self application ? Nor could even he
wring out thus the last drops of its bitterness. It is still a
Marah, near which you trace many miserable footsteps ; and
never, while misery exists, can its dreary grandeur, its passion
for death, the beauty it pours upon the grave, the darkness
which, collecting from all glooms and solitudes, it bows down
upon the one fatal day of birth, be forgotten. " Let them
bless it that curse the day," for surely it is the most piercing
cry ever uttered in this world of "lamentations, mourning,
and woe."
In describing an apparition, as in describing all the other ob-
jects collected in his poem, the author of Job has this advantage
— his is, so far as we know, the first.
" He is the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea"
POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB. 83
of shadows, dreams, and all the other fears and marvels of the
night. Is it asked, how ought an apparition to be represented?
We reply, as it ought to be seen. With a certain preceding con-
sciousness, the shadow of the approaching shade, with fear
shaking every bone, but ovei"powering no part of the man —
with hair shivering, but with eye fixed and strained in piercing
intensity of vision — -with the perception of a form without dis-
tinct outline, of a motion without sound, of a fixed position
without figure, of a voice so faint, " that nothing hves 'twixt it
and silence" — with a strange spiritual force from within rising
up to bear the burden, and meet the communion of an unearthly
presence — and with the passing away of that burden, like the
gradual dropping of a load of heavy gloom from the mind ; thus
could we conceive a man, bold in spirit, strong in health, and
firm in faith, meeting a messenger from the dead. And thus
has Eliphaz described his visitor. It is the hour of night. He
is alone on his couch. A shudder, like the sigh of a spirit, passes
over him. This shudder strengthens till every fiber of his frame
shakes. Then he becomes " aware" of the presence and transit
of a spiritual being, and every hair on his flesh starts up to do
him homage. This motion not heard, stills into a form not seen.
In awful balance between matter and spiiit, hangs the dim shade
before the strained, yet unmaddened eye. And then a voice,
fainter than a whisper, but more distinct, trembling between
sound and silence, is heard, " How can man be more just than
God, or mortal man more just than his Maker ?" To paint a
shade is surely the most difficult of achievements. But here
EHphaz seizes, in the inspired glance of one sentence, the
middle point vibrating between the two worlds. Xot so suc-
cessfully has Milton assayed to set chaos before us, in language
jarring and powerful almost as the tumultuous surge it describes,
and by images culled from all elements of contradiction, con^
fusion, and unrule.
Innumerable since have been the poetical descriptions, as
"well as pictorial representations, of ghosts and ghost-scenes.
But the majority are either too gross or too shadowy. Some have
84 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB.
painted their ghosts too minutely ; they have made an inven-
tory of a spirit — head, hair, teeth, feet, dress, and all, are lite-
rally represented, till our terror sinks into disgust, or explodes
into laughter. Thus Monk Lewis describes his fiend, as hoarse
with the vapors of hell. Thus, while Shakspeare clothes his
ghost with complete steel, an inferior genius since makes the
steel of his ghostly warrior red-hot. Others dilute their vapory
apparitions till they vanish quite away. One author is deep in
the knowledge of panic terror (Brockden Brown). He makes
you fear as much in company as alone, as much at noon as at
midnight — he separates the shiver of supernatural fear from the
consciousness of a supernatural presence, and gives you it en-
tire, " hfting the skin from the scalp to the ankles." But this,
though a rare power, evades the difficulty of representing a
spirit. Perhaps Scott, the painter, and Southey, the poet, have
succeeded best : Scott in his Demon of the Cape appearing to
Vasco de Gama, and Southey in his famed description of Ar-
valan appearing to Kailyal.
" A nearer horror met the maiden's view ;
For right before her a dim form appeared —
A human form in that black night,
Distinctly shaped by its own lurid light —
Such light as the sickly moon is seen to shed
Through spell-raised fogs, a bloody, baleful red.
That specter fixed his eyes upon her full ;
The light which shone in their accursed orbs
"Was like a light from hell,
And it grew deeper, kindling with the view.
She could not turn her sight
From that infernal gaze, which, like a spell.
Bound her, and held her rooted to the ground.
It palsied every power.
Her limbs availed her not in that dread hour ;
There was no moviug thence.
Tliought, memory, sense, were gone.
She heard not now the tiger's nearer cry ;
She thought not on her father now ;
Her cold heart's-blood ran back ;
POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB. 85
Her hand lay senseless on the bough it clasped ;
Her feet were motionless ;
Her fascinated eyes,
Like the stone eyeballs of a statue, fixed,
Yet conscious of the sight that blasted them."
This is genius, but genius laboring to be afraid. In Job, it is
mere man trembling in the presence of a spiritual power.
The moral pictures in Job are even more wonderful, when we
consider the period. Society was then a narrow word — a co-.
lossal fixture, without play, fluctuation, or fluent, onward motion.
From this, you might have expected much sameness in the de-
scriptions of character ; and yet there is a great variety. In the
several pictures of the misery of the wicked, not only is the
imagery almost p)rodigally varied, but there are new traits of
character introduced into each. Job's account of the state of
his prosperity is famous for redundancy of beautiful figures. It
is itself a cornucopia. And how interesting the glimpses given
us of the manners and customs of a pastoral and primitive age !
None of the landscapes of Claude Titian or Poussin equal these.
"We see
^ "A pastoral people, native there,
Who, from the Elysian, soft, and sunny air,
Draw the last spirit of the age of gold,
Simple and generous, innocent and bold."
All that has since occurred on the bustling stage of the vv'orld
is forgotten as a dream. That innocent, beautiful hfe seems
the only reality.
The praise of wisdom must not be overlooked. It is the an-
ticipation of an answer to Pilate's question, " What is truth ?"
That did not, or at least ought not to have meant, what is the
absolu(3 truth of all things ? — a question equivalent to, what is
Omniscience ? — but, what is that portion of the universal truth,
•what the extract from its volume, which can satisfy the soul,
coincide with conscience, give a sense of safety, and form a firm
pillow for the bed of death ?
86 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB/
To this question, many insufficient and evasive answers have
been returned. Science has sought for truth in fields, and
niines, and furnaces — in atoms and in stars — and has found
many glittering particles, but not any such lump of pure gold,
any such " sum of saving knowledge," as is entitled to the name
of the truth. " The sea saith, It is not in me." The truth
grows not among the flowers of the field, sparkles not among
the gems of the mine ; no crucible can extract it from the fur-
nace, no microscope detect it in the depths, and no telescope
descry it in the heights of nature. Art, too, has advanced to re-
ply. Her votaries have gazed at the loveliness of creation ; they
have listened to her voice, they have watched the stately steps of
her processes ; and that loveliness they have sought to imitate in
painting, those steps to follow in architecture, and those voices
to repeat in music and in song. But painting must whisper
back to poetry, poetry repeat to music, and music wail out to
architecture — " It is not in us." Others, again, have followed a
bolder course. Regarding art as trifling, and even science as
shallow, they have aspired to enter with philosophy into the
springs and secrets of things, and to compel truth herself to
answer them from her inmost shrine. But too often, in propor-
tion to their ambition, has been their failure. We sickefl as we
remember the innumerable attempts which have been made,
even by the mightiest minds, to solve the insoluble, to measure
the immense, to explain the mysterious. From such have
proceeded many cloudy falsehoods, a few checkered gleams, of
clear light little, but the truth has still remained afar. " The
depth saith. Not in me." Nay, others have, in desperation,
plunged, professedly in search of truth, into pleasure or guilt ;
they have gone to hell-gate itself, and have asked, Does the
truth dwell here ? but destruction and death only say, with
hollow laughter, "We have heard the fame of it with our
ears."
Standing above the prospective wreck of all such abortive
replies the author of Job discloses that path which the "vul-
ture's eye hath not seen," and the gates of which no golden key
-POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB. 87
can open — " Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom ;
and to depart from evil is understanding." Simple the finger-
post, but it points out the truth. Here, at last, we find that
portion of the universal knowledge, truth, or wiodom, which
satisfies without cloying the mind — which reflects the inner
man of the heart as " face, face in a glass" — which gives a
feeling of firm ground below us, firm if there be terra firma in
the universe — and on which have reposed, in death, the wisest
of mankind. Newton laid not his djing head on his " Prin-
cipia," but on his Bible ; Cowper, not on his " Task," but on
his Testament; Hall, not on his wide fame, but on his "humble
hope ;" Michael Angelo, not on that pencil which alone coped
with the grandeurs of the "Judgment," but on that grace
which, for him, shore the judgment of its terrors ; Coleridge,
not on his limitless genius, but on "Mercy for praise, to be
forgiven for fame." Often must the wanderer amid American
forests lay his head upon a rude log, while above it is the abyss
of stars. Thus the weary, heavy-laden, dying Christian leans
upon the rugged and narrow Cross, but looks up the while to
the beaming canopy of immortal hfe — to those "things which
are above."
Calmly does Job propound the great maxim of man, though
it might have justified even excess of rapture. Archimedes ran
out shouting " Eureka !" Had he found the truth ? No, but only-
one golden sand upon the shore of science. Nay, though he
had found out all natural knowledge at once ; suppose he had,
by one glance of genius, descried the axletree whence shoot
out all the spokes of scientific truth — though louder far, in this
case, had been his Eureka, and deeper far his joy — would he
have found the truth ? No ; it was in the wilderness of Arabia,
and to the heart of an holy herdsman, that this inspiration at
first came, and no cry of triumph proclaimed its coming, and
no echo then reverberated it to the nations.
The entrance of the Deity into this poem is the most daring
and the most successful of all poetic interventions. God him-
self turns the scale of the great argument. The bearing of
88 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB.
his speech upon the whole scope of the poem fiills afterward
to be noted. Meantira.e let us look at the circumstances of
his appearance, and at the mode of his utterance. The dis-
putants have enveloped themselves in a cloud of words. A
whirlwind must now scatter it. They have been looking at
the silver and golden sides of the shield ; both must now be
blended and lost in the common darkness of the shadow of
God. No vehicle for this awful umpire like a whirlwind. We
can not paint an oriental whirlwind ; but, some years ago, on a
Sabbath afternoon, we saw a spectacle we shall never forget.
It was the broad, bright, smothering sunshine of an August
day. Not a speck was visible on the heavens, save one in the
far south. Suddenly, as w^e gaze, that one speck broadens,
darkens, opens into black wings, shuts again into a mass of
solid gloom, rushes then, like a chariot of darkness, northward
over the sky, till, in less time than we have taken to write these
words, there is, over all the visible heaven and earth, the wail
of wind, the roar of thunder, the pattering of hail, the foil of
rain, the -flash of lightning, and the rushing of swift waters
along the ground. " It is a vv'hirlwind !'' we exclaimed, as,
like a huge sudden apparition, it seemed to stand up between
us and the summer sky. " With God is terrible majesty."
From such a car might an angry Deity descend. Out of
such a black orchestra might God speak, and all flesh be silent
before him.
The speech is worthy of the accompaniments and of the
speaker. It is a series of questions following each other like
claps of thunder. Have our readers never fancied, during a
thunder-storm, that each new peal was an ironical question, pro-
posed to the conscience from the cloud, and succeeded by a
pause of silence more satirical still ? Thus, God from his
heaven, while pointing to his gallery of works, rising in climax
to leviathan, laughs at the baffled power and wisdom of man ;
and terrible is the glory of his snorting nostrils. The " ques-
tion" in composition is often as searching and stringent as was
the "question" of old in law. Abrupt, jagged, unanswered, it
POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB. 89
gives an idea of the Infinite, sucTi as is given by a bust, or tbe
broken limb of a statue. The slight tinge of contempt which
mingles with it adds a strange flavor to its interest ; and, when
repeated, it sounds like the voice of a warrior, shouting trium-
phantly in the ear of his dead, unreplying foeman. So have
the masters of writing used it. Demosthenes abounds in what
Hall calls those terrible interrogations, by which, after pros-
trating his opponents in argument, he proceeds to trample them
in the mire — reserving them, however, wisely, for the close of his
orations. Barrow pursues some of his longest and finest trains
of reasoning in this form. But the great modern master of this
impressive inversion of truth is Foster, who never fails, in his
"Essays," thus to cite the conscience or the soul to his bar, and
cross-examine it amid such silence as the judgment-seat may
witness, when a Mary, Queen of Scots, is summoned to put in
her plea. In Job, the questions of God form the climax of the
poem. You feel that they reach the highest possible point of
sublimity ; and the pause which follows is profound as the
stilhiess of the grave. The voice even of poetic melody, im-
mediately succeeding, had seemed impertinent and feeble. The
cry of penitence and humihty, " Behold, I am vile," is alone fit
to follow such a burst, and to cleave such a silence.
To put suitable language into the mouth of Deity, has gene-
rally tasked to straining, or crushed to feebleness, the genius of
poets. Homer, indeed, at times, nobly ventriloquizes from the
top of Olympus ; but it is ventriloquism — the voice of a man,
not of a God — Homer's thunder, not Jove's. Milton, while
impersonating God, falls flat ; he peeps and mutters from the
dust; he shrinks from seeking to fill up the compass of the
Eternal's voice. Adequately to represent God speaking, required
not only the highest inspiration, but that the poet had heard, or
thought he had heard, his very voice shaping articulate sounds
from midnight torrents, from the voices of the wind, from the
chambers of the thunder, from the rush of the whirlwind, from
the hush of night, and from the breeze of the day. And, doubt-
less, the author of Job had had this experience. He had lain on
90 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB.
his bed at niglit, while his tent was shaking with what seemed
the deep syllables of Jehovah's voice. lie had heard God in the
waters, unchained by midnight silence, and speaking to the stars.
In other nameless and homeless sounds of the wilderness, he
had fancied distinct words of counsel or of warning ; and when
he came to frame a speech for God, did he not tune it to the
rhythm of those well-remembered accents ; and on these, as on
wings, did not his soul soar upward into the highest heaven of
song ? Some poems have risen to the note of the flute, and
others to the swell of the organ ; but this highest reach of
poetry rose to the music of the mightiest and oldest elements
of nature combining to form the various parts in the one voice
of God. And how this whirlwind of poetry, onc^ aroused,
storms along — how it ruffles the foundations of the earth — how
it churns up the ocean into spray — how it unvails the old treas-
ures of the hail and the snow — how it soars up to the stars —
how the " lightnings say to it. Here we are" — how, stooping
from this pitch, it sweeps over the curious, noble, or terrible
creatures of the bard's country, rousing the mane of the lion,
stirring the still horror (5f the raven's wing, racing with the
wild ass into the wilderness, flying with the eagle and the hawk,
shortening speed over the lazy vastness of behemoth, awaken-
ing the thunder of the horse's neck, and daring to " open the
doors of the face," with the teeth " terrible round about" of
leviathan himself! The truth, the literal exactness, the fresh-
ness, fire, and rapidity of the figures presented, resemble less
the slow, elaborate work of a painter, than a succession of pic-
tures, taken instantaneously by the finger of the sun, and true
to the smallest articulation of the burning life.
The close of the poem, representing Job's renewed prosperity,
is in singular contrast with the daring machinery and rich
imagery of the rest of the book. It is simple and strange as a
nursery tale. By a change as sudden as surprising, the wheel
turns completely round. Job rises from the dust ; a golden
shower descends, in the form of troops of friends, bringing with
them silver and gold ; sheep and oxen, as if rising from the
POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB. 91
eartb, fill his folds ; new sons and daughters are born to him ;
the broad tree over his tent blooms and blossoms again ; and
long, seated under its shadow, may he look ere he descry other
messengers arriving breathless to announce the tidings of other
woes. In Blake's illustrations of this book, not the least inter-
esting or significant print is that representing the aged patriarch,
seated in peace, surrounded by a multitude of singing men and
singing women ; camels, sheep, and oxen grazing in the dis-
tance ; and, from above, God (an exact likeness of Job) smiling,
well-pleased, upon this full-length portrait of the man perfect
throuo'h sufferinor — the reconciled man.
Perhaps, when Blake himself expired, the true and only key
to his marvelous book of Illustrations (less a commentary on
Job, than a fine though inferior variation of it) was lost. It
were vain to recount the innumerable interpretations of the
poem given by more prosaic minds than Blake^s. Our notion
has been already indicated. We think Job a dramatic and
allegorical representation of the necessity, means, and conse-
quences of the reconciliation of man the individual, shadowing
out, in dim distance, the reconciliation of man the race on earthy
but not, alas ! (as Blake seems to have intended) the recon-
ciliation of man the entire species in heaven. The great problem
of this world is, How is man to be reconciled, or made at onej
with his Maker? He appears, as David describes himself, a
"stranger on this earth." All elements, and almost all beings,
are at war with him. He has nothing friendly at first, save the
warmth of his mother's breast. Rain, cold, snow, even sunshine,
beasts, and men, seem and are stern and harsh to his infant
feelings and frame. As he advances, his companions, his school-
masters, are, or appear to be, renewed forms of enmity. " What
have I done to provoke such universal alienation ?" is often his
silent, suppressed feeling. The truths of art, science, nay, of
God's word, are presented as if contradicting his first fresh feel-
ings. Books, catechisms, schools, churches, he steals into, as if
they were strange and foreign countries. At every step, he
breathes a diflScult air. Sustained, indeed, by the buoyant
92 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB.
spirits of youth, he contrives to be cheerful amid his difficulties ;
but at last the " Death-in-life" appears in his path — the dread-
ful question arises, " Must there not be something in me to pro-
voke all this enmity ? Were / a different being, would to me
every step seem a stumble, every flower a weed, every brow a
frown, every path an inclosure, every bright day a gaud, every
dark day a faithful reflector of misery, every hope a fear, and
every fear the mask for some unknown and direr horror ? If
it is not the universe, but I, that am dark, whence comes in me
the shadow which so beclouds it ? Whence^ comes it, that I do
not partake either of its active happiness, or of its passive peace ?
And seeing that the universe is unreconciled to me, and I to the
universe, must it not be the same with its God, and who or
what is to bridge across the gulf betwixt him and me ? If a
finite creation repels me,- how can I face the justice of an infinite
God ? If time present me with little else than difficulties, what
dangers and terrors may lurk in the heights and depths of eter-
nity ? If often the wicked are prosperous and contented on
earth, and the good afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not com-
forted, may not similar anomalies abound hereafter? And how
am I to be convinced that a system so strange as that around
me is wise — that sufferings are salutary, and that its God is
good? And how, above all, is my personal unworthiness to
be removed ?
Su h is a general statement of the common difficulty. In
various men it assumes various forms. In one man, a gloomy
temperament so poisons all the avenues of his being, that to tell
him to be happy and to worship, sounds at first as absurd as
though you were giving the same counsel to one burning in a
conflagration. Another is so spell-bound by the spectacle of
moral evil, that he is able to do or say little else than ask the
question — " Whence and what art thou, execrable shape ?" A
third, sincere almost to lunacy, is driven doubly '* mad for the
sight of his eyes which he doth see" — the sight of a world, as
hollow in heart as some think it to be in physical structure. A
fourth has his peace strangled by doubts as to the peculiar doc-
POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB. 93
trines, or as to the evidences of liis faith — doubts of a kind which
go not out even by prayer and fasting. And a fifth, of pure
life and benevolent disposition, becomes a mere target for the
arrows of misfortune — at once a prodigy of excellence and a
proverb of woe.
This last case is that of Job, and, perhaps, of those now
enumerated, the only one then very likely. But the resolution
of the difficulty he obtained applies to all the others unrecon-
ciled — it ought to satisfy them. How was Job instructed ? By
being taught — first, in part through suflfering, and, secondly,
through a manifestation of God's superiority to him — a child-
like trust in God. Even amid his wailings of woe, he had fal-
teringly expressed this feeling — " Though he slay me, I will
trust in him." Bat when he saw and ielt God's greatness, as
expounded by himself, he reasoned thus : One so great must
be good — one so wise must mean me well by all my afflictions.
I will distrust and doubt him no more. I will loathe myself
on account of my imperfect and unworthy views of him. I
will henceforth confide in the great whole. I will fearlessly
commit my bark to the eternal ocean, and, come fair weather
or foul, will believe that the wave which dashes, or the wave
which drowns, or the wave which wafts to safety, is equally
good. I will also repent, in dust and ashes, of my own vile-
ness, and trust to forgiveness through the medium of the Great
Sacrifice, which the smoke of ray altar feebly symbolizes.
Behold in this the outline of our reconciliation. The Creator
of this great universe must be good. Books of evidences, be-
gone ! One sunset, one moonhght hour, one solemn meditation
of the night, one conversation at evening with a kindred heart, is
worth you all ! Such scenes, such moments, dissolve the most
massive doubts easily and speedily as the evening air sucks
down the mimic mountains of vapor which He along the verge
of heaven. The sense given is but that, indeed, of beauty and
power — transcendent beauty, and power illimitable ; but is
there not insinuated something more — a lesson of love as tran-
scendent, and of peace as boundless ? Does not the blue sky
04 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB.
give US an unutterable sense of security and of unioi ', ( ('j\h
around us, like the curtain of a tent ? Do not the utars dart
down glances of warm intelligence and affection, secret and real
as the looks of lovers ? Do not tears, torments, evils, and death,
seem at times to melt and disappear in that gush of golden
glory, in that stream of starry hope which the milky-way
pours each night through the heavens ? Say not with Carlyle,
" It is a sad sight." Sad ! the sight of beauty, splendor,
order, motion, progress, power. Godhead — how can it be sad ?
Man, indeed, must at present weep as well as wonder, as he
looks above. Be it so. We have seen a child weeping bit-
terly on his mother's knee, while the train was carrying him
triumphantly on. "Poor child!" we thought, "why weepest
thou ? Thy mother's arms are around thee, thy mother's eye is
jQxed upon thee, and that bustle and rapidity, so strange and
dreadful to thee, are but carrying thee faster to thy home."
Thus man wails and cries, with God above, God around, God
below, and God before him. Not always shall he thus weep.
But other elements are still wanting in his reconciliation. It
is not necessary merely that power, beautj^, and wisdom lead to
the conception of God's goodness and love, but that suffering,
by perfecting patience, by teaching knowledge, should, while
humbling man's pride, elevate his position, and put into his
hands the most powerful of all telescopes — that of a tear.
" Perfect through suffering" must man become ; and, then, how
do all apparent enemies soften into friends ! how drop down all
disguises ; and misfortunes, losses, fevers, falls, deaths, stand
out naked, detected, and blushing lovers.
One thing more, and the atonement is complete. Man has
about him another burden besides that of misery — it is a bur-
den of sin. To this he can not be reconciled. This must be
taken away ere he can be perfectly at one with the universe or
its Maker. This, by the great sacrifice at Calvary, and the
sanctifying power of the Spirit, has been taken away ; and
now, whoever, convinced of God's benevolence by the voice of
his own soul echoing the language of the creation — satisfied,
POETRY OF THE BOOK OF JOB. 95
from experience, of the benefits of suflfering — is also forgiven,
through Christ, his iniquities, stands forth to view the recon-
ciled man. Be he of dark disposition, his gloom is now tem-
pered, if not removed ; he looks at it as the pardoned captive
at his iron bars the last evening of his imprisonment. Be he
profoundly fascinated by moral evil, even with its dark counte-
nance, a certain morning twilight begins to mingle. Has he
been sick of the hoilowness of the world, now he feels that that
very hoilowness secures its exj^losion — it must give place to a
truer system. Has he entertained doubts — he drowns them in
atoning blood. Has he suffered — his sufferings have left on the
soil of his mind a rich deposit, whence are ready to spring the
blossoms of Eden, and to shine the colors of heaven. Thus
reconciled, how high his attitude, how dignified his bearing !
He knows not what it is to fear. Having become the friend of
God, he can look above and around him with the eye of univer-
sal friendship. In the blue sky he dwells, as in a warm nest.
The clouds and mountains seem ranged around him, like the
chariots and horses of fire about the ancient prophet. The
roar of wickedness itself, from the twilight city, is attuned into
a melody, the hoarse beginning of a future anthem. Flowers
bloom on every dunghill — light gushes from every gloom —
the grave itself smiles up in his face — and his own frame, even
if decaying, is the loosened and trembling leash which, when
broken, shall let his spirit spring forth, free and exulting, amid
the liberties, the hght, the splendors, and the " powers of the
world to come." *
* The author means, if God spare him, to develop further his views
of the reconciliation of man, in another, and probably a fictitious form.
CHAPTER VI.
POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS.
The entire history of Israel is poetical and romantic. Besides
the leading and wide events we have already indicated, as nour-
ishing the spirit of Hebrew poetry — such as the creation, the
flood, the scene at Sinai — there were numerous minor sources of
poetic influence. The death of Moses in the sight of the promised
land ; the crossing of the river Jordan ; the wars of Canaan ; the
romantic feats of Samson ; the immolation of Jophtha's daughter,
the Iphigenia of Israel ; the story of Ruth, "standing amid the
alien corn," with all its simplicity and pathos ; the rise of David,
harp in hand, from " the ewes with young," to the throne of his
country ; his adventurous, checkered, and most poetical his-
tory ; the erection of the temple, that fair poem of God's ; the
separation of the tribes ; the history and ascent of Elijah ; the
calling of Elisha from the plow ; the downfall of the temple ;
the captivity of Babylon ; the return from it ; the rise of the
new temple, amid the tears of the old men, who had seen the
glories of the former — these, and many others, were events
which, touching again and again, at short and frequent inter-
vals, the rock of the Hebrew heart, brought out another and
another gush of poetry.
We speak not now of David's Psalms, or those which fol-
lowed his time, but of those songs which are sprinkled through
the historical works of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel (inclusive
of one or two of David's strains), and which shine as sparkles
struck off from the rolling wheel of Jewish story. It is beau-
POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 97
tiful to see history thus flowering into poetry — the heroic deed
living in the heroic la)^ — the glory of the field, separated from
its gore, purified, and, like the ever-burning fire of the temple,
set before the Lord of Hosts. What Macaulay's " Lays of
Ancient Rome" have done for the fabulous legends and half-
true traditions of ancient story, have Jasher, Iddo, Deborah, and
David, in a higher and holier manner, done for the real battles
and miracles which stud the annals of God's chosen people.
Need we refer to the grand myth — if such it be — of the
standing still of the sun over Gibeon, and of the moon over the
valley of Ajalon. Supposing this literally true, v.hat a picture
of the power of mind over matter — of inspired mind over pas-
sive matter! The one word of the believing roan has arrested
the course of nature. His stern commanding eye has enlisted
the very sun into his service, and the moon seems a device upon
his banner. It is a striking verification of the words, " All
things are possible to him that believeth." That matter which
yields reluctantly to the generalizations of science, is plastic, as
soft clay, in the hands of faith. Suns and systems dance to the
music of the throbs from a great heart. Should we, on the
contrary, suppose this a poetical parable, and thus rid ourselves
of the physical difficulties, how grandly does it express modern
experiences ! Has not man, through astronomy, made the
sun stand still, and the earth revolve ? Did not the genius of
Napoleon arrest the sun of Austerlitz, for many a summer,
over his fields of slain ? Is not each extension of the power of
the telescope, causing firmaments to yield, to recede, to draw
near, to dissolve, to curdle, to stand, to move, to assume ten
thousand various forms, colors, and dimensions ? Is not man
each year feeling himself more at home in his house, more at
hberty to range through its remoter apartments, with more
command over its elements, and with a growing consciousness,
that his empire shall yet be complete ? Joshua commanding
the sun and the moon, is but an emblem of the man of the
future, turning and winding the universe, like a "fiery Pega-
sus," below him, on his upward and forward career.
E
98 POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS.
Deborali — what a strong solitary ray of light strikes from her
story and song, upon the peaks of the past ! A mother in
Israel, the wise woman of her neighborhood, curing diseases,
deciding differences, perhaps, at times, conducting the devotions
of her people — how little was she, or were they, aware of the
depth which lay in her heart and in her genius. It required
but one action and one strain to cover her with glory. In her,
as in all true women, lay a quiet fmid of strength, virtue, and
courage, totally unsuspected by herself. While others won-
dered at her sudden patriotism and poetry, she wondered more
than they. The Great Spirit, seeking for a vent through which
to pour a flood of ruin upon the invaders of Israel, found this
woman sitting under her palm-tree, on the mountain side, and she
started up at his bidding. " I, Deborah, arose." The calm
matron becomes the Nemesis of her race, the mantle of Miriam
falls on her shoulders, and the sword of Joshua flames from her
hand. This prophetic fury sinks not, till the enemy of her coun-
try is crushed, and till she has told the tidings to earth, to
heaven, and to all after-time. And then, like a sword dropped
from a hero's side, she quietly ftiUs back into her peaceful soli-
tude again. It is Cincinnatus resuming his plow-handle in
mid-furrow. How wonderful are those gusts which surprise and
uplift men, and women too, into greatness — a greatness befora
unknown, and terrible even to themselves.
In her song the poetry of war comes to its culmination. Not
the hoofs of many horses, running to battle, produce such a
martial music, as do her prancing words. How she rolls the
fine vesture of her song in blood ! How she dares to hken her
doings to the thunder-shod steps of the God of Sinai ! The
Bong begins with God, and with God it ends. One glance —
no more — is given to the desolations which preceded her rising.
Praises, like sunbeams, are made to fall on the crests of those
who periled themselves with her, in the high places of the
field. Questions of forked lightning are flung at the recreant
tribes. " Why did Dan abide in ships ?" Ah ! Dan was a ser-
pent in the way, biting the horse-heels, and causing the rider
POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 99
to fall backward ; but here be is stung and stumbled himself !
Over one village, Meroz, she pauses to pour the concentra-
tion of her ire, and the " curse causeless doth not come." For
the brave, the light of Goshen ; for the recreants, the night of
Egypt ; but for the neutral, the gloom of Gehenna ! " All
power," then, " is given her," to paint the battle itself ; and it,
and all its scenery, from the stars above fighting against Sisera,
to the river Kishon below, that " ancient river," rolling away in
indignation the last relics of the enemy, appear before us. Then
her imagination pursues the solitary Sisera, unhelmed, pale, and
panting, to the tent of Heber, and with a yet firmer nerve, and
a yet holier hypocrisy, she re-enacts the part of Jael, and slays
again her slain. And then, half in triumph, and half in the ten-
derness which often mingles with it, she sees the mother of Sisera
looking out at her window, with the flush of hope on her cheek
fading into the deathlike paleness of a mother's disappointment
and a mother's anguish ; and then — for Deborah, too, is a
" mother in Israel" — she can no more, she shuts the scene, she
drops the lattice, and her voice fiilters, though her faith is firm,
as she exclaims, "So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord;
but let them that love him be as the sun, when he goeth forth
in his might."
It is a baptized sword which Deborah bears. It is a battle
of the Lord which she fights. It is a defensive warfare that her
song hallows. "Carnage," says Wordsworth, "is God's
daughter." We reverenced and loved the Poet of the Lakes,
whose genius was an honor to his species, and whose hfe was
an honor to his genius ; but seldom has a poet written words
more mischievous, untrue, and (unintentionally) blasphemous,
than these. We all remember Byron's inference from it, " If
Carnage be God's daughter, she must be Christ's sister." Blas-
phemous ! but the blasphemy is Wordsworth's, not Byron's.
Here the skeptic becomes the Christian, and the Christian the
blasphemer. If Carnage be God's daughter, so must evil and
sin be. Xo, blessed be the name of our God ! He does not
smile above the ruin of smoking towns ; he does not snufF up
100 POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. ■
the blood of a Borodino, or a Waterloo, as a dark incense; he
does not say, over a shell-split fortress, or over the dying decks
of a hundred dismasted vessels, driftins: down the tremblins*
water on the eve of a day of carnage, " It is very good ;" he is
the Prince of Peace, and his reign, when universal, shall be the
reign of universal brotherhood. And yet, we will grant to
Carnage a ro]/al origin : she is, if not the daughter of our God,
yet of a god, of the ffod of this world. But shame to those who
would lay down the bloody burden at the door of the house of
the God of Mercy — a door which has opened to many an orphan
and many a foundling, but which will not admit this forlorn
child of hell.
Never did genius more degrade herself than when gilding the
fields and consecrating the banners of unjust or equivocal war.
Here, the gift of Scott himself resembles an eagle's feather, trans-
ferred from the free vnng of the royal bird to the cap of some
brutal chieftain. The sun and the stars must lend their light
to the worst atrocities of the battle-field, but surely genius is
not bound by the same compulsion. De Quincey has lately
predicted the immortality of war : we answer him in the lan-
guage of a book, the authority of which he acknowledges,
Neither shall they learn ivar any more.
Between the time of Deborah and David, w^e find little express
poetry. One fable there is, that of Jotham — "the Trees choos-
ing a king" — besides the all-beautiful book of Ruth.
The first fable, as the first disguise assumed by Truth, must
be interesting. Since Jotham uttered the fierce moral of his
parable, and fled for his fife, in what a number of shapes has
Truth sought for refuge, safety, decoration, point, or j^ower !
Hid by him in trees, she has afterward lurked in flowers, spoken
in animals, surged in waves, soared in clouds, burned over the
nations in suns and stars, ventriloquized from mines below and
from mountains above, created other worlds for her escape, and,
when hunted back to the family of mankind, has made a thou-
sand new variations of the human species, as disguises for her
shy and tremulous self! Whence this strange evasiveness ? It
POETRY OF THE H/.S1>0^I0AI. IjClOK^ lOl
is partly because Truth, like all her true friend?, loves to un-
bend and disport herself at times ; because Truth herself is but
a child, and has not yet put away all childish things ; because
Truth is a beauty, and loves, as^ the beautiful do, to look at
and show herself in a multitude of mirrors ; because Truth is
a lover of nature, and of all lovely things ; because Truth, who
can only stammer in the language of abstractions, can speak in
the language of forms ; because Truth is a fugitive, and in dan-
ger, and must hide in many a bosky borne and many a shady
arbor; because Truth, in her turn, is dangerous, and must not
show herself entire, else the first look were the last ; and be-
cause Truth would beckon us on, by her very bashfulness, to
follow after her, to her own land, where she may still continue
to hide ia heaven, as she has hid in earth — but amid forests, and
behind shades of scenery so colossal, that it hath not entered
into the heart of man to conceive thereof
And seldom (to look a little back in the narrative) did Truth
assume a quainter disguise, than when she spoke from the lips
of Balaam, the son of Beor. Inclined as we are, with Herder,
to assign to his prophecies a somewhat later date than is usually
supposed, we do not for that reason deny their authenticity or
genuineness. They bring before us the image of the first god-
less poet — the first who " profaned the God-given strength, and
marred the • lofty line." Having been, perhaps, at first a true
prophet, and a genius, he had become a soothsayer, but was
surprised and forced into a true prophet again. His words
come forth from his lips, like honey from the carcass of the lion
— " meat fi'om the eater." We figure him always with gray hair
and a Danton visage ; the brow lofty and broad ; the eye small,
leering, fierce ; the lips large and protruding. Poetry has often
lighted on a point so tempting as that rock-like brow ; licen-
tiousness has blanched his hair, and many sins and abominations
are expressed in his lower face. But look how the Spirit of the
Lord now covers him with an unusual and mighty afflatus — how
he struggles against it as against a shirt of poison, but in vain
—how his eye at length steadies sullenly into vision — and how
16^ POET#-Y bF tHE' HISTORICAL BOOKS,
his lips, after writhing, as though scorched, open their wide and
slow portals to utter the blessing. He feels himself — eye, brow,
soul, all but heart — caught in the power of a mighty one ; and
he must speak or burn ! As it is, the blessing blisters his
tongue, like a curse, and he has found only its utterance a
milder misery.
Beautiful, notwithstanding Balaam, is the scene in Numbers.
It is the top of Pisgah, where the feet of Moses are soon to
stand in death. But now seven altars are sending up the
crackling smoke of their burnt-offerings — the fat of bullocks
and rams has been transmuted into a rich and far-seen flame —
Balak and the Princes of Moab surround the sacrifices, and gaze
anxiously upon the troubled face of the seer ; while around
stand up, grim and silent, as if waiting the result. Mounts
Nebo and Peor ; behind stretches the Land of Promise, from
the Dead Sea to the Lebanon ; and before are the white tents,
the Tabernacle, and the bright cloud, suspended, vail-hke and
vast, over the camp of Israel. " 'Twere worth ten years of
peaceful life one glance of that array." The soul of Balaam,
the poet, rises to his lips, but would linger long there, or come
forth only in the fury of curse, did not the whisper of God at
the same moment touch his spirit ; and how his genius springs
to that spur. To his excited imagination, the bright finger of
the cloud over the camp seems the horn of a " unicorn ;" the
camp itself, couching in the valley, is a " great lion," waiting
to rear himself, to drink the blood of the slain ; no " divination"
can move that finger pointing to Canaan and to Moab ; no " en-
chantment" can chain that " Lion of the tribe of Judah." It is
over — he drops his rod of imprecation, and to the crest-fallen
Princes exclaims — " God hath blessed, and I can not reverse it^
From point to point he is taken, but, even as his ass was
waylaid at every step by the angel, so is his evil genius met
and rebuked under a better spirit, till each mount in all that
high range becomes a separate source of blessing to the " people
dwelling alone, and not reckoned among the nations." Trem-
bling in the memory and the remaining force of the vision, the
POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 103
prophet at lerigtli pursues eastward his solitary journey, and,
trembling in the terror of Israel, Balak also goes his way.
Genius has indeed a hard task to perform when she turns, or
seeks to turn, against God. In proportion to the resemblance
she bears him, is the misery of the rebellion. It is not the clay
rising against the potter — it is the sunbeam against the sun.
But here, too, we find righteous compensation. Sometimes
the parricidal power is palsied in the blow. Thus, Paine
found the strong right hand, which in the " Rights of Man" had
coped with Burke, shivered, when, in the " Age of Reason," it
touched the ark of the Lord. Sometimes, with the blasphemy
of the strain, there is blended a wild beauty, or else a mournful
discontent, which serves to carry off or to neutralize the evil
effect. Shelley, for instance, has made few converts: a sys-
tem which kept him so miserable can not make others happy
or hopeful — and you cry besides, that very beauty and love
of which he raves are vague abstractions, till condensed into
a/orm. Others, again, lapped generally in the enjoyment or
dream of a sensual paradise, which is often disturbed by the
feeling or the fear of a sensuous hell, sometimes through their
dream chant fragments of psalms, snatches of holy melodies
learned in cWdhood ; or, awakening outright, feel a power over
them compelling them to utter the truth of heaven in strains
which had too often finned by turn every evil passion of earth ;
and, behold, a Burns and Byron, as well as a Saul and a
Balaam, are among the 2>rophets. Does their genius thus ex-
ercised seem strange as a parable in the mouth of fools ? How
stranger far to superior beings must be the spectacle of any
species of genius revolting against its own higher nature in re-
volting against its God !
Let then Balaam, the son of Beor, pass on toward the moun-
tains of the East. We follow him with mingled emotions of
disgust and admiration, fear and pity — pity, for the sword is
already trembling over his head ; he who conspired not with
Moab shall soon conspire with Midian, and shall perish in the
attempt. It is but one lucid peak in his history that we see —
104 POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS.
all behind and before is darkness; nor can we expect for liim
even the tremendous blessing — " Therefore eternal silence he his
doomr
In the First Book of Samuel, we find at least three specimens
of distinct poetry — the ode or thanksgiving, the satire, and the
ghost scene. The first is the song of H^mah. This is in-
teresting, principally, as the finest utterance of the general desire
for children which existed in Jewish females, and which exists
in females still. Vv^e deduce from this not merely the inference
that the Jews expected a Messiah, but also that there is in
human hearts a yearning after a nobler shape of humanity, and
that this yearning is itself a proof of its prophecy, and of the
permanence and progressive advancement of that race which,
notwithstanding ages of anguish and disappointment, con-
tinues to thirst for and to expect its own apotheosis.
And are not all after- satire and invective against monarchy
and kings condensed in Samuel's picture of the approaching
" King Stork" of Israel ? We quote it entire : — " And this will
be the manner of the king that shall reign over you : He will
take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots,
and to be his horsemen ; and some shall run before his chariots.
And he will appoint him captains over thousands,4lnd captains
over fifties ; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap
his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instru-
ments of his chariots. And he will take your daughters to be
confectioneries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he
will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your olive-yards,
even the best of them, and give them to his servants. And he
will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and
give to his officers, and to his servants. And he will take your
men-servants, and your maid-servants, and your goodliest young
men, and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take
the tenth of your sheep ; and ye shall be his servants. And
ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye
shall have chosen you ; and the Lord will not hear you in that
day." What a quiet, refreshing vein of sarcasm enlivens the
POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 103
stern truth of this passage. Sheep and asses are the last and
least viclims to the royal vulture — men and women are his
favorite quarry.
Ere coming to the Cave of Endor, we must glance at the
actors in the celebrated scene.
The first is Samuel, who had been brought up in Hannah's
hand to the Temple service — who had, with his curling locks
and " little coat," eagerly officiated as a young priest there —
who had been awakened at midnight by the voice of God —
through whose little throat came accents of divine wrath which
stunned Eh's heart, and made the flesh-hooks of his sons trem.-
ble amid their sacrilege — who stood behind the smoke of the
sacrifice of a sucking lamb, with his hands uplifted to heaven,
while behind were his cowering countrymen ; before, the army
of the Philistines ; and above, a blue sky, which gradually
darkened into tempest, thunder, dismay, and destruction to the
invaders — who anointed Saul — who hewed Agag in pieces —
who entered amazed Bethlehem like a God, and, neglecting the
tall sons of Jesse, chose David, the fair-haired and blooming-
child of o-enius — who ao-ain, at Gilo-al, summoned the liojht-
nings, which said to him, " Here we are" — and who, at last,
was buried in Ramah, his own city, with but one mourner — all
Israel, which " rose and buried him." Son of the barren
woman, consecrated to God from thy birth, "king of kings,"
lord of thunders, how can even the strong grave secure thee ?
Nay, ere it fully can, thou must look up from below once mora
to perform another act of king-quelling power.
The second actor in the scene is Saul, whose character is
more complex in its elements. Indolent, yet capable of great
exertion ; selfish, yet with sparks of generosity ; fitful in tem-
per, vindictive in disposition, confusedly brave, irregularly lib-
eral, melancholy — mad, Avithout genius, possessed of strong
attachments, stronger hatreds and jealousies,' neither a tyrant
nor a good prince, neither thoroughly bad nor good, whom you
neither can " bless nor ban," he is one of the nondescripts of
history. He reminds us most of the gloomy tyrant of Scotland
E*
106 POETRT OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS.
— Macbeth. Like him, he has risen from a lower station ; like
him, he has cemented his tottering throne by blood ; hke him,
he is possessed by an evil spirit, though, in Saul's case, it does
not take the form of a wife-fiend ; hke him, too, he is desper-
ate — the Philistines are upon him — David is at a distance-
Samuel sleeps in Ramah — God has refused to answer him by
prophets, or Urim, or dreams ; and he must now, like Macbeth
in his extremity, go and knock at the door of hell.
The third actor is the witch of Endor. A borderer between
earth and hell, her qualities are rather those of the former than
of the latter. She has little weird or haggard grandeur. So
far as we can apprehend her, she was a vulgar conjurer, herself
taken by surprise, and caught in her own snare. She owns (if
we may compare a fictitious with a real person) little kindred
to the witches of " Macbeth," with their faces faded and their
raiment withered in the infernal fire ; their supernatural age
and ugliness ; the wild mirth which mingles with their malice ;
the light, dancing measure to which their strains are set, and
which adds greatly to their horror, as though a sentence of
death were given forth in doggerel ; the odd gusto with which
they handle and enumerate all unclean and abominable things ;
the strange sympathy with which they may almost be said to
fancy their victims ; their dream-like conveyance ; the new and
complete mythology with which they are allied ; and the uncer-
tainty in which you are left as to their nature, origin, and his-
torj' ; — nor to those of Scott and Burns, who are just malicious
old Scotch hags, corrupted into witches.
Such are the actors. How striking the scene ! We must
figure for ourselves the Avitch's place of abode. The shadows
of night are resting on Mount Tabor. Four miles south of it, lies,
near Endor, a ravine deep sunk and wooded. It is a dreary and
deserted spot, hedged round by a circle of evil rumors, through
which nothing but despair dare penetrate. But there a torrent
wails to the moon, and the moon smiles lovingly to the torrent ;
and thick jungle, starred at times by the eyes of fierce animals,
conceals this wild amour ; and there stands the hut of the hag,
POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. lOV
near which you descry a shed for cattle, which have been, or
have been bought by, the wages of her imposture. A knock
is heard at her door ; and, starting instantly from the thin sleep
of guilt, she opens it, after arousing her accomplices. Three
men, disguised, but not so deeply as to disguise from her ex-
perienced eye the features of lurid fear and ferocity, ask to be,
and are, admitted. One, taller, by the head and shoulders, than
the rest, opens, in gloomy tones, the gloomy interview, and asks
her to bring up whom he should name. Not suspecting this
to be Saul — and yet, to whom else could belong that towering
stature, that martial form, and the high yet hurried accents of
that king-like misery ? — she reminds him that Saul had cut off
all that had familiar spirits from the land, and that this might
be a snare set for her life. Stung, it may be, at this allusion
to one of his few good deeds, in hot and hasty terms, he sw^ears
to secure her safety. The woman, satisfied, asks whom she is
to invoke, trusting, probably, to sleight-of-hand, on her part or
her accomplices', to deceive the stranger. He cries aloud for
Samuel — the once hated, the now greatly desired, even in his
shroud — and while he is yet speaking, his prayer is answered.
Samuel, upraising himself through the ground, is seen by the
woman. Horrified at the unexpected sight, and discovering, at
the same moment, the identity of Saul, she bursts into wild
shrieks — " Thou art Saul !" Slowly shaping into distinct
form, and curdling into prophetic costume, from the first
vague and indefinite shade, appears an " old man covered with
a mantle." It is "Samuel even himself." The grave has
yielded to the whisper of Omnipotence, and to the cry of de-
spair. Fixing his eye upon the cowering and bending Saul,
he asks the reason of this summons. Saul owns his extremity ;
and then the ghost, slow disappearing, as he had slowly risen,
seems to melt down into those awful accents, which fall upon
Saul's ear as " blood mingled with fire," and which leave him
a mere molten residuum of their power upon the ground —
" To-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me" — shadows
in a world where the " light is as darkness." " Then fell Saul
108 POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS.
along the eartli" — a giant chilled and prostrated by a vapor.
And how similar the comfort offered through the witch of Endor
to the fallen monarch of Israel to the dance of Macbeth's in-
fernal comforters ? Shakspeare must have had Endor in his eye :
** Come, sisters, cheer we up his sprigbts,
And show the best of our delights ;
I'll charm the air to give a sound,
While you perform your antique round ;
That this great king may kindly say,
Our duties did his welcome pay."
To this dance, performed to cheer the cheerless, we may liken
the calf, killed in haste, and in haste eaten, by one who shall
never partake another meal. But here Macbeth rises above his
prototype. He drinks the " wildflower wine" of destiny — goes
forth enlarged by the draught — and at last dies in broad battle,
■with bis harness on his back ; Avhereas, Saul perishes on the
morrow, by his own hand.
And who was his chief mourner? Who sung his threnody
— a threnody the noblest ever pung by poet over king ? It
was a laureate whom his death had elected to the office — it was
David. His " Song of the Bow" — which he taught to Israel,
till it became such a household word of national sorrow as the
"Flowers of the Forest" among ourselves — is one of the short-
est as well as sweetest of lyrics. It is but one gasp of genius,
and yet remains musical in the world's ear to this hour. It is
difficult, by a single stroke upon the groat heart of man, to pro-
duce a sound which shall reverberate till it mingle with the last
trump ; and yet, this did David in Ziklag. On a wild torn leaf
floating past him, he recorded his anguish ; and that leaf, as if
all the dew denied to the hills of Gilboa had rested on it, is still
fresh with immortality. "How are the mighty fallen ;" "tell
it not in Gath ;" " they were lovely in their lives, and in their
death not divided ;" " thy love to ine was wonderful, passing the
love of women" — these touches of nature, and accents of music,
have come down to us entire, as if all the elements had conspired
POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 109
that such sounds should never perish. A lesson to all who write
or speak ! Speak from the inmost hearty and your word, though
as little, is as safe, as Moses in his ark of bulrushes. Unseen
hands are stretched forth from all sides to receive and to guard
it. It becomes a part of the indestructible essence of things.
The poet's name may perish ; or, though it remain, may repre-
sent no intelligible character ; but the " Flowers of the Forest"
and " Donocht-head" must be sung and wept over while^the
earth endure th. Grasp, though it were with your finger, the
horns of nature's altar, and you shall never be torn away. Let
the world be ever so hurried in her transition from age to age,
she never can forget to carry her least household gods along
with her.
The picture in this "Bow Song" is perfect in its simplicity.
On the high places of their last field stand Saul and Jonathan,
soon to be twins in death. Swifter are they than eagles, and
stronger than lions. Beautiful are their feet upon the moun-
tains. Courage gleams in the eyes of both ; but in Saul it is
the cotirage of despair. The scene of Endor still swims before
his view, and the mantle of Samuel darkens the day. The
battle is joined. The Philistines press his army sore. Jona-
than is slain before his eyes. Young, strong, and beautiful, he
yields to a stronger than he. Saul himself is wounded by the
archers. The giant totters toward the ground, which is already
wet with his blood. Feeling his fate inevitable, he asks his
armor-bearer to save, by slaying him, from the hands of the
uncircumcised. He refuses — the unfortunate throws himself
on his ow^n sv/ord, and you hear him crying with his final
breath — " Not the Philistines, but thou, unquiet spirit of Ramah,
hast overcome me." From the hills of Gilboa, the iraaginatioa
of David leaps to Gath, and hears the shout with which the
tidings of the king's death are received there. But there mingles
■with it, in his ear, a softer, yet more painful sound. It is the
wail of Israel's women, almost forgetting their individual losses
in that of Saul, their stately monarch, and Jonathan, his in-
genuous son. And how do years of ordinary sorrow seem
110 POETHY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS.
collected in the words which had long struggled obscurely in
David's bosom, and often trembled on his lips, but never been
expressed till now, when, in the valley of the shadow of death,
friendship became a name too feeble for his feelings — "My
brother Jonathan 1" If death dissolves dear relationships, it
also creates others dearer still. Then, possibly, for the first
time, the brother becomes a friend ; but then also the friend is
often felt to be more than a brother.
But we may not tarry longer on these dark and dewless
hills. We pass to that hold in the wilderness, which David
has not yet, but is soon to quit, for a capital and a throne. A
sentence makes that hold visible, as if set in fire : — " And of
the Gadites, there separated themselves unto David into the.
hold in the wilderness, men of might, and men of war for the
battle, that could handle shield and buckler, whose faces were
like the faces of lions, and were as swift as the roes upon the
mountains." "There is," says Aird, "an Ihad of heroes in
these simple words. Suppose David had his harp in his
hand, in the hold, and worshiped with his warriors the God of
Israel (in light introduced from the top of the cave), what a
picture for Salvator or Rembrandt ; or, rather, the whole effect
is beyond the reach of the pictorial art. The visages and
shapes, majestic in light and shadow, in that rock-ribbed den,
could be given on the canvas, but nothing save the plastic
power of poetry could lighten the darkly-congregated and pro-
scribed cave, with the sweet contrasted relief of the wild roes
without, unbeleaguered and free, on the green range of the un-
molested hills. The verse is a perfect poem."
The mulberry-trees next arise before us, surmounting the
valley of Rephaim. In themselves, there is little poetrj^ But
on their summits you now hear a sound, the sound of " a
going" — mysterious, for not a breath of wind is in the sky ; it
is the " going" of invisible footsteps, sounding a signal from
God to David to press his enemies hard. We have often
realized the image, as we listened to the wind, of innumerable
tiny footsteps treading upon the leaves, their minute, incessant,
POETRY 01' THE HISTORICAL BOOKS, HI
measured, yet rapid dance. It seemed at once music and dan-
cing ; and, had it ceased in an instant, would have reminded you
of the sudden silence of a ball-room, which a flash of lightning
had entered. It struck the soul of Burns, who, perhaps, heard
in it the sound of spirits sullenly bending to overwhelming
destiny, and found it reflective of his own history. But in the
scene at Kephaim, it appeared as if armies were moving along
the high tops of the trees ; as, in " Macbeth," the wood began
to move. Nature, from her high green places, seemed making
common cause against the invader ; and, in the windless waving
of the boughs, was heard the cheer of inevitable victory. "Would
to God, that, in the silence of the present expectation of the
Church, a " going," even as of the stately steps of Divine
Majesty, were heard above, to re-assure the timid among the
Church's friends, and to abash the stout-hearted among her
foes.
From the thick of poetical passages and events in the other
parts of Jewish history, we select a few — the fewer, that the
mountains of prophecy which command at every point the his-
tory remain to be scaled. We find in Nathan's parable " a
lamb for a burnt-offering," the simj^lest of stories, producing the
most tremendous of heart-quakes. No four words in any lan-
guage are simpler, and none stronger, than the words, " Thou
art the Man." What effect one quiet sentence can produce !
The whispers of the gods, how strong and thrilling ! Nathan,
that gentle prophet, becomes surrounded with the grandeur of
an apparition, and his words fall like the slow, heavy drops of
a thunder-shower. The princely, gallant, and gifted king quails
before him ; and how can you recognize the author of the 18th
Psalm, with its fervid and resistless rush of words and images,
like coals of fire, in that poor prostrate worm, groveling on the
ground, and afraid of the eyes of his own servants ?
The genius of David remains for the analysis of the next
chapter. But we must not omit the darkest and most poetic
hour in all his history, when he cast himself into the hands of
God rather than of men ; and, when under the fiery sword a©d
112 POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS.
the menacing angel, we can conceive admiration for the magnifi-
cence of the spectacle, contending with terror — his cheek pale,
but his eye burning — the king in panic — the poet in transport,
and grasping instinctively for a harp he had not to express
his high-strung emotions. Lightning pausing ere it strikes — the
poison of Pestilence, hung over the " high-viced city" in the
sick air — Death, in the fine fiction of Le Sage, coming up to the
morning Madrid — must yield to this figure leaning over the
devoted city of God, while both earth and heaven seem wait-
ing to hear the blow which shall break a silence too painful and
profound.
Besides Solomon's Proverbs and Poems, there are in his life
certain incidents instinct with imagination. The choice of
Hercules is a fine apologue, but has not the sublimity or the
completeness of the choice of Solomon.
Then there are the sublime circumstances of the dedication
of the temple ; the pomp of the procession by which the aik
was brought up from the City of David to the pi'ouder resting-
place his son had prepared ; the assemblage of all Israel to wit-
ness the solemnity ; the sacrifice of innumerable sheep and oxen
covering the temple and dimming the day with a cloud of fra-
grance ; the slow march of the priests, throu^-h the courts and
up the stairs of the glorious fabric, till the sanctuary was
reached ; the music, which attended the march, peopling every
corner and crevice of the building with its voluminous and
searching swell ; the moment when the sudden ceasing of the
music, in raid-volume, told the people without that the ark was
now resting in its "own place;" the louder strain, of cymbals,
psalteries, harps, and trumpets, which awoke when the priests
returned from the most holy place ; the slow coming down, as
if in answer to the signal of the music, of the cloud of the glory
of God — a cloud of dusky splendor, at once brighter than day
and darker than midnight — the very cloud of Sinai, but with-
out its thunders or lightnings ; the music quaking into silence,
and the priests throwing themselves on the ground, before the
" darkness visible" which fills the whole house, lowerinoj over
POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 113
the foreheads of the bulls of brass, and blackening the waves of
the molten sea ; and the august instant when Solomon, trem-
bling yet elate, mounts the brazen scaffold, and standing dim-
discovered amid a mist of glory, spreads out his hands, and,
in the audience of the people, utters that prayer, so worthy of
the scene, "But will God indeed dwell on the earth ? Behold,
the heaven, and the heaven of heavens can not contain thee, how
much less this house that I have builded ?" Surely Solomon
here, next to Moses on Sinai, had reached the loftiest ^o/ftY ever
permitted to mortal man.
But time would fail us even to glance at the numerous re-
maining poetical incidents, circumstances, and passages in the
historical books. We must omit, reluctantly, the visit of the
Empress of Sheba to Sultan Solomon — Micaiah's vision of
Raraoth-Gilead, and of what was to befall Israel and its king
there — the destruction of Sennacherib and his army, in one
night, by the angel of the Lord — the great passover of Josiah
— and, besides several incidents, already alluded to as occurring
in Ezra and iSTehemiah, the history of Esther — a history so
simple, so full of touches of nature and glimpses into character,
so divine, without any mention of the name of God. The most
impassioned lover is the secret, who never names his mistress.
The ocean is not less a worshiper that she mutters not her
Maker's name. The sun is mute in his courts of praise. In
Esther, God dwells, as the heart in the human frame — not
visible, hardly heard, and yet thrilling and burning in every
artery and vein. No label proclaims his presence, but the lifa
of the book ha^ been all derived from Him.
CHAPTEEYII.
POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS.
We have, in tlie previous chapter, rather outshot the period
of the Psahiis ; but we must throw out a hne, and take up
David, ere we sail further.
No character has suffered more than that of David, from all
sorts of imperfect appreciation. While some have treated him
as a monster of cruelty and lust, classing* him with the JSTeros
and Domitians, others have invested him with almost divine
immunities, as if we had no more right to ask at him than at
God, " AVhat dost thou V — as if his motions had been irre-
proachable as those of the wind, and his vengeance inevitable
as the thunderbolt. David, in our view of him, was neither a
monster nor a deity — neither a bad man nor by any means the
highest of Scripture worthies. William Hazlitt has nowhere
more disgraced his talents, amid his many offenses, than in a
wretched paper in the " Round Table," where he describes David
as a crowned spiritual hypocrite, passing from debasing sins to
debasing services — debauching Bathsheba, murdering Uriah,
and then going to the top of his palace, and singing out his
penitence in strains of hollow melody. Paine himself, even in
his last putrid state, never uttered a coarser calumny than this.
ISTor ever did the pure and lofty spirit of Edward Irving look
nobler, and speak in higher tones, than when, in his preface to
" Home on the Psalms," he gave a mild, yet stern verdict upon
the character of this royal bard — a verdict in which judgment
and mercy are both found, but with " mercy rejoicing against
judgment." Many years have elapsed since we read that
POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 115
paper, and, should our views, now to be given, happen, as we
hope, to be found to coincide with it, we must still claim them
as our own. We remember little more than its tone and
spirit.
David was a composite, though not a chaotic, formation. At
first, we find him as simple and noble a child of God, nature,
and genius, as ever breathed. A shepherd boy, watching now
the lambs, and now the stars, his sleep is peradventure haunted
by dreams of high enterprise and coming glory, but his days
are calm and peaceful as those of the boy in the Valley of Hu-
miliation, who carried the herb " heart's-ease" in his bosom, and
sang (next to David's own 23d Psalm) the sweetest of all pas-
torals, closing with the lines —
" Here little, and hereafter, bliss
Is best from age to age."
And yet this boy had done, even ere he went to the camp of
Israel, one deed of " derring-do ;" he had wet his hands in the
blood of a hon and a bear. This had given him a modest sense
of his own strength, and perhaps begun to circulate a secret
thrill of ambition throughout his veins ; and when he obeyed
the command of Jesse to repair to his brethren in the host, it
might be with a foreboding of triumph, and a smelling of the
battle afar off. We can conceive few subjects fitter for picture
or poetry, than that of the young David measuring the mass of
steel — Goliath — with an eye which mingled in its ray, wonder,
eagerness, anger, and
"That stern joy which warriors feel
In foemen worthy of their steel."
A hundred battles looked forth in that lingering, longing, m-
satiate glance. Every one knows the result to the giant of
Gath: he fell before the smooth sling-stone. The result on
David's mind is not quite so evident ; but we think that all the
praises and promotion he received, did not materially affect the
116 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS.
simplicity of Lis habits, or tlie integrity of liis purposes. Nor
did, at first, the persecution of Saul much exasperate Lis spirit,
balanced as tliat was by the love of Jonathan. But Lis long-
continued flight and exile — the insecurity of Lis life, the con-
verse Le Lad with " wild men and wild usages" in tLe cave of
Adullam and tLe wilderness of ZipL — altLougL they failed in
weaning him from his God, or Lis JonatLan, or even Saul — did
not fail somevvLat to embitter his generous nature, and to ren-
der him less fitted for bearing the prosperity which suddenly
brake upon him. More men are prepared for suddenjdeath
than for sudden success. Even after he had reached the throne
of his father-in-law, there remained long, obscure contests with
the remnant of Saul's party, sudden inroads from the Philis-
tines, and a sullen, dead resistance on the part of the old heathen
inhabitants of the land, to annoy his spirit. And when after-
ward Le Lad brought up the ark of the Lord to the city of
David — when the Philistines were bridled, the Syrians smitten,
the Ammonites chastised, and their city on the point of being
taken — from this very pride of place David fell — fell foully — •
but fell not forever. From that hour, his life ran on in a cur-
rent of disaster checkered with splendid successes ; it was a
tract of irregular and ragged glory, tempering at last into a
troubled yet beautiful sunset. But all the elements for our
judgment of it had been collected by the time that the " matter
of Uriah" was fully transacted.
A noble nature, stung before its sin, and seared before its
time, contending between the whirlpool of passion and the
strong, still impulses of poetry and faith, ruling all spirits ex-
cej)t his oum, and yet forever seeking to regulate it, too, sincere
in all things — in sin and in repentance — butsincerest in repent-
ance — often neglecting the special precept, but ever loving the
general tenor of the law, unreconciled to his age or circum-
stances, and yet always striving after such a reconciliation,
harassed by early grief, great temptations, terrible trials in ad-
vanced life, and views necessarily dim and imperfect — David,
nevertheless, retained to the last his heart, his intellect, his sim-
POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS. Il7
plicit}'', his devotion — above all, bis sincerity — loved bis God,
saw from afar off his Redeemer; and let the man who is " with-
out sin," among' his detractors, cast the first stone. His char-
acter is checkered^ but the stripes outnumber the stains, and the
streaks of light outnumber both. In his life, there is no lurking-
place — all is plain ; the heights are mountains — '^ the hills of
holiness," where a free spirit walks abroad in singing robes ;
the valleys are depths, out of which you hear the voice of a
prostrate penitent pleading for mercy, but nothing is, or can
be, concealed, since it is God's face which shows both the lights
and shadows of the scene. David, if not the greatest or best
of inspired men, was certainly one of the most extraordinary.
You must try him not, indeed, by divine or angelic comparison ;
but if there be any allowance for the aberrations of a tortured,
childlike, devout son of genius — if the nobler beasts of the
•wilderness themselves will obey a law^, and observe a chronol-
ogy, and follow a path of their own, then let the wanderer of
Adullam be permitted to enter, or to leave his cave at his own
time, and in his own way, seeing that his wanderings were
never intended for a map to others, and that those who follow
are sure to find that they are aught but ways of pleasantness or
of peace to them.
David's genius reflects, of course, partially the phases of hia
general character. It is a high, bold energy, combining the
fire of the warrior and the finer enthusiasm of the lyric poet.
This is its general tone, but it undergoes numerous modifica-
tions. At one time, it rises into a swell of grandeur, in which
the strings of his harp shiver, as if a storm were the harper.
Again, it sinks into a deej), solitary plant, like the cry of the
bittern in the lonely pool. At a third time, it is a little gush
of joy — a mere smile of devout gladness transferred to his
strain. Again, it is a quick and earnest cry for deliverance
from present danger. Now, his Psalms are fine, general moral-
izings, and now they involve heart-searching self-examinations ;
now they are prophecies, and now notes of defiance to his ene-
mies ; now pastorals, and now bursts of praise. Ere speaking
118 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS.
of some of them individually, we have a few general remarks
to offer :~—
First, Few of the Psalms are fancy-pieces, or elaborated from
the mind of the poet alone : most are founded upon facts which
have newly occurred, whether those facts be distinctly enun-
ciated, or only implied. David is flying from Saul, and he strips
off a song, as he might a garment, to expedite his flight, or he
is in the hold in the wilderness, and he sings a strain to soothe
his anxious soul, or he is overtaken and pressed hard by the
Philistines, and he makes musical his cry for safety, or he has
fallen into a grievous sin, and his penitence blossoms into
poetry, or he is sitting forlorn in Gath, while the idolaters
around are deriding or denying the Lord God of Israel, and he
murmurs to himself the words : " The fool hath said in his
heart, there is no God," and describes the Lord looking down
in anger upon a world lying in wickedness. This, which is
common to the Psalms, with much of the other poetry of Scrip-
ture, gives an unspeakable freshness, force, and truth to them
all. Each flower stands rooted in truth ; the poetry is just fact
on fire. We have now what is called "occasional poetry," but
the occasions thus recorded are generally small, such as the
sight of the first snow-drop, or the reading of a fine novel in
romantic circumstances. But suppose a Wallace or a Bruce, a
Mina or a Bolivar, a Wellington or a Napoleon, had been
writers, and had let oft' in verse the spray of their adventures,
successes, escapes, and agonies — suppose we had, from iheir
own tongues or pens, Wallace's feelings after Falkirk, or JSTa-
poleon's song of Lodi, or his fugitive poetry during the cam-
paign of 1814 — these had borne some resemblance to the
burning life of David's Psalms.
Secondly, We find in them great variety, extending not only
to the Psalms as a whole, but as separate compositions. Many
of them begin, for instance, with lamentation, and end with
rapture, while others reverse this. In some of the shortest, we
find all the compass of the gamut described, from the groan to
the pean, from the deep self-accusation to the transport of
POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 119
gratitude. Hcuce a singular completeness in tliem, and an
adaptation to the feelings of those mixed assemblies which were
destined to sing them. " Is any merry ? let him sing Psalms ;"
but is any melancholy, few of those Psalms close without ex-
pressing sympathy with his desolate feelings too.
Thirdly, What were the causes of this variety ? It sprang
partly from the varying moods of David's mind, which was sin-
gularly sensitive in its feelings, and rapid in its transitions from
feeling to feehng, and from thought to thought — his life was, and
his poetry is, an April day — and partly because, being a prophet,
his prophetic insight often comes in to shed the bright smile
of his future prospects upon the darkness of his present state.
Fourthly, We notice in the Psalms a " more exceeding"
simplicity and artlessness, than in the rest of even Scripture
poetry. Any current, though it were of blood or of flame,
looks less spontaneous than the single spark or blood-drop.
Many of the prophetic writings have a force, and swell, and
fierceness, approaching to a certain elaboration ; while David's
strains distill, like " honey from the rock." The swift succes-
sion of his moods is childlike. His raptures of enthusiasm are
as brief as they are lofty. Every thing proclaims a primitive
age, a primitive country, and a primitive spirit. Such snatches
of song, unimpregnated with religion, sung the Caledonian
bards in their wildernesses, and the fair-haired Scalds of Den-
mark in their galleys.
Fifthly, The piety of the Psalms is altogether inexplicable,
except on the theory of a peculiar inspiration. The touched
spirit of David, whether wandering in the desert, or seated in
his own palace ; whether in defeat or victory ; whether in glory
or in deep guilt — turns instinctively to heaven. Firmly, with
his blood-red hand, he grasps the Book of the Law of his God !
From old promises, as well ns fresh revelations, he extracts the
hope, and builds up the image of a coming Redeemer ! It is
beautiful especially to see the wanderer of Maon and Engedi,
surrounded by the lion-faces of his men — the center of Israel's
disaffection, distress, and despair — retiring from their company,
120 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS.
to pray, in the clefts of the rock ; or, sleepless, amid their sav-
age, sleeping forms, and the wild music of their breathing,
sino-ino- to his own soul those sacred poems, which have been
the life of devotion in every successive age. It is often, after
all, to such places, and to such society, that lofty genius, like
Salvator's, goes, to extract a desert wealth of inspiration,
which is to be found nowhere else. But it is not often that such
hard-won spoils are carried home and laid on the altar of God.
Sixthly, from all these qualities of the Psalms, arises their
exquisite adaptation to the praising purposes, alike of private
Christians, of families, and of public assemblies, in every age.
We are fiir from denying that other aids to, and expressions of,
devotion may be legitimately used ; but David, after all, has
been the chief singer of the Church, and the hold in the wilder-
ness is still its grand orchestra. Some, indeed, as of old, that
are discontented and disgusted with life, may have repaired to
it, but there, too, you trace the footsteps of the widow and
fatherless. There the stranger, in a strange land, has dried his
tears ; and there those of the penitent have been loosened
in gracious showers. There, the child has received an early
foretaste of the sweetness of the green pastures and still waters
of piety. There, the aged has been taught confidence against
life or death, in the sure mercies of David ; and there, the
darkness of the depressed spirit has been raised up, and away
like a cloud on the viewless tongue of the morning wind. But
mightier spirits, too, have derived strength from those Hebrew
melodies. The soul of the Reformer has vibrated under them
to its depths ; and the lone hand of a Luther, holding his banner
before the eyes of Europe, has trembled less that it was stretched
out to the tune of David's heroic psalms. On them the freed
spirit of the martyr has soared aw^ay. And have not destruction
and death heard their fame, when, on the brown heaths of Scot-
land, the stern lay was lifted up by the persecuted, like a new-
drawn sword, and waved flashing before the eyes of the foemen —
" In Judah's land, God is well known, ""
His name's in Israel great ;
POETRY OP THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 121
In Salem is his tabernacle,
% In Zion is his seat.
There arrows of the bow he brake,
The shield, the sword, the war ;
More glorious thou than hills of prey,
More excellent art far."
Wild, holy, tameless strains, how have ye ran down through
ages, in which large poems, systems, and religions, have per-
ished, firing the souls of poets, kissing the hps of children,
smoothing the pillows of the dying, storming the warrior to
heroic rage, perfuming the chambers of solitary saints, and
clasping into one the hearts and voices of thousands of assem-
bled worshipers; tinging many a literature, and finding a
home in many a land ; and still ye seem as fresh, and young,
and powerful as ever ; yea, preparing for even mightier tri-
umphs than when first chanted! Britain, Germany, and
America now sing you ; but you must yet awaken the dumb
millios of China and Japan.
We select two or three of them for particular survey. We
have first the 8th Psalm, which, if not one of David's earliest
productions, seems, at least, to reflect faithfully his early feel-
ings. The boy's feelings, when crystalized by the force of the
man's experience, are generally genuine poetry. The moods of
youth, when clad in the words of manhood, and directed to its
purposes, become " apples of gold, set in a network of silver."
The inspiring thought, in this solemn little chant, is that of
wonder — the root of all devotion, as well as of all poetry and
philosophy. " When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy
fino-ers — the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained —
what is man ?" The point of view he thus assumes is inex-
phcable, except on the supposition of his entertaining an ap-
proximately true notion of the magnitude of those starry globes.
If they had appeared to him only a few hundred bright
spangles on the black robe of night, what was there in them so
to have dwarfed the earth, with its vast expanse and teeming
popuMion ? But David's imagination and faith combined to turn
122 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS.
his eye into a telescope — a glimmer of tLe true starry scLemo
came like a revelation to his soul ; and, consideriil^ at once the
magnitude of the heavenly bodies, and their order, beauty, and
luster, he cried out, " What is man ?" This was his first feel-
ing ; but it was breathlessly followed by a perception of the
exceeding grandeur of man's position in reference to this lower
world. " Thou hast made him lord over the works of thy
hands below," although these sovereign heavens seem to defy
his dominion, and to laugh over his tiny head. It was not
permitted even to David to foresee the time when man's strong
hand was to draw that sky nearer, like a curtain — when man
was to unfold its laws, to predict its revolutions, and to plant
the flag of triumph upon its remote pinnacles. Since his eye
rested, half in despair, upon that ocean of glory, and since he
drew back from it in shuddering admiration, how many bold
divers have, from every point of the shore, plunged amid its
waters, and what spoils brought home — here the single pearl of
a planet, and here the rich coral of a constellation, and here
again, the convolulted shell of a firmament — besides, what all
have tended to give us, the hope of fairer treasures, of entire
argosies of supersolar spoil, till the word of the poet shall be-
come true —
" Heaven, hast thou secrets ?
Man unbares me, I have none."
As a proper pendant to the 8th Psalm, we name next the
139th.
Here the poet inverts his gaze, from the blaze of suns,
to the strange atoms composing his own frame. He stands
shuddering over the precipice of himself. Above is the All-
enoompassing Spirit, from whom the morning wings can not
save, and below, at a deep distance, appears amid the branch-
ing forest of his animal frame, so fearfully and wonderfully
made, the abyss of his spiritual existence, lying like a dark
lake in the midst. How, between mystery and mystery, his
mind, his wonder, his very reason, seem to rock hke a little
POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 123
boat between the sea and the sky. But speedily does he re-
gain his serenity ; when he throws himself, with childlike haste
and confidence into the arras of that Fatherly Spirit, and mur-
murs in his bosom, " How precious also are thy thoughts unto
me, O God ; how great is the sum of them ;" and looking up
at last in his face, cries—" Search me, O Lord. lean not search
thee ; I can not search myself; I am overwhelmed by those
dreadful depths ; but search me as thou only canst; see if there
be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlast-
ing."
But hark ! the " voice of the Lord is upon the waters." The
God of glory thundereth, and it is a powerful voice which
Cometh forth from the Lord. No marvel that David's blood is
up, and that you see his hand " pav/ing," like Job's war-horse,
for the pen of the lightning. The 29Lh Psalm surpasses all
descriptions of a thunder-storm, including those of Lucretius,
Virgil, and Byron, admirable as all those are. That of Lucretius
is a hubbub of matter ; the lightning is a m.ere elemental dis-
charge, not a barbed arrow of vengeance ; his system will not
permit a powerful personification. Virgil's picture in the
Georgics is superb, but has been somewhat vulgarized to our
feelings by many imitations, and the old commonplaces about
"Father Jove, and his thunderbolts." Byron does not give
us that overwhelming sense of unity which is the poetry of a
thunder-storm — cloud answers to cloud, and mountain to moun-
tain ; it is a brisk and animated controversy in the heavens,
but you have not the feeling of all nature bowing below the
presence of one avenging Power, with difficulty restrained from
breakino; forth to consume — of one voice creating^ the sounds —
of one form hardly concealed by the darkness — of one hand
grasping the livid reins of the passing chariot — and of one sigh
of relief testifying to the feelings of gratitude on the part of
nature and of man — when, in the dispersion of the storm, the
one mysterious power and presence has passed away. It is the
godhood of thunder which the Hebrew poet has expressed, and
no other poet has. Like repeated peals, the name of the Lord
124 POETRY OF THE TIOOK OF TSALMS.
Rounds down all tlio 20Lli J\srilin, solcnmizini;- and harmonizing
it all — " Thu voice of the Lord is upon the waters — the God of
glory thundereth ; the Lord breakoth the cedars of Lebanon ; the
Lord shakcth the wilderness of Jvadcsh ; the voice of the Lord
maketh the liinds to calve, and discovereth the forests ; the
Lord siUoth ii]>oii i\n\ Hood ; the Lord will i;-ive strength unto
his people ; the JA)rd will bless liis people with peace." Thus
are all the j)henouiena of the storm — from the agitated waters
of the sea, to the crashing cedars of Lebanon — from the dej)ths
of Jiashan's forest, bared to its every fallen leaf, and every ser-
pent's hole, in the glare of the lightning, to the premature calv-
ing of the Idnd — from the awe of the quaking wikhirncss, to
the solemn peace and whispered worship of Cod's people in bis
temi)lc — bound together by the name and presence of God as
by a chain of living lire,
" When Bciencc, from creation's faco,
Kiichantinent's vail withdraws,
What lovely visioiia yield their place
To cold material laws."
True, but not merely love/// l)ut dreadful visions recede before
the dawn of science ; while the rainbow becomes less beautiful,
t^ho thunder becomes less sublime. Jiut this poet seems not to
feel, that, when science reaches its noonday, those visions shall
return, for, indeed, they are something better than mere visions.
The thunder, after all, is the voice of (Jod. Every particle of
that tempest is an instant emanation from a present Deity.
Analyze electricity as strictly as you can, the question recurs,
" What is it, whence comes it ?" and the answer must bo,
From an inconceivable, illimitable Tower behind and within
those elements — in one word, from (Jod. So that the boy
who throws himself down in terror before the black cloud,
as before a frown, is wiser than the man of science, who
regards it as ho would its picture. So that the devout female
who cries out, " there's the power to crusli us, were it but per-
mitted," is nearer the truth than the i)ert prater who, amid the
POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 125
play of those arrows of God, takes out his watch to calculate
their distance, or turns round to prove, according to the doc-
trine of chances, that there is httle or no danger. So that
the cono;re<i'ation, who are awed to silence by this oratorv, are
the real savants of the thunder, which must, like all natural
objects, reflect the feelings of the human soul ; and the higher
that soul, it will appear the more mysterious ; and the humbler
that soul, it will appear the more terrible. The ignorant may
regard it with superstition — the great and good must, with
solemn reverence.
The 18th Psalm is called by Michaelis more artificial, and
less truly terrible, than the Mosaic odes. In structure, it may
be so, but surely not in spirit. It appears to many besides us,
one of the most magn-ificent lyrical raptures in the Scriptures. As
if the poet had dipped his pen in " the brightness of that light
which was before his eye," so he describes the descending God.
Perhaps it may be objected that the nodus is hardly worthy of
the vindex — to deliver David from his enemies, could Deity
even be imagined to come down ? But the objector knows not
the character of the ancient Hebrew mind. That mind was
" DRUNK WITH GoD." He had not to descend from heaven ;
he was nigh — a cloud hke a man's hand might conceal
— a cry, a look might bring him down. And why should
not David's fjincy clothe him, as he came, in a panoply be-
fitting his dignity, in clouds spangled with coals of fire ? If
he was to descend, why not in state ? The proof of the
grandeur of this Psalm, is in the fact that it has borne the test
of almost every translation, and made doggerel erect itself, and
become divine. Even Sternhold and Hopkins, its fiery whirl-
wind lifts up, purifies, touches into true power, and then throws
down, helpless, and panting upon their ancient common.
Perhaps the great charm of the 18th Psalm, apart from the
poetry of the descent, is the exquisite and subtile alternation of
the / and the Thou. We have spoken of parallelism, as the
key to the mechanism of Hebrew song. We find this as existing
between David and God — the delivered, and the deliverer —
126 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS.
beautiful]}'- pursued throughout the whole of this Psalm. " I
will love thee, O Lord, my strength." "I will call upon the
Lord, who is worthy to be praised." " He sent from above ;
he took me ; he drew me out of many waters." "Thou wilt
light my candle." " Thou hast given me the shield of thy sal-
vation." " Thou hast girded me with strength unto battle."
" Thou hast given me the necks of mine enemies." " Thou
hast made me the head of the heathen." The Psalm may thus
be likened to a stormy dance, where we see David dancing, not
now before, but by the side of, the Majesty on high. It has
been ingeniously argued, that the existence of the / suggests,
inevitably as a polar opposite, the thought of the Thou^ that
the personality of man, proves thus the personality of God ;
but, be this as it may, David's perception of that personality is
nowhere so intense as here. He seems not only to see, but to
feel and touch, the object of his gratitude and worship.
We must not omit the 104th Psalm, although not probably
from David's pen. It is said by Humboldt to present a pic-
ture of the entire Cosmos ; and he adds — " We are astonished
to see, within the compass of a poem of such small dimensions,
the universe, the heavens and the earth, drawn with a few
grand strokes." Its touches are indeed fevi', rapid — but how
comprehensive and sublime ! Is it God ? — he is "clothed with
hght as with a garment," and when he takes his morning or
his evening walk, it is on the " wings of the wind." The winds
or lightnings ? — they are his messengers or angels : " Stop us
not," they seem to say, " the King's business requireth haste."
The waters ? — the poet shows them in flood, covering the face
of the earth, and then as they now lie, inclosed within their
embankments, to break forth no more forever. The springs ?
— he traces them, by one inspired glance, as they run among
the hills, as they give drink to the wild and lonely creatures
of the wilderness, as they nourish the boughs on which sing
the birds, the grass on which feed the cattle, the herb, the
corn, the olive-tree, and the vine, which fill the mouth, cheer
the heart, and radiate round the face of man. Then he skims
POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 127
Tv'ith bold wing all lofty objects — the trees of the Lord on
Lebanon, "full of sap" — the fir-trees and the storks which are
upon them — the high hills, with their wild goats — and the
rocks, with their conies. Then he soars' up to the heavenlj'-
bodies — the sun and the moon. Then he spreads abroad his
wings in the darkness of the night, which "hideth not from
him," and hears the beasts of the forest creeping abroad to
seek their prey, and the roar of the lions to God for meat,
coming up, vast and hollow, like embodied sound, upon the
winds of midnight. Then, as he sees the shades and the wild
beasts fleeing together, in emulous haste, from the presence of
the morning sun, and man, strong and calm in its light as in
the smile of God, hieing to his labor, he exclaims, "O Lord,
how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them
all !" He casts next one look at the ocean — a look glancing
at the ships which go there, at the leviathan which plays
there; and then, piercing down to the innumerable creatures,
small and great, which are found below its unlifted vail of
waters. He sees, then, all the beings, peopling alike earth and
sea, waiting for life and food around the table of their Divine
Master — nor waiting in vain — till, lo ! he hides his face, and
they are troubled, die, and disappear in chaos and night. A
gleam, next, of the great resurrections of nature and of man
comes across his eye. " Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they
are created, and thou renewest the face of the earth." But a
greater truth still succeeds, and forms the climax of the Psalm
— (a truth Humboldt, with all his admiration of it, notices not,
and which gives a Christian tone to the whole) — " The Lord
shall rejoice in his works." He contem{)lates a yet more per-
fect Cosmos. He is " to consume sinners" and sin " out of" this
fair universe : and then, when man is wholly worthy of his
dwelling, shall God say of both it and him, with a yet deeper
emphasis than when he said it at first, and smiling, at the same
time, a yet warmer and softer smile, "It is very good." And
with an ascription of blessing to the Lord does the poet close
^this almost angelic descant upon the works of nature, the
12'8 POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS.
glory of God, and the prospects of man. It is not merely the
unity of the Cosmos that he has displayed in it, but its pro-
gression, as connected with the parallel progress of man — its
thorough dependence on one Infinite Mind — the "increasing
purpose" which runs along it — and its final purification, when
it shall blossom into the " bright consummate flower" of the
new heavens and the new earth " wherein dwelleth righteous-
ness ;" — this is the real burden, and the pecuhar glory of the
104th Psalm.
We must not linger longer among those blessed Psalms,
whether those of David, or those composed in later times, else
we could have dilated with delight upon the noble 19th, where
the sun of the world, and the law of God, his soul's sun, are
bound together in a panegyric, combining the glow of the one
and the severe purity of the other ; upon the 22d, which some
suppose Christ to have chanted entire upon the cross ; upon the
24th, describing the entrance of the King of Glory into his
sanctuary ; upon the Penitential Psalms, coming to a dreary
climax in the 51st; upon such descriptive and poetic strains
as the 65th ; upon the prophetic power and insight of the '72d
and the 2d ; and on the searching self-communings, and the
spirit of gentleness, humility, and love for God's word, which
distinguish the whole of the 119th. But, perhaps, finer than
all, are those little bursts of irrepressible praise, which we find
at the close. During the course of the book, you had been
conducted along very diversified scenes ; now beside green pas-
tures, now through dark glens, now by still waters, now by
floods, and now by dismal swamps, now through the silent
wilderness, where the sun himself was sleeping on his w^atch-
tower — ^in sympathy with the sterile idleness below ; and now-
through the bustle and blood of battle-fields, where the elements
seemed to become parties in the all-absorbing fury of the fray ;
but, at last, you stand beside the Psalmists, upon a clear, com-
manding eminence, whence looking back on the way they had
been led, forward to the future, and up to their God, now no
longer hiding himself from his anointed ones, they break into
POETRY OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 129
peans of praise ; and not satisfied with their own orisons, call
on ail objects, above, around, and below, to join the hymn, be-
come, and are worthy of becoming, the organs of a universal
devotion. The last six or seven psalms are the Beulah of the
book ; there the sun shineth night and day, and the voice of
the turtle is heard in the land. From a reflection of their fire,
have sprung the hymn which Milton ascribes to our first pa-
rents, the hymn which closes the " Seasons," and the great
psalm v/hich swelled from the harp of Coleridge, as he struck it
to the music of the Arveiron, and in the light of the morning
star. And surely those bright gushes of song, occurring at the
close, unconsciously typify the time when man, saved from all
his wanderings, strengthened by his wrestlings, and recovered
from his falls, shall, clothed in white robes, and standing in a
regenerated earth, as in a temple, pour out floods of praise,
harmonizing with the old songs of heaven — when the nations,
as with one voice, shall sing —
" Praise ye the Lord. God's praise within
His sanctuary raise ;
And to him in the firmament
Of his pow'r give ye praise.
Because of all his mighty acts,
^ "With praise him magnify :
O praise him, as he doth excel
In glorious majesty.
Praise him with trumpet's sound ; his praise
With psaltery advance :
"With timbrel, harp, string'd instruments,
And organs, in the dance.
Praise him on cymbals loud : him praise
On cymbals sounding high.
Let each thing breathing praise the Lord.
Praise to the Lord give ye."
CHAPTEE VIII.
SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY.
We have alread}'' glanced at some of the aspects of this
great man's character ; but that, both as a man, and as a wri-
ter, is far too magnificent and peculiar, not to demand a chap-
ter to itself.
Magnijicence is, indeed, the main quality of Israel's " Grand
Monarque," as Coleridge calls him. The frequent sublimity,
and the fluctuating interest, which surrounded his father's
career, he possessed not. But the springtide of success which
was his history, the abundance of his peace, his inexhaustible
wealth, the pomp of his establishment, the splendor of the
house and the temple which he built, the variety of his gifts
and accomplishments, the richness and diversified character of
his writings, and the manifold homage paid him by surrounding
tribes and monarchs, all proclaimed him " every inch a king,"
and have rendered " Solomon and his glory," proverbial to this
hour. He sat, too, in the center of a wide-spread commerce,
bringing in its yearly tribute of wealth to his treasury, and of
fame to his name. Even when he sinned, it was with a high
hand, on a large scale, and with a certain regal gusto ; he did
not, like common sinners, sip at the cup of corruption, but
drank of it, " deep and large," emptying it to the dregs. When
satiety invaded his spirit, that, too, was of a colossal character,
and, for a season, darkened all objects with the shade of
" vanity and vexation of spirit." And when he suffered, his
groans seemed those of a demigod in torment ; his head be-
came waters, and his eyes a fountain of tears. ThusJ on all his
SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY. 131
sides, bright or black, he was equally and roundly great. Like
a pyramid, the shadow he cast in one direction, was as vast as
the light he received on the other.
No monarch in history can be compared, on the whole, with
Solomon. Fj'om the Nebuchadnezzars, the Tamerlanes, and
similar " thunderbolts of war," he differs in kind, as well as in
degree. lie was the peaceful temple — they were the armed
towers; his wisdom was greater thnn his strength — they were
sceptred barbarians, strong in their military" prowess. In ac-
complishments, and in the combination of good sense with ge-
nius, he reminds us of Julius Cossar; but he, too, was a man of
war from his youth, besides being guilty of ciimes both against
his country and his own person, "^^ blacker far than any recorded
of the proverbialist of Israel ; — a union, let us rather call hira,
of some of the qualities of the " good Haroun Alraschid," with
some of those of our own Alfred the Great. To the oriental
grandeur — the love of peace, poetry, and pleasure which dis-
tinguished the caliph — he added the king's sense of justice, and
homely, practical wisdom.
It was his first to prove to the world that peaoe has greater
triumphs, and richer glories, than war. All the useful, as well
as elegant arts found in him at once a pattern and a patron.
He collected the floating wisdom of his country, after having
intermingled it with his own, into compact shape. He framed
a rude and stuttering science, beautiful, doubtless, in its sim-
plicity, when he " spake of all manner of trees," from the cedar
to the hyssop. He summoned into being the power of com-
merce, and its infant feats were mighty, and seemed, in that
day, magical. He began to bind hostile countries together by
the mild tie of barter — a lesson which mio^ht have been tauo-ht
him, in the forest of Lebanon, by the interchange between the
"gold clouds metropolitan" above, and the soft valleys of Eden
below. He built palaces of new and noble architecture ; and
although no pictures adorned the gates of the temple, or shone
above the altar of incense, or met the eyes of the thousands who
* See Suetonius.
132 SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY.
worshiped within the court of the Gentiles, yet was not that
temple itself — with its roof of nciarble and gold, its flights of
steps, its altars of steaming incense, its cherubic shapes, its
bulls and molten sea — one picture, painted on the canvas of
the city of Jerusalem, with the aid of the hand which had
painted long before the gallery of the heavens ? In poetry, too,
he excelled, without being so filled and transported by its power
as his father ; and, as with David, all his accomplishments and
deeds were, during the greater part oi his life, dedicated to, and
accepted by, heaven.
Such is an outline of his efforts for the advancement of his
country. Amid them all, the feature which most exalts, and
most likens him to Jesus, is the peace of his reign. It was this
which entitled him to build the temple ; it is this which casts
a certain soft green light, like the light of the rainbow, around
his glory; and it is this which directs every Christian eye
instantly to a ^' greater than Solomon," in the promised peace
and blessedness which the 7 2d Psalm predicts as the results
of the reign of David's son. The gorgeous Solomon, and the
humble Jesus, wear one badge — the white rose of peace ; the
one above his crown of gold, and the other anoid his crown of
thorns.
Every man has a dark period in his career, whether it is pub-
licly known or concealed, whether the man outlive or sink be-
fore it. Solomon, too, had his " hour and power of darkness."
Stern justice forbids us to wink at its principal cause. It was
luxury, aggravated into sin. Fullness of bread, security, splen-
dor, wealth, like many suns shining at once upon his head,
enfeebled and corrupted a noble nature. Amid the mazy dances
of strange women, he was whirled away into the embrace of
demon gods. He polluted the simpHcity of the service he had
himself established. He rushed headlong into many a pit,
which he had himself pointed out, till " Wisdom" refused to be
"justified" of this her chosen child. Sorrow trod faithfully
and fast in his track of sin. Luxury begat listlessness, and this
listlessness began soon to burn, a still slow fire, about his heart.
SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY. 133
His misery became wonderful, passing the woe of man ; the
more, as in the obscuration of his great hght, enemies, hke
birds obscene and beasts of darkness, began to stir abroad. The
general opinion of the Church, founded upon the Book of Ec-
clesiastes, is, that he repented and forsook his sins before death.
Be this true or not, the history of his fall is equally instructive.
The pinnacle ever overhangs the precipice. Any great dispro-
portion between gifts and graces, renders the former fatal as a
knife is to the suicide, or handwriting to the forger. We ar-
dently hope that Solomon became a true penitent. But, though
he had not, his writings, so far from losing their value, would
gain new force ; the figure of their fallen author would form
a striking frontispiece, and their solemn warnings would re-
ceive an amen, as from the caves of perdition. A slain Solo-
mon ! — since fell Lucifer, son of the morning, what more im-
pressive proof of the power of evil ? And, like him, he would
seem majestic, though in " ruins" — not " less than archangel
ruined, and the excess of glory obscured." Alas ! is it not still
often so in life ? Do you not often see beings — whom, for their
powers, accomplishments, or charms, you must almost worship
— on whom the sun looks with fonder and more lingering ray —
attracting, by their fatal beauty, the dark powers, and becoming
monuments of folly, or miracles of woe ? Is there not what we
must in our ignorance call a mysterious envy, in the universe,
which will not allow the beautiful to become the perfect, nor
the strong the omnipotent, nor the lofty to reach the clouds ?
That ENVY (if we dare use the word) is yet unsj^ent ; and other
mighty shades, hurled down into destruction, may be doomed
to hear their elder brethren, from Lucifer to Byron, raising the
thin shriek of gloomy salutation, "Are ye also become weak as
we ?" as they follow them into their cheerless regions.
With a bound of gladness, we pass from the dark, uncertain
close of Solomon's hfe, to his works and genius. In these he
exhibits himself in three aspects — a poetical proverbialist, a
poetical inquirer, and a poetical lover ; the first, in his Proverbs
— the second, in the Book of Ecclesiastes — and the third, in the
134 SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY.
Sono- of Songs. But, in all three, you see the true soul of a
poet — understanding poet in that high sense in which the great-
est poet is the wisest man.
David was essentially a lyrical, Solomon is a combination of
the -didactic and descriptive poet. His pictures of folly, and
his praises of wisdom, prove his didactic ; many scenes in the
Song, and, besides others, his picture of old age in Ecclesiastes,
— his descriptive powers. His fire, compared with David's, is
calm and glowing — a guarded furnace, not a flame tossed by
the wind ; his flights are fewer, but they are as lofty, and more
sustained. With less fii-e, he has more figure ; the colors of
his style are often rich as the humming-bird's wing, and pro-
claim, at once, a later age, and a more voluptuous fancy. The
father has written hymns which storm the feelings, melt the
heart, rouse the devotion, of multitudes ; the son has painted
still rich pictures, which touch the imaginations of the solitary
and the thoughtful. The one, though a great, can hardly be
called a wise poet ; the other, was the poet-sage of Israel — his
imagination and intellect were equal, and they interpenetrated.
The Proverbs appear to have been collected by him, with
many important additions, into their present form. A few
others were annexed afterward. They now he before us, a
massive collection of sententious truths, around which Solomon
has hung illustrations, consisting of moral paintings, and of
meditative flights.
We liave first the material, or Proverbs proper. A proverb
may, perhaps, be best defined a common-sense truth, condensed
in a sentence, and sealed or starred with an image. It was
certainly a fine conception, that of curdling up the common
sense of mankind into pleasing and portable form — of driving
the flocks of loose, wandering thoughts from the wide common
into the penfolds of proverbs. Proverbs have been compared
to the flights of oracular birds. They tell great general truths.
They show the same principles and passions to have operated
in every age, and prove thus the unity of man. They engrave,
unintentionally, ancient manners and customs ; and serve as
•SOLOMON AND HIS TOETRT. 135
medals, as well as maxims. Like fables, they convey truth to
the young with all the freshness and the force of fiction. In tho
concipjirative richness or meagerness of a nation's proverbs, may
be read much of its intellect and character ; indeed, Fletcher's
saying about the songs of a country, may be transferred to its
proverbs, they are better than its laws ; nay, they are its laws
— not the less powerful that they are not confined to statute-
books, but wander from tongue to tongue and hearth to hearth.
The Proverbs proper, in Solomon's collection, are not only rich
in truth, but exceedingly characteristic of the Jewish people,
and of those early ages. The high tendencies of the Hebrew
mind — its gravity, its austerity, its constant recognition of
justice as done now, its identification of evil with error (" Do
not they err that devise evil ?"), of crime with folly, and the
perpetual up-rushing reference to Deity as a near Presence —
are nowhere more conspicuous than here. The truth inscribed
in them is rarely abstract or transcendental — towering up to
God, on the one hand, in the shape of worship, it is always
seeking entrance into man, on the other, in the form of prac-
tice. Yet profound as wisdom itself are many of its sentences.
" Man's goings are of the Lord ; how can a man then under-
stand his own way ?" " Stolen waters are sweet, and bread
eaten in secret is pleasant." " The spirit of man is the candle
of the Lord." "Thes righteous wisely considereth the house of
the wicked." " A merry heart doetli good like a medicine ; but
a broken spirit drieth the bones." " The desire of the slothful
killeth him." " Open rebuke is better than secret love." Let
those who are in the habit of regarding the Proverbs as a mass
of truisms, ponder such, and many similar sentences. AVe find
all that is valuable in Emerson's fam.ous essays on " Compensa-
tion" and " Spiritual Laws," contained in two or three of those
old abrupt sentences, which had perhaps floated down from be-
fore the flood. The imagery in which they are enshrined, has
a homely, quaint richness, and adds an antique setting to these
"ancient most domestic ornaments."
Around such strong simplicities, rescued from the wreck of
136 SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY.
ages, the genius of Solomon has suspended certain pictures and
meditations, indubitably all his own. Not only do they stand
out from, and above the rest of the book — not only are they too
lengthy to have been preserved by tradition, but they bear the
mark of his munificent and gorgeous mind. Some of them are
moral sketches, such as those of the simple youth, in the Yth
chapter — of the strange woman, in the 9th — of the drunkard
and glutton, in the 23d — and of the virtuous woman, in the
21st — sketches reminding you, in their fullness, strength, and
fidelity, of the master-pieces of Hogarth, who had them avowedly
in his eye ; others are pictures of natural objects, looking in
amid his moralizings as sweetly and refreshingly as roses at
the open window of a summer school-room. Such we find at
the close of the 27th chapter — "Be thou diligent to know the
state of thy flpcks, and look well to thy herds. The hay ap-
peareth, and the tender grass showeth itself, and herbs of the
mountains are gathered ; the lambs are for thy clothing, and the
goats are the price (or rent) of the field. And thou shalt have
goats' milk enough for thy food, for the food of thy household,
and for the maintenance for thy maidens." A third class consists
of poetic peans in praise of wisdom, and solemn appeals to
those who reject its counsel, and will none of its reproof The
most plaintive of these occurs in the first chapter of the book,
and forms a striking motto upon its opening portals. Scripture
contains no words more impressive than Wisdom's warning —
" Because I called, and ye refused, therefore I will laugh at
your calamity ; I will mock when your fear cometh — when your
destruction cometh as a whirlwind." The laughter of a God is
a tremendous conception. Suppose the lightning a ghastly
smile, and the after-thunder a peal of laughter from the sky at
poor, cowering man ; what a new horror would this add to th«
tragedy of the storm, and yet it were but a hieroglyphic of the
irony implied in Divine derision ! While the giants were pre-
paring, with labor dire, and din far heard, to storm the skies,
the "gods," says Paracelsus, " w^ere calm; and Jove prepared
his thunder — all old tales." But, in the hearing of the Hebrew
SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY. 137
poet, while the kings of the earth are plotting against the
Lord and his anointed, a laugh, instead of thunder, shakes the
heavens, makes the earth to tremble, and explodes in a moment
the long-laid designs of the enemj^, ^vho become frantic more on
account of the contemptuous mode, than the completeness, of the
destruction. What if the last " Depart, ye cursed !" were to
be accompanied by celestial laughter, reverberated from the
hoarse caverns of hell ?
The praise and personification of wisdom, reach Solomon's
highest pitch. To personify an attribute well, is a great
achievement ; to sustain " strength," or " force," or " beauty,"
through a simile or an apostrophe, is not easy, much less to
supply a long soliloquy for the lips of Eternal Wisdom. Ma-
caulay has coupled Bunyan and Shelley together, as masters in
the power of glorifying abstractions — of painting spiritual con-
ceptions in the colors of life ; nay, spoken of them as if they
had been the first and greatest in the art. He has foi-gotten
Eschylus, and those strong life-like forms who aid in binding
Prometheus to his rock. He has forgotten Solomon's Wisdom,
who stands up an " equal among mightiest energies," and
speaks in tones so similar to, that he has often been supposed one
of, the Great Three. Hear the divine egotist — " When he pre-
pared the heavens, / was there ; when he appointed the foun-
dations of the earth, / was by him, and / was daily his delight :
/was set up from everlasting." As inferior only to Solomon
in making metaphors move, and flushing the pale cheeks of ab-
stract ideas, we name Blake and David Scott. To their eyes,
the night of abstraction was clearer than the day ; so-called
dreams appeared, and were realities. They saw the sun stand-
ing still ; they felt the earth revolving; to them, every "isLand"
of appearance had fled away, and the mountains of convention-
alism were " no more found."
We have mentioned the author of the " Pilgrim's Progress."
Interesting in itself, that work is so also, as one of a class
of writings of which Ecclesiastes was the first. We refer to
spiritual autobiographies. We sigh and cry in vain for au
138 SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY.
authentic account of the iiiner life of Shakspeare, or Bacon,
or Buike ; but \vq have that (according to general belief) of
Solomon, that of Banyan, and that of a nioderu who chooses to
entitle himself " Sartor Resartus." It were curious, aird per-
haps something better than cuiious, to review those three ear-
nest histories together. Now, what tirst strikes us about them,
is their great similarity. Three powerful minds, at the distance
of ages, in the most diverse ranks, circumstances, and states of
society, are found, in different dialects, asking the question —
" What shall I do to be saved" — struggling in different bogs
of the same "Slough of Despond" — trying many expedients to
be rid of their bui'dens, and at length finding or fancying they
have found, a final remedy. It is, then, the mark of man to
wear a burden ; it is the mark of the highest men to bear the
heaviest burdens, and it is the mark of the brave and bravest
men to struggle most to be free from them. The sun of the
civilization of the nineteenth century, only shows the burden in
a broader light, and makes the struggle against it more con-
spicuous, and perhaps more terrible. The preacher from the
throne, and the preacher from the tub, utter the same message ;
in all, the struggle seems made in good faith — all are in ear-
nest — all have surrounded their researches with a poetic beauty,
only inferior to their personal interest, and all seem to typify
large classes of cognate minds.
Their difficulties, however, assume diversity of form, and
eliminate diversities of feeling. Solomon's weariness is not
altogether, though it is in part, that of the jaded sensualist;
its root hes deeper. It is the contrast between the grandeur
of the human mind, and the shortness of human life, the mean-
ness of earthly things, and the fi-ailty of the human frame, that
amazes and perplexes him. The thought of such a being,
surrounded by such circumstances, inhabiting such a house,
and dismissed only into the gulf of death, haunts his mind like
a specter. That specter, he in vain seeks to reason away —
to drown, to dissi})ate, or to moralize away, to outstare with a
hardy look, to bring under any theory, to find any path of life
SOLOMON AXD HIS POETRY. 139
where it is not— still it rises before him, embittering his food,
shadowing- his wine-cup, making business a drudgery, the read-
ing or making of books a weariness, and j)leasure a refined
torment. Wild, at times, with uncertainty, he spm-ns at the
very distinctions between riglrt and wrong, knowledge and ig-
norance, and prays to " God to manifest to the sons of men
that they are but beasts" (what a text for Swift ! nay, are not
all his works really sermons on it ?) ; but, -with the specter re-
jected on them, those great barriers arise again, and he con-
fesses, that " Wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth
darkness." Death, being to him but faintly gilded Avith im-
mortality, presents little prospect of relief. And thus does the
wise, w^ealthy, and gifted king toss to and fro, on his couch of
golden fire, and the Book of Ecclesiastes is simply a record of
the uneasy motions, and helpless cries, of a mind as vacant as
vast, seeking to be filled, and awakening an echo only of the
horse-leech's cry, " Give, give."
In Bunyan, the difficulty is rather moral than intellectual.
His spirit is bowed, under a sense of sin, and of its infinite, end-
less consequences. He is humble, as if all hell were bound up
in the burden -on his back. " How shall I be happy on earth ?"
is Solomon's question ; " How shall I cease to be unhappy here
and hereafter ?" is Bunyan's. Both feel themselves miserable ;
but, to Bunyan's mind, his misery seems more the result of per-
sonal guilt, than of the necessary limitations of human life, and
of the human understanding.
In Sartor, we have great doubt and darkness expressed in
the language of the present day. But it is not so. much his per-
sonal imperfecti<yn, or the contrast between the capacities of his
soul and the vanity and shortness of his life, which aflfects him,
as it is the uncertainty of his religious creed. Devoured by the
religious element, as by central fire, the faith of his fathers sup-
plies, he thinks, no adequate fuel. Unable to believe it fully,
he is incapable of hating or of striking at its roots ; he deems
that rottenness has withered it; but is it not still the old elm-
tree under which, in childhood, he sported, mused, and prayed ?
140 SOLOMON AND IIIS POETRY.
No other shelter or sanctuary can he find. And then, in wild,
fierce, yet self-collected, wanderings, " Gehenna buckled under
his calm belt," he walks astray, over the wilderness of this
world, seeking, above all things, after rest ; or that he should
awake, and find his pilgrimage, indeed, to be a dream !
Thus pass on the three notable pilgrims — the crowned Solo-
mon, the bush-lipped and fiery-eyed Baptist, and the strong
literary Titan of this age — each, for a season, carrying his hand,
like the victims in Vathek, upon his breast, and saying, " It
burns." All attain, at last, a certain peace and satisfaction.
The conclusion of Solomon's whole matter is, " Fear God, and
keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."
" Here is one solid spot amid an ocean of vexation, of uncer-
tainty, of contradiction, and of vanity, and on it I will rest ray
weary foot." Bunyan, a poor, burdened sinner, clings to the
cross, and it is straightway surrounded by the shining ones, who
come from heaven to heal and comfort the sufferer. Sartor
says, " I am not meant for pleasure ; I despise it ; happiness is
not meant for me, nor for man ; but I may be blessed in my
misery and darkness, and this is fiir better." All those results
seem beautiful, in the light of the tears and the tortures
through which they have been reached. All are sincere and
strong-felt. But, while the last is vague and unsupported as a
wandering leaf, while the first is imperfect as the age in which
it was uttered, the second is secure in its humility, strong in its
weakness, has ministered, and is ministering, comfort, peace,
and hope — how living and hfe-giving to thousands ! — and if it
fail—
" The pillared firmament is rottenness,
And earth's base built on stubble,"
We leave the machinery, the meaning, and the manners of
Solomon's Song, to Charles Taylor, Pye Smith, and other
critics ; we have a sentence to say as to its spirit and poetry.
It is conceived throughout in a vein of soft and tender feehng,
and sufiused with a rich, slumbrous light, like that of a July
SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY. 141
afternoon, tremblinjr amid beds of roses. There are flowers.
but they are not stirred, but fanned by the winds of passion.
The winds of passion themselves are asleep to their own music.
The figures of speech are love- sick. The dialogues seem carried
on in whispers. Over all the scenery, from the orchards of
pomegranates, the trees of frankincense, and the fountains of the
gardens, to the lions' dens, and the mountains of the leopards,
there rests a languor, like sunny mist, and shines " the bloom
of young desire, and purple light of love." To call all this the
eifect of an oriental climate and genius, is incorrect ; for, first,
all the writings in Scripture were by orientals ; and, secondly,
we find certain occidental poems, such as " Romeo and Juliet,"
or " Lalla Rookh," nearly as rich as the Song. We must
either trace it to some sudden impulse given to the imagination
of Solomon, whether by spring coming before her time — or ap-
pearing in more than her wonted beauty — or flushing over the
earth with more than her wonted spirit-like speed — or by the
access of a new passion, which, even in advanced life, makes all
things, from the winter in the blood to the face of nature, new
and fresh, as if after a shower of sunny rain ; or we may trace
it, with the general voice of the church, to the influence of new
views of the loveliness of Messiah's character and of his future
church, around whom, as if hastily to pay the first-fruits of the
earth's homage to her lord and his bride, cluster in here all
natural beauties, at once reflecting their image and multiplying
their splendors. Solomon might have had in his eye a similar
vision to that afterward seen by John of the bride, the Lamb's
wife, coming down from God out of heaven ; and surely John
himself never described his vision under sweeter, although
he has with sublimer, images. " I am the rose of Sharon, and
the lily of the valleys. As the lily among thorns, so is my love
among the daughters." " Who is she that looketh forth as the
morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an
army with banners ?"
We notice in this poem two classes of descriptions — the one
of persons, the other of natural scenes — and a singular contrast
142 soLOMoisr and his poetry.
between them. Solomon's description of persons is, in general,
gorgeous to exuberance. Images, from artificial and from nat-
ural objects, are collected, till the bride or bridegroom is decked
"vvith as many ornaments as a summer's landscape or a winter's
night sky ; the raven's plumage is plucked from^ his wing, the
dove's eye is extracted from its socket, perfumes are brought
from beds of spices, and lilies led drooping out of their low
valleys — nay, the vast Lebanon is himself ransacked to garnish
and glorify the one dear image ; on the other hand, the descrip-
tion of natural scenes is simple in the extreme, yet beaiitiful as
if nature were describing herself. " The winter is past, the rain
is over and gone ; the flowers appear on the earth ; the time
of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is
heard in our land." This is the green of nature looking in
amid the glare of passion. We have here love first exaggerat-
ing the object beloved, and then retiring to hide her blushes of
shame amid the cool leaves of the garden.
We find, in Shakespeare, a similar intermixture of natural ob-
jects with 23assionate scenes, and a similar subdued tone in their
description. It is not that he does this for the sake of effect,
nor that he quails — he merely cools — before nature. The nat-
ural allusions act like the touch of female affection, laid on the
red brow of passion, and opening the fountain of tears. His
madmen, hke poor Lear, are crowned with flowers ; his castles
of gloom and murder are skimmed by swallows, and swaddled
in delicate air ; in his loneliest ruins lurk wild grasses and flow-
ers, and around them the lightning itself becomes a crown of
glory.
Regarding the question as to the Christmn application of the
Song, as still a moot, and as a non-essential point, we forbear
to express an opinion on it. As a love dialogue, colored to the
proper degree with a sensuous flush, " beautiful exceedingly" in
its poetry, and portraying with elegance, ancient customs, and
the inextinguishable principles of the human heart, this poem is
set unalterably in its own niche. It has had many commen-
taries, but, in our judgment, the only writer who has caught
SOLOMON AND HIS FOETRT. 143
its warm and glowing spirit, is Samuel Rutherford, who has not,
indeed, written a commentary upon it, but whose " Letters" are
inspired by its influence, and have nearly reproduced all its
language. Despite the extravagancies with which they abound,
when we consider the heavenliness of their spirit, the richness
of their fancy, the daring, yet devout tone of their language,
the wrestling earnestness of their exercise, their aspirings after
the Savior, in whom the -writer's soul often sees " seven
heavens," and to gain whom, he would burst through " ten
hells" — we say, blessings and perfumes on the memory of those
dungeons whence so many of these letters came, and on that of
their rapt, seraphic author whose chains have been " glorious
liberty to many a son of God." The soul was strong wdaich
could spring heaven-high under his prison load, and which has
made the cells of his supposed infamy holy and haunted ground,
both to the lovers of liberty and the worshipers of God.
It is with a certain melancholy that we dismiss the great
monarch of Israel. We remember once feeling a strong shud-
der of horror at hearing an insinuation (we believe not true) that
the author of a very popular and awful religious poem, was not
himself a pious man. It was one of those assertions which
make the heart quake, and the hand catch convulsively at the
nearest object, as if earth were sinking below us. But the
thought of the writer of a portion of the Bible being a " cast-
away" — a thought entertained by some of repute in the Chris-
tian world — is far more painful. It may not, as we have seen,
detract from, but rather add to, the effect of his writings ; but
does it not surround them with a black margin ? Does not
every sentence of solemn wisdom they contain, seem clothed
in mourning for the fate of its parent ? On Solomon's fate, we
dare pronounce no judgment; but, even granting his final hap-
l^iness, it is no pleasing task to record the mistakes, the sins,
the sorrows, or even the repentance of a being originally so
noble. If at " evening time it was light" with him, yet did
not a scorching splendor torment the noon, and did not thun-
ders, melting into heavy showers, obscure the after-day ? The
144 SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY.
" glory of Solomon" is a fearful and troubled glory : how dif-
ferent from the meek light of the life of Isaac — most blameless
of patriarchs — whose history is that of a quiet, gray autumnal
day, where, with no sun visible, all above and below seems
diluted sunshine — a day as dear as it is beautiful, and which
dies regretted, as it has lived enjoyed !
CHAPTER IX.
mTRODUCTION TO THE PROPHETIC BOOKS.
We resign to other writers — many of whom are so well com-
petent for it — the task of disproving the theory that the pro-
jDhets were the mere rhythmic historians of past events — merely
the bards of their country. Indeed, one of the shrewdest of
German critics, De Wette, abandons this as untenable, and
concedes them a certain foresight of the futm-e, although he
evidently conceives it to be little better than the instinct of cats
forecasting rain, or of vultures scenting carrion. We propose
at present to make a few remarks illustrative of the prophetic
office among the Hebrews. The general picture of a prophet
has been given already.
The prophet, first, had a supernatural gift. That this was
more than genius, is evident from the terms applied to it ; the
power moving them is always a moral power ; it is the " Holy''^
Ghost — it is a divine power — " the spirit of the Lord is upon
them" — from the purposes served by their utterances, which
are uniformly, not merely artistic, but moral and spiritual — from
the objects presented to their view, often lying hid in regions
which the most eagle-eyed genius were unable to scan — and
from the miraculous circumstances by which so many of their
messages were sealed. That this supernatural power did not
interrupt^ though it elevated, their natural faculties, is evident
from the diversities of style and manner which are found not
only among different prophets, but in diflferent parts of the same
prophecy. This gift, again, operated on the proi:)hets in divers
manners. Sometimes God visited their minds by silent sugges-
G
146 INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPHETIC BOOKS.
tion ; sometimes lie spoke to tliem as lie did to Samuel, by a
voice ; sometimes the prophet fell into a trance or day-dream,
and sometimes God instructed him through a vision of the night ;
sometimes angelic agency was interposed as a medium, and
sometimes God directly dawned upon the soul ; sometimes
future events were distinctly predicted ; sometimes they were
adumbrated in figure ; and sometimes counsel, admonition, and
warning, constituted the entire "burden." Language, often
creaking under the load, was the general vehicle for the pro-
phetic message, but frequently, too, " signs" and " wonders"
of the most singular description were employed to shadow and
to sanction it. The prophet, who at one time only smote with
his hand, stamped with his foot, or cried with his voice, at
another prepared stuff for removing, or besieged a tile, or mar-
ried " a wife of whoredoms," to symbolize the mode, and attest
the certainty, of approaching events. Bolder upon occasion still,
he dared to stretch forth his hand to the wheel of nature, and
it stopped at his touch — to call for fire from heaven, and it
came when he called for it.
The power of prophecy was fitful and intermitting : in this
point, resembling genius. It was, like it,
" A power which comes and goes like a dream,
And which none can ever trace."
In the fine language of Hushai, it lighted upon the prophet as
the " dew falleth upon the ground." Rather, it came upon his
head, and stirred his hair, and kindled his eye, and inflated his
breast, as a gust of wind comes upon a pine, for, though sud-
den, its advent was not soft as the dew. It was a nobler de-
moniac possession. Recovered from it, the prophet resumed
his ordinary occupation, and was a common man once more.
Then, too, his own words seemed strange to him ; he wondered
at them, as we can conceive the f^ibled oak wondering when it
had sweltered honey. He searched what the Spirit did signify
by him, nor probably was he always successful in the search.
INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPHETIC BOOKS. 147
Authors of mere human gift are often surprised at their own
utterances. Even while understanding their general meaning,
there are certain shades, certain emphases, a prominence given
by the spirit of the hour to some thoughts and words, which
seem to them unaccountable, as to a dreamer his converse, or his
singing, when reviewed by the light of day. How much more
must the prophet, through whom passed the mighty rushing
wind of the Divinity, have stared and trembled as he recalled
the particulars of the passage.
Nor was this transit of God, over the prophetic soul, silent as
that of a planet. It was attended by great bodily excitement
and agony. The prophets were full of the fury of the Lord.
The Pythoness, panting upon her stool — Eschylus, chased be-
fore his inspiration, as before his own Furies — Michael Angelo,
hewing at his Moses, till he was surrounded by a spray of stone
— the Ancient Marinere, wrenched in the anguish of the delivery
of his tale — give us some notion of the Hebrew prophet, with
the burden of the Lord upon his heart and his eye. Strong and
hardy men, they generally were ; but the wind which crossed
them, was a wind which could " rend rocks," and waft tongues
of fire upon its wings. In apprehension of its effects, on both
'body and spirit, we find more than one of their number shrink-
ing from below its power. It passed over them, notwithstand-
ing, and, perhaps, an under-current of strength was stirred
within, to sustain them in that "celestial colloquy sublime."
But true inspiration does no injury, and has no drawback.
Nectar has no dregs.
The prophet, thus excited and inspired, was certain to
deliver himself in figurative language. All high and great
thought, as we have intimated before, casts metaphor from it,
as surely as substance produces shadow. The thought of the
Hebrew bard had come from heaven, and must incarnate
itself in earthly similitudes, or remain unuttered. Figure, in
some cases a luxury, was here a necessity of speech. As this
thought, besides, was destined to be coeval with earth, it must
be expressed in that universal cipher which the language of
148 INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPHETIC BOOKS.
figure alone supplies. It, like simliglit, always explains and
recommends itself to every one who has eyes to see. A figure on
the breast of a truth, is like a flower in the hand of a friend.
Hence, its language, like the language of flowers, is free of the
world and of all its ages. It is fine to see the genius of poetry
stooping to do the tasks of the prophetic power. Herself a
" daughter of the king," she is willing to be the handmaid of
her elder sister. Instead of an original, she is content to be the
mere translator, into her own everlasting vernacular, of the
oracles of heaven.
This singular form — its soul the truth of heaven — its body
the beauty of earth — was attached, for wisest purposes, to
the Jewish economy. It acted as God's spur, suspended by
the side of the system, as it moved slowly forward. It gave
life to many dead services ; it mingled a nobler element with
the blood of bulls and goats ; it disturbed the dull tide of na-
tional degeneracy ; it stirred, again and again, the old flames of
Sinai ; it re- wrote, in startling characters, the precepts of the
moral law ; and, in its perpetual and vivid predictions of Mes-
siah's coming, and death, and reign, outshot by ages the testi-
mony of types, rites, and ceremonies. It did for the law what
preaching has done for the Gospel : it supplied a living sanction,
a running comment, and a quickening influence. When, at times,
its voice ceased, the cessation was mourned as a national loss ;
and we hear one of Israel's later psalmists complaining that
" there is not among us a prophet more." And this not that
Asaph lamented that there was none to sing the great deeds of his
country, but that he mourned the decay of the piety and insight
of which prophecy had been the " bright consummate flower."
In truth, prophecy represented in itself the devotion, the in-
sight, and the genius of the land, and of the period when it was
poured forth.
This power was su])jected to a certain culture. Schools of
the prophets seem to have been first established by Samuel.
The pupils were trained up in a knowledge of religion, and in
habits of devotion. These schools were nurseries, and from
INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPHETIC BOOKS. 149
them God miglit, and did, choose, from time to time, his ap-
pointed instruments. Amos seems (vii. 14) to regard it as a
thing uncommon, that though he was a prophet, he had not been
trained in such seminaries. It is supposed by some, that those
sons of the prophets were employed as their assistants, and stood
in the relation which evangelists afterward bore to the apostles.
Lastly, This prophetic vision, centring in Christ, became
clearer as he drew near. At first it is dim ; the character of
the person is but partially disclosed; his divinity ghmmers
faintly on the view, and a cloud of darkness rests on his pre-
destined sufferings — on that perilous " bruising," by which he
was to send forth judgment unto victory. Gradually, however,
it brightens ; the particulars of his mystic agony begin to flash
on the view of the prophets, while, at the same time, his divine
dignity is becoming luminously visible, and while the prospect
of the triumphs, consequent on his death, is stirring their hearts
to rapture ; and, finally, the very date of the hour and power
of darkness is recorded, the place of his birth is disclosed, and
his coming to his father's temple is announced in thunder.
Thus did the " spirit of prophecy" bear a growing testimony to
Jesus. Thus did the long- line of the prophets, like the stars
of moraing, shine more and more, till they yielded and melted
in the Sun of Righteousness. And through this deepening
and enlarging vision it was that the Jewish imagination, and
the Jewish heart, were prepared for his coming. The proph-
ets, kings though they were, over their own economy, were
quite ready to surrender their scepters to a greater than they.
Would that the sovereigns, statesmen, poets, and philosophers
of the present age were equally ready to cast their crowns at
the feet of that expected One, " who shall come, will come, and
will not tarry."
CHAPTER X.
ISAIAH, JEREMIAH, EZEKIEL, DANIEL.
ISAIAH.
" I FELT," says Sir W. Herschel, " after a considerable sweep
through the sky with my telescope, Sirius announcing himself
from a great distance ; and at length he rushed into the field
of view with all the brightness of the rising sun, and I had to
withdraw my eyes from the dazzling object." So have we,
looking out from our " specular tower," seen from a great way
oflf the approach of the "mighty orb of song" — the divine
Isaiah — and have felt awe-struck in the path of his coming.
He was a prince amid a generation of princes — a Titan among
a tribe of Titans ; and of all the prophets who rose on aspiring
pinion to meet the Sun of Righteousness, it was his — the Evan-
gelical Eagle — to mount highest, and to catch on his wing the
richest anticipation of his rising. It was his, too, to pierce
most clearly down into the abyss of the future, and become an
eye-witness of the great events which were in its w^omb in-
closed. Ho is the most eloquent, the most dramatic, the most
poetic — in one word, the most complete, of the Bards of Israel.
He has not the bearded majesty of Moses — the gorgeous natural
description of Job — Ezekiel's rough and rapid vehemence, like
a red torrent from the hills seeking the lake of Galilee in the
day of storm- — David's high gusts of lyric enthusiasm, dying
away into the low wailings of penitential sorrow — Daniel's
awful allegory — John's piled and enthroned thunders; his
power is solemn, sustained — at once measured and powerful ;
his step moves gracefully, at the same time that it shakes the
ISAIAH. 151
wilderness. His imagery, it is curious to notice, amid all its
profusion, is seldom snatched from the upper regions of the
Ethereal — from the terrible crystal, or the stones of fire — from
the winged cherubim, or the eyed wheels — from the waves of
the glassy sea, or the blanched locks of the Ancient of Days ;
but from lower, though lofty objects — ^from the glory of Leb-
anon, the excellency of Sharon, the waving forests of Carmel,
the willows of Kedron, the flocks of Kedar, and the rams of
Nebaioth. Once only does he pass within the vail — " in the
year that King Uzziah died" — and he enters trembling, and
he withdraws in haste, and he bears out, from amid the surg-
ing smoke and the tempestuous glory, but a single " live coal"
from off the altar. His prophecy opens with sublime complaint ;
it frequently irritates into noble anger, it subdues into irony,
it melts into pathos ; but its general tone is that of victorious
exultation. It is one long rapture. You see its author stand-
ing on an eminence, bending forward over the magnificent pros-
pect it commands, and, with clasped hands, and streaming eyes,
and eloquent sobs, indicating his excess of joy. It is true of
all the prophets, that they frequently seem to see rather than
foresee, but especially true of Isaiah. Not merely does his
mind^verleap ages, and take up centuries as a " little thing ;"
but his eye overleaps them too, and seem literally to see the
word Cyrus inscribed on his banner — the river Euphrates
turned aside — the Cross, and him who' bare it. We have little
doubt that many of his visions became objective, and actually
painted themselves on the prophet's eye. Would we had wit-
nessed that awful eye, as it was piercing the depths of time —
seeing the To Be glaring through the thin mist of the Then !
How rapid are this prophet's transitions ! how sudden his
bursts ! how startling his questions ! how the page appears to
live and move as you read ! " Who are these that fly as a
cloud, and as the doves to their windows ?" " Who is this that
Cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah ?" " Who
bath believed our report V " Lift ye up a banner upon the high
mountain!" "Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion ;
152 ISAIAH.
put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem !" " Ho ! every one
that thirsteth, come ye to the waters !" He is the divme de-
scriber of a divine panorama. His sermons are not composi-
tions, but cries, from one who " sees a sight you can not see, and
hears a voice you can not hear." He reahzes the old name
which gradually merged in that of prophet — " seer." He is the
seer — an eye running to and fro throughout the future : and as
you contemplate him, you feel what a power was that sight of
the olden prophets, which pierced the thickest vails, found the
turf thin and the tombstone transparent, saw into the darkness
of the past, the present, and the to come — the most hidden re-
cesses of the human heart — the folds of Destruction itself; that
sight which, in Ezekiel, bare the blaze of the crystal and the
eyes of the wheels — which, in Daniel, read at a glance the
hieroglyphics of heaven — and which, in John, blenched not
before the great white throne. Many eyes are glorious ; that
of beauty, with its mirthful or melancholy meaning ; that of
the poet, rolling in its fine frenzy ; that of the sage, worn with
wonder, or luminous with mild and settled intelligence ; but
who shall describe the eye of the prophet, across whose mirror
swept the shadows of empires, stalked the ghosts of kings,
stretched in their lovehness the landscapes of a regenerated
earth, and lay, in its terror, red and still, the image* of the
judgment-seat of Almighty God ? Then did not sight — the
highest faculty of matter or mind — come culminating to an in-
tense and dazzhng point, trembling upon Omniscience itself?
Exultation, we have said, is the pervading spirit of Isaiah's
prophecy. His are the " prancings of a mighty one." Has he
to tread upon idols ? — he not only treads, but tramples and
leaps upon them. Witness the irony directed against the stock
and stone gods of his country, in the 44th chapter. Does
he describe the downfall of the Assyrian monarch ? — it is to the
accompaniment of wild and hollow laughter from the depths of
Hades, which is " moved from beneath" to meet and welcome
his coming. Great is his glorying over the ruin of Babylon.
With a trumpet voice he inveighs against the false fastings and
ISAIAH. 153
other superstitions of his age. As the panorama of the millennial
day breaks in again and again upon his eye, he hails it with an
unvaried note of triumphant anticipation. Rarely does he miti-
gate his voice, or check his exuberant joy, save in describing
the sufferings of Christ. Here he shades his eyes, holds in his
eloquent breath, and furls his wing of fire. But, so soon as he
has passed the hill of sorrow, his old rapturous emotions come
upon him with twofold force, and no pean, in his prophecy,
is miore joyous than the 54th chapter. It rings hke a marriage
bell.
The true title, indeed, of Isaiah's prophecy is a " song." It
is the " Song of Songs, which is Isaiah's," and many of its notes
are only a little lower than those which saluted the birth of
Christ, or welcomed him from the tomb, with the burden, " He
is risen, he is risen, and shall die no more !"
From this height of vision, pitch of power, and fullness of
utterance, Isaiah rarely stoops to the tender. He must sail
on in
" Supreme dominion,
Through the azure deep of air."
Yet, when he does descend, it is gracefully. " Can a woman for-
get her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on
the son of her womb ? Yea, they may forget ; yet I will not
forget thee." Tears in the eye of a strong man, move more
than all other human tears. But here are tears from a " fire-
armed angel," and surely there is no softness like theirs.
The uniform grandeur, the pomp of diction, the almost pain-
ful richness of figure, distinguishing this prophet, would have
lessened his power over the common Christian mind, had it not
been for the evangelical sentiment in which his strains abound,
and which has gained him the name of " the Fifth Evangelist."
Many bear with Milton solely for his religion. It is the same
with Isaiah. The cross stands in the painted window of his
style. His stateliest figure bows before Messiah's throne. An
eagle of the sun, his nest is in Calvar3^ Anticipating the
154 JEREMIAH.
homage of tlie Eastern sages, lie spreads out before the infant
God treasures of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The gifts are
rare and costly, but not too precious to be offered to such a be-
ing ; they are brought from afar, but he has come farther " to
seek and to save that which was lost."
Tradition — whether truly or not, we can not decide — asserts
that 698 years before Christ, Isaiah was sawn asunder. Cruel
close to such a career ! Harsh reply, this sawing asunder, to
all those sweet and noble minstrelsies. German critics have
recently sought to imitate the operation, to cut our present
Isaiah into two. To halve a body is easy ; it is not quite so
easy to divide a soul and spirit in sunder. Isaiah himself spurns
such an attempt. The same mind is manifest in all parts of the
prophecy. Two suns in one sky were as credible as two such
flaming phenomena as Isaiah. ISTo ! it is one voice which cries
out at the beginning, " Hear, heavens, and give ear, earth"
— and which closes the book with the promise, " And it shall
come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from
one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come and worship be-
fore me, saith the Lord."
JEREMIAH.
Criticism is never so unjust, as when, while exaggerating
one undoubted merit in a writer, she denies him every other.
This is unjust, because a great merit is seldom found alone —
there has seldom, for example, been a great imagination with-
out a great intellect ; and because it is envy which allows the
prominence of one faculty to conceal others which are only ?
little less conspicuous. Burke was long counted by many ^
fanciful, showy writer without judgment; although it is now
universally granted that his understanding was more than equal
to his fancy. It was once fashionable to praise the prodigality
of Chalmers' imagination, at the expense of his intellect ; it
seems now admitted, that although his imagination was not
prodigal, but vivid — nor his intellect subtile, though strong — ■
JEREMIAH. 155
that botli were commensurate. A similar fate lias befallen
Jeremiah. Because lie was plaintive, other qualities have been
denied, or grudgingly conceded him. The tears which often
blinded him, have bhnded his critics also.
The first quality exhibited in Jeremiah's character and his-
tory, is shrinking timidity. His first words are, " Ah, Lord God,
behold I can not speak, for I am a child." The storm of in-
spiration had seized on a sensitive plant or quivering aspen, in-
stead of an oak or a pine. Jeremiah, at this crisis, reminds us
of Hamlet, in the greatness of his task, and the indecision or
feebleness of, his temperament. And yet this very weakness
serves at length to attest the truth and power of the afiiatus.
Jeremiah, with a less pronounced personality than his brethren,
supplies a better image of an instrument in God's hand, of one
moved, tuned, taught, from behind and above. Strong in su-
pernal strength, the child is made a " fenced city, an iron pillar,
and a brazen wall." Traces, indeed, of his original feebleness
and reluctance to undertake stern duties, are found scattered
throughout his prophecy. We find him, for instance, renewing
the curse of Job against the day of his birth. We find him, in the
same chapter, complaining of the derision to which he was sub-
jected, in the discharge of his mission. But he is re-assured, by
remembering that the Lord is with him, as a " mighty terrible
one." His chief power, besides pathos, is impassioned exhorta-
tion. His prophecy is one long application. He is distinguished
by powerful and searching practicalness. He is urgent, vehe-
ment, to agony. His " heart is broken" within him ; his " bones
shake ;" he is " like a drunken man," because of the Lord, and
the words of his holiness. This fury often singles out the igno-
rant pretenders to the prophetic gift, who abounded in the decay
and degradation of Judah. Like an eagle plucking from the
jackdaw his own shed plumes, does Jeremiah lay about him in
his righteous rage. Their dull dreams he tears in pieces, for
" what is the chaff to the wheat, saith the Lord." For their
feigned " burdens," he substitutes a weight of wrath and con-
tempt, under which they sink into ignominy. Mingled with thi :■
156 JEREMIAH.
ardor of spirit, and earnestness of appeal, there are touches of
poetic grandeur. Witness the picture in the 4th chapter, of
the tokens attesting the forthcoming of the Lord to vengeance.
Chaos comes again over the earth. Darkness covers the heaven.
The everlasting mountains tremble. Man disappeai-s from be-
low, and the birds fly from the darkened air. Cities become
ruins, and the fruitful places v»'ildernesses, before the advancing
anger of the Lord. Byron's Darkness is a faint copy of this
picture ; it is an inventory of horrible circumstances, which
seem to have been laboriously culled and painfully massed up.
Jeremiah performs his task with two or three strokes ; but they
are strokes of lightning.
Before closing his prophecy, this prophet must mount a lofty
peak, whence the lands of God's fury, the neighboring idolatrous
countries, are commanded, and pour out lava streams of invective
upon their inhabitants. And it is a true martial fire which in-
spirits his descriptions of carnage and desolation. In his own
language, he is a " lion from the swellings of Jordan, coming up
against the habitation of the strong." All tears are now wiped
from his face. There is a fury in his eye which makes you won-
der if aught else were ever there ; it is mildness maddened into
a holy and a fearful frenzy. In a noble rage, he strips off the
bushy locks of Gaza, dashes down the proud vessel of Moab,
consumes Ammon, makes Esau bare, breaks the bow of Elam,
and brandishes again, and again, and again, a sword over Baby-
lon, crying out at each new blow, " a sword is upon the Chal-
deans ; a sword is upon the liars ; a sword is upon her mighty
men ; a sword is upon their horses ; a sword is upon her treas-
ures." We have difficulty in recognizing the weeper among
the willows in this homicidal Energy, all whose tears have been
turned into devouring fire.
Besides his Lamentations — which have occasioned the general
mistake that he is wholly an elegiac poet — fine strokes of pathos
are scattered amid the urgency, the boldness, and the splen-
dor of his prophecy. His is that melting figure of Rachel,
weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because
JEREMIAH. 167
they are not. His is that appeal to Epiiraim — -" Is he my dear
son ? is he a pleasant child ?" which sounds like the yearning
of God's own bowels. His the plaintive question — " Is there
no balm in Gilead ?" And his the wide wish of sorrow — " Oh
that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears,
that I might weep night and day for the slain of the daughter
of my people !"
And was not this wide wish granted when, in the Lamen-
tations, he poured out his heart in those deep melodies of des-
olation, mourning, and woe ? Here, to use the beautiful lan-
guage of one departed, "the scene is Jerusalem lying in heaps;
the poet, the child of holy inspiration, appears upon the ruins,
and, with notes of desolation and woe, strikes his harp to the
fallen fortunes of his country. It was not that the pleasant
land now lay waste — and it did lie waste ; it was not that the
dauo^hters of Jerusalem were slain, and her streets ran red — and
they did run red ; but it was the temple — the temple of the
Lord, with its altars, its sanctuary, its holy of holies leveled
to the ground — rubbish where beauty stood, ruin where strength
was : its glory fled, its music ceased, its solemn assemblies no
more, and its priesthood immolated, or carried far away. These
had shed their glory over Israel, and over all the land, and it
was the destruction of these which gave its tone of woe to the
heart of the Israelite indeed." Yet the feelings which fill his
heart to bursting are of a complicated character. A sense of
Israel's past glory mingles with a sense of her guilt : he weeps
over her ruin the more bitterly that it is self-inflicted. There
is no protest taken against the severity of the divine judgments,
and yet no patriot can more keenly appreciate, vividly describe,
or loudly lament the splendors that were no more. We can
conceive an angrier prophetic spirit, finding a savage luxury, in
comparing the deserted streets and desecrated shrines of Jeru-
salem with his own predictions, and crying out — " Did I not
foretell all this?" as, with swift, resounding strides, flaming
eye, gaunt cheek, and disheveled hair, he passed on his way
through them, like the spirit of their desolation, to the wilder-
158 JEREMIAH.
ness. Jeremiali views tlie scene with softer feelings, identifies
himself with his country, feels Jerusalem's sword in his own
heart, and lingers in fond admiration of its happier times, when
the sons of Zion were comparable to fine gold — when her Naza-
rites were purer than snow, whiter than milk, more ruddy than
rubies — when the beloved city was full of people, great among
the nations, and a princess among the provinces — the perfection
of beauty, and the joy of the whole earth.
We are reminded of the "Harp of Selma," and of blind
Ossian sitting amid the evening sunshine of the Highland
valley, and in tremulous, yet aspiring notes, telling to his small,
silent, and weeping circle, the tale of
" Old, unhappy, far off things,
And battles long ago."
It has become fashionable to abuse the poems of Ossian ; but,
admitting their forgery, as well as faultiness, they seem to us,
in their h£tter passages, to approach more nearly than any
modern English prose to the force, vividness, and patriarchal
simplicity and tenderness of the Old Testament style. Lifting-
up like a curtain the mist of the past, they show us a world
unique and intensely poetical, peopled by heroes, bards,
maidens, and ghosts, and separated by their mountains from
all countries and ages save their own. It is a great picture,
painted on clouds instead of canvas, and invested with colors
as gorgeous as its shades are dark. Its pathos has a wild sob-
bing in it — an JSolian tremulousness of tone, like the wail of
spirits. And than Ossian himself, the last of his race, answer-
ing the plaints of the wilderness — the plover's shriek, the " hiss"
of the homeless stream, the bee in the heather bloom, the rustle
of the birch above his head, the roar of the cataract behind, in
a voice of kindred freedom and kindred melancholy, conversing
less with the little men around him than with the giant spirits
of his fathers — we have few finer figures in the whole region of
poetry. Ossian, in short, ranks with the Robbers and the Sea-
EZEKIEL. 159
sons, as a work of prodigal beauties, and more prodigal faults,
and, partly through, both, has impressed the world.
We return to the sweet, sad singer of Israel, only to notice
the personal interest he acquires, from the fuller details given of
his history. If less interesting by nature than other prophets, he
is more so by circumstances. Isaiah, Elijah, and Ezekiel, " come
like shadows, so depart." We know little of their ordinary life.
They appear only on great occasions, and their appearance,
like that of a comet, is generally a signal for surprise or terror.
We scarcely can conceive of them suffering from common ca-
lamities, although sublime agonies are often theirs. Isaiah in the
stocks, instead of turning back the shadow of Ahaz ; Ezekiel,
drawn up by a rope of rags from a dungeon, instead of being-
snatched away by the locks of his head toward heaven, seem in-
congruous conceptions. But we find Jeremiah smitten, put in the
stocks, the yoke upon his neck broken ; we see him sinking in
the mire of the dungeons, and drawn up thence by cords ; we
find many similar incidents recorded in his history, which, while
lessening somewhat its grandeur, add to its humanity. " Alas !
my brother," is our exclamation, as we witness his woes. A
brother's voice, now tremulous in grief, now urgent in entreaty,
now loud in anger, and now swelling into lofty poetry, sounds
down upon us through the solemn centuries of the past, and
we grieve that the grave denies us the blessings of a brother's
presence, and the pressure of a brother's hand.
EZEKIEL.
But who dare claim kindred with Ezekiel, the severe, the
mystic, the unfathomable, the lonely, whose hot, hurried breath
we feel approaching us, like the breath of a furnace ? Perhaps
the eagle may, for his eye was as keen ' and as fierce as hers.
Perhaps the lion may, for his voice, too, sounded vast and
hollow on the wilderness wind. Perhaps the wild ass may, for
his step was, like hers, incontrollable. Or does he not turn
away proudly from all these, and, looking up, demand as asso-
160 EZEKIEL. ■*
elates, the most fervid of the burning ones, those who, of the
angeUc throng, stand the nearest, and yet blench the least,
before the throne of God ? Does he not cry, as he sees the
seven angels, holding the seven last vials of divine wrath, and
coming forth from the " smoke of the glory of God," " These
are my brethren," be mine to mingle with these, to be clean as
these, and to bear a like "vessel of the Lord" v.'ith these?
Does he not wish to stand apart even from Isaiah, Daniel, Ha-
bakkuk, and John ?
The comparison of a comet, often used, and generally wasted,
is strikingly applicable to Ezekiel. Sharp, distinct, yet nebu-
lous, swift, sword-shaped, blood-red, he hangs in the Old Tes-
tament sky, rather burning as a portent, than shining as a
prophet. It is not his magnitude, or solidity, so much as his
intensity and his strangeness, which astonish you. It is not the
amount of light he gives which you value so much, as the heat,
the excitement, and the curiosity which he produces. " From
what depths, mysterious stranger, hast thou come ? what are
the tidings of thy shadowed, yet fiery beams? and whither art
thou bound ?" are inevitable questions to ask at him, although
the answers have not yet fully arrived. To use the language
of another, " he is a treasury of gold and gems, but triple-barred,
and guarded by watching seraphim."
The comet, then, is but a fiery sword protecting a system
behind it. To burst beyond a boundary so sternly fixed, and
expound the heights and depths of his meaning, is not our pur-
pose. We shall be satisfied if we can catch, in dim daguerreo-
type, the outline of the guardian shape.
Mark, first, the lofty and visionary groundwork of his pro-
phecy. It is the record of a succession of trances. The pro-
phet usually hangs high between earth and the regions of the
ethereal. A scenery, gigantic as that of dreams, select as that
of pictures, rich as that of fancy, and distinct as that of nature,
surrounds his motions, and swims before his eye. The shapes
which he had seen in the temple come back upon his captive
vision, but come back, altered in form, enlarged in size, and
EZEKIEL. 161
shining in the radiance of the divine glory. How terrific the
composite of the four hving creatures, with their four faces and
wings, seen amid a confusion of hght and darkness, of still fire
and leaping lightnings, of burnished brass and burning coals,
coupled with the high rings of the eyed wheels, unified by the
spirit moving in them all, overhung by the terrible crystal
of a firmament, and that again by the sapphire throne, and
that again by the similitude of a man seated upon it, sur-
rounded, as they pursue their strait, stern path, by the
girdle of a rainbow, which softens the fiery storm, and moving
to the music of a rnultitude of waters, " as the noise of an
host," which is commanded from above by a mightier, solitary
voice — the voice of the Eternal ! What pencil shall repre-
sent to us the glory of this apparition ? or who, but one whose
brow had been made adamant, and whose eye had been cleansed
with lightning, could have faced it as it passed ? Or shall we
look at the prophet again, seized by the form of a man's hand,
lifted up by a lock of his hair between earth and heaven, and
brought from Chebar to Jerusalem ? or shall we follow him, as
he passes down the deepening abominations of his country ?
or shall we witness with him the man clothed with linen, bap-
tizing Jerusalem with fire ? or shall w^e descend after him into
that nameless valley, full of dry bones ? or shall we take our
stand beside him on that high hill, higher far than that of
Mirza's vision, or than any peak in the Delectable Mountains,
and see the great city on the south, or hear the rush of the holy
waters, encompassing the earth ? Visions these, for which the
term sublime is lowly, and the term " poetic" poor. From
heaven, in some clear future day, might be expected to fall
down at once the epithets which can express their glory, and
the light which can explain their meaning.
We mark, next, besides his visions, a singular abundance and
variety of typical acts and attitudes. Xow, he eats a roll, of a
deadly sweetness. Kow he enacts a mimic siege against a tile,
representing Jerusalem. Now he shaves his beard and hair,
burns a third part in the fire, smites a third part with a knife,
162 EZEKIEL.
scatters a third part to the winds, reserving only a few hairs as
a remnant. Now he makes and shows a chain, as the worthy-
recompense of an evil and an insane generation. Now he pre-
pares stuff for removing, and brings it out day after day in the
sight of all. Now he stands with bread and water in his hands,
but with bread, water, hands, body, and head, trembling, £is if
in some unheard storm, as a sign- of coming tremors and tem-
pests among his people. And now, sad necessity, the desire of
his eyes, his wife, is taken away by a stroke ; yet God's seal is
set upon his lips, forbidding him to mourn. It was the sole
link binding him to earth, and, once broken, he becomes
loosened, and free as a column of smoke separated from the sac-
rifice, and gilded into flame by the setting sun.
Such types suited the ardent temperament of the East. They
were its best oratorical gestures. They expressed what the
waving of hands, the bending of knees, and the beating of
breasts, could not fully do. They were solidified figures.
Modern ages can show nothing equal or similar, for Burke's
dagger must, by universal consent, be sheathed. But still the
roll, the tile, the hair, the chain, the quaking bread and water,
of Ezekiel, shall be preserved as specimens of an extinct tongue,
the strangest and strongest ever spoken on earth.
We mark, next, with all critics, a peculiar boldness of spirit
and vehemence of language. How can he fear man, who had
trembled not in the presence of visions, the report of which on
his page is yet able to bristle the hair and chill the blood ?
Thrown into heaven's heat, as into a furnace, he comes forth
indurated to suffering and to shame — his face a flint, his " brow
adamant,''* his eye a coal of supernatural fire. Ever after-
ward, his style seems hurrying in chase of the " wheels," and
his colors of speech are changing and gorgeous as the light
which surrounded them. That first vision seen on Chebar's
banks, becomes his ideal, and all his after-predictions either
reach, or aim at reaching, its glory. A certain rough power, too,
distinguishes many of his chapters. He is " naked, and is not
ashamed." As he felt bound to give a severe and literal tran-
EZEKIEL. 163
script of tlie " things of heaven" which he srav, he conceives
himself bound also literally to transcribe the things of earth and
hell.
Kotwithstanding this impetuosity, there comes sometimes
across his jet black lyre, with its fiery strings, a soft, beauti-
ful music, which sounds more sweetly and strangely from the
medium it has found. It is not pathos, but elegant beauty, re-
posing amid rude strength, like a finished statue found in an
aboriginal cave. There is, for instance, a picture in the 16th
chapter, which a high judge calls the " most delicately beauti-
ful in the written language of men." " Then washed I thee
with water ; yea, I thoroughly washed away thy blood from thee,
and I anointed thee with oil. I clothed thee also with broidered
work, and shod thee with badgers' skin, and I girded thee about
with fine linen, and I covered thee with silk. I decked thee
also with ornaments, and I put bracelets upon thy hands, and a
chain on thy neck. And I put a jewel on thy forehead, and
ear-rings in thine ears, and a beautiful crown upon thine heaS.
Thus wast thou decked with gold and silver, and thy raiment
was of fine linen, and silk, and broidered work ; thou didst eat
fine flour, and honey, and oil : and thou wast exceeding beau-
tiful, and thou didst prosper into a kingdom. And thy renown
went forth among the heathen for thy beauty : for it was per-
fect through my comeliness, which I had put upon thee, saith
the Lord God." This seems a fragment of Solomon's Song ;
it is a jewel dropped from the forehead of his " spouse," and
acts as 2ifoil to the fearful minuteness of description which
characterizes the rest of the chapter. In this point of his genius,
Ezekiel resembles Dante. Like Dante, he loves the terrible ;
but, like Dante too, the beautiful seems to love him.
Sprinkled, besides, amid the frequent grandeurs and rare
beauties of his book, are practical appeals, of close and cogent
force. Such, for instance, are his picture of a watchman's duty,
his parable of sour grapes, his addresses at various times to the
shepherds, to the elders, and to the people of Israel. From dim
imaginative heights, he comes down, hke Moses from the dark-
164 EZEKIEL.
ness of Sinai, with face shining and foot stamping out indig-
nation against a guilty people, who thought him lost upon his
aerial altitudes. He is at once the most poetical and practical
of preachers. This paradox has not unfrequently been exem-
plified in the history of preaching, as the names of Chrysostom,
Taylor, Howe, Hall, and Chalmers, can testify. He who is aHe
to fly upward, is able to return, and with tenfold impetus, from
his flight. The poet, too, has an intuitive knowledge of the
springs of human nature which no study and no experience can
fully supply, and which enables him, when he turns from his
visions to the task, to " pierce to the dividing asunder of soul
and sjDirit, of the joints and marrow," and to become a " dis-
cerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." In Ezekiel's
prophecy, we find visions and practical exhortations almost
equally blended — the dark and the clear alternate, and produce
a fine chiaro-scuro, like
" That beautiful uncertain weather,
"Where gloom and glory meet together."
On the range of prophetic mountains, overlooking the Pagan
lands, Ezekiel, like his brethren, has a summit, and a dark and
high summit it is. The fire which he flings abroad from it
comes from a " furnace heated seven times hotter" than that of
the rest. He daUies with the destruction of Israel's foes ; he
" rolls it as a sweet morsel under his tongue ;" he protracts the
fierce luxury ; he throws it out into numerous imaginative
shapes, that he may multiply his pleasure. He sings in the ear
of one proud oppressor the fate of a former, as the forerunner
of his own. He mingles a bitter ii-ony with his denunciations.
He utters, for example, a laynentation over Egypt ; and such a
lamentation — a lamentation without sorrow, nay, full of exults-
ing and trampling gladness. And at last, opening the wide
mouth of Hades, he throws in — "heaps upon heaps" — all
Israel's enemies — Pharaoh, Elam, Meshech, Tubal, Edom, the
Zidonians, in " ruiu reconciled" — and with a shout of laughter
EZEKIEL. 165
leaves tliem massed together in one midniglit of common de-
struction,
Ezekiel was a priest as well as a prophet, and alludes more
frequently than any of the prophets to the ceremonial institutes
of the temple. He was every inch a Jew ; and none of the
prophets possessed more attachment to their country, more zeal
for their law, and more hatred to its foes. It is not enough for
him to predict the ruin of Zion's 2^resent enemies ; he must
spring forward into the future, organize and bring up from the
far north a shadowy army of enemies, Gog and Magog, against
the mountains of Israel, and please his insatiate spirit of pat-
riotism, by whelming them also in a vaster and a final doom.
And leaving them to their " seven months' burial," he hurries
away, in the hand of God, to the very high mountain, where,
in place of the feUen temple and deserted streets of Jerusalem,
the new city, the new temple, and the new country of the prince
appear before his view, and comfort him under the darkness of
the present, by the transcendent glories of the future hovering
over the history of his beloved people.
Such a being was Ezekiel — among men, but not of them —
detained, in the company of flesh, his feet on earth, his soul
floating amid the cherubim. We have tried to describe him ;
but perhaps it had been our wisdom to have said only, as he
heard it said to an object representing well the swiftness,
strength, and impetuosity of his own spirit — "O wheel !"
Amplification is asserted, by Eichhorn and others, to be the
peculiarity of Ezekiel. It was as truly asserted by Hall, to be
the differentia of Burke. He no doubt describes minutely the
objects before him ; but this because, more than other prophets,
he had objects visually presented, complicated and minute to de-
scribe. But his description of them is always terse and suc-
cinct ; indeed, the stern literahty with which he paints ideal and
spiritual figures is one cause of his obscurity. He never deals
with his visions artistically or by selection, but seems simply to
turn his soul out before us, to daguerreotype the dimmest of his
dreams. Thus, too, Burke, from the vividness of his imagina-
1G6 DANIEL.
tion, seems often to "be rlietoricaily expanding and exaggerating,
while, in fact, lie is but severely copying from the large pictures
which have arisen before his view.
We know little of this prophet's history : it is marked chiefly
by the procession of his predictions, as during twenty-one years
they marched onward to the mountain-top, where they were
abruptly closed. But we can not successfully check our fancy,
as she seeks to represent to us the face and figure of this our
favorite prophet. We see him young, slender, long-locked,
stooping, as if under the burden of the Lord — with a visible fire
in his eye and cheek, and an invisible fire about his motions
and gestures, earnest purpose pursuing him like a ghost, a
wild beauty hanging around him, like the blossom on the
thorn tree, and the air of early death adding a supernatural
age and dignity to his youthful aspect. We see him, as he
moved through the land, a sun-gilded storm, followed by looks
of admiration, wonder, and fear; and, like the hero of " Excel-
sior," untouched by the love of maidens, unterrified by the
counsel of elders, undismayed by danger or by death, climbing
straight to his object. We see him at last, on the Mount of
Vision — the Pisgah of prophecy — first, with rapturous wonder,
saluting the spectacle of that mystic city and those holy waters
— then crying out, " Lord, now let thy servant depart in peace,
for mine eyes have seen thy salvation" — and at last, behold,
the burning soul exhales through the burning eyes, and the
wearied body falls down in his own solitary chamber — for it
had been indeed a " dream," but a dream as true as are the
future reign of Jesus and the future glory of the city and
church of God.
DANIEL.
We require almost to apologize for introducing Daniel into
the same cluster of prophets with Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.
And this not because it is rich enough without him, still less
that he is not worthy of the conjunction, but that he seems at
DANIEL. 167
first to belong to a different order of men. They were proph-
ets, and little else. He was a chief counselor in a great em-
pire. They seem to have been poor, sohtary, and wandering
men, despised and rejected ; he was the favorite of monarchs.
Their predictions exposed them to danger and shame; his
" dreams" drew him aloft to riches and honor. They were ad-
mitted now and then among princes, because they were proph-
ets ; but his power of prophecy made him a prince. Their
predictions came generally naked to their waking eyes — they
■were day-dreams ; but his were often softened and shaded by
the mist of sleep. And yet we do feel justified in putting the
well-conditioned and gold-hung Daniel beside the gaunt, hun-
gry, and wild-eyed sons of the proj^hets we have just been pic-
turing. Souls, and dark piercing eyes expressing similar souls,
are kindred, whether they burn 'neath the brows of beggars or
of kings.
" Sleep on," said an unhappy literary man, over the dust of
Bunyan, in Bunhillfields, " thou prince of dreamers." Prince
the third he was; for, while Joseph is the first, Daniel is the
second monarch in this dim dynasty. His pillow was at times
a throne — the throne of his genius, the throne of empires, and
of all future ages. His imagination, fettered during the day
by the cares of state, lanched out at night into the sea of
futurity, and brought home, from its remotest shores, spoils of
which we are only yet learning the value and the meaning. It
was by understanding the cipher of his own dreams, that he
learned to expound that of others. As the poet is the best,
nay, only true critic of poetry — as the painter can best un-
derstand pictures — and the orator best appreciate, whoever
else may feel, eloquence — the dreamer alone can expound
dreams.
Ovaq Euji Jiog — " a dream is from God," is one of the
earliest, shortest, and truest of sentences. Strange, stuttering,
imperfect, but real and direct messengers from the Infinite, are
our dreams. Like worn-out couriers, dying with their news at
the threshold of the door, dreams seem sometimes unable to
168 DANIEL.
utter their tidings. Or is it rather that we do not yet under-
stand their language, and must often thus lay missives aside,
which contain at once our duty and our destiny ? No theory
of dreams as yet seems entirely satisfactory ; but most imperfect
are those theories which deny in them any preternatural and
prophetic element. AYhat man for years watches his dreams —
ranges them each morning round his couch — compares them
with each other, " spiritual things with spiritual" — compares
them with events — without the profound conviction that a super-
human power is " floating, mingling, interweaving," with those
shapeless shades — that in dreams he often converses with the
dead, meets with the loosened spirits of the sleeping upon com-
mon ground, exerts powers unknown to his waking moments,
recalls the past though perished, sees the present though dis-
tant, and descries many a clear spot through the mist of the
future ? The dreaming world — as the region where all elements
are mingled, all contradictions reconciled, all tenses lost in one
— supplies us with the only faint conception we have of that
awful NOW, in which the Eternal dwells. In every dream does
not the soul, like a stream, sink transiently into the deep abyss,
whence it came, and where it is to merge at death, and are
not the confusion and incoherence of dreams just the hubbub,
the foam, and the struggle, with which the river weds the
ocean ?
But all dreams, which ever waved rapture over the brow of
youthful genius, dreaming of love or heaven, or which ever dis-
tilled poison on the drugged and desperate repose of unhappy
bard or philosopher, who has experienced the " pains of sleep,"
or cried aloud, as he awoke in struggles — " I shall sleep no
more," must yield in magnitude, grandeur, and comprehensive-
ness, to the dreams which Daniel expounded or saw. They are
all colossal in size, as befitted dreams dreamed in the palaces of
Babylon. No ears of corn, blasted or flourishing — no kine,
fat or lean — appear to Daniel ; but here stands up a great
image, with head of gold, breast of silver, belly of brass, and
feet of iron, mingled with mire clay ; and there waves a tree,
DANIEL. 169
tall as heaven, and broad as earth. Here, again, as the four
winds are striving upon tlie ocean, four monstrous forms emerge,
and there appears the throne of the Ancient of Days, with all
its appurtenances of majesty and insignia of justice. • Empires,
religions, the history of time, the opening gateways of eternity,
are all spanned by those dreams. No wonder that monarchs
sprang up trembling and troubled from their sight, and that one
of them changed the countenance of the prophet, as years of
anguish could not have done.
They are recounted in language grave, solemn, serene. The
poetry of Daniel lies rather in the objects presented than in the
figures or the language of the description. The vehemence,
pathos, or fury, which, in various measures, characterized his
brethren, are not found in him. A calm, uniform dignity dis-
tinguishes all his actions and words. It forsakes not his brow
even while he is astonished for one hour in the presence of the
monarch. It enters with him as he enters, awful in holiness,
into the hall of Belshazzar's feast. It sits over him in the
lion's den, like a canopy of state ; and it sustains his style to
its usual even exalted pitch in describing the session of the An-
cient of Days, and the fiery stream which goes forth before
him.
Besides those dreams, there are interspersed incidents of the
most romantic and poetical character. Indeed, Daniel is the
most romantic book of Scripture. There is the burning, fiery
furnace, with ih^ fourth Man walking through it, where three
only had been cast in ; there is the story of Nebuchadnezzar,
driven from men, but restored again to his kingdom, and becom-
ing an humble worshiper of the God of heaven ; there is the
hall of Belshazzar, with the armless hand and unread letters
burning from the wall ; and there is the figure of Daniel in
the den, swaying the lions by his eye, and his holiness — em-
blem of a divine philosophy — soothing the savage passions
of clay. *
Perhaps, after all, the great grandeur of Daniel's prophecy
arises from its frequent glimpses of the coming One. Over all
H
170 DANIEL.
the wondrous emblems and colossal confusions of his visions,
there is seen slowly, yet triumphantly, rising, one head and
form — the form of a man, the head of a prince. It is the Mes-
siah painting himself upon the sky of the future. This vision
at once interpenetrates and overtops all the rest. Gathering
from former prophets the separate rays of his glory which they
saw, Daniel forms them into one kingly shape : this shape he
brings before the Ancient of Days — to him assigns the task of
defending the holy people — at his feet lays the keys of univer-
sal empire, and leaves him judging the quick and the dead.
To Daniel, it was permitted to bring forth the first full birth
of that great thought, which has ever since been the life of the
church and the hope of the world.
And now, too, must this dignified counselor, this fearless
saint, this ardent patriot, this blameless man, this magnificent
dreamer, pass away from our page. He was certainly one of
the most admirable of Scripture worthies. His character was
formed in youth ; it was retained in defiance of the seductions
and of the terrors of a court. His genius, furnished with every
advantage of education, and every variety of Pagan learning,
was consecrated to God ; the window of his prophecy, like that
of his chamber, stood open toward Jerusalem. Over his death,
as over that of the former three, there hangs a cloud of dark-
ness. The deaths of the patriarchs and the kings are recorded,
but the prophets drop suddenly from their airy summits, and
we see and hear of them no more. Was Isaiah sawn asunder ?
We can not tell. Did Jeremiah perish a martyr in Egypt ? We
can not tell. Did Ezekiel die in youth, crucified on the fiery
cross of his own temperament ? We can not tell. And how
came Daniel, the prince of dreamers, to his end ? Did he, old
and full of honors, die amid some happy Sabbath dream ?
Or did he depart, turning his eyes through his open window
toward that beloved city where the hammers of reconstruction
were already^esounding ? We can not tell. No matter : the
messages are with us, while the men are away ; the messages
are certain, while the fate of the men is wrapt in doubt. This
DANIEL. 171
is in fine keeping with the severe reserve of Scripture, and with
the character of its writers. Munificent and modest benefac-
tors, they knocked at the door of the human family at night,
threw in inestimable wealth, fled, and the sound of their feet,
dying away in the distance, is all the tidings they have given
of themselves.
CHAPTER XL
THE MINOR PROPHETS.
Beside the " giant angels" of Hebrew song, appears a series
of "stripling cherubs," who are commonly called the minor
prophets. They inherit this name, because some, though by no
means all of them, flourished at a later date than the others —
because their prophecies are shorter — because their genius was
of a humbler order, although still that order was high — and
because, while their genuineness and inspiration are conceded,
they have never bulked so largely in the eye of the Church.
If the constellation of large stars described in the former chap-
ter may be compared to the cross of the south, this now in
sight reminds us of the Pleiades : it is a mass of minute par-
ticles of glory, which may be somewhat difficult to divide
asunder.
These smaller predictions have all a fragmentary character,
and a great occasional obscurity, which has annoyed translators
and verbal critics. What is written in brief space is generally
written in brief time ; and what is written rapidly is often full
of rude boldness, abrupt transitions, and violent inversions.
Hence, too, a difficulty which touches our province more closely,
the difficulty of defining the peculiarity of each of the prophets.
They have left only footprints on that dim old Hebrew soil,
and from these we must gather their strength, age, and size.
Cuvier's task of inferring a mastodon from a bone, here requires
renewal. The very tread, indeed, of some animals, bewrays
them ; but then, that is either gigantic, as the trami)le of ele-
phants, or peculiar, as the mark which a rare and solitary bird
JONAH. lYS
leaves upon the sand or snow. But here, many rare and soh-
tary birds have left their prints, close beside each other, and
how to distinguish between them ?
The order in which the minor prophets appear in our version
is not the correct one. We prefer that of Dr. Newcome, who
places them according to the respective dates of their lives and
predictions. According to his arrangement, the first is
JON'AH.
All known about this prophet, besides what is told us in his
book, is simply that he liv^ed in or before the reign of Jeroboam
the Second, and was born in Gath-hepher, in the tribe of Zebu-
lun.
The story of Jonah, wondrous as it is, seems, like that of
Cambuscan and Christabel, only " half told." It breaks off so
abruptly, that you almost fancy that a part had been torn away
from the close. " Jonah" possesses little pure poetry. That
song of deliverance, said, by some absurd mistake of tran-
scribers, to have issued from the whale's belly, instead of, as its
every word imports, being sung upon the shore, is the only
specimen of the prophet's genius. Although not uttered, it
was perhaps conceived in the strangest prison where man ever
breathed, fitly called the " belly of hell" (or the grave), where
a deep within a deep, a ward within the " innermost main,"
confined the body without crushing the spirit of the fugitive
prophet. It is a sigh of the sea — a " voice from the deeps,"
audible to this hour. The most expressive word, perhaps, in it
all, is the pronoun " thy" — " thy billows and thy waves have
passed over me." Think of God's ocean being felt as all press-
ing against that hving dungeon, and demanding, in the thunder
of all its surges, the fugitive of Tarshish, and yet, after exciting
unspeakable terror and remorse, demanding him in vain ! With
what a complicated feehng of thankfulness and of reflex terror,
he seems to have regarded his danger and his deliverance ! And
how the strange shrine he had found for groans unheard, vows
174 JONAH.
unwitnessed, and prayers broken by the lasting of tbe mon-
ster's tail, or by the grinding of his teeth, suggests the far off
temple, the privileges of which he had never so much valued,
as now, when, seen from the " belly of hell," it seemed the very
gate of heaven !
But the poetry of the book of Jonah is not confined to this
little strain. Every thing about it
" Suffers a sea change,
Into something rich and strange."
There is, first, the abrupt call to the Jewish prophet, to repair
alone, and confront that great city, the name of which was a
terror in his native land. It was a task which might have
blanched the cheek of Isaiah, and chilled the blood of Ezekiel.
They stood afar off as they predicted the destruction and tor-
ment of Israel's enemies ; but Jonah must draw near, and
encounter fierce looks of hatred, if not imprisonment and death.
And yet, it was not without a severe struggle that he deter-
mined to disobey, for hitherto he had been a faithful servant of
God. But, perhaps, some misbegotten dream had <;rossed his
couch, stunned his soul with the noises of Nineveh, lost him
amid its vast expanse, terrified him with its seas of faces, and
so shaken his courage, that the next day he arose and fled from
the breath of the Lord, crying out. If the semblance be so
dreadful, what must be the reality ? And westward to Joppa,
looking not behind him, ran Jonah. While Balaam was the
first impious prophet on record, Jonah is the first temporizer
and trifler%ith the gift and mission of God. Irritable in dis-
position, perhaps indolent, perhaps self-seeking, certainly timid,
he permits his temperament to triumph over his inspiration.
It is the tale of thousands, who from the voice of the Lord
which surrounds them like an eddying wind, and says, " Onward
to duty, to danger, to glory, and immortality," flee to the Tar-
shish of pleasure or to that of business which is not theirs, or to
that of selfish inaction, or to that of a not less selfish despair.
It is well for them if a storm disturb their course, and drive them
JONAH. 175
into the true port, as poverty did to Johnson, and as misery to
Cowper ; but more frequently —
" As they drift upon their path,
There is silence deep as death" —
silence amid which their last plunge in the dead sea of obliv-
ion, and their last drowning gurgle, become audible, as thunder
on the summer deep.
"We have, as the next scene in this singular history, Jonah
gone down into the ship, and sunk in sleep. This was no
proof of insensibility. Sleep often says to the eyes of the
happy, " Burn on, through midnight, like the stars ; ye have
no need of me ;" but to those of the wretched, " I will fold you
in my mantle, and buiy you in sweet oblivion till the morning
come." In certain states of desolation, there lies a power which
draws down irresistibly the coverlet of sleep. Not in the full-
ness of security, but of insecurity ; not in perfect peace, but in
desperate recklessness, Jonah was overpowered by slumber.
He slept, but the sea did not. The sight of a slumbering
sinner can awake the universe. But the rocking ship, the
roaring sea, and the clamorous sailors, only confirmed the slum-
ber of the prophet — even as the dead in the center of the city
seem to sleep more soundly than in the country — who hears of
their apparitions ? Roused he is at last by the master, who is
more terrified at his unnatural sleep, than at the sea's wild
vigil. " What meanest thou, O sleeper ; arise, call upon thy
God, if so be that thy God will think of us, that we perish
not." The God of the fugitive and slumbering Jonah is felt
after all to be their safety, and in awakening the prophet, they
feel as if they were awakening h^s Deity. He had an angry
God, but they had none.
How different the sleep of Jonah from the sleep of Jesus on
the lake of Galilee ! The one is the sleep of desperation, the
other of peace ; the one that of the criminal, the other of the
child ; the one that of God's fugitive, the other of his favorite ;
the darkness over the head of the one is the frown of anger ;
1*76 JONAH.
the other the mask upon the forehead of love ! But each is
the center of his several ship — each, in different ways, is the
cause of the storm ; in each, in different ways, hes the help of
the vessel ; each must awake — the criminal to lighten the ship
of his burden ; the Son to rebuke the winds and waves, and
produce immediately a great calm.
The moment Jonah entered the ship, instinct probably told
the sailors that all was not right with him. The fugitive from
God carries about him as distinct marks as the fugitive from
man. He, too, has the restless motion, the unhappy eye, the
unaccountable agitation, the mutilated or the melancholy re-
pose. He, too, has the "Avenger of blood" behind him.
Who has not witnessed such God-chased men, fleeing from a
great purpose of intellect, a high ideal of life, noble prospects —
from their happiness itself — and the faster they fled, the more
lamentable become the chase ? And who has not felt, too, that
the place where such recreants were was dangerous, since they
had become as a " rolling thing before the whirlwind" of divine
wrath ? And what inscription can be conceived more painful
than that which must be sculptured upon the sepulehers of such
— " Fallen from a great hope ?" Jonah had betrayed his se-
cret, by words as well as by looks. " He had told them that he
had fled from the presence of the Lord." And after his lot
is drawn, he proffers himself willingly to the sacrifice, for his
conscience had awaked with him, and he began to fear the
roused sea less, than to remain in the midst of a drowning
ship and a desperate crew. It was better to " fall into the
hands of God than of men." And so soon as the victim, who had
been demanded by all those waves, small and great, shrieking
or sunk, clear-crashing or hparse, was yielded to their fury, a
sullen growl of satisfaction first, then a loud signal for retreat,
and, lastly, a whisper commanding universal silence, seem to
testify that the sacrifice is accepted, the ship safe, and Jonah at
the mercy of the deep. Even so when depart the self-stunted
great, or the inconsistent and undeveloped good, man and na-
JONAH. 1Y7
ture seem to say, half in sorrow, and half in gladness, but
"wholly in submission, " It is well."
But Jonah must not yet depart; he had yet work to do, suf-
ferings to bear, sins to contract, a name of checkered interest to
leave to the world. " The Lord had prepared a great fish to
swallow up Jonah." As a " creature of the great calm," which
was suddenly produced on the sea, there appeared, emerging
from the lowermost deep, and attracted, it might be, by the
wondrous silence which had followed the wondrous storm, an
enormous fish, which swallowed the prophet, and descended
with him into the sea again. We do not seek to prove or to
commend this incident to the logical intellect or the sensuous
apprehension ; we look at it ourselves, and show it to others, in
the light of faith. Nor let any one think himself of superior
understanding, because he disbelieves it. If it had been a fool-
ish legend, why h^ve so many self-conceited fools rejected it ;
and why has it been believed by Milton, by Newton, and by
" him who spake as never man spake V As it is, this great
fish doth show its back, " most dolphin-like," above the waves,
and floats at once an emblem of God's forbearance to his feeble
and fugitive ones, and of the faithfulness of his promise to his
own buried son — " As Jonah was three days and three nights
in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and
three nights in the heart of the earth."
After "being thrown out on the shore nearest Assyria, and
singing his song of thanksgiving, Jonah, thus strangely recalled
to his post, is urged again by the word of the Lord to enter
Nineveh. A " dreadful sound," the sound of the sea, is in his
ears, repeating the call. Alone, and unnoticed in a crowd com-
posed of the confluence of all nations, he enters the capital of
the East. After, perhaps, a short silence, the silence of wonder
at the sight of that living ocean, he raises his voice. At first,
feeble, tremulous, scarcely heard, it is swollen by every tributa-
ry street, as he passes, into a loud imperious sound, which all
the cries of Nineveh are unable to drown. " Yet forty days, and
Nineveh shall be overthrown." It is but a simple sentence,
178 JONAH.
uttered again and again, in terms unvaried. Its tones, as well
as its terlias, are the same ; it is a deep monotony, as if learned
from a dying wave. Its effect is aided, too, by the appearance
of the prophet. Haggard by watchfulness, soiled by travel,
" bearded like the pard," with a wild hungry fire in his eye,
he seems hardly a being of this earth. Nineveh is smitten to
the heart. Ere he has pierced one third of it, it capitulates to
the message, the voice, and the figure of this stranger. The
king proclaims a fast, and all, from the greatest to the least,
put on sackcloth. And still on amid these trembling, ftisting,
and sackcloth-clad multitudes, slowly and steadfastly moves
the solitary man, looking neither to the right hand nor to the
left, but uttering, in the same unmitigated tone, the same in-
cessant cry, " Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be over-
thrown."
We have here a striking proof of the power which units,
when placed on the right side — that of God and truth — usually
exert over the masses of men. As the figure one is to the
ciphers, few or many, which range after it, so is the hero, the
saint, the poet, the prophet, and the sage, to their species.
One man enters, thirty-four years ago, the Western Metropolis
of Scotland ; sits quietly down in a plain house, in the north-
west suburb, and writes sermons, which speedily change his
pulpit into a battery, and memorize every Sabbath by a moral
thunder-storm. Private as pestilence, comes another, fis^e years
later, into London, and his wild cry, lonely, at first, as that of
John's in the desert, at last startles the press, the parliament,
the court, the country without, the throne within, and it is felt
that the one man has conquered the two millions. Nay, was
there not, two thousand years ago, from an obscure mount in
Galilee, heard a voice, saying, "Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven ;" and has not that voice,
though clouded by opposition, choked in blood, crushed under
the gravestone, at length commanded the attention, if not yet
the obedience of the world ? Let no one say in despair, " I
am but one ;" in his unity, as in the unity of a sword, lies his
JONAH. 1^9
might — if his metal be true, his singleness is strength — he
may be multiplied, indeed, but he can not be divided. Minor-
ities, and minorities of one, generally do the real work of man-
kind.
The last scene of Jonah's history partakes of the same mar-
velous character with the rest. God determines to spare the
city, at its crying. Jonah is angry. His occupation is gone
• — his character for veracity is impeached — he has become a
false prophet — better have been rolhng in the deep still, than to
face the people of Nineveh when the forty days are past. He
is angry, and he wishes to die — to die, because millions are not !
Expecting the destruction of the city by earthquake or flame
from heaven, he had gone out from it, and erected a booth or
shelter, to screen his head from the sun ; and he is there when
he hears of the respite granted to the city. A fiercer fire than
the sun's is now kindled in his heart ; and, mingling with the
-heat which the booth imperfectly alleviates, it drives him al-
most to frenzy. He assails Omnipotence with savage irony.
In answer, God prepares a large gourd, or species of palm,
which springs up like an exhalation, and steeps his head with
grateful coolness. Jonah is glad of it ; it somewhat mollifies
his indignant feelings, and under its shadow he sinks into re-
pose. He awakes ; the morning has risen like a furnace, but
the gourd is withered ; a worm has destroyed it, its cool shade
is gone, and the arid leaves seem of fire, as they bend above
his head, in a vehement but dry east wind which has sprung
up. He faints, partly in pain, and partly in sorrow because of
the green and beautiful plant, and renews, in bitterer accents,
his yesterday's cry, " It were better for me to die than to live."
Slowly there drop down upon him, from heaven, the words,
" Dost thou well to be angry for the gourd ?" and he answers,
in the quick accents of despite and fury, " I do well to be
angry, even unto death ! Be angry, yea, I could die for my
gourd." "Then, said the Lord, thou hast had pity on the
plant, for which thou hast not labored, neither madest it
grow, whieh in a night rose, and in a night perished (which
180 JONAH.
was not thine, and wliicli only for a few hours was with thee)
And should not I have mercy on that great city, Nineveh,
wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons, who can not
discern between their right hand and left hand (innocent as
the gourd itself!), and also much cattle (poor dumb ones) 1"
And there, to the imagination, still sits the stunned and down-
cast prophet, the great city in sight, and shining in the sun —
the low of hundreds of cattle in his ears— the bitter wind in
his eyes and in his hair — disappointment and chagrin in his
heart — and, hanging over his naked head, the fragments of the
withered plant. Who would care to go and to sit down along
with him ?
And yet not a few have gone, and sat beside Jonah under
that shade of tattered fire ! The fierce, hopeless infidel, who
would like Cain kill his brother, because he can not comprehend
his God ; the dogmatist, who has learned his " lesson of despair"
so thoroughly, that the ease with which he recites it seems a
voucher for its truth ; the gloomy Christian, who lingers many
a needless hour around the skirts of Sinai, instead of seeing its
summits sinking afar off in the distance ; the victim of vanity
and disappointment, who has confounded his voice and identi-
fied its rejection, with the voice and the rejection of God ; the
misanthrope, who says, " Would that all men were liars ;" and
the fanatic, who grieves that the heavens do not respond to his
vindictive feelings, and leave him and his party standing alone
in the solitude which the race has left ; such, and others, have
partaken of the momentary madness, and shared in the dreary
shelter of the prophet.
He, we trust, arose from under the gourd, and humbled,
melted, instructed, resumed the grand functions of his office. It
is of comparatively little moment whether he did or not, as the
principles inscribed on his prophecy remain in any case the
same. These are, first, to fly from duty is to fly to danger ;
secondly, deliverance from danger often conducts to new and
tenfold perils, and involves tenfold responsibilities ; thirdly, a
duty delayed is a duty doubled ; fourthly, the one voice of an
AMOS. 181
earnest man is a match for millions ; fifthly, an error in the
truest prophet can degrade his character, and cast a shade of
doubt upon his name ; and sixthly, God would rather lower the
good report of any of his messengers, than endanger one syl-
lable of his own recorded name, " The Lord God, merciful and
gracious, long-suffering, and slow to anger."
AMOS.
This prophet lived nearly 800 years before Cnnst. While
employed as an herdsman, he was summoned to lift up his voice
against Israel. Driven from Bethel, by the calumnies of the
idolatrous priest Amaziah, he fled to Tekbah, a small town ten,
miles south of Jerusalem ; and afterward, we hear of him no
more.
As Burns among the poets, is Amos among the prophets.
Few, indeed, of that company could be called cultured ; but
Amos was especially destitute of training. He comes straight
from the cattle-stall and the solitary pasture. A strong bull of
Bashan, he leaps in, " two years before the earthquake," and
bellows out, " The Lord will roar from Zion, and utter his voice
from Jerusalem." He turns his first fury upon the neighbor-
ing idolatrous nations ; and short, deep, decisive, are the crashes
of his thunder against Damascus, Gaza, Tyrus, Edom, Amnion,
and Moab. His burdens are only words ; but they are words
of doom. A nation falls in every sentence. " I will send a fire
into the house of Hazael — a fire on the wall of Gaza — a fire on
the palaces of Tyrus — a fire upon Teman — a fire in the wall of
Kabbah." And having flung those forked flashes at the neigh-
boring nations', he pours out on Judah and Israel his full and
overflowing ire. Israel, at the time of Amos, had partially re-
covered its ancient possessions and grandeur, and more than its
ancient pride, injustice, and luxury. It required to be startled
from its sel6sh dream, by the rude cries of this holy herdsman,
whose utterances are abrupt, unvaried, and laconic, as midnight
alarms of fire. Ceremony there is none with Amos. Nor, like
1S2 AMOS.
some of his brethren, does he ever indulge in long and swelling
passages, whether of allegory or description. His prophecy is
principally composed of short threatenings, short prayers, sud-
den exclamations, and, above all, startling questions. "Pre-
pare to meet thy God, O Israel." " Woe unto you who desire
the day of the Lord ! that day is darkness and not light." " I
hate and despise your feast-days." " Take away from me the
noise of your songs." " In all vineyards shall be waihng, for
I will pass through thee, saith the Lord." But interrogation is
his power. He is like a stranger from the country asking his
way through a city. But his questions are rather those of in-
dignation than of surprise. Thus he sounds on his wild uneven
path : — ^" Can two walk together except they be agreed ?" " Shall
there be evil in the city, and the Lord hath not done it?"
" The lion hath roared, who will not fear ?" " The Lord hath
spoken, who can but prophesy ?" " Shall horses run upon the
rock ?" " Are ye not as the children of Ethiopia unto me,
children of Israel, saith the Lord God ?"
The imagery of Amos is generally pastoral, and comes in, like
a cool breeze from Bashan, to temper the ardor of his pro-
phetic vein. The bird, the lion from whose mouth the shep-
herd rescues two legs or the piece of ^n ear, the bear meeting
the man who has escaped the hon, the kine of Bashan, the vine-
yards where he had often gathered fruit, the seven stars and
Orion which he had often watched from his midnight fields, the
plowman overtaking the reaper, and the gatherer of grapes,
the sower of seed — proclaim his original habits and associations.
Two of the principal types employed are selected from the
scenery of the country — the grasshoppers, in the 7th, and the
basket of summer-fruit, in the 8th chapter. In like manner, the
future prosperity of Israel is represented by a rural image. " I
will bring again the captivity of my people Israel ; and they
shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof, and they shall
make gardens, and eat the fruit of them."
There are besides, in Amos, certain brief and bold sublimities,
which class his genius with that of the best of the lesser pro-
AMOS. 183
pbets. Such, in the 9th chapter, is the vision of the Lord stand-
ing upon the altar, and proclaiming the inextricable dilemmas
into which Israel's crimes had led them. In all Scripture
occur no more powerful antitheses than the following : — " He
that fleeth of them shall not flee away ; he that escapeth of
them shall not escape (into safety). If they dig down into
Sheol, thence shall mine hand take them. If they climb up
into heaven, then shall I bring them down. If they hide them-
selves in the top of Carmel, I will search for, and thence will I
take them out. And if they hide themselves from mine eyes,
in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent,
and he shall bite them. If they go into captivity before their
enemies, there will I command the sword, and it shall slay
them, and I will set mine eyes upon them for evil, and not for
good." How the divine omnipresence here rolls itself around
the victims of the divine anger ! In the 139th Psalm, the poet
wishes to escape from the Spirit of God, as from a thought too
strange and overwhelming for him ; but here, Israel would seek
escape from him, as he might from the center of a forest of fire,
but is doomed forever to seek it in vain. An historian has
given an animated description of the impossibility of escape
which beset the steps of the fugitive from the power of the
Roman Emperor. If he crossed the Alps, that power was
before Jiim ; if he crossed the ocean, it was waiting for him
on the shore ; and the tropic or the frigid zone was equally
unable to hide him from its Briarean grasp. Still, there re-
mained for him an avenue of deliverance. He might plunge
into the sea, or turn his sword against his own bowels, or pledge
his oppressor in poison. But for the object of the just ven-
geance of Jehovah, there lay no such way of escape ; he could
not thus set his foe at defiance. The sea w^ould say, " It is
not in me ;" Sheol (or Hades) would re-echo the cry ; if he
dropped into the arms of death, they would but hand him into
those of Death's King ; and if he sought to mount to heaven,
this were to flee into the metropolis of his foe. Other worlds
were barred against him ; or even were their barriers broken,
184 AMOS.
this were only to take down the palisades which blocked the
way of his perdition. The Universe was transfigured into
a menacing shape, fronting the criminal with a face of fire, and
stretching out on all sides its myriad starry hands, to arrest his
retreat, or to shed down dismay upon his guilty soul.
Thus, too, we may, in perfect harmony with the spirit of
Amos, adumbrate not only the idea of God's personal presence,
but of the presence of his laws. These, as well as his eye,
never slumber, and never sleep : they flame on, like chariot
lamps, through the thickest darkness ; they people the remotest
solitudes, and the heather bloom which drops there, and the
httle stream which gurgles — the one drops, and the other
gurgles to their severe melody. The thought of this banishes
solitude from the creation. " How can I be alone, when the
Father is with me," and when all the principles which regulate
suns, are here — on this quaking bog, this peak of snow, this
crag of ocean ? Nay, these omnipresent laws, in their moral
form, are found in far drearier and darker places than the dens
of serpents or of lions. They exist in evil hearts, in polluted
consciences, in the abodes of uttermost infamy. Innocent as
the water and the bread which are there, pure as the light
which shines there, yet terrible as the conscience which often
there awakens, do the laws of God's moral government there
stand, and exercise a real, a felt, though a disputed, sovereignty
— the dawning of their full and final power. " Whither can
men go from their presence ?" It is not the spirit of earthly
law which a great writer has so powerfully painted ; it is the
spirit of universal righteousness which invisibly thus hovers,
and quells even those who doubt or disbelieve the righteous
One. "Ascend we heaven, they are there," for it is these
which constitute our entire knowledge of the stars ; these bind
all worlds into one ; and he who has adequately ascertained the
laws of his own fire, has only to blow its flame broader, to de-
cipher the laws of the " burning, fiery furnace" of the midnight
heavens. Ye silent, steadfast, perpetual principles, so slow, yet
swift — so stern, yet merciful — so low, yet so loud in tone — so uii-
AMOS. 185
assuming, and so omnipotent — so simple in your roots, and so
complicated in your branches — we might sing peans and build
altars in your worship, were it not that we have been taught,
and taught specially by those Hebrew poets, to see, behind and
within you, one living spirit, God over all, blessed forever,
your never-failing fountain, your ever-open ocean, and have
been taught to sing —
" Father of all, we bow to thee,
Who dwell'st in heaven adored,
But present still, through all thy works,
The universal Lord."
Amos has had a singular destiny among his fellows. Many
herdsmen tended cattle in Tekoah, or gathered fruit from its
sycamore-trees, but on him alone lighted the spirit of inspi-
ration. It came to him as, like Elisha, he was employed in his
peaceful toil ; it hurried him to duty and to danger ; it made
him a power among the moral princes of the land ; it gave his
name and his prophecy a place in an immortal volume ; and
from gathering sycamore fruit, it promoted him to stand below
the " tree of life," to pluck from it, and to distribute to after-
ages not a few clusters, as fair as they are nutritious, of its
celestial fruit. All honor to the bold herdsman of Tekoah !
Nor can we close, without alluding again to the unhappy poet
whose name we coupled with his at the beginning — who left
the plow, not at the voice of a divine, but of an earthly im-
pulse — whose snatches of truth, and wisdom, and virtuous sen-
timent, were neutrahzed by counter strains of coarse and ribald
debauchery — who struggled all his life between light, which
amounted to noon, and darkness, which was midnight — who tore
and tarnished with his own hand the garland of beauty he had
woven for the brow of his native land — whose name, broader in
his country's literature than that of Amos in his, is broadened
by the blots which surrounded, as well as by the beauties which
adorned it — and of whom, much as we admire his genius and
the many manly qualities of his character, we are prone to say,
186 HOSEA.
Pity for his own sake and his country's, that he had not tarried
" behind his plow on the mountain-side," for then, if his
" g^ory" had been less, his "joy" had been greater, or, if ruined,
he at least had " fallen alone in his iniquity."
HOSEA.
This prophet seems to have uttered his predictions seven or
eight hundred years before Christ. He was a son of Beeri,
and lived in Samaria. He was cotemporary with Isaiah, and
prophesied nearly at the same time with Joel. He is " placed,"
says an eminent critic, " first among the twelve minor prophets,
probably because of the peculiarly national character which be-
longs to his oracles."
Hosea is the first of the prophets who confines his ire within
the circle of his own country ; not a drop spills beyond. One
thought fills his whole soul and prophecy — the thought of Israel
and Judah's estrangement from God, and how they may be. re-
stored. This occupies him like a passion, and, like all great
passions, refuses to be divided. He broods, he yearns, his
" bowels sound like a harp" over his native land. To her, his
genius is consecrated " a whole burnt-offering" — to her, his
domestic happiness is surrendered in the unparalleled sacrifice of
the first chapter. And how his heart tosses to and f];o, between
stern and soft emotions, toward Ephraim, as between conflicting
winds ! At one time, he is to be as a " lion unto Ephraim ; he
is to tear, and to go away ;" but again he cries out — " How
shall I give thee up, Ephraim? I will not execute my fierce
anger ; I will not turn to destroy Ephraim utter/y." Indeed,
the great interest of the book s|)rings from the vibrations of the
balance in which the nation hangs, rising now high as heaven,
and now sinking as low as hell, till at last it settles into the
calm, bright equilibrium in which the last beautiful chapter
leaves it. The prophecy may be compared to a water-fall
which tears and bruises its way, am.id spray and rainbows,
through a dark gulley, and gains, with difiiculty, a placid pool
HOSEA. 187
at the base, where it sleeps a sleep like the first sleep after
torture.
Abruptness characterizes Hosea as well as Araos ; but, while
in Amos it is the fruit of haste and rural habit, in Hosea it
springs from his impassioned earnestness. He is not only full,
but choked at times with the fury of the Lord. Hence his
broken metaphors ; his sentences begun, but never ended ; his
irregular rhythm ; his peculiar idioms ; the hurry with which he
leaps from topic to topic, from feeling to feeling, and from one
form of speech to another. The flowers he plucks are very
beautiful, but seem to be snatched without selection, and almost
without perception of their beauty, as he pursues his rapid way.
A sublime incoherence distinguishes his prophecy even more
than those of the other prophets. His passages and sentences
have only the unity of earnestness, such a unity as the wind
gives to the disconnected trees of the forest. From this, and
his other peculiarities, arises a great and frequent obscurity.
He is like a man bursting through a deep wood ; this moment
he is lost behind a tree trunk, and the next he emerges into the
opea space. But, perhaps, none of the prophets has, within
the same compass, included such a multitude of short, memo-
rable, and figurative sentences. His coin is minute in size, but
at once precious and abundant.
What texts for texts are the following : — "My people are de-
stroyed, or cut off for lack of knowledge." " Ephraim is joined
to idols; let him alone." "O, Ephraim, what shall I do unto
thee ? your goodness is as the morning cloud, and as the early
dew." " Ephraim is a cake not turned." " Gray hairs are
sprinkled or dispersed upon him, and he knoweth it not."
" They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirl-
wind. As for Samaria, her king is cut off like foam upon the
water." " They shall say to the mountains. Cover us, and to
the hills, Fall on us." " I drew them with the cords of a man,
with the bands of love." " I gave them a king in mine anger,
and I will take him away in my wrath." " O, death, where is
thy triumph ? O, grave, where thy destruction 2" " I will be as
188 HOSEA.
the dew unto Israel." " What hatli Ephraim any more to do
with idols ?" We see many of our readers starting at the sight
of those old femiliar faces, which have so often shone on them,
in pulpits, and from books, but which they have never traced
till now to Hosea's rugged page. He is, we fear, the least read
of all the prophets.
And yet, surely, if the beginning of his prediction somewhat
repel, the close of it should enchain every reader. It is the
sweetest, roundest, most unexpected, of the prophetic perora-
tions. All his woes, warnings, struggles, hard obscurities, and
harsh ellipses and transitions, are melted down in a strain of
music, partly pensive, and partly joyous, fresh as if it rose from
earth, and aerial as if it descended from heaven. The contro-
versies of the book are now ended ; its contradictions reconciled
— the balance sleeps in still light ; God and his people are at
length made one, through the gracious medium of pardoning
love; the ornaments lavished on the bridal might befit that
future and final " bridal of the earth and sky," of which it is
the type and the pledge ; and the music might be that which
shall salute the " Lamb's wife." Hear a part of it. " I will
heal their backslidings, I will love them freely, for mine anger
is turned away from them. I will be as the dew unto Israel
He shall blossom as the lily, he shall strike his roots as Leb-
anon. His branches shall spread, his glory shall be as the olive
tree, and his smell as Lebanon. They that sit under his shadow
shall return ; they shall revive as corn ; they shall break forth
as the vine ; the scent thereof shall be as the wine of Lebanon."
Softest of all droppings, are the last droppings from a thun-
der-cloud, which the sun has brightened, and the rainbow^ bound.
Smoothest of all leaves, are the " high leaves" upon the holly-
tree. And soft and smooth as these droj^pings and leaves,
are the last words of the stern Hosea, whom otherwise we
might have called a half Ezekiel, possessing his passion and
vehemence ; while Zechariah shall reflect the shadowy portion
of his orb, and be nearly as mystic, typical, and unsearchable
in manner and in meaning, as the son of Buzi.
JOEL. 189
JOEL
Stands fourth in the cataloo-ne of the minor bards. Nothino-
"whatever is known of him, except that he seems to have been
of the tribe of Judah, and that he prophesied between seven
and eight hundred years before Christ.
Gloomy grandeur is this bard's style ; desolation, mourning,
and woe, are the substance of his prophecy. Its hero is the
locust, winging his way to the fields predestined for his ravages.
We can suppose Joel, the pale yet bold rider of one of those
shapes in the Revelations, " Locusts like unto horses prepared
unto battle ; on their heads crowns of gold, their faces as the
faces of men, their hair as the hair of women, their teeth as the
teeth of lions, with breastplates of iron, and the sound of their
wings as the sound of many horses and chariots running to
battle." And hark ! how he spurs, instead of restraining, his
terrible courser, crying out, " The day of Jehovah cometh ; it
is near. A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of cloud
and of thick darkness. As the dusk before the dawn spread
upon the mountains, cometh a great people and a strong ; there
hath never been the like of old, nor shall be any more forever.
A fire devoureth before them, and behind a flame consumeth ;
the land before them is as the Garden of Eden, and behind
them a desolate wilderness ; yea, and nothing shall escape
them." So black and broad, as if cast from the shadow of a
fallen angel's wings, is the ruin predicted by Joel.
These locusts have a king and a leader, and, in daring con-
sistency with his own and his country's genius, he constitutes
that leader the Lord. They are his " great camp," his " army,"
they march at his command straightforward; with them he
darkens the face of the earth, and with them, " warping on the
eastern wind," he bedims the sun and the stars. These innu-
merous, incessant, and irresistible insects form the lowest, but
not the least terrible of those incarnations of God, which the
imagination of the Jew delighted to create and the song of the
prophet to describe. JSfow^ the philosopher seldom personifies
190 JOEL.
even the universe ; 'tis but a great and glorious It ; but then,
each beautiful, or dire, or strange shape passing over the earth,
or through the heavens — the shower, the rainbow, the "whirl-
wind, the locust-troop, the mildew, the blight — was God's
movable tent, the place where, for a season, his honor, his
beauty, his strength, and his justice dwelt, the tenant not de-
graded, and inconceivable dignity being added to the abode.
Promises of physical plenty alternate, in Joel, with threaten-
ings of physical destruction. And rich are the years of plenty
■which he predicts to succeed those of famine. " O ye children
of Zion, be glad in Jehovah your God ; for he giveth you the
former rain in measure, and will cause the former and the latter
rain to come down on you as aforetime. And the floor shall
be full of wheat, and the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.
And I will restore to you the years which the locusts have
eaten — my great army which I have sent unto you. And ye
shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied ; and shall praise the name
of Jehovah your God." Such smooth and lovely strains seem
less congenial, however, to Joel's genius than is the progress of
the destroyers. Into that he throws his whole soul. The
" sheaf " of plenty he bears artistically and w^ell ; but he be-
comes the " locust," as he leads him forth to his dark and silent
battle.
But there are still nobler passages than this in Joel's .pro-
phecy. As the blackness of a cloud of doom to that of a swarm
of locusts, is Joel's description of the one to his description of
the other. There are two or three passages in his prophecy
which, like the dove of the deluge, " can find no rest for the
sole of their feet," till they reach the cliff's of final judgment
Touch, indeed, one does, for a moment, upon the roof of that
" one place," where Peter, inflamed beneath the fiery Pentecost,
is preaching to the disciples ; but ere the speaker has closed, he
has risen and soared away toward a higher house, and a far disr
tant age. Another and fuller accomplishment there must be
for the words, " I will show wonders in the heavens, and in the
earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be
JOEL. 191
turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before tbe great
and terrible day of Jehovah come." Nothing, save the great
last day, can fill up the entire sphere of this description. That
there is what we may call a strange and mysterious sympathy
between the various lines of the divine procedure — that when
God's providence smiles, his works in nature often return smile
for smile — and that when his moral procedure is frowning, his
material framework becomes cloudy, threatening, and abnormal,
too, seems proved by facts, as well as consistent with the dictates
of true philosophy ; for although there be those who stand
cowering heloio such singular correspondences with the vulgar,
and those who stand ahove them, like angelic creatures, and
those who stand cqmrt from them, as they do from all strange
and beautiful phenomena, like the minions of mathematics and
the slaves to a shallow logic, there may be those who can stand
on their level and beside them, and see all God's works reflect-
ing, and hear them responding to, and feel them sympathizing
with, each other. And that, when God shall close our present
economy, and introduce his nobler and his last, this may be an-
nounced in the aspects of nature, as well as of society — that the
heaven may blush, and the earth tremble, before the face of
their king — that there shall be visible signs and wonders —
seems at once philosophically hkely, and Scripturally certain.
An earthquake shook the cross, darkness bathed the brow of
the crucified, the rocks were rent, and the graves were opened.
Jerusalem, ere its fall, was not only compassed, but canopied,
with armies. A little time before the French Revolution there
is peace on earth ; is there peace in heaven ? No ; night after
night, the sky is bathed in blood — blood finding a fearful com-
ment in the wars which folio v/ed, in which France alone counted
her five millions of slain — a " sign of the times," which did not
escape the eye of Cowper, as his " Task" testifies. Since then,
once and again, pestilence and civil convulsion have danced
down together their dance of death, and their ball-room has
been lighted up by meteors, which science knew not, nor could
explain. But what imagination can conceive of those appear-
192 JOEL.
ances which shall precede or accompany the coming of God's
Son, and the establishment of his kingdom ? Let the pictures,
bj Joel, by John, and, at a fiir off distance, by Pollok, reraaia
as alone approximating to the sublimity of those rehearsals of
doom. Be it that they are from the pencils of poets, surely
poets are fitting heralds to proclaim the rising of those two
new poems of God — the New Heaven, and the New Earth ;
and is not the language of one of themselves as true as it is
striking —
" A terrible sagacity informg
The poet's heart, he looks to distant storms,
He hears the thunder, ere the tempest lowers."
A kindred event in the future lies obscurely upon Joel's page.
It is the "last conflict of great principles." That this is the
burden of the 3d chapter, it seems difficult to deny. Through
its fluctuating mist, there is dim-discovered the outline of a
battle-field, where a cause — the cause of the world — is to be
fought, fought finally, and to the watchword, " Victory or
death." Nothing can be more magnificent than the picture,
colored though it be by Jewish associations and images. The
object of the fight is the restoration of Judah to its former free-
dom and power. For this, have its scattered members been
gathered, organized, and brought back to their own land. God
has gathered them, but he has also, for purposes of his own, to
use prophetic language, " hissed" for their enemies, from all
nations, to oppose them on the threshold of their triumph. The
valley of decision or excision is that of Jehoshaphat, the deep glen
lying between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives, and which
is watered by the brook Kedron. There " multitudes, multi-
tudes," are convened for the final issue. The field has been
darkened, and over those multitudes a canopy expands, xx^-
lighted by sun, moon, or stars. Under this black sky, the sea
of heathen fury and numbers is advancing, and the people of
God are, in deep suspense and silence, awaiting its first break-
ing billow. The contest at last begins, when lo ! there is a
JOEL. 193
glare on Olivet, ^^'hich sliows also the whole expanse of Je-
hoshaphat's valley, and also the faces of the foemen, as they
draw nigh ; and hark ! there is a voice from Zion which shakes
earth and heaven, and tells that the delivery is near ; and then,
between Olivet and Jerusalem, and hanging high over the nar-
row vale, appears the Lord himself, " the hope of his people,
and the stronghold of the children of Israel." And as the re-
sult of this sudden intervention, when the fight is decided, " the
mountains drop down sweet wine, the hills flow with milk, the
torrents of Judah flow with water, a fountain comes forth from
the House of Jehovah, and waters the valley of Shittim," and
innumerable voices proclaim that henceforth the "Lord will
dwell in," as he has delivered, Zion.
Was there ever preparation on a larger scale; suspense
deeper ; deliverance more sudden ; or a catastrophe more sub-
lime ? We stay not no'^ critically to inquire how much there
is of what is literal, and how much of what is metaphorical, in
this description. To tell accurately where, in prophetic lan-
guage, the metaphor falls from around the fact, and the fact
pierces the bud of the metaphor, is one of the most difficult of
tasks ; as difficult, almost, as to settle the border line between
the body and the soul. But, apart from this, we think there is
no candid reader of the close of Joel, but must be impressed
with the reality of the contest recorded there, with its modern
date, its awful breadth of field, its momentous and final char-
acter. It is, in all the extent of the words, that war of opinion
so often partially predicted and partially fought. It is a con-
test between the real followers of Christ, out of every kindred,
denomination, tongue, and people, and the open enemies and
the pretended friends of his cause. It is a contest of which the
materials are already being collected. It is a contest which, as
it hurtles on, shall probably shake all churches to their foun-
dations, and give a new and strange arrangement to all parties.
It is a contest for which intelligent men and Christians should
be preparing, not by shutting themselves up within the fast-
nesses of party, nor by strengthening more strongly the stakes
I
194 MIC AH.
of a bygone implicit narrowness of creed, but by the exercise
of a wise liberality, a cautious circumspection, and a manly
courage, blended with candor, and by being prepared to sacri-
fice many an outpost, and relinquish many a false front of
battle, provided they can save the citadel, and keep the banner
of the cross flying, free and safe above it. It is a contest which
may, in all probability, become at last more or less literal, as
when did any great war of mind fail to dye its garments in
blood. It is a contest of whose where and when we may not
speak, since the strongest prophetic breath has not raised the
mists which overhang the plain of Armageddon. It is a con-
test, finally, which promises to issue in a supernatural interven-
tion, and over the smoke of its bloody and desperate battle-field,
to show the crown of the coming of the Son of Man.
MICAH.
He is called the Morasthite, because born in Mareshah, a
village in the south of the territory of Judah. He prophesied
during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. We find a
remarkable allusion to him in the book of Jeremiah. That
prophet had predicted the utter desolation of the temple and city
of Jerusalem. The priests and prophets thereupon accused him
to the princes and the people, as worthy to die, because he had
prophesied against the city. The threat is about to be put in
execution, when some of the elders rise up and adduce the case
of Micah. " Micah, the Morasthite, prophesied in the days of
Ilezekiah, king of Judah, saying, Thus saith the Lord of Hosts,
Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become
heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of
the forest. Did Hezekiah, king of Judah, and all Judah, put him
at all to death ? did he not fear the Lord, and besought the
Lord, and the Lord repented him of the evil which he had pro-
nounced against them ? Thus might we procure great evil against
our souls." Micah was pleaded as a precedent, nor was ho
pleaded in vain.
MICAH. 195
Tliis prophet is noted principally for the condensation of his
language, the rapidity of his transitions, the force and brevity of
his pictures, the form of dialogue to which he often approaches,
and for two or three splendid passages which tower above the
rest of his prophecy, like cedars above the meaner trees. One
of these records the sudden gleam of insight which showed him,
in the future, Bethlehem-Ephratah sending out its illustrious
progeny, one whose goings forth had been from of old, from the
" Eternal obscure." How lovely those streams of prophetic
illumination, which fall from aflu*, like autumn sunshine upon
secret and lonely spots, and crown them with a glory unknown,
to themselves ! Bethlehem becomes beautiful beyond itself, in
the luster of the Savior's rising. Another, for moral grandeur,
is almost unequaled in Scripture, and sounds like the knell of
the ceremonial economy. "Wherewith shall I come before
Jehovah, and bow myself before the Most High God ? Shall I
come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old ?
Will Jehovah be well pleased with thousands of rams, with ten
thousands of rivers of oil ? Shall I give my first-born for my
transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ? He
hath showed thee, O man, what is good. And what doth Je-
hovah require of thee, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and
to walk humbly with thy God ?" Here the burden of the 50th
Psalm is uttered more sententiously, although not with such
av/ful accompaniments. Both announce the prospective arrival
of a period, when the husk of type and statutory observance
was to drop from around the fruit it had protected and con-
cealed, when equity was to outsoar law, mercy to rejoice over
sacrifice, and humility to take the room of ceremonial holiness
— when that " which had decayed and w^axed old was to vanish
away."
In this liberal spirit, as well as in certain passages of Micah's
prophecy, we descry the influence of the great orb which ap-
peared above the horizon at the same time — Isaiah. The close
of the Tth chapter is almost identical with a passage in Isaiah ;
but the main coincidence occurs in the 4th chapter. Critics
196 MICAH.
have doubted whether the opening of this was copied by Isaiah
from Micah, or by Micah from the 2d chapter of Isaiah ; or
whether it were communicated by the Spirit separately to both.
This is a matter of Utile moment ; certainly the strain itself was
worthy of repetition.
It is a vision of the future glories of the Church. The pro-
phet finds an emblem of it in Mount Sion, or the mountain of
the temple of" the Lord. This was not remarkable for height.
Far loftier mountains arose throughout Palestine. There were
the mountains which stand alway about Jerusalem. There
was Salmon, with its perpetual snow. There were the moun-
tains of Gilboa, where Saul and Jonathan, who had been lovely
in their lives, in their death were not divided. There was
Carmel, shadowing the waters of the west, and covered, to its
summit, with a robe of undying green. There was Tabor, ris-
ing, like an island, from the plain of Esdraelon, which lies like
an ocean around it. And in the north, stood the great form of
Lebanon, rising above the clouds, and covered with the cedars
of God—
" Whose head in wintry grandeur towers,
And whitens with eternal sleet ;
"While summer, in a vale of flowers,
Is smiling rosy at his feet."
Compared to these and others, Mount Sion was but a little hill
— a mere dot on the surface of the globe. But dearer it was
than any or all of them to Micah's heart. And why ? because
it was the mountain of the Lord's house. No temple stood on
Tabor ; no incense streamed from Carmel ; to Lebanon no tribes
went up, nor sacrifices ascended from its cedarn summits. Sion
alone represented the position of the Church — not to be com-
pared in magnificence or in multitude of votaries with other
systems, but possessing, in the presence of the Spirit of the
Lord, a principle of divine life and an element of everlasting
progress.
But the prophet has now a " vision of his own." Sion in his
MIC AH. 197
dream, begins to stir, to move, to rise. It first surmounts the
hills which are around Jerusalem ; then rises higher than Car-
mel, that solitary mountain of the west ; then overtops Tabor ;
and springs up, at last, as far above Lebanon as Lebanon was
above the meaner hills of the land. It is established on the top
of the mountains, and exalted above the hills, and up to it he
sees flocking all nations. It has become the center of the
world. It gives law to every people and tongue. The Lord
himself sits in the midst of it, distributing justice impartially
to all near and far off. And around and within the shadow
of his universal throne, the prophet beholds many hammering
their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into pruning-
hooks — others sitting below their vine and fig-tree — and all
calm, peaceful, and happy, under the solitary scepter of Jehovah.
Thus shaped itself on Micah's eye a prospect which must
yet be transferred from his to the broad page of the world.
Like Sion, the Church is, in one view, very small. Hindoos
and Chinese speak of her as a low heresy, creeping about the
mountains and marshes of Europe ; and contrast her with their
ancient and colossal establishments. Jev/s and Mohammedans
deride her, as cemented by the blood of him that was crucified.
And in one sense they are right in so judging ; in another, they
are fearfully mistaken. Christianity is nothing, except that it
is divine — nothing, except that it comes from heaven — nothing,
except that it is to cover the whole earth with its power and its
praise. The arm of a prophet was just like any other human
arm ; it possessed precisely the same number of bones, sinews,
muscles, and veins. And yet when raised to heaven, when
electrified from above, it could divide the sea, raise the dead,
and bring down fire from the clouds. So the true Church of
Christ is just an assemblage of simple, humble, sincere men —
that is all ; but the Lord is on their side, and there we discern
a source of energy, which shall yet shatter thrones, change the
destiny of nations, and uplift, with resistless force, the moun-
tain of the Lord's house above the mountains and above the
hills.
198 MIC AH.
This despised and struggling Church shall yet become uni-
versal. " All nations shall flow unto it." Those who wander
on the boundless steeps of Tartary — those who shiver amid
the eternal ice of Greenland — those who inhabit Africa, that con-
tinent of thirst — those who bask in the lovely regions of the
South Sea — all, all are to flow to the mountain of the Lord.
They are to " flow ;" they are to come, not in drops, but with the
rush and the thunder of mighty streams. " IsTations are to be
born in one day." A supernatural impulse is to be given to the
Christian cause. Christ is again to be, as before, his own mis-
sionary. Blessed are the eyes which shall see this great gather-
ing of the nations, and the ears which shall hear the sound
thereof. Blessed above those born of woman, especially, the de-
voted men, who, after laboring in the field of the world, shall
be rewarded, and at the same time astonished, by finding its
harvest-home hastened, and the work which they had been pur-
suing, with strong crying and tears, done to their hands, done
completely, and done from heaven. In this belief lies the hope
and the help of the world. But for a divine intervention, we
despair of the success of the good cause. Allow us this, and
Christianity is sure of a triumph, as speedy as it shall be uni-
versal. On Sabbath, the 16th of May, 1830, we saw the sun
seized on the very apex of his glory, as if by a black hand, and
so darkened that only a thin round ring of light remained visible,
and the chill of twilight came prematurely on. That mass of
darkness within seemed the world lying in wickedness, and
that thin round ring of light, the present progress of the Gospel
in it. But not more certain were we then, that that thin round
ring of light was yet to become the broad and blazing sun, than
are we now, that through a divine interposal, but not otherwise,
shall the " knowledge of the glory of the Lord cover the earth
as the waters the sea."
With this coincides Micah's prophecy. From Sion, as of old,
the law is to go forth ; and the word of Jehovah issuing from
Jerusalem seems to imply, that he himself is there to sit and
judge and reign — his ancient oracle resuming its thunders, and
In AHUM. 199
again to his feet the tribes going np. And the first, and one of
the best fruits of his dominion is peace. " They learn war no
more." Castles are dismantled, men of war plow the deep no
longer, but are supplanted by the white sails of merchant ves-
sels ; soldiers no more parade the streets in their lothesome
finery of blood ; swords and spears are changed into instru-
ments of husbandry, or, if preserved, are preserved in exhibi-
tions, as monuments of the past folly and frenzy of mankind.
(Perhaps a child finds the fragment of a rusty blade some day
in a field, brings it in to his mother, asks her what it is, and
the mother is unable to reply !) Peace, the cherub, waves
her white wing, and murmurs her soft song of dovelike joy
over a regenerated and united world.
All hail, ye " peaceful years !" Swift be your approach ; soon
may your great harbinger divide his clouds and come down ;
and. soon may the inhabitants of a warless world have diiiiculty
in crediting the records which tell of the wretchedness, the dis-
peace, the selfishness, and the madness of the past.
N"AHUM.
Nahum was a native of Elkoshai, a village of Galilee, the
ruins of which are said to have been distinctly visible in the
fourth century.
Nahum's prophecy is not much longer than his history. It
is the most magnificent shout ever uttered. Like a shout, it is
short, but strong as the shout which brought down Jericho.
The prophet stands — a century after Jonah — without the wall
of Nineveh, and utters, in fierce and hasty language, his procla-
mation of its coming doom. No pause interrupts it ; there is
no change in its tone ; it is a stern, one war-cry, and comes
swelled by the echoes of the past. Nahum is an evening wolf,
from the Lord, smelling the blood of the great city, and utter-
ing a fearful and prolonged note — half of woe, and half of joy,
which is softened by distance into music. How wondrous that
one song should have survived such a city !
200 ZEPHANIAH.
In a shout, you expect nothing but strength, monotony, and
loudness. But Nahum's is the " shout of a king ;" not merely
majestical in tone, but rises, with splendid imagery and de-
scription. Nineveh must fall to regal music. It must go
down amid pomp and poetry. Especially does the prophet
kindle, as he pictures the pride, pomp, and circumstance of
■war. Tyrtseus and Korner, nay, Macaulay and Scott, are faint-
hearted on the field of battle, compared to Nahum. He strikes
his lyre with fingers dipped in blood. In him, a prophetic
blends with a martial fire, like a stray sunbeam crowning and
hallowing a conflagration. Hear Nineveh shaking in the breath
of his terrible outcry — " AVoe to the city of blood ! She is all
full of falsehood and violence. The prey departeth not. There
is a sound of the whip, and a sound of the rattling wheels, and
of the prancing horses, and of the bounding chariots, and of the
mounting horsemen. There, too, burns the flame of the sword,
and the lightning of the spear, and a multitude of slain, and a
heap of dead bodies, and there is no end to the carcasses — they
stumble upon carcasses."
Nahum's prophecy possesses one poetical quality in perfec-
tion. That is concentration. He has but one object, one
thought, one spirit, one tone. His book gathers like a " wall
of fire" around the devoted city. He himself may be fitliest
likened to that wild and naked prophet, who ran in incessant
and narrowing circle about Jerusalem, and who, as he traced
the invisible furrow of destruction around it, cried out, " Woe,
woe, woe," till he sank down in death !
ZEPHANIAH.
His genealogy is more minutely marked than that of any of
his brethren. He is the " son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the
son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah." While his genealogy
is thus carefully preserved, none of the fiicts of his life are given.
We know only that he was called to prophesy in the days of
Josiah, the son of Anion, the King of Judah. He was cotem-
ZEPHANIAH. 201
porary with Jeremiah, and, hke him, " zealous to slaying"
against the idols and idolatrous practices of his country.
Zephaniah is less distinguished than some of his brethren for
any m^arked or prominent quality. He is not abrupt, like Ro-
sea, gloomily-grand, like Joel, majestic, hke Micah, impetuous,
like Amos, or concentrated, like Nahum : he is rather a compo-
site of many qualities, and a miniature of many prophetic writers.
We have vehement denunciation of the sins of his own people ;
we have the dooms of idolatrous nations pronounced with all the
force and fury of his office ; we have pictures, startling for life
and minuteness, of the varied classes and orders of offenders in
Jerusalem — princes, judges, prophets, and priests; and we
have bright promises, closing and crov/ning the whole. All
these are uttered in a brief, but impressive and solemn
style.
But why, is it asked, do these Hebrew prophets utter such
terrible curses against heathen countries ? Are they not harsh
in themselves, and do they not augur a vindictive spirit on the
part of their authors ? "We ask, in reply, first, were not those
curses fulfilled ? Were they uttered in impotent fury ? Did
they recoil upon the heads of those who uttered them ? Did
those ravens croak in vain ? If not, is it not to be inferred that
the rage they expressed was not their own ; that they were, in
a great measure, as ravens were supposed to be, instruments of
a higher power, dark with the shadow of destiny ? Evil wishes
are proverbially powerless ; the " threatened live long" — curses,
like chickens, come home to roost. But their curses — the
ruins of empires are smoking with them still. But, secondly,
even if we grant that human emotions did to some extent
mingle with those prophetic denunciations, yet these were by
no means of a personal kind. Of what oftense to Ezekiel had
Tyre, or to Isaiah had Babylon, been guilty ? Their ire was
kindled on general and patriotic grounds. Thirdly, Let us
remember that the prophets employed the language of poetry,
Vvhich is always in some degree that of exaggeration. Righteous
indignation, when set to music, and floated on the breath of
202 ZEPHANIAH.
song, must assume a higher and harsher tone ; must ferment
into fury, soar into hyperbohcal invective, or, if it sink, sink
into the undertone of irony, and yet remain righteous indigna-
tion still. Fourthly, As Coleridge has shown so well, to fuse
indignation into poetic form, serves to carry off whatever of
over-violence there had been in it : by aggravating, it reheves
and lessens its fury. Fifthly, There is such a thing as noble
rage ; there are those who do well to be angry ; there is anger
which may lawfully tarry after the sun has gone down, and
after the longest twilight has melted away ; there is a severe
and purged fire, not to feel which implies as deep a woe, to the
subject, as to feel it inflicts upon the object. It is the sickly
sentiraentaHsm of a girl which shudders at such glorious frowns
and fiery glances and deep thrilling accents, as robust virtue
must sometimes use to quell vice, and audacity, and heartless-
ness, and hypocrisy, in a world rank with them all. There
must be other sentences and songs at times than the perfumed
pages of albums will endure, and cries may require to be raised
which would jar on the ear of evening drawing-rooms. Such
sentences and cries the mildest of men, nay, superhuman beings,
have been forced to utter. Can any one ^vonder at Ezekiel's
burdens, who has read the 23d chapter of Matthew ? Dare any
one accuse Isaiah of vindictive scorn to the fallen King of
Babylon, who remembers the divine laughter described in the
2d Psalm, or the 1st chapter of Proverbs ? It is very idle to
proceed with Watts to reduce to a weak dilution the sterner
Psalms. The spirit of Jude and 2d Peter is essentially the
same with that of the 109th and 137th Psalms ; and never be
it forgotten, that the most fearful denunciations of sin, and pic-
tures of future punishment in Scripture, come from the lips of
Jesus and of the disciple whom he loved. It is in the New Tes-
tament, not the Old, that that sentence of direst and deepest
import occurs, " It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the
living God."
Were, indeed, the theory of the Germans true, that those
prophetic curses were uttered after the events predicted, we
HABAKKUK. 203
sliould surrender them more readily to their censure, although,
even in this case, there had been numerous paUiations to plead
for the prolonged exultation of a deHvered race over foes so
oppressive and formidable. But believing that Isaiah's burden
of Babylon is of a somewhat different order from the prophecy
of Capys, and that all the Scripture predictions implied fore-
sight, and were the shadows of coming events, we are not dis-
posed to gratify the skeptic by granting that one spark of
infernal fire shone on those flaming altars of imprecation, al-
though a shade of human feeling was perhaps inseparable from
the bosoms of the priests, however purged and clean, who
ministered around them.
HABAKKUK.
This man, too, is but a name prefixed to a rapt psalm. He
lived in the reign of Jehoiakim ; was, of course, cotemporary
with Jeremiah ; and it is generally supposed that he remained
in Judah, and died there. Rugged, too, is his name, and
cacophonous, nay, of cacophony often used as the type. Yet
this name has been carved in bold characters upon the bark of
the " Tree of life," and will remain there forever. Rough as
it is, it was the name of a noble spirit, and has, moreover, a
fine signification — " one that embraces." Embraces what ?
Does not his daring genius seem stretching out arms to " em-
brace" those horns of light, which are the " hiding of Jehovah's
power ?" These are the horns of the altar to which Habakkuk
must cling !
His power seems as limited as lofty. His prophecy is a
Pompey's Pillar — tall, narrow, and insulated. It begins abruptly,
like an arm suddenly shot up in prayer. " How long, O
Jehovah, have I cried, and thou hast not hearkened ! Why
dost thou show me iniquity, and cause me to behold grievance ?
for spoiling and violence are before me, and there are that raise
up strife and contention." Yet this reluctance to describe the
frightful scenes he foresaw, is but the trembling vibration of
204 HABAKKUK.
the javelin ere it is lanched, the hesitation of the accusing
orator ere his speech has fully begun, the convulsive flutter in
the lightning ere the bolt be sped. Over the heads of the trans-
gressors of his people, he speedily lifts up three words, which
express all that follows — Behold, Wonder, Perish — words very
suitable, in their fewness, to herald the coming of the Chal-
deans, that " bitter and hasty nation," who were swift as the
leopard, and fierce as the evening wolf, as well as characteristic
of the ardent soul of this prophet, who sees the flower before
the bud, and finds out the crime by the torch of the punish-
ment. How he catches and sets before us the rapid progress of
the Chaldeans. Come like shadows they may, but they do not
so depart. Yielding like wax to receive, he like marble retains
their image and tread. " Their judgment and their excellency
proceed from themselves." They have — that is lately— re-
volted from the Assyrian yoke ; they are newly let loose ; the
greater the danger of their prisoners. " Their faces sup up as
the east wind." 'No livelier image of desolation can be given.
" They shall gather up captives as the sand," as the east wind
lifts and drifts the sands before it. Thus, like " reapers de-
scend to the harvest of death" the foemen, fermenting the
" vision which Habakkuk the prophet did see."
Chapter first contains the vision, chapter second the accusa-.
tion, and chapter third the song, or, as Evvald calls it, the
Dithyrambic. These are the beginning, middle, and end of
the prophecy. The accusation breaks into a succession of
woes, hke large electric drops. " Woe unto him that coveteth
an evil covetousness for his house. Surely the stone from the
wall crieth out, and the beam from the timber answereth, woe,
woe to him that buildeth a town by blood, and establisheth a
city by iniquity." Probably the woe, thus fearfully ventrilo-
quized from v/all and wood, pertains to the King of Babylon.
But those that follow light on his own land. '' Woe to him that
makethhis neighbor drink," "Woe to Iiim that saith to the
•wood, awake, to the silent stone, arise, shall it teach ?" " Be-
hold, it is laid over with gold and silver, neither is there any
HABAKKUK. 205
breath in tlie midst thereof." But he can not tarry longer
pouring forth such preliminary drops, for the Lord himself is
about to speak, in the full accents of his ire, and to come in all
the majesty of his justice.
How solemn the stillness of the expectation produced by the
closing words of the second chapter, " But Jehovah is in his
holy temple. Be silent before him all the earth." As in sum-
mer the still red evening in the west predicts the burning
morrow, do those subhmely simple, and terribly tame words,
announce that the ode, on its wide wings of shadowy fire, is at
hand.
Amid the scenery of Sinai, there was heard at the crisis of
the terror, a trumpet waxing gradually very loud, giving a
martial tone to the tumult, drawing its vague awfulness into a
point of War, and proclaiming the presence of the Lord of
Hosts. Could we conceive that trumpet to have been uttering
words, descriptive of the scene around, they had been the words
of Habakkuk's song. " God came from Teman, the Holy One
from Paran ; his glory covered the heavens, and the earth was
full of his praise."
But the description is not of Sinai alone, nor, indeed, of any
single scene. It is a yjicture of the divine progress or pilgrim-
age throughout the Jewish economy, formed by combining all
the grand symbols of his powder and presence into one tumult
of glory. It were difficult for a thunder-storm to march calmly
and regularly. There must be ragged edges in the darkness,
and wild flashes and fluctuations in the hght ; and so with
Habakkuk's song. Its brightness is as the sun's ; but there is
a hiding or vail over its might. Its figures totter in sympathy
with the trembhng mountains it describes. Its language bows
before its thoughts, like the everlasting mountains below the
footsteps of Jehovah.
Where begins this procession ? In the wilderness of Paran.
There, where still rise the three tower-like summits of Mount
Paran, which, when gilded by the evening or morning sun, look
like " horns of glory," the great pilgrim begins his progress.
206 HABAKKUK.
How is he attired ? It is iu a garment woven of the " marvel-
ous light and the thick darkness." Rays, as of the morning
sun, shoot out from his hand. These are at once the horns and
the hidings of his power. Like a dark raven, flies before him
the plague. Wherever his feet rest, flashes of fire (or birds of
prey !) arise. He stands, and the earth moves. He looks through
the clouds which vail him, and the nations are scattered. As
he advances, the mountains bow. Paran begins the homage ;
Sinai succeeds ; the giants of Seir, and Moab, and Bashan fall
prostrate — till every ridge and every summit has felt the awe
of his presence. On still he goes, and lo ! how the tents of
Cushan are uncovered, undone, removed, and their wandering
inhabitants vanish away ; and how the curtains of the land of
Midian do tremble, as he passes by. But have even the waters
perceived him ? Is he angry at the rivers ? Has he breathed
on them too ? Yea, verily ; and Jordan stands aside to let him
through dryshod into Canaan's land. And once entered there,
the hills imitate the terror of their eastern brethren, and fall a
trembling ; and the deeps of Galilee's sea and the Mediterranean
utter their voice ; and the heights, from Olivet to Lebanon, lift
up their hands in wonder ; and, as his arrows fly abroad, and
his spear ghtters, the sun stands still over Gibeon, and the moon
over the valley of Ajalon. Nor does the Awful Pilgrim repose
till he has trampled on the nations of Canaan as he had on the
mountains of the east, and till over their bruised heads and
weltering carcasses he has brought aid to his people and salva-
tion to his anointed.
This analysis, after all, fails to convey the rapid accumula-
tion of metaphor, the heaving struggle of words, the boldness
of spirit, and the crowded splendors of this matchless picture.
Indeed, almost all the brighter and bolder images of Old Tes-
tament poetry are to be found massed up in this single strain.
Chronology, geography, everything, must yield to the purpose
of the poet ; which is, in every possible way, to do justice to his
theme, in piling glory on glory around the march of God. Thus
he dares to remove the Red Sea itself, and throw it into the
OBADIAH. 207
path between Paran and Palestine, that the Deity may pass
more triumphantly on.
Yet the modesty is not inferior to the boldness of the song,
Habakkuk had begun intending to describe a future coming of
God, and, to fire himself for the effort, had called np the glories
of the past. But after describing these, he stops short, allowing
us only to infer from the former what the future must be.
Exhausted and reeling under the perception of that overpower-
ing picture, he dares not image to himself the tremendous secrets
of the future. He says only, "Though my country should
come to utter desolation, the vines give no fruit, the fields
yield no bread, the flock be cut off from the fold, and there be
no herd in the stall, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, nay, exult
in the God of my salvation. He will make me to leap as the
hart, even though my feet, hke God's own, should leap on naked
crags, and tread on high places, though they should be those
of scathed and sterile desolation."
Beautiful the spirit of Habakkuk, and expressing in another
form the grand conclusion of Job, and of all earnest and recon-
ciled spirits. A God so great must be good ; and he who hath
done things in the past so mighty and terrible, yet in their
efiect so gracious, may be well expected, and expected with
exultation, to pursue his ov/n path, however inscrutable, to the
ultimate good of his world and Church, and often to " express
his answer to our prayers," as in the days of old, by works as
" fearful" as inaQ-uificent.
OBADIAH.
There are no less than twelve persons of this name mentioned
in Scripture. The most distinguished of them is the Obadiah
who saved a hundred of God's prophets, by hiding them in a
cave, during a time of scarcity and persecution. Some suppose
that he was the prophet before us, although others deem him
to have flourished at a much later date — at the same period
witU Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
208 OBADIAH.
He seems to have propliesied in the short interval between
the destruction of Jerusalem and that of Edom. His prophecy,
which is but a fragment, consists principally of predictions of
the judgments impending over Edom, and of the restoration
and prosperity of the Jews. There are remariiable coincidences
between Obadiah and the 49 th chapter of Jeremiah.
A single chapter, which, like this of Obadiah, has survived
ages, empires, and religions, must be strongly stamped either
with peculiarity or with power. It must have some inextin-
guishable principle of vitality. Apart from its inspiration, it
survives, as the most memorable rebuke to fraternal hardness
of heart. It is a brand on the brow of that second Cain, Esau.
Hear its words, stern in truth, yet plaintive in feehng, " For
slaughter, and for oppression of thy brother Jacob, shame shall
cover thee, and thou shalt be cut ofi" forever. In the day
when thoustoodest on the other side, in the day when strangers
carried away captive his forces, and when foreigners entered
his gates, and when they cast lotion Jerusalem, thou also icast
as one of tJmn. But thou shouldest not have so looked on the
day of thy brothei', on the day when he became a stranger, nor
have rejoiced over the sons of Judah in the day when they
were destroyed, nor have magnified thy words in the day of
distress. Thou shouldest not have entered into the gate of my
people in the day of their calamity, nor have so looked on his
affliction in the day of his calamity, nor have put forth thine
hand on his substance in the day of his calamity, nor have
stood in the cross way to cut off those of his that escaped, nor
have delivered up those of his that remained, in the day of dis-
tress." " Verily, O Esau, thou . wert guilty concerning thy
brother, when thou sawest the anguish of his soul, and when,
perhaps, like Joseph, he besought thee, and thou wouldst not
hear." And at thy Philistine forehead was Obadiah commis-
sioned to aim one smooth sling-stone, which, having prostrated
ihee, has been preserved for us, in God's word, as a monument
of thy fratricidal folly. This is that little. book of Obadiah. .
HAGGAI. 209
HAGGAI
Between Obadiah and Haggai, many important events "had
occurred in tlie history of God's people. The city Jerusalem
had been captured, the Temple sacked, and the brave but ill-
fated inhabitants been carried captive to Babylon. There they
had groaned and wept bitterly under their bondage, and one
song of their captive genius, of unequaled pathos, has come
down to us. " By the rivers of Babylon, there w^e sat down, yea,
we wept when we remembered Zion. Wc hanged our harps upon
the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us
away captive required of us a song, and they that wasted us
required of us mirth, saying, sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land ?" How,
indeed, sing it, save as we may conceive the fiends singing in
hell the songs of heaven, the words the same, the melodies the
same, but woe for the accompaniments and for the hearts ? How
sing here the songs of Judah's vintage, and Judah's ingather-
ing, and Judah's marriage-feasts ? Surely it is the most deli-
cate and infernal of insults for a spoiler to demand mirth
instead of labor, a song instead of patient sorrow ! V/e, they
reply, can sing at your bidding no songs of Zion, but we can
testify our love to her by our tears. And, trickling through
the hand of the taskmaster, and running down three thousand
years, has one of these tears come to us, and we call it the
ISYth Psalm.
From this state of degradation and woe, Judah had been
raised. She had been brought back in circumstances mourn-
fully different, indeed, from the high day when, coming out of
Egypt, she turned, and encamping between Pihahiroth and the
sea, felt that the extremity of the danger w^as the first edge of
the rising deliverance, and when she went forth by her armies
with a mighty power and a stretched-out arm. Now she must
kneel, and have the bandage of her slavery taken off by human
hands, and be led tamely out into her own land, under the
banners of a strano-er. Even after she had reached and com-
210 HAG GAT.
meiiced the operation of building the Temple, numerous diffi-
culties, arising partly from the opposition of surrounding tribes,
and partly from the indifference of the people themselves, were
presented. For fourteen or fifteen years the enterprise was
abandoned, and it is on an imfinished Temple that we see
Haggai first appearing to stir up his slothful, and to comfort
his desponding, countrymen.
We know only of this prophet, that he was born during the
captivity ; that he had returned with Zerubbabel, and flourished
under the reign of Darius Ilystaspis.
The right of Haggai to the title of poet has been denied, on
account of his comparatively tame and prosaic style ; but we
must remember the distinction we have indicated between
poetic statement and poetic song. He has little of the latter,
but much of the former. There is nothing in the Hebrew
tongue calculated more to rouse the blood, than these simple
words of his — " Who is there left among you that saw this
house in its former glory ? And what do ye see it now ? Is
it not as nothing? Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith
Jehovah. And be strong, O Joshua, son of Josedech, the high-
priest. And be strong, all ye people of the land, saith Je-
hovah. And work, for I am with you, saith Jehovah, Lord of
Hosts. For thus saith Jehovah of Hosts, yet once more, it is a
httle while, I will shake the heavens and the earth, and the sea
and the dry land, and I will shake all nations, and the desire
of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,
saith Jehovah of Hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is
mine, saith Jehovah, God of Hosts. Greater shall be the glory
of this latter house than of the former, saith Jehovah, God of
Hosts. And in this place will I give peace, saith Jehovah, God
of Hosts." This, if prose, is the prose of a pyramid, or an
Olympus, compared with the flowery exuberance of Enna or
Tempe. It is the bareness of grandeur. It is one of the moore
of heaven.
The building of the second Temple had been resigned in de-
spair, partly because it was impossible to supply some of the
ZECHARIAII. 211
principal ornaments of tlie ancient edifice, such as the Urim
and Thiimmira, the ark containing the two tables of the law,
the pot of manna, Aaron's rod that budded, and the cloud, or
Shekinah, that covered the mercy-seat, and was the symbol of
the divine glory. It became then the part of Haggai, in his
work of encouragement and re\dval, to point out the advent of
one object to the new Temple, which should supply the lack of
all. This was to be the living cloud — the personal Shekinah
— the Christ promised to the fathers. And he, when he came,
was not only to glorify the mercy-seat, and brighten the turban
of the high-priest as he went in to pray, but to pour a radiance
over the whole world, of which he had been the desire. Did
the Temple shake w^hen the cloud of glory entered it in Solo-
mon's day ? The Karth was to respond to the vibration, when
the Son of Man came to his Father's house. " Tidings of the
New Shekinah" may, therefore, be the proper title for Haggai's
prophecy ; and while the old men wept w-hen they contrasted
the present with the former Temple, he rejoiced, because he saw
in the absence of those external o-lories, in the settino* of those
elder stars, the approaching presence of a spiritual splendor —
the rising of the last great luminary of the Church.
It was not needful that the herald of an event (comparative-
ly) so near should be dressed in all the insignia of his oflace.
These had been necessary once to attract attention, and secure
respect, but now the forerunner was merely, like Elijah, " to
gird up his loins, and run before" the chariot which was at
hand. And thus we account for the comparative bareness of
style appertaining to the prophet Haggai. ^
His associate in office was
ZECHARIAH.
He was the " Son of Barachiah, the son of Iddo." " In Ezra,"
says Dr. Eadie, " he is styled simply the son of Iddo, most
probably because his fiither, Barachiah, had died in early man-
hood, and his genealogy, in accordance with Jewish custom, is
212 ZECHARIAH.
traced at once to Lis grandfather, Iddo, who would be better
known. He appears to have been a descendant of Levi, and
thus entitled to exercise the priestly, as he did the prophetic,
office. He entered upon his prophetic duties in the 8th month
of the second year of Darius, about 520, A.C." Jewish tradition
relates that the prophet died in his native country, after " a life
prolonged to many days," and was buried by the side of Hag-
gai, his associate.
The object of Zechariah is precisely that of Haggai — " writ
large." It is to rouse an indolent, to encourage a desponding,
and to abash a backsliding people. This he does, if not with
greater energy, yet by bolder types, and through the force of
broader ghmpses into the future, than his coadjutor.
In all prophetical Scripture, we find lofty symbols rushing
down, as if impatient of their elevation, into warm practical
apphcation, like high white clouds dissolving in rain. This
we noticed in Ezekiel. But in Zechariah it is still more re-
markable. The red horses, the four horns, the stone with seven
eyes, the candlestick of gold, the olive-trees, the flying roll, the
ephah and the talent of lead, the four chariots from between the
two mountains, the staves Beauty and Bands, the cup of trem-
bhng, the burdensome stone, and the fountain of purification,
are not mere brilhant dreams, " forever flushing round a sum-
mer's sky," but are closely connected with the main purposes of
the prophecy. It is Haggai's argument pleaded from the clouds.
The poet who extracts his own thought and imagery from
ordinary scenery, is worthy of his name. But he is the truest
maker, who forms a scenery and world of his own. This has
Zechariah done. The wildest of the " Arabian Nights" contains
no descriptions so unearthly as those in his prophecy. Those
mountains, what and where are they ? Those chariots, whence
come, and w^hither go they ? Those four horns, who has raised ?
Those red horses, what has dyed them ? But strangest and
most terrible is the " flying roll," " passing like night from land
to land" — having " strange power of speech," stranger power of
silence — a judgment, verily, that doth not linger, a damnation
ZECHARIAH. 213
that doth not slumber. How powerfully does this represent
law as a swift executioner, winged, and ever ready to follow
the trail of crime, at once with accusation, sentence, and pun-
ishment !
From the height of contempt, Zechariah has reached for the
then state of his country — he has but a few steps to rise — to a
panoramic prospect of the future, even of its most distant points
and pinnacles. The long day of Christianity itself looks dim
in the splendors of its evening ; the second advent eclipses the
first. The " day of the Lord" surmounts all intermediate ob-
jects ; and the " last battle" brings his prophecy to a resplendent
close.
One stray passage must be noticed, from its connection with
the New Testament, and the tragedy of the Cross. It is that
where the Lord of Hosts cries out, in his impatience and anger,
" Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man
that is my fellow : smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be
scattered." How startling the haste of this exclamation !
" Haste, for the victim has been bound to the altar. Haste, for
the harps in heaven are silent till the day of atonement has
passed away. Haste, for hell is dumb in the agony of its dark
anticipations. Haste, for the eyes of the universe have been
fixed upon the spot ; all things are ready ; yea, the sackcloth of
the sun has been woven, and ere that darkness pass away, the
sweat of an infinite agony must have been expanded, and the
blood of an infinite atonement must have been shed."
Did not the great victim bear this in view on the last night
of his life, when, looking up to the darkened heaven and the
unsheathed sword, he sounded himself the signal for the blow,
as he cried, " It is written, smite the shepherd, and the sheep
shall be scattered ?"
This wondrous cry was obeyed. The sword awoke against
the man, God's fellow. It was "bathed in heaven." And
now no more is the cry raised, " Awake, O sword." Against
the people of God it is sheathed forever. Yet shall this dread
moment never be forgotten. For even as in the glad valleys of
214 MALACHI.
earth, wlien sunsliine is resting on the landscape, the sound of
thunder heard remote only enhances the sense of security, and
deepens the feeling of repose, so, in the climes of heaven's day,
shall the memory of that hour so dark, and that cry so fearful,
be to the souls of the ransomed a joy forever.
MALACHI.
The word means " my angel or messenger." Hence some
have contended that there was no such person as Malachi, but
that Ezra was the author of the book. Origen even maintains
that the author was an incarnate angel. The general opinion,
however, is, that he was a real personage, who flourished about
400 years before Christ.
It v/as meet that the ancient dispensation should close amid
such cloudy uncertainties. It had been all along the " religion
of the vail." There was a vail, verily, upon more than the
face of Moses. Every thing from Sinai — its center, down to
the least bell or pomegranate — wore a vail. Over Malachi's
Hice, form, and fortunes, it hangs dark and impenetrable. A
masked actor, his tread and his voice are thunder . The last
pages of the Old Testament seem to stir as in a furious wind,
and the word curse, echoing down to the very roots of Calvary,
closes the record.
On Malachi's prophecy, there is seen mirrored, in awful clear-
ness, in fiery red, the coming of Christ, and of his forerunner,
the Baptist. " I will send you Elijah, the prophet, before the
coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord." Last of a
long and noble line — fated to have no follower for four hundred
years — a certain melancholy bedims this prophet's strains. His
language is bare and bald, compared with that of some of the
others, although this seems to spring rather from his subject
than himself. The " seal of the prophets," as the rabbis called
him, is a hlacTc seal. And thus, although he abounds in pre-
dictions of Christ's near approach, you shut him with a feeling
of sadness.
MALACIII. 215
It is impossible to close this review of Israel's ancient bards
"without very peculiar sensations. We feel as one might who
had been dwelling for a season among the higher Alps, as he
turned to the plains again, tori'ents and avalanches still sounding
in his ears, and a memory of the upper grandeurs dwindhng to
his eyes all lower objects. But have we brought down with us,
and do we wish to confer on others, nothing but admiration ?
Nay, verily, these Alps of humanity waft down many important
lessons. Showing how high man has attained in the past, they
show the altitude of the man of the future world. To the poet,
how exciting, at once, and humbling ! He complains, at times,
that he too soon and easily overtakes his models, and finds them
cloud or clay after all ; but here are models forever above and
beyond him, as are the stars. And yet he is permitted to look
at, to be hghtened by them, " to roll their raptures, and to catch
their fire." Here are God's own pictures, glowing on the inac-
cessible walls. To the believer in their supernatural claims,
how thrilling the proud reflection — this bark, as it carries me
to heaven, has the flag of earthly genius floating above it. To
the worshiper of genius, these books present the object no
longer as an idol, but as a god. The admirer of man finds him
here in his highest mood and station, speaking from the very
door of the eternal shrine, with God tuning his voice and regu-
lating his periods. Genius and religion are here seen wedded
to each other, with unequal dowries, indeed, but with one heart.
And there is thus conveyed, in parable, the prospect of their
eternal union.
And can v/e close this old volume without an emotion of un-
utterable astonishment ? Here, from the rudest rock, has dis-
tilled the sweetest honey of song. The simplest and most
limited of lano^uages has been the medium of the loftiest elo-
quence — the oaten pipe of the Hebrew shepherd has produced
a music, to which that of the Grecian organ and the Latin fife
is discord. Here, too, centuries before the Augustan age, are
conceptions of God which Cicero never grasped, nor Virgil ever
sung. Race, climate, original genius, will not altogether account
216 MALAcnr.
for this. The real answer to the question, Why burned that
bush so brightly amid the lonely wilderness, is, God, the God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Moses, Isaiah, and Daniel,
dwelt therein^ and the place is still lovely, yet dreadful, with his
presence.
CHAPTER XII.
CIRCUMSTANCES MODIFYING NEW TESTAMENT
POETRY.
The main principle of the Old Testament may be comprised
in the sentence, " Fear God, and keep his commandments : this
is the whole duty of man." The main principle of the New is,
" Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved."
And yet, round these two simple sentences, what masses of
beauty and illustration have been collected ! To enforce them,
what argument, what eloquence, what poetry, have been em-
ployed ! Say, rather, that those truths, from their exceeding
breadth, greatness, and magnetic power, have levied a tribute
from multitudinous regions, and made every form of thought
and composition subservient to their influence and end.
The New Testament, as well as the Old, is a poem — the
Odyssey to that Iliad. And over the poetry of both, circum-
stances and events have exerted a modifying power. Yet it is
remarkable, that in the New Testament, although events of a
marvelous kind were of frequent occurrence, they are not used
so frequently in a poetical way as in the Old. The highest
poetry in the New Testament, is either didactic in its character,
as the Sermon on the Mount, and Paul's praise of charity, or it
is kindled up by visions of the future, and apparitions through
the present darkness of the great white throne.
The resurrection, as connected with the doctrine of a general
judgment, is the event which has most colored the poetry of
the New Testament. The throne becomes a far more command-
ing object than even the mount that might be touched. Faint,
218 CIRCUMSTANCES MODIFYING
in fact, is the reflection of this " Great Vision" upon the page
of ancient prophecy : the trump is heard, as if from a distance ;
the triumph of life over death is anticipated seldom, and with
little rapture. But no sooner do we reach the threshold of the
new dispensation, than we meet voices from the interior of the
sanctuary, proclaiming a judgment ; the sign of the Son of
Man is advanced above, the graves around are seen with the
tombstones loosened and the turf broken, and " I shall arise"
hovering in golden characters over each narrow house ; the
central figure bruises death under his feet, and points with a
cross to the distant horizon, where life and immortality are
cleaving the clouds, and coming forth with beauty and heahng
on their wings. Such is the prospect in our Christian sanctuary ;
and hence the supernatural grandeur of the strains which swell
within it. Hence the rapture of the challenge, " O death,
where is thy sting?" Hence the solemnity of the assertion,
" Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming when they that are
in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Man." Hence
the fiery splendor of the description, " The Lord himself shall
descend with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the
trump of God." Hence the harping symphonies and sevenfold
hallelujahs of the Apocalypse, " I saw the dead, small and great,
stand before God." Here, indeed, is a source of inspiration,
open only to the New Testament writers. The heathens knew
not of the resurrection of the dead. But Paul and John have
extracted a poetry from the darkness of the grave. In heathen
belief, there was, indeed, a judgment succeeding the death of
the individual ; but no general assemblage, no public trial, no
judgment-seat, " high and hfted up," no flaming universe, and,
above all, no God-man swaying the fiery storm, and, with the
hand that had been nailed to the cross, opening the bocks of
universal and final decision,
" Meditations among the Tombs," what a pregnant title to
what a feeble book ! Ah ! the tombs are vaster and more
numerous than Hervey dreamed. There is the churchyard
among the mountains, where the " rude forefathers of the ham-
XEW TESTAMENT POETRY. 219
let lie." There is the crowded cemetery of the town, where
silent thousands have laid th.emselves down to repose. There
are the wastes and wildernesses of the world, where " armies
whole have sunk," and where the dead have here their shroud
of sand, and there their shroud of snow. There is the hollow
of the earth, v/here Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and many be-
sides, have been engulfed. There are the fields of battle,
which have become scenes of burial, as well as of death. And
there is the great ocean, which has wrapped its garment of
green round manjr a fair and noble head, and which rolls its
continual requiem of sublimity and sadness over the millions
whom it has entombed. Thus does the earth, with all its con-
tinents and oceans, roll around the sun a splendid sepulcher !
Amid those dim catacombs, what victims have descended !
The hero, who has coveted the dreadful distinction of entering
hell, red from a thousand victories, is in the grave. The sage,
who has dared to say that, if he had been consulted in the
making of the universe he had made it better, is in the grave.
The monarch, who has wept for more worlds to conquer and to
reign over, is in the grave. The poet, who, towering above his
kind, had seemed to demand a contest with superior intelli-
gences, and sought to measure his j^en against the red thunder-
bolts of Heaven, is in the grave. Where now the ambition of
the first, the insane presumption of the second, the idle tears of
the third, the idler laurels of the last ? All gone, sunk, lost,
drov/ned, in that ocean of Death, where no oar ever yet broke
the perpetual silence !
But, alas ! these graves are not full. In reason's ear — an
ear ringing ever with strange and mystic sounds — there is heard
a voice, from the thousand tombs, saying — " Yet there is room."
The churchyard among the hills has a voice, and says — " There
is room under the solitary birch which waves over me." The
city cemetery hath a voice, and says — " Crowded as I am, I can
yet open a corner for thy dust ; yet there is room." The field
of battle says — " There is room. I have earth enough to cover
all my slain." The wildernesses have a voice, and say —
220 CIRCUMSTANCES MODIFYINa ""
" There is room in us — -room for the travelers who explore our
sands or our snows — room for the caravans that carry their
merchandise across our dreadful solitudes." The depth of the
ocean says — " Thousands have gone down within me-— nay, an
entire world has become the prey of ray waters, still my cav-
erns are not crowded ; yet there is room." The heart of the
earth has a voice — a hollow voice — and says — " What are Ko-
rah and his company to me ? I am empty ; yet there is room."
Do not all the graves compose thus one melancholy chorus, and
say — " Yet there is room ; room for thee, thou maiden, adorned
with virtue and loveliness ; room for thee, thou aged man ;
room for thee, thou saint, as surely as there was room for thy
Savior ; room for thee, thou sinner, as surely as thy kindred
before thee have laid themselves and their iniquities down in
the dust ; room for all, for all must in us at last he down."
But is this sad cry to resound forever ? No ; for we are lis-
tening for a mightier voice, which is yet to pierce the cold ear
of death, and drown the dull monotony of the grave. How
magnificent, even were they fictitious, but how much more, as
recording a fact, the words — " All that are in the graves shall
hear his voice, and shall come forth." To what voices do the
dead not listen ! Music can charm the serpent, but it can not
awaken the dead. The voice of an orator can rouse a nation to
frenzy, but lot him try his eloquence on the dead, and a hollow
echo will rebuke his folly. The thunder in the heavens can
appall a city, but there is one spot in it where it excites no
alarm, and that spot is the tomb.
" The lark's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more arouse them from their narrow bed."
There is but one voice which the dead will hear. It is that
voice which shall utter the words — " Awake and sing, ye that
dwell in dust ; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the
earth shall cast out the dead."
Was it a sublime spectacle, when, at the cry, " Lazarus, come
forth," th^ dead man appeared at the mouth of the sepulcher,
NEW TESTAMENT POETRY. 221
the hue of returning life on his cheek, forming a strange con-
trast to his white grave-clothes ? What, then, shall be said of
the coming forth of innumerable Lazaruses, of the whole con-
gregation of the dead — the hermit rising from his solitary
grotto, the soldier from his field of blood, the sailor from his
sea-sepulcher, the shepherd from his mountain-grave ? To see
— as in the season of spring, the winged verdure climbs the
mountain, clothes the plain, flushes the forest, adorns the brink
and the brow of the precipice — in this second spring, a torrent
of life passing over the world, and hving men coming forth,
where all before had been silence, desolation, and death ; to see
the volcano disgorging the dead which were in him, and the
earthquake relaxing his jaws, and giving back the dead which
were in him, and the sullen tarn restoring her lawful captives,
and the ocean unrolling and revealing the victims of her "" in-
nermost main," and the Seine disclosing her suicidal prey, and
the wastes and wildernesses becoming unretentive of their long-
concealed dead — every pore quickening into life, every grave
becoming a womb. This is the spectacle of the Christian res-
urrection — a spectacle but once to be beheld, but to be remem-
bered forever — a spectacle which every eye shall witness — a
spectacle around which a universe shall gather with, emotions
of uncontrollable astonishment and of fearful joy.
The New Testament stands and shines in the luster of this
expectation. So important is the place of resurrection in the
system, that Jesus identifies himself with it, saying — " I am the
resurrection and the life." And from his empty grave floods
of meaning, hope, and beauty, flow forth over the New Testa-
ment page. The Lord's day, too, forms a link connecting the
rising of Christ with that of his people, and is covered with,
the abundance both of the first-fruits and of the full harvest.
Among the incidents in the life of Christ, there are several of
an intensely poetical character. We shall mention here the
Transfiguration. This singular event did not take place, as
commonly supposed, on Tabor. Tabor was then the seat of a
Boman mihtary fort. It took place on a high, nameless moun-
222 CIRCUMSTANCES MODIFYING
tain, probably in Galilee. It was seemingly on the Sabbath-
day ("After six days, Jesus took Peter, James, and John, up
into a high mountain apart") that this grand exception to the
tenor of Christ's earthly history was manifested. It was a re-
hearsal of his Ascension. His form, which had been bent under
a load of sorrow (a bend more glorious than the bend of the
rainbow), now erected itself, like the palm-tree from pressure,
and he became like unto a " pillar in the temple of his God."
His brow expanded ; its wrinkles of care fled, and the sweat-
drops of his climbing toil were transmuted into sparks of glory.
His eye flashed forth, like the sun from behind a cloud — nay,
his whole frame became transparent, as if it were one eye. The
light which had long lain in it concealed was now unvailed in
full effulgence : " His face did shine as the sun." His very
raiment was caught in a shower of radiance, and became white
as no fuller on earth could whiten it ; and who shall describe
the luster of his streaming hair, or the eloquent silence of that
smile which sate, like the love of God, upon his lips ?
" What hill is like to Tabor hill, in beauty and in fame,
For there, in sad days of his flesh, o'er Christ a glory came,
And light o'erflowed him like a sea, and raised his shining brow,
And the voice came forth, which bade all worlds the Son of God
avow V
This radiance passed away. The glory of the transfigured
Jesus faded as the red cloud fades in the west, when the sun
has set. (And how could the disciples bear the change ? And
yet, as Christ, in his coronation robes, had seemed, perhaps,
distant and strange to them, did not his returning self appear
dearer, if less splendid, than his glorified humanity ?) But the
glory did not pass without leaving a mild reflex upon the page
of Scripture. " We were with him in the holy mount," says
Peter ; and was not the transfigured Christ in his eye when he
Bpeaks immediately after of " The day-star arising in our
hearts ?" And John's picture of Christ in the Apocalypse, is a
NEW TESTAMENT POETRY. 223
colossal copy of tlie figure he had seen on the holy mount,
vibrating between dust and Deity, at once warm as humanity^
and glorious as God. •
As jDFoducing or controlling the poetry of the New Testa-
ment, next to the resurrection, stands the incarnation. " Will
God in very deed dwell with men upon the earth V Will
God, above all, dwell in a form of human flesh, and so dwell,
that we must say of it, " God is here," nay, " this is God ?"
Is there found a point where the finite and the infinite meet,
mingle without confusion, marry without compulsion, and is this
point the Man of Galilee ? In fact, the incarnation and poetry bear
a resemblance. Poetry is truth dwelling in beauty. The incarna-
tion is the Word " made" holy and beauteous " flesh." Poetry is
the everlasting descent of the Jupiter of the True into the arms
of the Danae of the Beautiful, in a shower of Gold. The incar-
nation is God the Spirit, descending on Jesus the perfect man,
like a dove, and abiding upon and within him. The difference
is, that while the truth of Jesus is entirely moral, that of poetry
is more varied ; and that while the one incarnation is personal
and real, the other is hypothetical and ideal. Man and God
have rhymed together ; and the glorious couplet is, " the mys-
tery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh."
From this fact have sprung the matchless antitheses and cli-
maxes of Paul's prose poetry, Peter's fervid meditations on the
glory of Christ, and John's pan tings of love toward the " Man
God," on whose bosom he had leaned, and whose breath had
made him forever warm.
JBut, without dwelling on other circumstances modifying New
Testament poetry, we pass to speak, in the next chapter, of the
Poetry of the Gospels, and of that transcendent poet who died
on Calvary.
CHAPTER XIII.
POETRY OF THE GOSPELS.
Perhaps we had better have designated this chapter " The
Poetry of Jesus," for nearly all the poetry in the four Evangel-
ists clusters in, around his face, form, bearing, and words.
The word " character," as applied to Jesus, is a misnomer.
Character seems generally to mean something outstanding from
the being — a kind of dress worn outwardly ; at best, a faint
index to the quahties within. Thus, to say of a man, " he has
a good moral character," is to say little. You still ask, what
is he ? what is the nature of his being ? to what order does he
belong ? is he of the earth earthy, or born from above ? It is
of Christ's being, not his character, that we would speak, while
seeking to show its essential poetry.
The company of the disciples in the " Acts," have answered,
by anticipation, all questions about Christ's being, in the mem-
orable words, " thy hohj child, Jesus." He was a child — a
holy child — a divine child — an eternal child. He seems still
to sit " among the doctors," with Zoroaster, and Moses, and
Confucius, and Socrates, and Plato, ranged around him, " both
hearing them and asking them questions," while they, like the
sheaves of Joseph's brethren, are compelled to bow down before
the noble boy. His sermons, possessing no logical sequence
and coherence, are the utterances of a divine infant ; the tongue
is just a produced heart; and his words flow up, in irregular
yet calm succession, from the depth below. And yet all he
says is, " like an angel, vital everywhere," and each word is a
whole. Like jewels from a crown, the sentences drop down
POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 225
entire : " Ye are the light of the world ;" " Ye are the salt of
the earth ;" " What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in
light ;" " If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full
of light ;" " If the hght that is in thee be darkness, how great
is that darkness ?" (How many dark lanterns — such as mis-
guided men of genius— does this one sentence inclose I) And
are not all inconsistent, half-formed, or conventional systems of
morality, exploded by the grand generality — -the scope tran-
scending far the duration of this mortal hfe for its aim and ac-
complishment — of the words, " Be ye perfect, as your Father
in heaven is perfect ?"
But , wholeness belonged to more than Christ's words; it
belonged to himself and to his words, because they faithfully
and fully represented himself, even as the acorn carries in it
the figure of the oak. He was entire ; and his possession of
all virtues was signified by the gentle calm which reigned over,
and inclosed them within it. Just as the whole man comes out
in his smile, the "fullness of the Godhead" lay, hke a still,
settled smile, on Christ's meek face. His eye concentrated all
the rays of the Divine Omniscience into its mild and tearful orb.
His heart was a miniature ocean of love. His arm seemed
the symbol of Omnipotence. His voice was the faint and thrill-
ing echo of the sound of many waters. We are apt to think
and speak as if the attributes of Divinity were somehow crowded
and crushed into Mary's son. But those who saw him and
believed, felt that Godhead lay in him softly and fully, as the
image of the sun hes in a drop of dew. " In him dwelt the
fullness of Godhead bodily," as a willing tenant, not as a reluc-
tant caj)tive.
But, as a man, as well as the incarnation of Godhead, he was
perfect. Beside the stately, ancient, and awful forms of the
patriarchs of the old world, and the bards and first kings of
Israel, he seems young and slender. What were his years to
those of Adam and Methuselah ? He wrote not, like Solomon,
on trees — from the cedar on Lebanon to the hyssop which
springeth out of the wall. He had no Sinai for pedestal, as
226 POETRY OF THE GOSPELS.
Moses had. He had not the mighty speech of Isaiah. But he
possessed what all these wanted-— he possessed perfection. He
was only a child, but he was a celestial child ; he was only a
lamb, but it was a lamb without blemish and without spot. In
him, as God-man, all contrasts and contradictions were blended
and reconciled. You hear him now, in tones soft as youthful
love, preaching concord to his disciples ; and again, in the voice
of a terrible thunder, and with the gestures of an avenger, de-
nouncing wrath upon the hypocrite and the formalist, the
Pharisee and the Scribe. Hear yonder infant weeping in the
manger of Bethlehem. That httle trembling hand is tlie hand
of him who made the world ; that feeble, wailing cry is the
voice of him who spake, and it was done — who commanded
and it stood fast. See that carpenter laboring in the shed at
Nazareth ! The penalty of Adam is standing on his brow in
the sweat-drops of his toil. That carpenter is all the while
directing the march of innumerable suns, and supplying the
wants of endless worlds. Behold yonder weeper at the grave
of Lazarus ! His tears are far too numerous to be counted ; it is
a shower of holy tears, and the bystanders are saying — " Be-
hold, how he loved him !" That weeper is the Eternal God,
who shall wipe away all tears from off all faces. See, again,
that sufferer in the Garden of Gethsemane ! He is alone ; there
is no one with him in his deep agony ; and you hear the large
drops of his anguish, "like the first of a thunder-shower," fall^
ing slowly and heavily to the ground. And, louder than these
drops, there comes a voice, saying — " Father, if it be possible,
let this cup pass from me." The utterer of that sad cry, the
swelterer of those dark drops, is he whom the harps of heaven
are even now praising, and who is basking in the sunshine of
Jehovah's smile. " Without controversy, great is the mystery
of godliness."
The reticence of Jesus is one of the most remarkable of his
characteristics. What he might have told us, in comparison
of what he has ! — of man, of God, of the future on earth, of the
eternal state ! " He knew what was in man." " The Son only
POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 227
knoweth the Father." " Thou, Lord, knowest all things." But
he remained silent. Nor was his silence forced and reluctant.
It was wise and willing. It seemed natural to him, as is then'
twinkling silence to the stars. This surrounded him with a
peculiar grandeur. The greatest objects in the universe are the
stillest. The ocean has a voice, but the sun is silent. The
seraphim sing, the Shekinah is dumb. The forests murmur,
but the constellations speak not. Aaron spoke, Moses' face but
shone. Sweetly might the high-priest discourse, but the Urim
and Thummim, the blazing stones upon his breast, flashed forth
a meaning deeper and diviner far. Jesus, like a sheep before her
shearers, was dumb in death ; but still more marvelous was the
self-denied and God-like silence of his life.
The secret of this silence lay partly in the practicalness of his
purpose. He had three great things to do in the space of three
years, and he could spare no time for doing or talking about
aught else. He had to preach a pure morality, to live a pure
life, and to die a death of substitution so vast, as to stop the mo-
lions of the universe till it was over. This was the full baptism
wherewith he was to be baptized. He was straitened till it was
accomplished. He bent his undivided energies to finish this
threefold work ; and he did finish it. He reduced morality to
a clear essence, forming a perfect mirror to the conscience of
man. He melted down all codes of the past into two consum-
mate precepts. To these he added the double sanction of love
and terror. And thus condensed, and thus sanctioned, he ap-
plied them fearlessly to all classes by whom he was surrounded.
He did something far more difficult. He led a life — and such
a life ! of poverty and power, of meanness and grandeur, of con-
tempt and glory, of contact with sinners and of perfect personal
purity — a life the most erratic and the most heavenly — a life
from which demons shrank in terror, round which men crowded
in eager curiosity, and over which angels stooped in wonder and
love — a life which gathered about the meek current of its benev-
olence the fiery chariots and fiery horses of all miraculous gifts
and all divine energies. And having thus lived, he came purged.
228 ^ POETRY OF THE GOSPELS.
as by fire, to a death, which seemed to have borrowed materials
of terror, from earth, heaven, and hell, to bow down along with
its own burden upon his solitary head.
But, to humble him to submission, the fearful load of Calvary
was not required. He was humble all his life long, and never
more so than when working his miracles. How he shrunk, after
they were wrought, from the echo of their fame ! He did not re-
buke the woman of Samaria for proclaiming her conversion, but
he often rebuked his disciples for spreading the report of his
miracles. These were great, but his purpose was greater far.
They were an equipage worthy of a god, but only an equipage.
If we would understand his profound lowliness, let us see him,
who had been clothed with the inaccessible light as a^^garment,
girding himself with a towel, and washing his disciples' feet ; or
let us look at him, who erst came from " Teman and from Paran,"
in all the pomp of Godhead, riding on an ass, and a colt, the foal
of an ass ; or let us watch the woman washing his feet with tears,
and wiping them with the hairs of her head ; or let us sit down
by the side of the well at Samaria, and see him who fainted not,
neither was weary, with " his six days' work — a world," wearied
upon this solitary way, and hear him, who was the Word of
God, speaking to a poor and dissolute female as " never man
spake." Surely one great charm of this charmed life, one chief
power of this all-powerful and all-conforming story, arises from
the lowliness of the base of that ladder, the " top of which did
reach unto heaven."
But this lowliness was mingled with gentleness. It was a
flower which grew along the ground — not a fire running along
H. We have no doubt that this expressed itself in the very
features and expression of his countenance. We have seen but
one pictured representation which answered to our ideal of the
face and figure of Jesus. It was the work of an Italian master,
whose name we have forgotten, and represented Christ talking
to the woman of Samaria. It was a picture which might have
converted a soul. There sat the wearied Savior, by the well-
side — ^his eye full of a far look of love and sorrow, as if he saw
POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 229
the whole degraded species in the one sinner before him, and
his hand half open, as if it held in it " the living water" — the
woman listening with downcast looks, and tears trickling down
her cheeks — her pitcher, resting on the mouth of the well, and
behind her, seen in the distance, the sunny sky and glowing
mountains of Palestine. But, in the noble figure and the ethe-
real grandeur of his countenance, you saw that the gentleness
was not that of woman, nor even that of man ; it was the gentle-
ness of him whose " dwelling is with the humble and the contrite
in sj^irit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and the heart of the
contrite ones." It was this which led him to gentle associates
— to the society of the holy women, and of those children who
saw the simplicity of infancy blended with the perspicacity of
Godhead in the same face, and felt at once awe-struck and at-
tracted. The babes and sucklings saw and felt what was hid
from the wise and prudent. But the chief scene for the exer-
cise of this exceeding gentleness was the company of publicans,
sinners, and harlots. The sight of personified purity mingling
with the vilest of beings, with condescension, blame, hope, and
pity expressed in his countenance, instead of disgust and horror,
w^as touching beyond the reach of tears. Like the moon looking
full in upon a group of evil-doers, at once rebuking, softening,
and spiritualizing the scene, so at Simon's table shone on the
sinners around, the shaded orb of the Redeemer's face, and it
seemed as if heaven were dimly dawning upon the imminent
victims of hell.
And yet, with this mildness, there was blended a certain
ineffable dignity. The dignity of a child approaches the
sublime. It is higher than the dignity of a king — higher, be-
cause less conscious. It resembles rather the dignity of the tall
rock, or of the pine surmounting its summit. This dignity,
compounded of purity and unconsciousness, was united in Christ
to that which attends knowledge and power. It was this which
made the people exclaim, that he taught with authority, and
not as the scribes — that wrung from the officers sent to appre-
hend him, the testimony that never man spake like this man,
230 POETRY OF THE GOSPELS.
and rendered lofty, instead of ludicrous, his asseveration, " I
and my Father are one." A dignity this which deserted him
not, even when he wore the scarlet robe, and carriejd the reed
for a scepter, and the thorns for a crown ; nay, which trans-
figured these into glorious emblems in the blaze of spirit which
shone around him. The old painters often paint Christ with a
halo around his head. No such halo had, or needed, that holy
brow ; it was enough that a divine dignity formed a hedge
around it.
But, " on all his glory," there was another " defense" — a red
rim of anger circled it at tim^s. The " Lamb" became, at rare
intervals, angry, and sinned, not in feeling nor in expressing
that righteous rage — righteous, although seeming strange as
a volcano in a valley, or as thunder from the blue sky. The
forked flames of Sinai burst out from Olivet, the lips of eternal
love become white with the foam of indignation, and upon his
enemies there fall " woes" heavier than those of the ancient
seers, and which seem to rehearse the last words, " Depart, ye
cursed." There are no such tremendous voices in all literature
as these. We feel, as we listen, that there is no enemy like an
offended lover — no fire like the sheen of a dead affection — no
element so bitter as that into which neglect changes the sweet
■ — no words like these, "The wrath of the Lamb." "The
wrath of the Lamb !" These are words from which heaven
and earth shall flee away, and which shall make its victims cry
out to the rocks and the mountains, " Cover us, cover us from
the wrath of him that sitteth upon the throne, and of the Lamh ;''"'
but the rocks and the mountains will not reply.
Such displays of anger were few and fjir between. They
seem escapes, albeit, always just in their cause and holy in
their spirit. And escapes, too, seem his prophecies and his
miracles. " Virtue goes out of him." Portions of his infinite
knowledge slip, as if involuntarily, from his mind, and now and
then crumbs drop down from the table of his Omnipotence
upon the happy bystanders. It is always as if he were restrain-
ing his boundless powers and gifts, as if he " stayed his thunder
POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 231
in mid-volley ;" for, does he not say himself, " Thinkest thou
that I can not now pray to my Father, and he shall presently
give me more than twelve legions of angels ?" Miracles, as we
have before hinted, he holds in severe subordination to the
moral purposes of his office, and hence he would never work
them, either merely to gratify curiosity or expressly to corrob-
orate his mission. They came from him like sudden reflec-
tions of the sun upon the eye or brow, and thus they answered
the important purpose of turning attention toward him — of
proving that what he said was not to be treated lightly — of
showing him to be superior to a mere teacher — of starting the
question, " Is the doctrine worthy of the magnificence of the
circumstances in which it is set ?" — of causing a finger of su-
pernal light to rest upon the head of the lowly youth of Naza-
reth — and to mark him out, once and forever, to the world.
The feeling, too, that a miraculous energy w^as fluctuating
around, and might flame up in a moment into a conflagration,
dangerous to be approached, served to clear a space about, and
pave a way before him, and to leave him ample time and room
ibr working the work his Father had given him to do.
Superiority to pride of knowledge and power was a distin-
guishing feature of Jesus. Pride can not, indeed, coexist with*,
perfect knowledge and power, for it implies as certainly some-
thing above, as something below it. The proud man looks up
as well as down, measuring himself with what is beyond, as
well as with what is beneath him. But this superiority in our
blessed Lord was only a part of that unconsciousness which so
signally characterized him. He seemed conscious of God only.
He overflowed with God. Even when he spoke of himself, it
was but as a vessel where God dwelt. His frequent "I" is
always running into the great " Thou" of God. " He that hath
seen me, hath seen the Father." This was all that we can con-
ceive of absorption into the Deity. The essence, indeed, is
never lost, nor the personality confounded ; but the Son, ever
rushing into his Father's arras, seems almost identified with him.
* Is the term geniality too common and too low to be applied
232 POETRY OF THE GOSPELS.
to this transcendent being ? And yet it forms but a true and
elegant version of the rude vernacular of his enemies. " Be-
hold a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber." No fugitive from
the temptations and responsibilities of man was man's Savior.
He feared them not ; he faced them, and he never fell before
them. He came " eating and drinking," and angels wondered,
and sinners wondered, as they saw those common actions glori-
fied into symbols and sacraments, the bread becoming the " corn
of heaven" under his smile, and the wine seeming pure as his
own blood beneath his blessing.
On all anchoritism and monachism, he looked ^down. Un-
breathed valor, unexercised virtue, chastity untried, compulsory
temperance, the ostrich device of hiding the eyes from danger,
were alien, if not abhorrent, to his frank, large, and fearless na-
ture. Think of the marriage at Cana of Galilee. We stay not
with triflers, to inquire at length into the quality of the wine
there transmuted. Suffice it, that in the language of the Eton
boy, " The conscious water saw her God, and blushed." Suffice
it that this, surely, like all Christ's miracles, must have been
perfect in its kind. He made the tongue of the dumb, not
merely to speak, but to sing ; he made the lame not only to
walk, but to leap as a hart ; the blind to see, at first, indeed,
men like trees walking, but ultimately with the utmost clear-
ness ; and the paralytic to take up his bed and walk ; the calm
he produced on the sea was a " great calm ;" the bread he mul-
tiplied must have been of the finest of the wheat ; and doubt-
less the wine he renewed in the vessels of Cana was of the rich-
est of the vintage. His lessons, stated or implied here or
elsewhere on the subject, are none the less imperative. They
seem to be these — first, that all excess is sin ; secondly, that the
moderate use of God's bounties can never be charged in itself
with iniquity ; but, thirdly, he never denies, nay, the spirit of
his teaching rather affirms, that there are cases and constitutions
where even moderation may be dangerous, as the parent and
prelude of undue indulgence, and where sacrifice may be better
than mercy.
POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 235
And yet tradition has said that Jesus was seldom seen to
smile, and never to laugh. Such traditions we hold worthless,
for whv should not smiles, at least, like birds of calm, have
often sat upon his lips, and God's sunshine upon that "hill of
holiness," his divine head ? But there lay a burden upon his
soul, which made his smiles few, and his sunshine a scattered
light. Even as the noble charger smells the battle afar off, and
paws restlessly till he has mingled with the thunder of the cap-
tains and the shouting, so did this " Lion of the tribe of Judah"
feel the approach of his foes, nor could he rest, nor could he
slumber, till he had fought the battle, and gained the victory of
the world. There were constant vision and expectation of the
decease at Jerusalem, and this bred a burning desire after the
passion of the Cross, which formed a slow, subdued fever within
him. " I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I
straitened till it be accomplished ? With desire have I desired
to eat this passover ere I suffer." Even on the mount of the
Transfiguration, he looked toward Calvary, and spake of his
coming death. This added a melancholy meaning to his words,
a nobility to his aspect, and a tremulous solemnity to his very
smiles. Great always is the life which stands even, uncon-
sciously, in the shadow of coming death. The shadow that
coming event casts before it is ever sublime and sublimating.
Yet, as it drew near, his manhood came out in the form of a
manlike shudder at the unspeakable cup which was given him
to drink. He saw down into it more clearly than ever sufferer
was permitted before or since to see into his coming woes ; and
if he did shrink and shiver, the shrinking was but for a moment,
and the shiver proved him human, and that his torments would
not be the incredible, impossible agonies of a God, but those of
one who was bone of our bone, as well as the brightness of the
Father's glory. It was, indeed, an awful moment, during which
he gasped out the words, " Father, if it be possible, let this cup
pass from me." He had tasted of its first drops, and they were
the great drops of the bloody sweat ; he had looked into its
contents, and seen them bubbhng up hke the springs of hell,
234 POETRY OF THE GOSPELS.
and he gave one start backward, and the cup was just passing
out of his hands. Passing into whose ? Into ours, to be drained
forever, and ever, and ever ! But, blessed be his name, the
start and spasm were momentary ; he grasped the cup again,
and said, in tones which thrilled every leaf in the garden,
" Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done."
Death is often at once the close and the epitome of life. It
is the index at the end of the volume. AH the man's proper-
ties seem to rush round him as he is about to leave the world.
This was eminently true of Christ. How emphatically he was
himself in the judgment-hall and on the Cross ! His reticence
became a silence hke that of a dumb spirit, at which Pilate
trembled. His gentleness swelled into the godlike, as he healed
the servant's ear, or said, " Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not
for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children." His
dignity seems to have risen, like a mountain-wave, under the
marks of contempt which were heaped upon him. His humility
and submission assumed an air of Atlantean grandeur, as the
burden of the world's atonement at length lay fully on his
shoulders. And power never, not even when he rebuked the
waves, or rode into Jerusalem, lay so legibly on his forehead or
in his eye, as when he hung upon the tree. The Cross was the
meeting-place, not only of all the attributes of Godhead, here
reconciled through its " witty invention," but of all the attributes
of Christ's princely manhood.
The circumstances of his death were worthy of the character
and of the object. While he hung suspended, the pulse of the
universe seemed now to stand still in collapse, and now to run
on with the fiery haste of a feverous paroxysm. There was a
great earthquake, which opened the adjacent graves, and
startled the slumbers of the dead within them. The rocks were
rent as by a burning hand, and it seemed as if the same hand
passed along to tear the vail of the Temple in sunder. About
the sixth hour, there was darkness over all the land until the
ninth hour, and the sun was darkened. And most wonderful
of all, a poor ruffian soul, shivering on the brink of destruo-
POETRY OP THE GOSPELS. 235
tion, was, in tbe very depth of the world-tragedy, snatched, like
a brand from the burning, by the nailed and bleeding arm of
the sufferer.
It was meet that a deep darkness, expressing the anger of
God, the evil of sin, and the anguish of the Savior, should
cover the earth — that nature, unable to look upon the features
of her expiring Lord, should throw a vail over the scene and the
sufferer. Nay, is it a conception too daring that this darkness
covered the universe, that " all the bright lights of heaven" were
darkened over the Cross, that not one orb ventured to shine
while the " Bright and Morning Star" was under echpse, that
from Christ's dying brow the shadow swept over suns, constel-
lations, and firmaments, till for three hours, save the throne of
the Eternal, all was gloom ? Be this as it may, when the vail
was removed, how strange the revelation ! There hung the
Savior, dead ; there were the two thieves, in the agonies of
approaching dissolution ; fcirther on, were the multitudes, with
rage, fear, and gratified revenge, contending on their faces ; and
farther on still, the towers of the city, the pinnacles of the
temple, and the distant hills, all shining out as in a new-born
radiance. For now the battle was over, the victory won, the
darkness past, the salvation finished, the Savior himself away,
already rejoicing in the bowers and blessedness of the paradise
of God.
But we must withdraw our feet from a ground so holy, and
so mysteriously shadowed, as that surrounding the Cross of
Christ.. - Silence here is devotion ; and where wonder is so fully
fed, it must be silent. Much as we admire the pictorial art, we
do not like pictures of the death of Christ. There was a painter,
in ancient Greece, who sought to represent the grief of Aga-
memnon at the death of his daughter, Iphigenia. How did he
represent it ? He gained the praises of all antiquity, and of all
time, by not doing it at all. He drew a curtain over the face
of the agonized parent. Thus let us, in imitation of the uni-
%'erse, draw a curtain over the solemn, the unfathomable scene.
Christ, in the grave, presents softer and less terrible points of
236 POETRY OF THE GOSPELS.
view. He lies down wearied, exhausted, alone, but triumphant
— " like a warrior taking his rest." A guard of soldiers watches
his sepulcher ; but angels are watching there too, and the soft
shadows of their wings give a mild sublimity to the new tomb.
It is a high glad day throughout the invisible moral creation.
Christ's work is done. The great redemption is complete. The
Savior's body "sleeps well." His spirit is preaching to the
spirits in prison. The morrow shall dawn upon his resurrec-
tion. And therefore the sun eclipsed yesterday is shining with
a serene and cheerful ray. And perhaps all, except the mur-
derers and the grieved disciples, feel an unaccountable joy run-
ning in their veins, as if some vast shadow and burden had
passed away from them and from the world — as if a danger of
mysterious magnitude had been somehow escaped, and a deliv-
erance somehow wrought of incalculable meaning. Even now,
beautiful days sometimes stoop down upon us, like doves from
heaven, and give us exquisite, though short-lived pleasure — ^in
which earth appears " a pensive, but a happy place," the sky
the dome of a temple, Eden recalled, and the millennium antici-
pated. But surely this Sabbath, as it is floated softly and
slowly to the west, seemed to be " covered with silver, and its
feathers with yellow gold," and to wear on its wings the smile
which had rested on the young world, when God pronounced it
" very good." And were there not heard in the air, above the
hill of Olives, or down the valley of Jehoshaphat, or amid the
trees of Gethsemane, snatches of celestial music, words of mys-
tic song, proclaiming that the jubilee of earth had awakened the
sympathies and the responses of heaveti, and that the " young-
eyed cherubim" were rehearsing the melody they are to sing on
the morrow in full chorus, when the scarcely buried Savior is
to spring up, as from sleep, to honor, glory, and immortality ?
But, without dwelhng on the other poetical events of his his-
tory — on the morning when he rose early from the grave — oa
bis mysterious and fluctuating sojourn for forty days on earth,
after his resurrection (as if he loved to linger in and haunt
that dear spot, and deferred his very glory to the last moment,
POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 237
for the sake of liis disciples) — on that immortal journey to
Em mails — on his ascension far above all heavens, arising from
the hill of Olives, with no chariot of fire, or horses of fire, but
in his own native might and instinctive tendency upward — on
his entrance and his session at the right hand of God — we come
to speak of the poetry which cleaves to those wondrous words
"W^hich he has left behind him.
The manner of Christ's life, as he uttered his parables and
other sayings, was in the highest degree poetical. It was the
life of a stranger on this earth, of a wanderer, of one who had
no home but the house not made with hands, which he had him-
self built. Ilence we identify his image with nature, and ever
see him on lonely roads, midnight mountains, silent or stormy
lakes, fields of corn, or the deep wildernesses of his country.
Every step trod by the old seers, was retrod by him, as if to
efface their fiery vestiges, and make the regions, over which
they had swept like storms, green again. He was only sent to
the lost sheep of Israel, but he more than once approached to
the very boundaries of his allotted field. We find him, for in-
stance, in the neighborhood of Tyre and Sidon, straying by
a mightier sea than that of Tiberias, and lifting his eyes to a
loftier summit than that of Tabor. " He must needs" see Leb-
anon, as well as pass through Samaria. His were not, indeed,
journeys of sentiment, but of mercy ; and yet, why should he
not have gazed with rapture upon the peaceful, the pure, and
the lofty, in the works, while he did the will, of God ? This
was, peradventure, the chief source of his solace amid suffering
and weariness. He was not recognized by men, but the lilies
of the field looked up meaningly in his face, the " waters per-
ceived him — they saw him well," the winds lingered amid his
hair, the sunbeams smiled on his brow, the landscape from the
summit seemed to crouch lovingly at his feet, and the stars
from their far thrones to bend him down obeisance. He, and
he alone, of. all men, felt at home in nature, and able to see it,
and call it, " My father's house." He felt not warmed by, but
warming the sun — not walking in the light of, but enlightening
238 POETRY OF THE GOSPELS.
the world, and could look on its great orbs as but the " many
mansions" for his spiritual seed. Of all men he only (mentally
and m-orally) stood erect^ and this divine uprightness it was
which turned the world upside down. The poetical point of
view of nature, is not that of distant admiration or of cold in-
quiry, it is that of sympathy, amounting to immersion ; the
poet's soul is shed, like a drop, into creation ; but this process
was never fully completed, save in one — in him who uttered
the Sermon on the Mount.
Fancy has sometimes revolved the question, were nature to
burst into words — were the blue sky to speak — what words
would best translate its old smiling silence ? To men bending,
and willing to bend, below its quiet, surpassing grandeur, what
sounds more cheering and cognate than were these — '' Blessed
are the 2'>oor in spirit, for theirs is the Jcingdoin of heaven V
These are the first words from the mount. The first recorded
word of the Divine Man is a blessing ; and a blessing on those
who feel their littleness, as the condition and element of their
being, and a blessing which fills the void of the poor, humble
heart with Heaven. Just as the sky seems to whisper — " Bend,
but bend — learn, only learn — listen, but listen — and all mine
are thine, and with galaxies shall I crown thy lowly head."
And as the beatitudes multiply, you feel more at every sen-
tence that they are from the deep heart of the universe, and
that this is God interpreting himself. Who but himself could
have named that eye which can alone to eternity see him — the
cleansed and filial heart ? " Blessed are the pure in heart, for
they shall see GodP
Demonstrate a God to the atheist, or the worldling, or the
sensual ! Alas ! such persons never had, and may never have,
a God, and how can they be conscious of him ? God must either
be a Father, or a fierce, overwhelming. Infinite Thought — a jus-
tice and a terror — crushing his enemies under their oivn one-
sided idea of him. But the pure and warm heart feels the
Father, like a sweet scent in the evening air — like the presence
of a friend in the dark twilight room — like a melody entering
POETEY OF THE GOSPELS. 239
"within and sweetening all the soul, which has leaped half-way
to meet it.
The heart here, the Father yoiider, and the universe of man
and matter as the meeting-place between them, is the whole scope
and the whole poetry of the Sermon on the Mount. The preacher
shears off all the superfluities and externals of worship and of
action, that he may show, in its naked simplicity, the com-
munion which takes place between the heart as worshiper, and
God as hearer. The righteousness he inculcates must exceed
that " of the Scribes and the Pharisees." The man who hates
his brother, or calls him " Eaca," is a murderer in seed. Adul-
tery first lurks and swelters in the heart. Oaths are but big
sounds ; the inner feelings are better represented by " Yea, yea,
nay, nay." That love which resides within will walk through
the w^orld as men walk through a gallery of pictures, loving and
admiring, and expecting no return. The giving of alms must
be secret. The sw^eetest prayer will be solitary and short. One
must fast, too, as if he fasted not. The enduring treasures must
be laid up within. Eighteousness must be sought before, and
as inclusive of, all things ; life is more precious than all the
means of it. The examination and correction of faults must be-
gin at home. Prayer, if issuing from the heart, is all-powerful.
The essence of the law and prophets lies in doing to others
as we would have others do to us. Having neglected the
inner Hfe, the majority have gone to ruin, even while following
fully and devotedly external forms of faith and worship. The
heart must, at the same time, be known by its fruits. It is only
the good worker that shall enter the heavenly kingdom. These
truths, in fine, acted upon — those precepts from the Mount,
heard and done — become a rock of absolute safety, while all be-
sides is sand now, and sea hereafter.
Such is, in substance, this sermon. It includes unconsciously
all theology and all morals, and is invested, besides, with the
beauty of imagery — theology — for what do we know, or can we
ever know, of God, but that he is " our Father in heaven," that
he accepts our heart-worship, forgives our debts, and hears our
240 POETRY OF THE GOSPELS.
earnest prayers — morals, for as all sin lies in selfishness, all virtue
lies in losing our petty identity in the great river of the species,
which flows into the ocean of God ; and as to imagery, how many
natural objects — the salt of the sea, the lilies of the valley, the
thorns of the wilderness, the trees of the field, the hairs of the head,
the rocks of the mountain, and the sand of the sea-shore — com-
bine to explain and to beautify the deep lessons conveyed ! Here
is, verily, the model — long sought elsewhere in vain — of a " per-
fect sermon," which ought to speak of God and of man in words
and figures borrowed from that beautiful creation, which lies
between, which adumbrates the former to the latter, and enables
the latter to glorify at once the works and the Author. " Here
is Christianity," we exclaim, and remember with pleasure the
experiences of a gifted spirit, who was wont, after attending
certain meetings, professedly meant to revive religion, but full
of degrading rant and vain contortion, to re-assure his spirit in
its belief of Jesus by reading, himself alone, the Sermon on the
Mount.
Fitly does the Teacher close his sermon by the parable of the
two men, the two houses, and the two foundations. The two
great classes of mankind are but too easily represented by two
individuals — the selfish and the spiritual man — the one build-
ing perhaps a palace on the sand, the other perhaps a cottage
on the rock, and each receiving his appropriate reward. The
palace (be it a poem, or a victory, or a g^rand discovery), if the
sand of selfishness be beneath it, sinks inevitably, and men,
angels, demons, and God, say of it — " Great is its fall." The
cottage (perhaps one humble heart, united by the builder to
Jesus — perhaps figured aptly by a cup of cold water given to
a discijile, or by a dying word, like that of the penitent thief)
stands securer far than the sun, and shall shine when he is
darkness. At the close of this parable of parables, do we not
see evil gone down, and lost in the abyss ; while good remains
imperishable upon its rock of ages ?
The Sermon on the Mount represents faithfully the two prin-
cipal features of Christ's preaching — its didactic basis, and the
POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 241
parabolic beauty v/bich sbone above. In it we find tbose two
qiiabties united ; in bis after-discourses we find tbem more in
separation. In tbe Gospel of Luke, for instance, we bave little
else tban parables proceeding from bis lips ; in Jobn, bis didacti-
cism takes a bigber fligbt tban in Matthew, and wears a celestial
luster upon her wings. In tbe Sermon on tbe Mount, be bad
soared bigb above Sinai ; but in tbe closing discourses to bis
disciples, recorded in Jobn, be leaves us, like tbe men of Galilee,
" standing and gazing up into beaven." In bis Sei'mon on tbe
Mount, be bad dwelt cbiefly upon tbe general relations of men
to tbe Father ; the discourses in John illustrate rather his own
special and transcendent connection with him.
Let us glance, first, at bis parables, which are a poetry in
themselves. Truth, half betrayed in beauty, half shrouded in
mystery, is the essence of a parable. It is the truth wishing
to be loved, ere she ventures forth to be worshiped and obeyed.
Tbe multitude of Christ's parables is not so wonderful as their
variety, their beauty, their brevity, and the sweet or fearful pic-
tures which they paint at once and forever upon the soul.
Here we see the good Samaritan riding toward bis inn, with his
wounded brother before him. There, hngeringly, doubtingly,
like a truant boy at evening, returns the prodigal son to bis
father, whose arms, at his threshold, stretched out, seem wish-
ing for wings to expedite the joyous meeting. In that field
stalks tbe sower, graver tban sowers are wont to be in the merry
season of spring. On tbe opposite side, the fisherman, with
joyful face, is drawing ashore bis heavy-laden net. With
yet keener ecstasy depicted on bis countenance, you see the
merchantman lighting on a pearl of pearls, while across from
him is tbe treasure-finder, with circumspective and fearful looks,
biding bis precious prize. And, lo ! bow, under tbe dim canopy
of night, shadowing tbe barely-budding field of wheat, steals a
crooked and winged figure, trembling lest the very darkness see
liim — the enemy — scattering tares in huddled abundance among
the wheat. The morning comes ; but, while revealing the rank
tares growing among the good seed, it reveals also tbe large mus-
L
242 POETRY OF THE GOSPELS.
tard-tree wliicli has shot up with incredible swiftness, " so that
the fowls of the air do build in the branches thereof." Here you
see a woman mixing leaven with her meal till the whole lump
is leavened ; and there another woman, sweeping the room, how
fast, yet intensely, for her lost piece of silver. There the ser-
vant of the marriage-host is compelling the wanderers from the
hedges to come in, his face all glowing with amiable anger and
kindly coercion ; and yonder, in the distance, with anxious eye
and crook in his hand, hies the shepherd into the twilight des-
ert, in search of his " lost sheep." And, hark ! as the mar-
riage-feast has begun, and the song of holy merriment is just
rising on the evening air, there comes a voice, strangely con-
certing with it, hollow as the grave — a whispered thunder. It
is the voice of Dives, saying — " Father Abraham, have mercy
on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger
in water, and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this fiameP
In such figures, Jesus has exhausted life, earth, eternity.
The small seed from which all greatness buds ; the supreme
beauty of compassion, even when found in foreign and unen-
lightened breasts ; the touch of nature, making the whole world
kin ; the joy and glory connected with the recovery of the lost ;
the unseen but awfully real agency of evil counteracting good
in this present world ; the all-embracing and pains-taking love
of the Great Host and Father ; the fact that men must some-
times be driven to their own happiness ; the dignity and value
of a lost soul, or a lost world ; the feelings connected with
finding a truth, and wrapping it up as too precious or bright for
the present time ; the yearning of the Father over his vagrant
children, and his joy at their return; the reception the Savior
was to receive when he came to save the lost ; the leap by which
the laws of earth pass into the unseen world ; the sympathies of
the departed with living men ; and the sufficiency and soleness
of the means God has appointed ; — such are the fancy-wrought
and fire-written lessons of the parables of Jesus Christ.
The marriage of the highest truth and human interest was
never so fully celebrated as here. Hence, while divines find
POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 243
those parables to sink into a profundity into which they can
Dot follow, children hang them up, like pictures, in their fancies
and hearts. From them, too, has sprung an entire literature,
including some of the master-pieces of modern genius. Dante's
" Divina Comedia," Spenser's " Faery Queen," and Bunyan's
" Pilgrim's Progress," are the long-reverberated and eloquent
echoes of the wayside words of the Divine Carpenter of Naza-
reth.
" Divine," indeed ! for if any man doubt his claim to the
title, let him pass from Christ's pictures of earth to his aspira-
tions after heaven ; let him hear the musical pants of this great
swimmer, as he is nearing, amid roughest water, the shores of
eternity and his Father's bosom. The last words of Jesus are
surcharged with feeling for his disciples, forgiveness to his ene-
mies, and desire after renewed communion with his Father.
His soul springs up, as he sees his Father's throne in view.
Death dwindles as he looks onward. A smile of triumph rests,
as by anticipation, upon his lips. " Be of good cheer : I have
overcome the world." His last command is, " that ye love one
another;" his last legacy is "peace." He is going to the
Father, but leaving the Comforter, and promising to return
again ; and, ere going, he breaks out into a prayer which, ere
it closes, seems to bind in one chain of glory earth and heaven,
himself, his Father, and his people : " The glory which thou
gavest me I have given them ; that they may be one, even as
we are one. Father, I will that they also whom thou hast
given me be with me where I am ; that they may behold my
glory." This prayer seems a specimen of his intercessory
prayers in heaven. It is the f.rst lifting up of that solemn voice
which sweetens the air of Paradise — the first raising of those
arms which brighten the very light which is inaccessible and
full of glory.
In considering those words, we are strongly impressed with
the feeling — this is the conscious link of the spiritual world —
the living bond between the Father and his children. The
Father can never on earth come nearer us than him ; we can
244 POETRY OF THE GOSPELS.
never get nearer than him to the Father. We know not
what the eternal ages may develop, or how that mysterious
sentence, "Then shall the Son of Man also himself be sub-
ject unto him, that God may be All in All," may bear upon
his future mediation ; but surely now he stands between us and
the beams of divine day, like an "Angel in the sun." There
is no getting him out of the eye of the world. The poor sin-
ner looks at him, and mourns, yet rejoices. The proud trans-
gressor hates and foams, but can not help looking at, and think-
ing of, Christ. The infidel, feeling him in his way, invents
theory after theory, each trampling down each, to resolve him
into clay or into mist ; but still he stands victorious and serene
above them all, inscrutable as an enigma, vast as a God, and
warm as a man. The fierce theoretical dogmatist would seek to
turn aside that smile, and fix it on the pages of his catechism
and the men of his creed ; but, like summer sunlight, it scatters
abroad and " sprinkles many nations." Many look down, and
strive to forget him ; some try to look above him, into super-
solar regions ; but in vain. His image pursues them into the
depths, or flies before them into the heights of nature. In this
age, only a few, even among those who disbelieve his claims,
yell out faded blasphemies and foul calumnies against his name.
More now of all kindreds and climes are beginning to wish this
Angel to descend, and are expecting from him — and from him
alone — the full solution of the dread mystery of man and the
world.
For why ? He only understands it. He has passed up every
step of the ladder, from the child to the God, from the manger
to the throne. He has felt the pulse of all being. He listened
to the hearts of harlots and of publicans, and heard humanity
boating even there. He looked into the dim eyes of the poor,
and saw therein the image of God. Even in devils he found
out all that was left of good in their natures, when they con-
fessed him to be the Son of God. While the long hair of the
prostitute wiped his feet, which her tears had watered, the eye
of the lunatic tarried, at his bidding, from its wild wanderings,
POETRY OF THE GOSPELS. 245
and began to roll calmly around him. Herod became grave in
his presence, Pilate washed his hands from the shadow of his
blood, Peter w^ept at his look, and Judas died at his recollection.
Angels ministered to him, or sung his praise ; the grave was
ashamed of hiding his dust ; earth threw his ransomed body up
to heaven ; and heaven sent forth all its guards, and opened all
its gates, to receive hira into its bosom, where it shall retain
him till the times of the restitution of all things.
Thus faintly have we sought to depict the character and elo-
quence of Jesus. Scripture writers did not, nor needed to do it.
They never say, in so many words, Christ was very eloquent,
very wise, very humble, very merciful, or very holy. But they
record his Sermon on the Mount ; they show him taking the
Pharisees in their own snare ; they register his tears at the tomb
of Lazarus; they paint the confusion of the witnesses, who
came, but could not bear testimony against him ; and they tell
of his washing his disciples' feet. We have, alas ! no new facts
to record of him ; and must say of that hfe so marvelous, yet
humane, " It is finished." But even as the most splendid ob-
ject in the sky is perpetually painted, yet always new, as the
sun is unceasingly rendered back by the wave of ocean, the
dew-drop, and the eye of man, so let it be with the Sun of
Righteousness. Let his blessed image be reflected from page
to page, each catching more fully than another some aspect of
his glory, till he shall himself stand before the trembling mirror
of the earth, " as he is," and till " every eye shall see him."
Then, probably, it may be found that all the proud portraits
which the genius of Taylor, and Harris, and Rousseau, and
Goethe, has drawn of him, are not comparable with that cher-
ished likeness of his face and nature which lies in the bosom of
the lowly Christian, like a star in a deep-sunken well, the more
glorious that it is solitary and seldom seen, forever trembhng,
but never passing away.
Note. — Since -writing this chapter, we have read Dr. Channing's Life.
We find in one of his letters two of our thoughts anticipated ; one, that
of Christ's unconsciousness in working his miracles, and another, his su-
246 POETRY OF THE GOSPELS.
j>eriority to them. He says, " Miracle sorting was to him nothing,
compared with moral energy." And this, he says, produced his uncon-
sciousness. "We rather think that that was the result of the miraculous
force stored up in him, and which, in certain circxmistances, as when it
met with strong faith, came forth freely and irresistibly, as water to
the diviner's rod, or perspiration to the noonday sun. But it was not
because it came out so spontaneously that Christ rated it low, but be-
cause its effects were the mere scaffolding to his ulterior purpose. We
advise every one to read the last thirty pages of the second volume of
Channing's Life. They constitute the finest apology for the reality of
Christ we ever read, and show deep insight into his nature. They
show that Hall's definition of Unitarianism — that its whole secret con-
sists in thinking meanly of Christ — did not at least apply to Channing.
CHAPTER XI y.
PAUL.
It was asked of old time, " Is Saul also among the prophets ?"
it may be asked now, is Paul also among the poets ? Wonder-
ful as this is, it is no less certain. A poet of the first order
Paul was, if force of thought, strength of feeling, power of ima-
gination (without an atom of fency), heaving ardor of eloquence,
and energy of language, go to constitute a poet.
The degree in which Paul possesses the logical faculty, the
extreme vigor and keenness of his understanding, have blinded
many to the power of his genius, just as, on the contrary, with
many writers, the luxuriance and splendor of their imagina-
tion have vailed from common critical view the subtilty and
strength of their insight. In the one case, the eye of the cherub
is so piercing, that we never look up to the wings ; in the other,
the wings are so vast and overshadowing, that they conceal
from us the eye. The want of fancy, besides, which we have
indicated, and the severe restraint in which he usually holds his
imagination, till his intellectual processes are complete, have
aided the general impression that Paul, though acute always,
and often eloquent, is never poetical. Whereas, in fact, his
logic is but the buckler on his arm, behind which you see the
ardent eyes and the glittering breastplate of a poet- hero, worthy
of mingling with the highest chivalry of ancient song, with
Isaiah and Ezekiel, with Habakkuk and with Joel. It was a
poet's eye, although glaring and bloodshot, that witnessed the
first martyrdom — a poet's eye that was smote into blindness on
the way to Damascus — that looked from Mars Hill, over that
248 PAUL.
transcendent'landscape and motley audience — and that, caught
up to Paradise, saw the visions of God, and, according to some,
was ever afterward weakened by the blaze. He nearly fulfilled
to the letter the words since figuratively apphed to Milton, who
" Passed the bounds of flaming space,
Where angels tremble as they gaz9,
Who saw, and blasted by the excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night."
In Paul, first, we find art arrested and pressed into the service
of Christianity — a conscious and cultured intellect devoting it-
self to plead the cause of heaven — the genius of the East, united
•with the acuteness and consecutive thought which distinguish
the European mind. The utterances of the old prophets, of
Jesus too, and of John, are artless as the words of a child.
Even the loftiest and longest raptures of Isaiah are as destitute
oi junctura as the Proverbs of Solomon ; the difierence only is,
that while Solomon walks calmly from stepping-stone to step-
ping-stone, Isaiah leaps from rock to rock, and peak to peak. The
words of Jesus, when mild, come forth disconnected as a stream
of smiles — when terrible, are successive, but separate, flashes of
forked lightning. Paul alone, of Scripture writers, aims at
composition in his system, his description, and his style. His
system is a dark but rounded orb ; in description, he essays to
group objects together ; and the style of the chief part of his
principal Epistles is an intertangled chain. We might conceive
that meeting on the Damascene way to typify the contrast be-
tween intuition and analysis — the divine Intuitionist looking
down from above — the baffled but mighty analyst falling like a
dead man at his feet, to rise, however, and to unite in himself
a large portion of both powers, to blend the learning and logic
of Gamaliel the schoolmaster, with the light streaming from the
face of Jesus, the child.
Here we see how exquisitely wise was the selection of Paul,
at that point of the history of the new religion, to become its
PAUL. 249
ambassador to the West. The first enthusiasm of its youth was
fading, and the power of the first impulse from on high had ne-
cessarily, in some measure, spent itself. The miraculous glory
surrounding its head was destined gradually to decay. That it
might, nevertheless, continue to live and spread — that it might
j^ass in its power into the midst of those cultivated countries,
where it was sure at every step to be challenged, it must as-
sume an elaborate shape, and find a learned advocate. A Paul
was needed ; and a Paul was found, nay, enlisted into the ser-
vice, not by any subaltern officer, but by the Great Captain
himself. There is no evidence that he was deeply read in
Grecian lore — had he been so, we should have had thirty in-
stead of three quotations from the Pagan poets ; nor that he was
ever trained to the study of the Grecian dialects ; but his in-
tellect, naturally acute to subtilty, was subjected to the some-
what severely intellectual processes which then abounded in the
Jewish schools ; and he was thus qualified to reason and wind a
way for Christianity, where the force of miracle, or the instant
lightning of intuitive feehng, were not at hand to cut and cleave
it. The religion of Jesus passed through the East like a ray
through an unrefracting medium ; when it came westward, it
found an atmosphere to be penetrated, and a Pauline power to
penetrate it by bending, yet remaining pure as a sunbeam.
"When Paul arose, Christianity was in a state of disarray.
The manna was fallen from heaven, and lay white on the
ground, but was not gathered nor condensed. Had it been de-
signed for a ])artial or temporary purpose, this had been com-
paratively of httle importance. But, as it was meant to tarry
till the master should come, it was necessary that it should as-
sume a shape so symmetrical, and a consistence so great, that
no sun of civilization or keen inquiry could melt it. For this
purpose, Paul was stopped, and struck down, and blinded, and
raised up, and cured, and taken like his master into the wilder-
ness (of Arabia), and brought back, and commissioned, and
preserved, and sent to Athens and to Rome, and inspired with
those dark yet wondrous Epistles of his — parts of which seem
260 PAUL.
to preserve certain great lialf-utterable trutlis m frost, till the
final spring shall come.
Some even of Paul's friends have regretted the analytical
cast which the intuitional religion of the " Carpenter" took from
his hands, and have said, " not Paul, but Jesus." There are
several reasons why we can not concur with them in this. First,
The intuitional element was not lost, it was only exhibited in
another form : the manna was that which had fallen from
heaven ; it was only formed into cakes by a master hand.
Secondly, Intuitional impression can never circulate widely nor
long, unless it thus be condensed ; bullion is sluggish — money
goes ; heaps of manna sometimes stank — the small cakes re-
freshed and revived the eaters. Even Christ's words required
Paul's emphasis and accentuation. Thirdly, All genuine in-
tuition and inspiration seek, and at last find, an artistic or sys-
tematic expression. Nature herself struggles after unity, and
after completeness of beauty. Every flower seems arrested on
its way to higher elegance and more ethereal hues. Every tree
seems stretching out its branches in quest of some yet rounder
termination. So with thought of all varieties of excellence and
of truth. The severely logical desires a vesture of beauty. The
beautifully imaginative desires a clothing of cla}^ Not always
is either appetency granted. But no religion, at least, can
have a permanent place and power in the world, unless it ap-
peal alike to the ideal and the artistic, display the eternal spirit,
and assume the earthly shape. To Christianity, Jesus supplied
the one, and Paul the other. Fourthly, Such a descent, as it
may be called, from Jesus the child, to Paul the logician, was
necessary, both as an interpretation of that part of Christianity
which was destined to endure, and as a substitute for that part
of it doomed to weaken and wane. Christianity, the spiritual
power, was to remain ; but Christianity, the miraculous force,
was to decline. Paul's system was 1» contain the essence of
the one, and to conserve so much as was conservable of the rel-
ict influence of the other. Fifthly, As in part remarked be-
fore, it was of importance to Christianity that it should triumph
PAUL. 251
over a man of culture. Simple fishermen it had in plenty ; but
it needed to show how it could subdue an intellectual and edu-
cated man ; how it should, in the process, reconcile the warring
elements in his nature, and bring to him what no study could
ever bring— peace amid his majestic powers. In other words,
the intellectual progress of the age and the new religion must
be reconciled, and they were reconciled accordingly ; not merely
in a coni'pact and complete theory^ but in a living man — and that
man was Paul. This, too, is the great j^robleni of the present
time. To have our mental progress reconciled with Christianity,
not only by such an elaborate system as Coleridge died in
building, but also by a hving synthesis — a breathing bridge —
the new Chalmers of the new time, forming in himself the
herald of the mightier one, whose sandals even he shall be un-
worthy to unloose : this is what the wiser of Christians, and
the more devout of philosophers, are at present longing and
panting to see.
Of such a man, who shall lay the ground-plan ? We can
not describe him into existence. Yet we rnay state certain
quahties which the Paul of the present must possess, as the
Paul of a former day did. He must be a converted man.
That is, he must have seen, in a blaze of blinding light,
the vanity and evil, the folly and madness, of the worldly
or selfish, and the grandeur and truth of the disinterested
and Christian life. He must, in a glare of illumination, have
beheld himself, with all his faculties and accomplishments,
as but a garlanded victim, to be sacrificed for man and to
God. This Paul learned on the way to Damascus, and he
acted ever afterward on the lesson. He must be, again, a man
who' has gifts and accomplishments to sacrifice. He must be
able to meet age on its ov^^n terms, and to talk to it in its own
dialect. He must speak from between a double peak, from the
height of a commanding intellect, and from that of a lofty mis-
sion. He must render it impossible for any one to look down
upon him. The king himself may be, as we have called him,
a divine and eternal child ; but the embassador and herald must
252 PAUL.
be, like Paul, a furnished man. He must, again, have under-
gone great struggles, been made perfect through suffering —
perhaps fallen into many and grievous sins. He may have
been years without hope, and without God, in the world. He
may have entertained fierce, impure, and wasting passions,
comparable to that rage which filled the heart of Saul of Tarsus.
He may, unlike Saul, have sacrificed the letter as well as the
spirit of the law. All these are only inverted qualifications for
his great office. They prove him human — they evince expe-
rience — they secure in him, and for him, widest sympathies,
and show him to possess a fellow-feeling with our infirmities.
"We find, again, that the Paul of the past had a deep interest
and love for his unbelieving brethren. They were counted as
brethren, though they were unbelievers. He had been an un-
believer himself, and had been saved from unbelief by a special
and marvelous interference. But there remained in him still
a compassion for his brethren that were without. " Therefore,"
he says, " he nad great heaviness and continual sorrow in his
heart." The Paul of the present should have his heart dis-
tended by a similar emotion. We say not that he should have
ever crossed the boundaries of unbelief, but he should have
neared them. Unless he has neared them, in this distracted
time, it is clear that he has never thought at all. And although
we could accept an angel who had only seen, we can not accept
an apostle unless he has reflected, reasoned, doubted, and then
believed. And the man who has ever had deep and sincere
doubt, will always afterward regard it with interest and sym-
pathy, as the tomb of his now risen and renewed being, and
extend the sympathy to those who are still inclosed. A Paul
disbelieved once, and pitied unbelief ever afterward. A Cole-
ridge doubted once, and became the spiritual father of many
bewildered doubters. A Hall was once a materialist, and
buried (gravely and reverently) materialism in his father's
grave. An Arnold fought for years with doubts, and his last
words were the words of Christ to doubting Thomas. The
thinker of the new era must, probably, have gained truth
PAUL. 253
through yet darker avenues than theirs, and be able almost to
bless them, because they led to a fuller and brighter day.
The Paul of the past united reverence for the extant record
with a keen perception of the wants of the new era, and the
spirit of the new dispensation. Like Jesus, he said, " It hath
been said unto you by them of old time ;" and then proceeded
to express the old watchwords in the tones and the spirit of his
own time. So must the Paul of the present. He must study
philosophy, gaze on nature, and wait the descending inspiration,
leaning the while over the page of the New Testament. Many,
ignoring this as either never having been true, or as having be-
come false (as if any truth could ever become a falsehood, any
more than a he a truth), are wasting their voice, like BaaFs
prophets, in crying to deaf elements, and a sleeping Pantheistic
God. Others are going about our streets, like well-meaning
but beslept watchmen, calling the hours of midnight, while the
morning is paling their lanterns. Our Paul, while loving' the
" pale light of stars," must feel and announce the dawning of the
day. Finally, the Paul of the present, thus endowed, thus
educated, and thus impressed, must address himself, as did the
Paul of old, to form a version or system of Christianity, which
may be reconciled, or at least appear reconcilable, to science
and philosophy. He must elaborate from the Scriptures a mir-
ror in which the great twofold Cosmos of matter and mind
shall be seen " as it is." He must proclaim the approaching
nuptials of spiritual beauty and philosophic truth. And with-
out daring to prognosticate the entire course of thought which
shall form the reconciling medium, we may express our notion
of certain conditions which it must premise. First, In at-
tempting such a synthesis, much which clings to, without
being, Christianity must be sacrificed or ignored by the Chris-
tian thinker. He must give up party bias, narrow views, the
inordinate esteem of creeds, the overbearing influence of tradi-
tion, bibliolatry, or worship of that " letter which killeth,"
and all those views of doctrine. which prove themselves false,
by being opposed to the instincts and intuitions, alike of cul-
254 PAUL.
tured and uncultured man — alike of peasant, analytic philos-
opher, and inspired poet. He must, too, for reasons good
and sufficient, lay less stress on miracles as proofs than many
do, but every thing on them as pledges which Christ is to re-
deem, and as specimens of his future supernatural interference.
Secondly, He must take his firm stand upon the Book^ believ-
ing it, as he believes the sun, on account of its superiority, its
unwaning splendor, its power, its adaptation to man's present
nature, intellect, and wants — an adaptation, like that of light,
ever fixed, yet ever fluctuating, its simj^licity, unity, and depth
— because it is the record of man's deepest intuitions and earliest
beliefs — because it is the best manual we have of genuine mo-
rality and devotion, and because its insight mounts ever and
anon to prophetic inspiration, and to preternatural knowledge
alike of the past and the future, and because, therefore, it can
only go down or perish with the present system of things. At
the same time, he will grant that the book is not perfect, nor
ultimate, nor complete. Enough, that it fills its sphere and
illuminates its cycle, till a brighter luminary shall dawn.
Thirdly, He must mark strongly the many points of connec-
tion between God's two revelations, while granting the striking
diversities. Admittino- that there is a e'reater streno-th and
quantity of evidence for God's works in nature, than for the
Scriptures—that the Bible can not be equaled in point of vast-
ness and variety to the universe — that both are surrounded
with deep difficulty and darkness — that the superiority of
the Bible lies principally in the hope and aspiration it en-
kindles as to future discoveries, as well as in the present peace
its doctrine of atonement communicates to the conscience ;
— he will see that both are mediatory in their character — that
neither is final — that the difficulties of both spring from this
imperfection of attitude — that both are transient — that to love,
or know, or believe either aright, a certain moral discipline is
necessary — that, except one become as a little child, he can in
no wise enter either into the kingdom of nature or into the king-
dom of heaven — and that both, springing from the same author,
PAUL. 255
regulating the one the intellect, and the other the conscience
of men, meditating in divers ways between man and the Infinite,
must sooner or later form a conjunction. So long as the philos-
opher holds nature to be an ultimate fact — to be, in other words,
God — he can never believe in the Bible, nor in the Bible's God.
So long as the Christian believes the Bible to be aught else than
a tent in which the Everlasting tabernacles for a night, he can
never understand or love the universe or its Creator. Grant that
both are embassadors, destined to retire before their King, and
it becomes plain that their difficulties and their opposition to
each other must also disappear. Fourthly, He must inculcate
the necessity of great concessions on both sides, ere there can
be even an approach to a union. The philosopher must con-
cede that Christianity is a fact, not a fable — a living power, not
a dead imposture— that it arose and spread in the world so sud-
denly and irresistibly, as to imply a divine impulse — that its
pecuHar sway over the moral nature is as incontestable as that
of the moon over the tides — that the belief in its supernatural
claims is still extant among many of the most cultured and in-
tellectual of men — and that, whatever he may think of its ex-
ternal evidences, it is the one most beneficial emanation from
God that ever shone on earth. The Christian, besides those
earthly incrustations around the virgin gold of his faith, which
we have said he must remove, should be prepared to admit that
science and philosophy are valuable and beautiful in themselves
— that they are true, so fer as they go — that their truth is in-
dependent of Scripture, and must stand or fall by its own evi-
dence — that their real tendency is good — and that, hke religion,
they are " sprung from heaven." AYhen such concessions, and
others, are mutually made, and when, moreover, a spirit of for-
bearance and charity is interfused, the ground of difference will
be marvelously narrowed, and the bans of the great bridal
shall be published. Teach men to love, and they will understand.
Once the Christian learns to love, instead of fearing, he will
accept philosophy. Once the philosopher is taught to love, in-
stead of hating Christianity, he will cease to consider its loftiest
256 PAUL.
pretensions as absurd, and its profonndest mysteries as formi-
dable. Finally, The Reconciler must look forward for the full
accomplishment of the work to the interference of supernatural
power. lie may publish the bans ; another shall celebrate
the full marriage. At this hope, false philosophy may writhe
its withered lips in scorn ; the true will remember, that there
have been separate creations innumerable, implying distinct
interferences of God, in the ages of geology ; and why should
there not be another to make man again upright — to rear up the
ruins of his brain, and the deeper ruins of his heart, into a
shapely whole — to silence the jarring voices of this unsettled
age by the musical thunder of a new w^ord from heaven — to
sup23lant usurped, feeble, or tyrannical authority, by a solitary
throne, the " stone cut out of the mountain without hands" —
and to melt down philosophy and faith into the one blaze of
vision ? ISTot till then shall men see the full spectacle of the
magnificent apjMrition of the universe, with Christianity, like
a divine halo, surrounding its head.
Too far have we perhaps been tempted to stray, in search of
the Paul of the present, from the Paul of the past. We return
to him, for the purpose of depicting a few more of the many
powers and peculiarities which distinguished his multiform na-
ture. The man demands a more particular survey, ere wo
come to the characteristics of the Author. And let us mark
the kindliness of that heart which lay below the sunlike splen-
dor of his genius. This is WTitten in his letter to Philemon ;
it hves in his interview with the elders of Ephesus, and breaks
out irrepressibly in many parts of his Epistles. It adds gi-ace
to his grandeur, and makes his doctrines alike divine and hu-
mane. The power of a demigod is hardly more amiable than
that of a demon, unless it be softened by touches of nature,
and mellowed by the air of earth. A Paul too proud for tears
had never turned the world upside down. But to " such an one
as Paul the aged" asking such a question as " What mean ye
to weep and to break mine heart V and wishing himself ac-
cursed for the sake of his unbelieving brethren, all hearts but
PAUL. 257
the hardest are ready to capitulate. Paul's tears effected what
his thunders, his learning, and his logic would not so quickly
have done. Great as the difference between man and man, is that
between tear and tear. The tears of Isaiah must have been
fiery and rainbow-beaming as his genius ; David's must have
been mingled with blood ; Jeremiah's must have been copious
and soft as a woman's; Ezekiel's must have been wild and
terrible tears. Of those of Jesus, what can we say, save that
the glory of his greatness and the mildness of his meek human-
ity must have met in every drop. And Paul's, doubtless, were
slow, oiuQt, and large, as his profound nature.
An old poet has quaintly called Jesus " The first true gen-
tleman that ever breathed." Paul's politeness^ too, must not
be overlooked, compounded as it was of dignity and deference.
It appeared in the mildness of the manner in which he de-
livered his most startling and shattering messages, both to
Jews and heathens ; in his graceful salutations ; in his win-
ning reproofs — the "excellent oil which did not break the
head ;" in the delicacy of his allusions to his own claims and
services ; and, above all, in the calm, self-possessed and manly
attitude he assumed before the rulers of his people and the
Eoman authorities. In the language of Peter and John to
their judges, there is an abruptness savoring of their rude fish-
erman life, and fitter for the rough echoes of the lake of Gali-
lee than for the tribunals of power. But Paul, w^hile equally
bold and decided, is far more gracious. He lowers his thun-
derbolt before his adversary ere he lanches it. His shaft is
"polished," as well as powerful. His words to king Agrippa
— " 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, ex-
cept these bonds" — are the most chivalric utterances recorded
in history. An angel could not bend more gracefully, or as-
sume an attitude of more exalted courtesy. And certain we are,
that, had his sermon before Felix been preserved, it had been
a new evidence of his perfect politeness. No Nathan or John
Knox-like downright directness in it. In his captive circum-
258 PAUL.
stances, this had been offensive. !N"o sayino^, in so many words,
" Thou art the man I" (no pointing even with his lino-er or sio--
nificant glance with his eye) ; but a grave, calm, impersonal
argument on " righteousness, temperance, and judgment to
come," which, as it " sounded on its way," sounded the very
soul of the governor, and made him tremble, as if a cold hand
from above had been suddenly laid on his heart. Paul's sermon
he felt to the core, trembled at, and shrank from, but no more
resented than if he had read it in the pages of a dead author.
Paul's eye miglit have increased his tremor, but could no more
have excited his wrath than can those eyes in pictures, which
seem to follow our every motion, and to read our very soul, ex-
cite us to resentment or reprisal. And here, again, we notice
a quality fitting Paul to be the Apostle of the West. Having
to stand before governors and kings, and the emperor himself,
he must be able to stand with dignity, or with dignity to fall.
In accordance with this, we find in Paul a curious union of pru-
dence and impulse. He is the subtilest and the sineerest of men.
Pure and mild as a planet, he has often a comet's winding coui-se.
Determined to know nothing but Christ and him crucified, he
yet becomes "all things to all men." Yielding in circumstan-
tials and to circumstances, on all essentials he is immovably
firm, like those stones which an infint's finger can move, but no
giant's arm can overthrow. It is not cringing subservience ; it is
not a base and low policy, such as has frequently been exempli-
fied by leadei"s in the Christian Church, who have deemed
themselves petty Pauls, but have been only miserable carica-
tures of his outer features. It is the mere winding movement
of a great river in calm, which, unlike a flood, does not over-
bear natural or artificial bulwarks, but kisses, and circles, and
saps them into subjection. Without enlarging on his other
and obvious qualities (on some of which Hannah More has di-
lated with her usual good sense and comprehension), such as his
disinterestedness, balanced, however, by an intense feeling of
his just rights and privileges ; his integrity ; his love to his kin-
dred according to the llesh; his modesty; his thankfulness;
PAUL. 259
his lieavenly-mindeduess ; his prayerfidness ; his unwearied and
ahnost superhuman activity ; the proud humility with which,
again and again, he took up the tools of his old trade ; his con-
descension to men of low estate ; his respect for God in the
authorities he had appointed ; his reverence for that system of
Judaism which was old and fast vanishing away — for the very
shell of that ark whence the Shekinah had gone up ; his thirst
for heaven ; his calm and dignified expectation of the angel of
death ; — we pause at one point of his character, which is seldom
noticed, we mean, his passion for Christ Jesus. This became
the main feeling in the breast of the " persecutor." He had
a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which was tar better :
" If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection''^ — that
is, to him who said, " I am the resurrection and the hfe." — '' I
account all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of
Christ Jesus." Every third sentence of his Epistles, indeed,
gleams with the name and glory of Christ. His feehng amounts
to lasciuatiou. One might fancy that the face he had seen on
the way to Damascus had ever afterward haunted his vision.
It is not the distant throb of admiration, which he feels to
Moses ; it is the panting of one full of love. • The heart of him
who had only seen Christ as " one born out of due time," seems
to heave in emulation of John, who had lain in his bosom, and
of Peter, who had been with him on the holy mount. The flame
is fonned, too, by another motive. He had spent years in hating
and cursing Christ. In order to compensate for the time thus
fearfully lost, there is a hurry in his afiection — there is a flutter
in his words of admiration — there is an anxiety to pour out
his whole soul in love to Christ, as if economy of expression,
measure of feeling, modification of tone, were treason to his
claims. There is a determination — "I, the once bloody-minded
Saul of Tarsus, shall be foremost, midst, and last, in proclaiming
my love to him, whose faith I labored to destroy." It is beau-
tiful to see Peter, John, and Paul, like three flames of holy fire,
chmbing higher and higher on the altar before the Crucinedj
260 PAUL.
and to see at last Paul's pointed column, outsoaring tlie rest,
and becoming " chief among the first three."
Was it for the sake of his aspiring and insatiable affection,
that he was caught up to Paradise and to the third heavens ?
We may not dilate on that mysterious vision, on \yhere he was,
on what he saw, on how long he was absent, on what words he
heard, since he himself remained silent. But no incident in his
history casts a richer light upon the peculiarities of bis charac-
ter, his reticence, his modesty, and his power of subordinating
all things to the practical purposes of his office. How calm the
countenance, above which throbs a brain painted around with
the visions of God ! How tacit and guarded the tongue, which
might have tried, at least, to stammer out the deep utterances
of the blest ! How unwilling to take to himself superior honor
on account of his strange transfiguration ! And, lest any should
dream that he had recounted this trance merely to elevate him-
self to the rank of those who had been with Jesus in the cham-
ber of Jairus, in the inner groves of Gethsemane, and on the
mount, how careful and quick he is to point to the " thorn"
which seemed to have been planted in his flesh in Paradise it-
self ! And how cautious, too, he is, in not pronouncing — though
probably his impression was strong — his judgment as to whether
he had been in the body or out of the body when caught away !
No privilege, however peculiar, or elevation, however lofty,
could move the iron firmness of his purpose, or intoxicate his
strong and sober spirit. The great analyst remained calm and
clear-eyed, even while he worshiped and wondered at the foot
of the throne.
In speaking of Paul's written eloquence, we must not forget
that he was a speaker as well as a writer. It is customary to
suppose his elocution bad, because certain .Corinthians said that
his bodily presence was weak and his speech contemptible.
But, first, this was the language of prejudice. Again, those
who uttered it were not probably fair judges. There were
audiences who despised Foster — nay, who sneered at Chalmers
and even Hall. " Wretched speaker," is a comment we have
PAUL. 261
overbeard when returning from hearing a very rare exhibition of
intellectual power and genuine eloquence. There are three kinds
of true eloquence : the eloquence of passion and sympathy, the
eloquence of intellect, and the eloquence of imagination. To
the first of these, all hearts respond ; the two last, of which
Paul's was a compound, have only power upon selected spirits.
And let us remember, that if the Corinthians despised Paul's
oratory^ the people of Lystra likened him to Mercury. Differ-
ent speakers suit different audiences. Flood failed in the Brit-
ish parliament : Pitt w^ould have failed in the Irish. Perhaps
Paul found but once an audience fully prepared intellectually to
hear him, at Athens, namely ; and the impression on the inner
consciousness, if not on their outer ear, was evidently profound.
" Weak," his bodily presence might seem to those who expected
in him a colossal reflection of his colossal purpose ; but often,
as he warmed and enlarged with his theme, his pale ^thin cheek
might flush with unearthly fire, his eye dart out lightnings, his
small figure appear at once distended and dignified, his tiny
arm seem a horn of power, and his voice rise into keeping
with the magnificence of the truths he uttered, and of the lan-
guage in which he clothed them. Such transfigurations have
been produced once and again by the sheer force of sympathy
and earnestness (as in Wilberforce), where neither the inspira-
tion of the Divinity nor the afflatus of the bard were present,
and might surely be expected and witnessed in Paul, when all
four were there.
To see him, as an orator, in a mood at once lofty and serene,
let us stand beside him on Mars Hill, and contemplate the scene,
the spectators, the speaker, and the speech. Magnificent, and
fairy-seeming, as a dream is that unequaled landscape. In
the distance, are the old snow-crowned mountains, where gods
were said to dwell, and whose hoary heads seem to smile down
contempt upon the new system, and its solitary defender.
Closer at hand, stretches away a breathless ocean, doubling, by
its glassy reflection, the look of eternity and of scorn which the
mountains cast. Below, sleeps the " Eye of Greece," so broad
262 PAUL.
and bright, with all its towers and temples, and with the hum
of its evening talk and evening worship, rising up the still air.
Slowly sinking toward the west, Apollo is taking leave of his
beloved cit}^, while, perhaps, one ray from his setting orb
strikes upon the bare brow of the daring Jew who is about to
assail his empire. The scene altogether, how solemn ! It is as
if nature were interested, if not alarmed, and had become silent,
to listen to some mysterious tidings. The spectators, who
shall describe, after Raphael has painted them ? Suffice it, that
the elite of the vainest and the wisest people of the world, the
most subtile of sophists, and the most eloquent of declaimers,
are there ; that Paul must bear th^ snowy sneer of the Epicurean,
the statuesque derision of the Stoic, the rapt misty eye of the
Academic, the blind and furious scowl of the superstitious rabble,
the sharper and deeper malice lurking in the eye of the Jew,
the anxious look of his own few but faithful friends, and the
keen anatomic glance of the mere critic, collected as if into one
massive, motley, shifting, yet still and sculptured face, which
seems absolutely to circle him in, as it glares upon him. And
before and within all this, there he stands, the tentmaker of
Tarsus. Is he not ashamed or afraid to address the over-
whelming audience ? Shrinks he not from the task ? Falters
not his tongue ? Gathers not his cheek crimson ? Ashamed !
Shall the archangel be ashamed when he comes forward, amid
a silent universe, to blow the blast that shall call the dead to
judgment, dissolve the elements of nature, and awaken the fires
of his doom ? No more does Paul's voice falter, or do his limbs
shake. He rises to the majesty of the scene. He fills, easily
and amply, the great sphere which he finds around him. He
feels the dignity of his position. He knows he has a message
from the God who made that ocean, these mountains, and these
heavens. The men of Athens are clamoring for some " new
thing" — he has the latest news from the throne of God. They
are worshiping the "unknown God" — it is his task to unvail
his image, and show him shining in the face of Christ Jesus.
Not (as Raphael represents him, iu an attitude too impassioned
PAUL. 2G3
for the speech, beneath its calm greatness) — -not with raised and
outspread arms, but with still, strong, demonstrative finger
uplifted, and eye meeting, Thermopylie-like, all those multi-
tudinous visages, with their crowd of varied expression, does
he stand, and pour out that oration, surpassing the orations
whereby Pericles and Demosthenes "shook the Arsenal" —
sweet as the eloquence of Plato, and awful as the thunder of
Jove — condensing in its nine immortal sentences, all the primal
truths of nature and of Christianity : God, the One, the Un-
searchable, the Creator, the Spirit, the Universal Ruler, Bene-
factor and Provider, the only Object of Worship, the Father of
Man, and his Former of one Blood, the Merciful, the All-
Present, the Hearer of Prayer, the Ordainer and Raiser from
the Dead of Jesus, and the Judge of all the earth upon the
Great Day ; and at the close of which, first a silence, deeper
than that which made them, '■ all ear," and then a murmur,
loud, conflicting, and innumerous as that of ocean's waves,
attest its powder ; while, lo ! as some are mocking, and others
saying, " We will hear thee again of this matter," the speaker
seems to sink down, and melt away. The cloud has scattered
its thunder-rain, and has to them disappeared forever.
This speech on Mars Ilill is as calm as it is comprehensive.
But, throughout his Epistles, there are scattered passages, in
which his spirit is hurried along, as by a mighty rushing wind,
into vehement and passionate rapture. Such enthusiasms never
arise till his trains of thought are finished. And we are some-
times tempted to imagine that they have been longed for as im-
patiently by the writer, as they are often by the uninitiated
reader. From the diflScult, although needful, task of reconciling
the Jewish with the Christian dispensation, or of explaining his
own conduct to the babes and sucklings of the churches he had
planted, Paul, even Paul the aged, the persecuted, the expected
and expectant of Nero's sword, springs up exulting, into the
broad and lofty fields of common Christian hope and joy. In
this mood it is that he hushes the groanings of the creation,
amid the resounding song, " Who shall separate us from the
264 PAUL.
love of Christ ? we are in all things more than conquerors,
through him that loved us ;" that while underrating in com-
parison of love even angels' tongues, he praises it with more
than an angel's eloquence ; that he sets the doctrine of the res-
urrection to solemn music ; that he shouts peans over the vic-
tories of faith ; and that he paints now the cloud of witnesses,
now the scene at Sinai, and again tlie fiery coming of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Such passages affect you more from the deep
disquisitions which precede, and the close and cogent practical
lessons which follow them.
What strikes us principally about these disquisitions of Paul,
and about his raptures — the two out of the three parts of which
his Epistles consist — is a certain air of struggle and effort they
both exhibit. His argument has sometimes the eagerness and
the indistinctness of one pleaded in a dream. Language yields
often below his strong steps. His eloquence labors to express
conceptions which seem inexpressible. His feelings too, is only
half uttered, and- only half realized. The powers of Greek are
tasked in such phrases as Kad' ^vnBQ^oh]v eig 'vnsQ^olrjv^ but
tasked in vain. Were it not that his mouth seemed shut, as
by an oath, against all betrayal of the particulars of his visions,
we might suppose him now and then uttering snatches of those
mystic strains he had heard in Paradise, and was able on earth
to remember, but not to understand or explain. These are his
"sayings, hard to be understood," of which Peter speaks, and
over which we see still many mortal, and many immortal, brows
bending in eagerness ; for even unto " these things do the angels
desire to look."
Three subjects of wonder — for with Paul, as with all writers
of the highest class, criticism soon fades into wonder — remain ;
one is the minute practical bearing of his conclusions. After
having sounded depAs, which may be the fear of cherubim,
and soared to heights, where they stand, with faces vailed, and
with heads whence the crowns have been cast away, he turns
round, without any loss of dignity or feeling of degradation, to
give careful counsels to the humblest of saints ; to " salute
PAUL. 265
Tryphemi and Trypbosa ;" to remember a poor teinale slave ;
to inquire about the cloak and parchments he had left at Troas ;
and to immortalize in ignominy Alexander a coppersmith,
henceforth the coppersmith for evermore. The golden head of
the great man often ends in feet of miry clay, at once clumsy
and. foul ; but Paul's subtile power is equally difiased. down his
whole nature — majeslsc on all great, he is mindful of all little
things. The second marvel is the small compass in which his
Epistles lie. The longest of them are short. There is not a
day but letters, longer than those to the Romans or the He-
brews, are passing from country to country, and city to city.
His letter to Philemon is a mere card. And yet, round these
little notes, piles of commentaries have darkened ; from them,
as from a point of separation, entire sects have diverged ; over
them, alas ! blood has been spilled ; and in them, lie mysteries,
the very edge of which has hardly yet transpired. Of what
series of letters out of Scripture, but these, can the half of this
be said ? And the power thus lodged in them, what can we
call it, if we call it not divine ? No charlatan, no fanatic, no
pedant, no mere genius, could, by such brief touches, have so
roused the " majestic world."
For mark, these letters, while making no pretensions to lite-
rary merit, while recording no new miracles, do announce them-
selves as from the Lord, and do testify to the supernatural
character of Jesus Christ, did therefore commit their credit, and
that of their author, to the entire claims of Christianity, and
expose themselves to severe tests, and to the keenest scrutiny.
And it is because they came forth from this triumphantly, and
made the prejudiced confess their truth, and feel their power,
that they now live and shine, as though written in stars upon
the page of the heavens.
Our third wonder is their variety of subject, and tone, and
merit. The idea of Paul, indeed, throughout all his writings,
is the same. It is that of the largeness of Christianity, as com-
pared with the law of Moses, and its unity and holiness, when
contrasted with heathenism. It may be expressed in one of the
260 PAUL.
sentences uttered by bim fri&m Mars Hill : — " God (the one spirit)
has made of one blood all nations that dwell upon the face of
the earth, and now coramandeth all men everywhere to repent."
His difficulties, in enforcing this great compound idea, arise from
his doctrine of a special divine love, and from the prejudices of
Judaizing believers ; and to meet those difficulties, all the ener-
gies of his intellect are bent. He seeks to bring the tabernacle,
on the one hand, with its worshipei's, but without its tempo-
rary rites, and the heathen Avorshipers, on the other, without
their idols, under the reconciling rainbow of the covenant. But,
while ever pursuing this master-thought, he seeks it through a
great variety of paths. And hence monotony, always a literary
sin of magnitude, attaches not at all to his Epistles. Not one
is a duplicate of another. His principal object in the Romans
is to level Jew and Gentile in one dust, that he may first sur-
prise them into one salvation, and then, by the strong force of
gratitude, " conclude," or shut them all up into one holy obe-
dience. In the Hebrews, it is to shovf the unity in diversity, and
the diversity in unity, of the two systems of Judaism and Chris-
tianity, which he does by a comparison, so subtile, yet so clear
and candid, that even prejudice, ere the close, is prepared to
exult with him in this triumphant preference of the hill Sion,
to the faded fires and deadened thunders of the " Mount that
might be touched." In his First Epistle to the Corinthians,
he plunges into the thick of Christian duty, into questions
of casuistry, into minute practical details, gathering them all
along with him as he rushes on to the grand climax of the Res-
urrection, with its prospective and retrospective bearings upon
personal holiness, till his call to Corinthian backsliders seems
to thunder through the last trump. And so with his other
letters. In some of them, his chief purpose is to proclaim the
glory of Christ. In others, it is to announce his Second Advent.
In others, it is to magnify his own office, and to stir up the de-
clining liberality of his correspondents. In others, it is to teach,
warn, exhort, and encourage some of his leading children in the
faith. And in one, tlie shortest and sweetest of all, written in
I'AUL. 267
a prison, but redolent of the virgin air of liberty, he condescends
to baptize what had been a bond of harsh necessity and fear
between two men, Philemon and Onesimus, into a bond of
Christian brotherhood and love.
The style, too, and tone are different. Paul's " token," to
be sure, " is in every Epistle." His presence proclaims itself
by divers infallible marks : a kindly and earnest introduction,
fervor of spirit, a close train of argument, winding on to end
in a tail of fire, a digressive movement, short bursts of elo-
quence, sudden swells of devotion, audible yearnings of affec-
tion, strong and melting advices, minute remembrances, and a
rich and effectual blessing at the close. But to some of his
Epistles, the description and denunciation of sin give a dark,
oppressive grandeur. Witness the 1st chapter of the Romans,
which reminds us of God looking down upon the children of
men, " to see if any did understand or know God," and beck-
oning on the deluge, as he says, " They are altogether become
filthy ; there is none that doeth good, no, not one." Others
sparkle with the light of immortality, and might have been
penned by the finger of Paul's " Ptesurrection-body." Others
glow with a deep, mild, autumnal luster, as if reflected from
the face of him he had seen as one born out of due time ; they
are full of Christ's love. Some, like the book of Hebrews, rise
into rich rhetoric, from intricate and laborious argument, and
contain little that is personally characteristic. Others are simple
as beatings of his heart. On one or two, the glory of the
Second Advent lies so brightly, that the gulf of death is buried
in the radiance ; in others, his own approaching departure,
with its circumstances of suffering and of triumph, fills the
field of view ; and he says, " I am now ready to be offered, and
the time of my departure is at hand."
Such are the letters of Paul — letters which, like the works,
large or small, of all the great, seem to descend from, instead
of overtopping, the writer. And we try to complete the image
of the man, by piecing together those broken fragments of his
soul— broken, thouo-h all seeking and tendino- to unit v. His
268 PAUL.
life, after all, was the l*oem ; he himself is "' our Epistle." A
wondrous life it was. Whether we view him, with low bent
head and eager eye, at the feet of Gamaliel ; or sitting near
Stephen's stoning, disdaining to wet his hands, but wetting his
soul in his blood ; or, under a more entire possession of his
fanaticism, haling men and w^omen to prison ; or, far before his
comrades on the way to Damascus, panting like a hound when
his scent of game is getting intolerable ; or lifting up one last
furious glance through his darkening eyes to the bright form
and face of Jesus ; or led by the hand, the corpse of his former
self, into the city, which had been waiting in panic for his
coming ; or " rolling his eyes in vain to find the day," as
Ananias enters ; or let down from the wall in a basket — the
Christianity of the A¥estern world suspended on the trembling
rope ; or bashful and timid, when introduced to Cephas and
the other pillars of the Church, who, in their turn, shrink at
first from the Tiger of Tarsus, tamed though he be ; or rending
his garments at Lystra, when they are preparing him divine
honors ; or, with firm yet sorrowful look, parting with Bar-
nabas at Antioch ; or in the pi-ison, and after the earthquake,
silent, unchained, still as marble, while the jailer leaps in trem-
bling, to say, " What must I do to be saved ?" or turning,
with dignified resentment, from the impenitent Jews to the
Gentiles ; or preaching in the upper chamber, Eutychus ahve,
through sleep and death ; or weeping at the ship's side at Mile-
tus ; or standing on the stairs at Jerusalem, and beckoning
to an angry multitude ; or repelling the charge of madness
before Festus, more by his looks and his folded arms, than by
his words ; or calm, as the figure at the ship's head, amid the
terrors of the storm ; or shaking off the vii^er from his hand as
if with the
" Silent magnanimity of Katm'e and her God;"
or, in Rome, cherishing the chain like a garment ; or, with
shackled arm, writing those words of God, " never to be
bound;" or confronting Nero, as JJ>aniel did his lions in the
PAUL. 269
den, and subduing him under the mere stress of soul ; or, at
last, yielding his head to the axe, and passing away to receive
the " Crown of Life" the Lord was to confer upon him ;
wherever, and in whatever circumstances, Paul appears, his na-
ture, like a sun, displays itself entire, in its intensity, its earnest-
ness, its clear honesty, its incessant activity, its struggle to in-
clude the world in its grasp — but is shaded, as evening draws
on, into milder hues, tenderer traits, and a holier effulgence.
And though the light went down in darkness and blood, its
relict radiance still shines upon us like the Parthenon, which
seemed " carved out of an Athenian sunset." Who that wit-
nessed the persecutor on his way to Damascus, could have pre-
dicted that a noon of such torrid flame could so tenderly and
divinely die ; and that the name of Paul, when uttered now,
should come to the Christian ear, as if carried on the breath of
that " south wind which blew softly" while he and the Ever-
lasting Gospel were sailing together past the Cretan shore to
Rome ?
CHAPTER XV.
PETER AND JAMES.
The poetry of Peter lies more in his character than in his writ-
ings, although both display its unequivocal presence. His ini-
petuosity, his forwardness, his outspoken utterance, his mistakes
and blunders, his want of tact, his familiarity with his master,
his warm-heartedness, his simplicity of character, render him
the Oliver Goldsmith of the New Testament. It was owing to
the child-hke temperament of genius, blended with peculiar
warmth of heart, that he on one occasion took Jesus aside, and
began to rebuke him — that he said, on another, " thou shalt never
wash my feet ;" but added immediately, on being told what it
imported, "Lord, not my feet only, but my hands and my head"
— that he muttered on the Mount of the Transfiguration, the
supremely absurd words, spoken as if through a dream, " Let
us make here three tabernacles, one for thee, one for Moses, and
one for Elias" — that he drew his sword, and cut off the ear of
Malchus — that he adventured on the water where Christ was
walking — that he was the spokesman of the twelve, always
ready, whether with sense or with kindly nonsense — and tkat
his aflfectionate nature was grieved when Christ asked at him
the third time, " Lovest thou me ?" With this temperament
consort his faults ; his boldness breaks down when danger ap-
pears, as has often happened with men of the poetical tempera-
ment ; even in his denial of Christ, we see the fervor of the man
— it is with oaths and curses, for his very sin has an emphasis
with it. And in fine keeping, too, with this, are the tears pro-
duced by Christ's look (Christ knew that for Peter a look was
PETER AND JAMES. 27l
enough)-— fast, fiery, bitter, and renewed, it is said, whenever
he heard the cock crow, till his dying day.
The change produced on Peter after the resurrection is very
singular. We can scarce at first recognize the blunderer on
Transfiguration Hill, the sleeper in Gethsemane, the gravely-
stupid and unconsciously impudent rebuker of Jesus, the open-
mouthed, grown-up child, in the solemn president of Pentecost,
the bold declaimer at the " gate called Beautiful," the dignified
captive sisted before the rulers and the high-priests, the minister
of divine justice standing with the javehn of death over Ananias
and Sapphira, the thauraaturgist, whose long evening shadow
swept and cured sick streets, and before whom an angel opened
the prison-doors, or the first embassador to the Gentile world.
But such a change has often been exemplified in persons of re-
markable character, under the pressure of pecuKar circumstances,
or through the force of great excitement. The story of the first
Brutus, although probably a mythic fable, contains in it a wide
truth, inclosing a hundred facts within it. " Call no man happy,
till he is dead." Call no man stupid, till he be dead. Give the
god within the man fair play, feed him with food convenient
for him, and he may in due time produce a divine progeny.
The Atlantean burden will often awaken the Atlantean strength
to bear it. In Peter — the forward, the rash, but the loving, the
sincere, and the simple-minded — there slumbered a wisdom and
sagacity, a fervor and an eloquence, which the first touch of
the fiery tongue of Pentecost aroused into an undying flame, to
become a light, a glory, and a defense around the infant Church.
" Desertion," which Foster has recorded as one grand ally to
" decision of character," did its wonted work on him. Left by
Christ foremost in the gap, a portion of Christ's spirit was be-
stowed on him, and his native faculty — great but uncultured
— was effectually stirred up. Remorse, too, had wrung his
heart ; tears had been his burning baptism — and let those who
have experienced tell how high the soul sometimes springs
to the sting of woe. The new birth of intellect, like the nat-
ural birth of man, and the n^w birth of God's Spirit, is fre-
272 PETER AND JAMES.
quently through pangs, as dear on reflection as they are dread-
ful in endurance. Nor had Peter not profited by his intercourse
with Chi'ist, during his stay on earth after the resurrection — the
most interesting portion of which recorded, is indeed a pathetic
interview between the forgiven denier and his appeased and
loving Lord.
A more wonderful contrast than this, between Peter before
and Peter after the resurrection, would be presented, did we ac-
cept the monstrous pre-eminence given to him by the Roman
Catholic Church. We refer our readers, for a confutation of this
error, to Isaac Barrow's unanswered and unanswerable treatise.
But, besides, we confess that we can not, without ludicrous emo-
tions, think of poor, talking, imprudent, noble-hearted Peter of
Galilee, as the predecessor of the many proud, ambitious, sche-
ming, mendacious, lewd, and thoroughly worldly and selfish
Popes; and are disposed to laugh still more loudly, when we
find his escapades, his rash, unthinking words, his want of reti-
cence and common sense, paraded by Papists (because in all
these things he was first), as evidences that even then he had
laid the foundation for his universal sway. Besides, did his
one denial form a precedent for the infinite series of falsehoods
that Church has since palmed on the world? Did his one
stream of curses create that deep river of blasphemy, which has
run down collaterally with the progress of the Roman Cathohc
faith ? xind how could the intrepid fisherman, with his "coat
off" — the humble married man — recognize his successors in the
pampered and purple-clad prelates — many of whom would have
been ready to fling the price of all purgatory into their courte-
zan's lap.
Great, unquestionably, as the change was upon Peter, after
he had fallen and Christ had departed, much of his former char-
acter remained. His language before his judges breathes not
a little of the unceremonious fisherman, although his attitude^
has become more dignified, and his eye be shining with a pen-
tecostal fire. In his impetuous mission to the Gentiles, and in
his sensitiv<^ and shrinkinof conduct when reproached for it — in
PETEK A\D JAMKS. 273
all that line of action, for whicli Paul rebuked him to the face —
we see the old man of warmth and weakness, ardent in temper-
ament and narrow in views, rapid in advance and hasty in re-
treat. But that any jealousy for Paul ever entered Peter's mind,
we can not believe, or, if it did, it must have been the transient
feehng of a child, who this moment weeps because her sister has
received a prettier plaything than she, and is the next fondling
'ler in her arms, and the next asleep in her bosom.
Another change still was before Peter. His nature must at
once soften and sublimate into its final shape — the shape in
which his letters reveal and leave him. And that is a form as
iovely as it is majestic. The weakness of his youth is all gone,
but its warmth remains. The Jewish prejudice, which survived
his early days, and seemed somehow to befit the " apostle of
the circumcision," has been exchanged for a catholic charity.
On his brow, now overhung by silver hair, there meet the
glories of the " holy mount," and those of the day of his de-
parture, when he shall again see and embrace his Lord. A
tearful sublimity, as of a sun setting amid rainy clouds ; a
yearning affection ; a fullness of evangelical statement ; an
earnestness of practical admonition ; a perpetual and lingering
reference to Christ ; a soft shade of sadness, at the prospect of
the speedy disappearance of all earthly things, brightly relieved,
however, by glimpses of his Lord's appearance — these, with
some shadowy hints as to the intermediate state, and one pic-
ture of the Sodom-like sins of his day, form the constituent fea-
tures of the two Epistles addressed by Peter to the " strangers
scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and
Bithynia, and to those who have obtained like precious faith
with us." Their style, like their spirit, is mild and sweet.
Gravity, dignity, and grace — how unlike his hurried words of
yore ! — distinguish every line. Perhaps only in one passage
do we see the old fire of the fisherman, unsoftened and unsub-
dued by trial, experience, or time. AVe speak of the tremen-
dous invective, contained in the second chapter of the Second
Epistlp, against the false teachers of the time — one of four or
2V4 PETEK A^'D JAMES.
five "burning coals of juniper" which, as if carried from the
conflao-rations of the old prophets, are thrown down here and
there amid the more placid pages of the New Testament. Such
are Christ's denunciation of the Pharisees, Paul's account of the
heathen world ; and beside, and almost identical wath, Peter's
invective, is the Epistle of Jude. That, indeed, is but one red
ray from the " wrath of the Lamb." But in Jude, as well as in
Peter, poetry blends Avith, strangely beautifies, and clearly dis-
covers the solemn purpose and terror of the prophetic strain.
Behold the dreary cluster of metaphors, like a grove of various
trees, all withered into the unity of death, of which Peter be-
gins, and Jude closes, the collection. " These," says Peter, " are
wells without water — clouds that are carried with a tempest ; to
whom the mist of darkness is reserved forever." " Clouds,"
says the yet sterner Jude, "they are without water, carried
about of winds ; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice
dead, plucked up by the roots ; raging waves of the sea, foam-
ing out their own shame ; wandering stars, to whom is reserved
the blackness of darkness forever." If this is imitation, it is
the imitation of one animated by a kindred spirit, and possess-
ing a still stronger and darker fancy.
We have already defended such denunciations of sin, which
are proper to both Testaments, although more frequently found
in the Old, because they express, not private, but public resent-
ment. While hearing them, we should say, " It is the voice of a
Ood, and not of a man." Indeed, their divinity is proved by their
grandeur and daring. They are as beautiful as terrible. They are
" winged with red lightning and impetuous rage." Passion there
is in them, but it is sublimed, transfigured, purified ; approach-
ing, in its power and justice, to that wrath on which the sun
never goes down, and expressing, not the malignity of earth,
but the " malison of Heaven." Had we seen Paul, Peter, or
Jude, inscribing those words of doom, or had we witnessed
Christ's face darkening into the divinest sorrow, or heard his
voice trembling in grief, as well as anger, we should have felt
in a higher degree, the emotioji of the skoptic who liad been
PETER A Nil JAMES. 2*75
reproaching Christ for his angry language to the Pharisees, but
who, when Channing took up the book, and read it aloud, said
— " Oh ! if that, indeed, were the tone in which he spoke I" If
that were the tone ! Could not Jesus have eloquized his own
words better than the good and noble-minded American ? Must
not the Ithuriel rebuke have been pointed by the Ithuriel tones,
as well as by the Ithuriel countenance ?
" So spake the cherub, and his grave rebuke,
Severe in youthful beauty, added grace
Invincible;'
Safer^ after all, to reproach than to encounter such fires of
righteous resistless anger, "running along the ground." " Kiss
the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way."
Peter's distinction, both as a writer and man, is not so much
fancy or intellect, as it is feeling. Running riot in his early
history, fluctuating in his middle life, it is in his Epistles a
calm and steady flame, burning heavenward. Rejecting, as
probably a fiction, the story that he desired to be crucified with
head downward, lest he should have too much honor in assum-
ing the attitude of his denied and dying Lord, we may see in
it a mythic emblem of his ultimate lowhness of spirit, as well
as of the inversion of character which he underwent. It may
represent, too, those sacrifices within sacrifices so common in
that martyr age, in which men sought for fearful varieties of
death — gloried in provoking their adversaries to invent new tor-
ments — made, at the least, no compromise with the last enemy,
nor wished one of his beams of terror shorn — so certain were
they on the one hand, that their sufferings could never ap-
proach the measure of their master's, and, on the other, that
the reward was near, and unspeakably transcendent. Crucified
with inverted head, or impaled on iron stakes, or breast-deep in
flames, it mattered not, since Paradise smiled, and Jesus beck-
oned, almost visibly beside them. Let us pardon even the mad-
ness of that primitive rage for martvrdom, wh^n wf think of
27(3 PETER AN^D JAMES.
the primitive patience of liope and security of faith from which
it sprung.
It. is impossible to contemplate Peters works out of the
checkered light of his character. It is different with James,
whose character is only to be read in his Epistle, for all tradi-
tionary notices of his history and habits seem uncertain. We
know little of him, except that he was not the James who stood
with Jesus on the Mount ; that he was known as James the Less ;
and that many identify him with James, the Lord's brother, of
whom Paul speaks. At the Council of Jerusalem, he acted,
in some measure, as moderator ; and his letter, as well as his
speech, shows him to have possessed quahties admirably adapt-
ing him for this office — wisdom, calmness, common sense,
avoidance of extremes, a balanced intellect, and a determined
will.
The Epistle of James is the first and best homily extant. It
is not what many would now call a " Gospel sermon" (but
neither is the Sermon on the Mount). It has little doctrinal
statement, and no consecutive argument ; it is a list of moral
duties, inspirited by the earnestness with which they are urged,
and beautified by the graphic and striking imagery in which
the style is clothed. James is one of the most sententious,
pointed, and terse of the New Testament authors. He reads
like a modern. The edges of his sentences sparkle. His words
are as " goads, and as nails." He reminds us more of Eccle-
siastes, than of any other Scripture book. Paul's short sen-
tences never occur till the close of his Epistles, and remind us
then of hurried pantings of the heart. They are like the post-
scripts of lovers. James's entire epistle is composed of brief,
glancing sentences, discovering the extreme liveliness and pier-
cing directness of his intellect. Every word tells. How sharp
and efl'ective are such expressions as — " When lust hath con-
ceived, it bnngeth forth sin ; and sin, when it is finished, bring-
f'th forth death. Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being
alone. Show me thy faith without tliy works, and I will show
thee my faith by my works. Thou believest that there is one
PETER AXD JAMES. 2/7
God ; thou doest well ; the devils also believe, and tremble. Is
any among you afflicted ? — Let him pray. Is any merry ?— Let
hira sing psalms."
In one of those sentences ("' the devils believe, and tremble''),
as well as in his quaint and powerful picture of the tongue, we
find that very rare and somewhat fearful gift of irony winding
and darkening into invective. What cool scorn and warm
horror meet in the words, " believe, and tremble /" How for-
midable does the " little member" he describes become, when
it is tipped with the " fire of hell I" And in what slow successive
thunderous words does he describe the " wisdom which is not
from above," as " earthly, sensual, devilish !" And upon the
selfish rich he pours out a very torrent of burning gold, as if
from the Lord of Sabaoth himself, into whose ears the cries of
the reapers have entered.
In fine, although we pronounce James rather an orator than
a poet, yet there do occur some touches of genuine poetic beaut}^,
of which, in pursuing his swift rhetorical way, he is himself
hardly conscious. " Let the rich," ho says, " rejoice in that he
is made low^, because as the flower of the grass, he shall pass
away." For a moment, he follows its brief history : " The sun
is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the
grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion
of it perisheth : so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways"
-—"fade away," and yet " rejoice," inasmuch as, like the flower,
whose bloom, savor, and pith have floated up to swell the
broad-blown lily of day, his adversity withers in the prosperity
of God. "What, again, is life? It is even a vapor, that
appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." Such
flowers, indeed, are transplanted from the prophetic forests.
There, mider the proud cedars, they were overshadowed, and
almost lost ; here, they bloom alone, and are the more lovely,
that they seem to grow amid the fragments of the tables, which
Moses, in his ire, strewed along the sides of Sinai — divine rub-
bish, left, as has not unfrequently been, in other senses, the
ease, by human wrath, but potent in its verv powder.
2*78 PETER AND JAME^;.
A little common sense often goes a great way in a mystified
and hollow world. How mucli mist does one sunbeam disperse !
James's few sentences — tlie law in powder — thrown out with
decision, pointed by keen satire, and touched with terrific anger,
have prevailed to destroy and disperse a thousand Antinomian
delusions, and to _ redeem the perfect " law of liberty" from
manifold chai'ges of licentiousness. Even grant we, that, among
the unhallowed multitude who have sought to reduce the stan-
dard of morals, Luther, like another Aaron, may have mingled,
even he must down before the " Man with a word and a blow,"
the man Moses, impersonated by James, crying out — as his
face's indignant crimson flashes through the glory which the
Divine presence had left upon it, and his eye outbeams his face
and outruns his hurrying feet, and his arms make a heave-offer-
ing of the fire-v/ritten tables — " Wilt thou know, O vain man,
that faith without works is dead ?"
Earnestness is a quality as old as the heart of man. Nor is
the proclamation of it, as an essential and all-important element,
merely of yesterday. It was preached — nay, cursed — into
Israel's ears by Deborah, when she spake so bitterly of poor,
trimming, tarrying, neutral Meroz, " which came not forth to
the help of the Lord." It was asked, in thunder, from Carmel,
by Elijah, as he said--" How long halt ye between two
opinions ?" It was proclaimed, through a calm louder than
the thunder, by the Great Teacher himself, as he told the do-
cile, well-behaved, money -loving weakling, in the Gospel, and
in him, millions — " Go, sell all that thou hast, and take up thy
cross, and follow me." And here, when faith in the Cross
itself was retiring to rest in the upper rooms of speculative
acquiescence, or traditionary acceptance, comes James, stoutly,
resisting the retreat. Llis great demand is " life, action, fruit."
Roughly, as one awakens those who are sleeping amid flames,
does he shake the slumberers, and alarm the supine. But let
those who have been taught by more modern prophets the value
of earnestness remember, that James always admits the au-
thority of that faith whoncf^ he would oxppot virtue to spring.
PETF.R AND JAMES. 2*79
" Faith is dead, being alone ;■' in other words, it is not the
Christian faith at all. That is necessarily a living, fruit-bearing
principle. And, strong as his hand is to tear away the subter-
fuges of the hypocrite, and bold as his spirit is to denounce
every shade of inconsistency — every " sham" of that day, and
although his tone against oppression and oppressors crashes up
into that of the old prophets, and his fourth and fifth chapters
be in the very mood of ISIalachi — yet the whole tenor of his
doctrine, and spirit, and language, substantiates his first and
only title — " James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesusi
Christy
CHAPTER XYI.
JOHN.
Thkre is, or was till lately, extant a vulgar Bibliolatry, which
would hardly admit of any preference being given to one Scrip-
ture writer over another, or of any comparison being instituted
between its various authors.^ This was absurd, even on the
ground which the doctrine of mechanical inspiration took. Sup-
pose that the whole Bible came from God, in the same way in
which nature is derived from him ; yet, who ever was afraid of
preferring the Alps to the Apennines, or of comparing the
Pacific with the Atlantic deep ? So comparisons were inevi-
table between writers of such various styles as Isaiah and the
author of Ruth, the Psalms and the Historical Books ; and pref-
erences to all but the mere slaves of a system, were as inevita-
ble as comparisons.
Kow, we need not be afraid to avow, that we have our fa-
vorites among Scripture writers, and that a leading favorite
is John. There was " one disciple whom Jesus loved ;" and we
plead guilty to loving the writer supremely too. It has been
supposed by some, that there was a certain resemblance between
the countenance of John, and that of Jesus. We figure the
same sweetness in the smile, the same silence of ineffable re-
pose upon the brow, the same mild luster in the eye. And, as
long as John lived, he would renew to those who had known
the Savior the impressions made by his transcendent beauty,
for transcendently beautiful he surely was. But the resem-
blance extends to the features of his composition, as well as of
his face. It seems Jpsu*? who is still speaking to us. The
JOHN. - 281
babe-like simplicity, the artlessness, the lisping out of the
loftiest thoughts, the sweet undertone of utterance, the warm
female-like tenderness and love, along with a certain divine
dogmatism, of the Great Teacher, are all found in an inferior
measure in the writings of his apostle. He has, too, a portion
of that strange familiarity with divine depths which distin-
guished his master, who speaks of them always as if he were
lying in his Father's bosom. So John seems perfectly at home
in heaven, and the stupendous subjects and scenery thereof.
He is not like Paul, " caught up to Paradise," but walks like a
native through its blessed clime. His face is flushed with the
ardors of the eternal noon, and his style wears the glow of that
celestial sunshine. He dips his pen in love — the pure and
fervid love of heaven. Love-letters are his Epistles — the mere
artless spillings of the heart — such 'tetters as Christ might have
written to the family at Bethany. Jesus is the great theme of
John. His name perpetually occurs ; nay, he thinks so often of
him, that he sometimes speaks of, without naming, him. Thus,
" Beloved, now are we the sons of God ; and it doth not yet ap-
pear what we shall be ; but we know that, when he shall appear,
we shall be like him." " Because that for his name's sake they
went forth, taking nothing of the Gentiles." In his Epistles,
occui-s the sentence of sentences, " God is love." Why is not
this sentence sown in our gardens in living green ; framed
and hung on the walls of our nurseries ; taught as the first
sounds to little ones ? Why not call God Love ? Why not
change the name of our Deity ? Why not instruct children
to answer, when asked who made you ? Love, the Father.
Who redeems you ? Love, the Son. Who sanctifies you ? Love,
the Holy Ghost ? Surely, on some day of balm did this golden
word pass across the mind of the apostle, when, perhaps, pon-
dering on the character, and recalling the face of Jesus, looking
up to the glowing sky and landscape of the East, and feeling
liis own heart burning within him, he spread out the spark in
his bosom, till it became a flame, encompassing the universe,
and the great generalization leapt from his lips — " God is love."
282 JOHN.
Complete as an epic, and immorial as complete, stands this
poem-sentence, insulated in its own mild glory, and the cross
of Jesus is below.
Imagination, properly speaking, is not found in the Epistles
of John. They are full of heart, of practical suggestion, of in-
tuitive insight, and of grave, yet tender dignity. You see the
aged and venerable saint seated among his spiritual children,
and pouring out his rich simplicities of thought and feehng,
while a tear now and then steals down his cheek. That passion
for Christ, which was in John as well as in Paul, appears in
the form of tranquil expectation. We shall soon " see him as
he isy The orator is seen as he is, when he has shot his soul
into his entire audience, and is ruling them like himself. The
warrior appears as he is, when hfting up his far-seen finger of
command, and leading on the charge. The poet is seen as he
is, when the fine frenzy of inspiration is in his eye. So Jesus
shall be seen as he is, when he comes garlanded and girt for
the judgment ; and when, blessed thought, his people shall be
like him, for the first look of that wondrous face of his shall com-
plete and eternize the begun similitude, and the angelic hosts,
perceiving the resemblance, seeing millions upon millions of re-
flected Christs, shall take up the cry, " Open ye the gates, that
the righteous nation may enter in."
In his Gospel, John takes a loftier and more daring flight.
He leaps at once into the Emp^T^rean, and walks with calm,
majestic mastery beside its most awful gulfs. How abruptly it
begins ! " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God." This emulates, evidently,
the first sentence of Genesis, and ranks with it, and the first
word, " God," in the Hebrews, as one of the three grandest in-
troductions in literature. Our minds are carried back to the
silent and primeval abyss. Over it there is heard suddenly a
sound, which swells on and on, till to its tune that abyss con-
ceives, labors, agonizes, and brings forth the universe, and the
harmony dies away in the words — " Tt is very good." Or, hear
a truf popt —
JOHN. 2a3
" A power and a glory of silence lay,
O'erbroodiug the lonely primeval day,
Ere yet unwoven the vail of light,
Through which shineth forth the eternal might ;
When the Word on the infinite void went forth,
And stirred it with pangs of a godlike birth ;
And forth sprung the twain, in which doth lie.
Enfolded all being of earth and sky.
* * * -jfr * ii-
Then rested the Word, for its work was done."
To follow the history of the " Omnific Word" — the Logos,
and darling thought of Plato — till he traced him entering into
a lowly stable in Bethlehem, and wedding a village virgin's
son, is John's difficult but divine task. Great, indeed, is the
mystery of godliness, but not too great to be believed. The
center of this creation is now supposed by many to lie, not in
one orb vaster than his fellows, but in some obscure point.
Thus, the God of it was found in fashion as a man, in the car-
penter's son — the flower of man, and fellow of Jehovah — but
with his glory disguised behind a robe of flesh, and with a
cross for his death-place. Who has not at times been impressed
with an intuitive feeling, as he walked along with a friend, of
the exact magnitude of his mind, and of his true character,
which came rushing upon him, and could not be gainsayed or
disbelieved ? John, too, as he lay on the bosom of the Savior,
and listened to his teaching, seems to have felt the burning im-
pression, that through those eyes looked Omniscience, and that
below that bosom was beating the very love of God, and said,
" This is the true God, and Eternal Life." " The Word was
made flesh, and dwelt among us ; and we beheld his glory, the
glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and
truth." No mere logical deduction could have led him to such
a conclusion, apart from his profound intuitive persuasion ; and
that once formed, no catena of ten thousand links could have
dragged him back from it. " Flesh and blood hath not revealed
it, but ray Father which is in heaven."
Full to Christ, in his highest estate, from the very beginning
284 JOHN-.
of his Gospel, does this EvangeHst point. I'he others com-
mence with recounting his earthly ancestry, or the particulars
of his birth. John shows him at once as the " Lord, high and
lifted up," descending from this eminence to wed his own body,
and to save his people's souls. 'Tis the only complete history
of Christ. It traces his connection with the Father, not through
the blood of patriarchs and kings, but though the heavens,
up directly to Jehovah's bosom. How grand this genealogy
— " 'No man hath seen God, at any time ; the only begotten
Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared
him !" And after announcing his true descent, he sets him-
self through the rest of the book, as if acting under the spell of
a lover's fascination, to record every word which he could catch
from those heavenly lips, as well as to narrate some of the ten-
derer and more private incidents in the life of the " Man of
Sorrows."
To Samaria's well, and to the last sayings of Christ, we have
alluded in a former chapter. But we can not refrain from re-
ferring to one or two scenes, exclusively related by John, of an
intensely poetical character : one is, the visit of Nicodemus to
Jesus by night. Meetings of interesting and representative
men, especially when unexpected and amid extraordinary cir-
cumstances, become critical points in the history of mankind.
Such was the meeting of Wallace and Bruce : the one repre-
senting Scotland's wild patriotic valor — the other, its calmer,
more collected, and regal-seeming power. Such was that of
old Galileo and young Milton in the dungeon — surely a theme
for the noblest pencil — the meeting of Italy's old savant, and
England's young scholar — the gray-haired sage, each wi'inkle
on his forehead the furrow of a star ; and the " Lady of his
College," with Comus curling in his fair locks, and the dream
of Eden sleeping on his smooth l)row ; while the dim twilight
of the cell, spotted by the fierce eyes of the officials, seemed the
age too late, or too early, on which both had fallen — a meeting
like that of Morning, with her one star, and coming day, and
of Midnif^ht, with all her melanoholv maturitv, and hosts of
JOHN. ' 285
diruiuibhtid suns — a meeting like that of two centuries. And so
met, at the dark and silent hour, in the gardens of the Tuileries,
Mirabeau and Marie Antoinette — the " wild submitted Titan,"
kissing her hand as they parted, and saying, " Madame, the
monarchy is saved," while, hark ! the echoes seem to catch the
words, and to return them in scorn.
It is with apology that we refer, upon the same page with
this, to the meeting recorded in John. Yet its interest is his-
torical as well as religious. Nicodemus represented the inquir-
ing and dissatisfied mind of Jewry — " Young Jerusalem" —
sick of forms and quibbles, and yet imable to comprehend as
yet a spiritual faith ; tired of the present, but not ripe for the
future ; in love with Christ's miracles, but fearing his cross, and
not despising its shame. And hence, when the evening fell
down, with a step soft and silent as its shadows, he steals forth
to meet with, and talk to, Jesus. Jesus, seeing in him the rep-
resentative of a class — a class possessing many excellent quali-
ties — who are sincere, whose belief in formalities and old saws
and shams is shaken, who are anxious inquirers, but who
united to these, weakness of will, timidity of disposition, and a
lack of profound spirituality, and self-sacrifice — tells him in
effect, " Dream not that you can get to heaven in this tiptoe
fashion, that you can always walk with the night, in seeking
the day ; you must go all my length, you must walk with me
as well as to me ; you must make a pubhc and prominent
stand for my cause ; and that you may be able to do this, you
must undergo a thorough and vital change ; you must become
a little child ; you must be born again ; you must sink down
into the cradle ere you can hope to begin your ascent toward
the throne."
How this strange yet noble paradox of our religion — the
most staggering of all spiritual truths — must have sounded in
the ear of Nicodemus, at the dead hour of night, when all else
was sleeping, save the stars ! Ah ! ye bright watchers, and
holy ones, ye have many voices, many words and languages are
yours, but ye can not utter such a truth as this—" Ye must be
286 JOHN.
born again !" Tremble on, then, and remain silent, and allow
him to speak who can !
There are modern Nicodemuses, who hold stolen interviews
with Christ, and cast stolen glances at Christianity, and yet
will not walk right onward with him, nor fully embrace his
faith. These are of various classes ; but we may here specify
two. There are those, first, who, like Nicodemus, believe the
Savior's miracles, but do not feel the deep radical spirituality
of his religion. Such men do desperate battle for the external
evidence, but are strangers to the living power. To them the
words, " Ye must be born again," sound meaningless, empty,
and strange. Others, again, a class numerous at present, are
not in sympathy with the miraculous part of Christianity,
scarcely believe in it, have, nevertheless, a liking for its spiritual
and loftier aspects, but lothe the humility and childlike sub-
mission which it requires of its votaries. They would see —
what would they not see ? if they would stoop ; but stoop they
will not. Its spirit, in other words, is not theirs ; and, there-
fore, they behold Christ only at and through the night. If
they were but, like Nicodemus, to wait and hear the words of
Jesus, till the day should break and all the shadows should flee
away ! For he had, after all, a noble destiny. He followed
Christ afar oflf; but he followed him to the last. He was true
to his dust. He, with Joseph of Arimathea, took him down
from the Cross ; and both seem now chiseled supporters to his
drooping head, and chiseled mourners over his lonely grave.
Not men to support his living cause ; they were marble to bend
over, adorn, and defend his dead body.
The scene between Jesus, the blind man, and the Jews, re-
lated in the 9th chapter, is not only remarkable, as Paley no-
tices, for its air of truth, but for its dramatic interest. The
j)lay of character with character — the manner in which the pe-
culiarities of each are supported — the retorts of the blind man,
so keen-witted and caustic — the undulations of the little story
— and the close in the conversion of the poor man, all prove
it a leaf from the book of life, but plucked and arranged by the
JOHN. 287
hand of a master and an eye-witness. Equally natural, and ten-
derer far, is the history of Lazarus and his sisters. We say
not, with an eminent living divine, that Jesus loved Mary with
the pure and peculiar aftection which the word generally im-
plies ; but certainly his heart regarded the circle of Bethany, of
which she was one, with especial interest. Lazarus seems to
have been an innocent — not iu weakness, perhaps, but in gen-
tleness ; one of those living pauses in the music of man whom
it is pleasant and rare to encounter. In that house, the Savior
felt himself, more than anywhere else, at rest ; it was an arbor
on his hill Difficulty, where he loved well to be, and where the
three indwellers seemed to perform various parts in suiting and
soothing his wide nature — Martha ministering to his necessi-
ties, Mary sitting at his feet, and Lazarus forming his mild and
shorn shadow. The ministering spirit, the listening disciple,
and the quiet reflector of his glory, were all there.
Into this loving circle, the entrance of Jesus did not prevent
that of death. And who needs to be reminded of the melting
circumstances of that death — of the slow approach of the Sav-
ior — of the meeting with Martha — of Mary casting herself
down in her tears before him, tears which seem to accuse his
delay as the cause of her brother's death — of Christ's own
troubled spirit and weeping eyes — or of the brief, but victorious
duel with death, at the mouth of the cave, at the close of which
the dead-alive came forth, and the yawn of the grave behind
seemed that of the disappointment of the last enemy himself,
and the light of returning life in Lazarus's eye, the first spark of
the general resurrection ? " Jesus wept." It is the shortest
sentence in the Bible. But sooner than have wanted that little
sentence, should we have consented that all books but the Bible
should have perished — that the entire glories of an earthly lit-
erature had sunk into the grave of forgetful ness. For the tears
of the Divine Man are links binding us immediately to the
throne of God, and the rainbow which is around it.
John, indeed, seems to have set himself to preserve all the
tearful passages which trickle down upon the history of Jesus.
288 JOHN.
He was a gatherer of tears ; and to him we owe such rich glean-
ings as the scene between himself, Jesus, and Mary, his mother,
at the cross — the interview between Christ and Mary Magda-
lene, when the one word "Mary," uttered in his old tones,
opened the way to her heart, and made her feel that her Lord
was the same to-day as he had been yesterday — and the cross-
questioning of Simon, son of Jonas, carried on till he was
grieved, and cried, " Lord, thou knowest all things ; thou know-
est that I love thee."
Thus is the Gospel of John — the Odyssey of Christ's mar-
velous story — calmer, softer, and higher than the other three.
The first three leave Christ with the halo of heaven around
his head ; while this deepens, perhaps, the grandeur of the
Ascension, by dropping the vail over it. And in what a noble
gasconade does the warm-hearted apostle close his narrative !
" There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which,
if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the
world itself could not contain the books that should be written."
A gasconade this, indeed, of a very pardonable sort, if it refer
only to the literal deeds which our short-lived Savior performed,
or to the literal words of a three years' ministry. But it be-
comes htcally true, if we look to the spiritual import and
manifold influences of that life and that gospel. These have
overflowed earth, and spilled their golden drops throughout the
universe. That " story of a life" has passed already into almost
every language, and into innumerable miUions of hearts. Al-
ready men, amid trackless wildernesses, in every region of the
world, are blessing their bread and their water in the name of
the Lord Jesus Christ, or looking up in silent worship, as they
see the cross of the south at midnight, bending in the glim-
mering desert of the tro})ical air. Nay, as astronomers tell us,
that there is an era at hand when that splendid Constellation
shall be seen in our hemisphere, as well as in the south, and
shall peacefully shine down the glories of Arcturus and Orion ;
so there is a day coming when all nations shall call Christ
blessed, and the whole earth bo Tilled with his glory. It can
JOHK. 289
be done, for it is in God's power ; it shall be done, for it is in
his prophecy.
That this tender-hearted and babe-like apostle should have
become the seer of the dreadful splendors of the Apocalypse —
that its crown of fire should be seen sitting on the head of the
author of the Epistle to the Elect Lady, may seem strange, and
has, along with other difficulties, induced many to deny to John
the authorship of this mystic volume. For a resolution of the
external difficulties, we refer our readers to the critical works
which abound. The intellectual difficulty does not seem to
us very formidable. The Apocalypse differs not more widely
from the epistles, than Coleridge's " Rime of the Ancient Mar-
iner," from his " Fears in Solitude ;" or, than Shelley's " Pro-
metheus Unbound," from his " Stanzas written in Dejection,
near Naples." Often authors seem to rise or to sink into spheres
quite alien, and afar from the common dwelling-place of their
genius. Their style and language alter. They are caught
above themselves, like " the swift Ezekiel, by his lock of hair ;"
or they shp momentarily down into abysses of strange bathos.
So with John. In a desert island, with his mind thrown out,
by this very sohtude, into the obscure prospects of the future
— with the " visions of God" bowing their burden upon his
soul — what wonder that his language should change, his figures
mix, and his spirit even and genius undergo transfiguration ?
Nay, we fancy a peculiar beauty in this selection of John.
Who has not seen a child astray in a populous city, shielded
by her very weakness, safe, as if seated by her mother's knee 1
Beautiful and melting, to grandeur, this spectacle ; but finer
still that of John, lost and safe in his simplicity and innocence,
amid the bursting vials, slow-opening seals, careering chariots,
conflicting multitudes, and cataracts of fire and blood, which
fill this transcendent vision ! The helplessness of the seer adds
to the greatness of the spectacle ; and we feel this is no elabo-
rate work of a visionary artist — it is the mere transcript of a
sight which came upon his soul ; and no lamb ever looked with
more innocent, fearless unconsciousness, upon an eclipse passing
M
290 J0HI5'.
over his glen, than does John regard the strange terrors and
tumultuating glories of the Apocalypse. Once, indeed, he " foils
down as dead ;" but his general attitude is that of quiet, though
rapt reception.
It is, indeed, a tumultuating glory that of the Eevelation.
He who has watched a thunder-storm half-formed, or a bright
but cloudy sunset, must have observed, with the author of
the " Lights and Shadows," " a show of storm, yet feeling of
calm, over all that tumultuous yet settled world of cloud." It
seemed a tempest of darkness or of light arrested in mid career.
An image of the Apocalypse ! It is a hubbub of magnificence
melting into beauty, and of beauty soaring into sublimity — of
terror, change, victory, defeat, shame, and glory, agonies, and
ecstasies, chasing each other over a space beneath ^vhich hell
yawns, above which heaven opens, and around which earth now
lightens with the glory of the one, and now darkens with the
uprising smoke of the other. Noises, too, there are ; the sound
of chariots running to battle ; the opening of doors in heaven, as
if answering the revolving portals of the pit ; rejoicings heard
in heaven, waihngs arising from hell ; now the speech of drag-
ons, now the voice of lambs, and anon the roar of lions ; great
multitudes speaking, earthquakes crashing, trumpets sounding,
thunders lifting up their voices — above all this, heard at inter-
vals, the New Song from the lips of the redeemed, amid it,
coming up, the thin and thrilhng cry of the " souls under the
nltar ;" and behind it, and closing the vision, the united halle-
lujah of earth and heaven.
The book might thus almost be termed a spiritual oratorio,
ready for the transcription of a Handel or a Haydn, and surely
supplying a subject equal to " Samson," the " Creation," or the
" Messiah." But where now the genius able to play it off, in
all its variety and compass ? And where the audience who
would bear its linked, and swelling, and interchanging, and
long-protracted harmonies ? Music has echoed divinely the
divine words — " Let there be light" — and rolled out in thunder-
surges the darkness of the crucifixion, and made the bhndness
JOHN. 291
of the Hebrew Hercules " darkness audible ;" but it has yet a
greater task to do, in incarnating in sound the dumb and dread-
ful soul of music sleeping in the Apocalypse.
But the question may here arise — to what order of poems does
the Apocalypse belong — if, indeed, it be a poem at all ? We
have read much controversy as to its poetical character and
form. On the one hand, it has been contended, that its struc-
ture, and the frequent occurrence of parallehsms, constitute it
entirely a poem ; while it is maintained, on the other, that,
while poetical passages occur, its general cast is symbolical
rather than poetical, and itself no more a poem than the Gos-
pels. AYe are mistaken if the theory propounded in the third
chapter do not embrace and reconcile both those opposite views.
There, we maintained that Scripture was composed, partly of
poetic statement and partly of poetic song — the former includ-
ing in it, too, the expression of symbols, which, however plainly
stated, are poetical in the truths they shadow, as well as in the
shadows themselves. This definition, we think, includes the
■whole Apocalypse. AYe have, first, in it the general dogmatic
or hortatory matter of the three commencing chapters, which,
though full of figure, has no rhythmical rise or melody ; sec-
ondly, the symbols of the temple and its furniture, the seals,
beasts, &c. ; thirdly, the songs and ascriptions of thanksgiving
sprinkled throughout ; and, fourthly, the great story, or plot,
which winds its way amid ail those strange and varied elements.
Thus, all is poetical in essence, but part only poetical in form.
The whole is a poem, i. e., a creation ; but a creation like God's,
containing portions of more and of less intensity and sweetness.
The difference between it and the Gospels is chiefly, that they
.8,re professedly histories, with fictitious and rhythmical parts ;
the Apocalypse professedly a vision, with much in it that must
be taken hcerally, and with a profound meaning running through
all its symbols and songs. Though a poem, it is not the less
essentially^ though it is the less literally^ true.
But to what species of poem does it belong ? By Eichhorn
and others, it is, on account of its changing actors, shifting
292 JOHN-.
scenes, and tlie presence of a chorus, ranked with the drama.
Stuart calls it an epopee ; others class it with lyric poecQs. We
are not disposed to coincide entirely with any of those opinions.
As well call a series of dissolving views, with the music to which
they dissolve or enter, a regular drama, with a regular chorus,
as the Apocalypse. A poetic recital of a poetic story it is ; but
both the story and the recital are far from regular. Lyrics
ring in it, hke bells amid a midnight conflagration ; but, as a
whole, it is narrative. Shall we then say of it merely — " I saw
a great tumult, and knew not what it was ?" Or shall we call
it a poem-mystery, acknowledging no rules, including all styles
and all forms, and gathering all diversified elements into one
glorious, terrible, nondescript composite? Has it not unwit-
tingly painted its own image in one of those locusts, which it
describes riding over the earth ? It is, in its warlike genius,
like " unto a horse prepared for the battle." It wears on its
head a crown of gold — the gold of towering imagery. Its pier-
cing intuition makes its " face as the face of man, and its teeth
as the teeth of a lion." Mystery, like the " hair of woman,"
floats around it, and hardens into a " breastplate of iron" over
its breast. Its " tail stings like a scorpion," in the words — "If
any man shall take away from the words of the book of this
prophecy, God shall take away his part from the book of life,
and out of the holy city." And its rapid and rushing elo-
quence is " like the sound of chariots — of many horses running
to battle." Here, there may be fancy in our use of the sym-
bols, but the characteristics thus symbolized are realities.
How wonderful the mere outline of this book ! The stage,
a solitary island, —
" Placed far amid the melancholy main ;"
the sole spectator, a gray-haired apostle of Jesus, who once lay
on his breast, but is now alone in the world ; the time, the
Lord's-day, acquiring a deeper sacredness from the surrounding
solitude and silence of nature ; the appearance of the Universal
Bishop, gold-girt, with head and hairs white as snow, flaming
JOHN. 293
eyes, feet like burning brass, voice as the sound of many-
waters, the seven stars in his right hand, and walking through
the midst of the seven golden candlesticks ; his charges to his
churches so simple, affectionate, and awful ; the opening of a
door in heaven ; the throne, rainbow-surrounded, fringed by
the seven lamps, and seeing its shadow in the sea of glass,
mingled with fire ; the Lion of the tribe of Judah opening the
seals ; the coming forth of the giant steeds — one white as the
milky banner of the Cross, another red as blood — a third black,
and with a rider having a pair of balances in his hand — a fourth
pale, and mounted by death ; the cry of the souls under the
altar ; the opening of the sixth seal ; the four angels standing
on the four corners of the earth, and blowing their blasts over
a silent world ; the sealing of the tribes ; the great multitude
standing before the Lamb ; the volcano cast, like a spark, into
the sea ; the opening of the bottomless pit ; the emergence of
tliose fearful hybrids of hell — the scorpion locusts, with Apollyon
as their king ; the unwritten words of the seven thunders ; the
prophesying, and death, and resurrection of the two witnesses ;
the woman clothed with the sun ; that other woman, drunk and
drenched in holy blood ; the uprising of the twin beasts of
crowned blasphemy ; the Lamb and his company on the Mount
Zion ; the angel flying through the midst of heaven, with the
Gospel in his mouth ; the man on the white cloud, with the
gold crown on his head, and the sharp sickle in his hand ; the
reaping of the harvest of the earth ; the vintage of blood ; the
coming forth from the smoke of the glory of God — of the seven
angels, with the seven last plagues, clothed with linen, girded
with virgin gold, and holding, with hands unharmed and un-
trembling, the vials full of the wrath of God — one for the earth
— one for the sea — one for the fountains of waters — one for the
sun, to feed his old flame into tenfold fierceness — one for the
seat of the beast — one for the Euphrates — and one for the fire-
tormented and earthquake-listening air ; the fall of the great
city Babylon ; the preparations for the battle of Armageddon ;
the advent of the Captain of the holy host ; the battle ; the rout
294 JOHN.
of the beast, and the false prophet driven back upon the lake of
fire ; the binding of Satan ; the reign of Christ and his saints ;
the final assault of the enemy, Gog and Magog, upon the
camp and the holy city ; their discomfiture ; the uprising, be-
hind it, of the great white throne ; and the ultimate and ever-
lasting "Bridal of the earth and sky" — such are the main
constituents of this prodigious and unearthly poem, the Apoc-
alypse, or Revelation of Jesus Christ.
But what saith this Scripture ? of what is this the ciphered
story ? " Who shall open this book, and loose the seals there-
of?" We seem to see ten thousand attenuated forms, and pale
and eager countenances, hanging over, and beseeching its ob-
stinate oracle. We remember the circle of books which have, in
the course of ages, slowly gathered around it, like planets around
the sun, in vain, for how can planets add to the clearness of their
central luminary ? We remember the fact, that many strong
spirits, such as Calvin and Luther, have shrunk from the task
of its explication, and that Robert Hall is reported to have said,
when asked to undertake it, " Do you wish me in my grave ?"
We remember that the explanations hitherto given constitute
a very chaos of contradictions, and remind us of the
" Eternal anarchy, amid the noise
Of endless wars, and by confusion stand.
For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce,
Strive here for mast'ry, and to battle bring
Their embryon atoms ; they around the flag
Of each his faction in their several clans,
Light arm'd, or heavy, sharp, smooth, sioift, or sloic,
Swarm populous."
So, that the question still recui-s, " Who shall open the book,
and loose the seals thereof?"
Sin, the sorceress, kept the key of hell. Perhaps to Time,
the truth-teller, has been intrusted the key of this chaos ; or,
perhaps some angel-genius, mightier still than Mede, or Elliott,
or Croly, may yet be seen speeding, " with a key in his hand,"
JOHiT. 295
to open this surpassing problem, and with " a great chain," to
bind its conflicting interpreters. Our notion rather is, that the
fall solution is reserved for the second coming of Christ ; that
he alone possesses the key to its mystery, who holds, also,
the keys of Hades and of death ; and that over this hitherto
inscrutable volume, as over so many others, the song shall be
sung, " Thou, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, art worthy to take
the book, and to open the seals thereof."
We can not close the Apocalypse, without wondering at its
singular history. An island dream, despised at first by many,
as we would have despised that of a seer of Mull or Benbecula,
admitted with difficulty into the canon, has foretold and outlived
dynasties — made Popes tremble and toss upon their midnight
beds — made conquerors pale, as they saw, or thought they saw,
their own achievements traced along its mysterious page, and
their own bloody seas anticipated — fired the muse of the
proudest poets, and the pencil of the most gifted artists —
and drawn, as students and admirers, around its cloudy center,
the doctors, and theologians, and philosophers of half the
world. And, most wonderful of all, it has kept its secret — it
has baffled all inquirers, and continues " shrouded and folded
up," like a ghost in its own formless shades, ranking thus,
either with the dreams of mere madness, and forming a silent
but tremendous satire on a world of fools, who have consented
to beheve and to examine it f 01% as we believe, wdth those grand
enigmas of Nature, Providence, and Faith, which can only be
stated, and can only be solved, by God himself.
CHAPT ER XVII.
COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES, AND EFFECTS
OF SCRIPTURE POETRY.
This would demand a volume, instead of a chapter, inas-
mucli as the influences of Scripture poetry slide away into the
influences of Scripture itself. But our purpose is merely, first,
to expand somewhat our general statements in the Introduction,
as to the superiority of the Bible as a book ; and then, secondly,
to point out some of the deep effects it has had upon the mind
and the literature of the world.
To make a comparative estimate of Scripture poetry is not a
complicated task, since the superiority of the Bible poets to the
mass of even men of true genius, will not be disputed. Like
flies dispersed by an eagle's wing, there are brushed away be-
fore them all brilliant triflers, elegant simulators, men who
" play well upon an instrument," and who have found that in-
strument in the lyre — who have HUrned to common uses the
aeroHte which has fallen at their door from heaven, and " lightly
esteemed" the httle, but genuine and God-given, power which
is their all. These, too, have a place and a name of their own ;
but the Anacreons, the Hafizs, the Catulli, and the Moores,
must flutter aside from the " terribil vm" of Moses and David.
So, too, must depart the Sauls, and Balaams, and Simon Magi
— such as Byron — whom the power lifted up as it passed, con-
torted into a fearful harmony, and went on its way, leaving
them broken and defiled in the dust. Such are among Israel,
but not of it — its hope, its God, are not theirs ; and even when
the language of Canaan is on their lips, it sounds dreary and
EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 297
strange, as a song of joy from a broken-hearted wanderer upon
the midnight streets.
But others there are, who retire from the field with more re-
luctance — nay, who are disposed to dispute the Hebrew pre-
eminence. These consist both of early and of modern singers.
Among early poets, may be ranked, not only Homer and
Eschylus, but the Vedas of India, the poems of Kalidasa and
Firdusi, Sadi and Asmai, as well as the countless fragments of
Scandinavian and Celtic song. Of many of such poems, it is
enough to say, that their beauties are bedded amid " continents
of mud" — mud, too, lashed and maddened into explosions of
fanatical folly ; and that partly through this environment, and
partly through the inferiority of their poetic power, they have
not, like the poetry of the Hebrews, naturalized themselves
among modern civilized nations.
While the faith, which they have set to song, has seemed
repulsive and monstrous, the song itself is broken, turgid, and
unequal, compared to the great Psalms and Prophecies of Is-
rael. Humboldt indicates the superiority of Hebrew poetry,
and the cause of it, when he says, " It is characteristic of it, that,
as a reflex of monotheism, it always embraces the whole world
in its unity, comprehending the life of the terrestrial globe, as
well as the shining regions of space. It dwells less on details
of phenomena, and loves to contemplate great masses. Na-
ture is portrayed, not as self-subsisting or glorious in her own
beauty, but ever in relation to a higher, an overruling, a s^^irit-
ual power."
"VVe are willing to stake the supremacy of the Hebrew Bards
over all early singers, upon this ground alone — their method of
contemplating nature in its relation to God.
There are three methods of contemplating the universe. These
are the material, the shadowy, and the mediatorial. The ma-
terialist looks upon it as the only reality. It is a vast solid fact,
forever burning and rolling around, below, and above him.
■ The idealist, on the contrary, regards it as a shadow, a mode of
, mind, the infinite projection of his own thought. The man who
'29'^ COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES,
stands between the two extremes, looks on nature as a great, but
not ultimate or everlasting, scheme of mediation or compromise
between pure and absolute spirit and the incarnate soul of man.
To the materialist, there is an altar, star-lighted, heaven-high,
but no God. To the idealist, there is a God, but no altar. He
who holds the theory of mediation, has the Great Spirit as his
God, and the mii verse as the altar on which he presents the gift
of his worship or poetic praise.
It must be obvious at once, which of those three views of
nature is the most poetical. It is surely that which keeps the
two principles of spirit and matter unconfounded — preserves in
their proper relations the soul and the body of things — God
within, and without the garment by which, in Goethe's grand
thought, " we see him by." While one sect deify, and another
destroy matter, the third impregnate, without identifying, it
with the divine presence.
The notions suggested by this view, are exceedingly compre-
hensive and magnificent. Nature, to the poet's eye, becomes " a
great sheet let down from God out of heaven," and in which
there is no object' " common or unclean." The purpose and the
Being above cast a greatness over the pettiest or barest objects.
Every thing becomes valuable when looked upon as a communi-
cation from God, imperfect only from the nature of the mate-
rial used. What otherwise might have been concluded discords,
now appear only undertones in the divine voice ; thorns and
thistles spring above the primeval curse, while the " meanest
flower that blows" gives " thoughts that do often lie too deep
for tears." The creation is neither unduly exalted nor con-
temptuously trampled under foot, but maintains its dignified
position as an embassador from the Divine King. The glory
of something far beyond association — that of a divine and per-
petual presence — is shed over all things. Objects the most
diverse — the cradle of the child, the wet hole of the scorpion,
the bed of the corpse, and the lair of the earthquake, the nest of
the lark, and the crag on which sits, half-asleep, the dark vul-
ture digesting blood — are all clothed in a light, the same in kind,
AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 299
though varying in degree — "The light which never was on
sea or shore."
But while the great and the infinite are thus connected with
the little and the finite, the subordination of the latter to the
former is alwaj-s maintained. The most magnificent objects in
nature are but the mirrors to God's face — the scaffolding to his
future purposes ; and, like mirrors, are to wax dim, and, like
scaffolding, to be removed. The great sheet is to be received
up again into heaven. The heavens and the earth are to pass
away, and to be succeeded, if not by a purely mental economy,
yet by one of a more spiritual materialism, compared to which
the former shall no more be remembered, neither come into
mind. Those frightful and fantastic forms of animated life,
through which God's glory seems to shine with a struggle, and
but faintly, shall disappear ; nay, the worlds which bore and
sheltered them in their rugged dens and caves, shall flee from
the face of the Regenerator. A milder day is to dawn on the
universe ; the refinement of matter is to keep pace with the ele-
vation of mind. Evil and sin are to be banished to some Siberia
of space. The word of the poet is to be fulfilled — " And one
eternal spring encircles all !" The mediatorial purpose of crea-
tion, fully subserved, is to be abandoned, that we may see " eye
to eye," and that God may be " all in all."
Such views of matter — its present ministry, the source of its
beauty and glory, and its future destiny— are found in the pages
of both Testaments. Their writers have their eyes anointed, to
see that they are standing in the midst of a temple — they hear
in every breeze and ocean billow the sound of a temple service
— and feel that the ritual and its recipient throw the shadow of
their greatness upon every stone in the corners of the edifice,
and upon every eft crawling along its floors. Reversing the
miracle, they see " trees as men walking," hear the speechless
sing, and, in the beautiful thought of our noble and gifted
" Roman," catch on their ears the fragments of a " divine so-
liloquy," filling up the pauses in a universal anthem. And,
while rejecting the Pagan fable of absorption into the Deity,
300 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES,
and asserting the immortality of the individual soul, they are
not blind to the transient character of material things. They
see afar off the spectacle of nature retiring before God — the
bright toys of this nursery — sun, moon, earth, and stars — put
away, like childish things, the symbols of the infinite lost in the
infinite itself. The " heavens shall vanish like smoke ; the
heavens shall be dissolved ; the earth shall be removed like a
cottage ; the elements shall melt with fervent heat." Nowhere
in Pagan or mystic epic, dream, drama, or didactic poem, can
we find a catastrophe at once so philosophical and so poetical
as this.
If we pass from the general idea and spirit of Hebrew poetry,
to its parts and details, many may deem that other ancient na-
tions have the advantage. Where, in Scripture, it may be said,
a piece of mental masonry so large, solid, and complete, as the
Iliad ? Where a fiction so varied, interesting, romantic, and
gracefully told, as the Odyssey ? Where such awful odes to
Nemesis and the Furies, as Eschylus has lifted up from his
blasted rock, and, in vain, named Dramas ? Where the perfect
beauty of Sophocles — the RafFaelle of Dramatists ? Where the
inflamed common-place of Demosthenes, like the simple fire of
a household hearth scattered against the foes of Athens with
the hand of a giant, or the bold yet beautiful mysticism of Plato,
or the divine denial and inspired blasphemy of Lucretius ? Have
the Hebrews aught, amid their rugged monotonies, that can be
compared with all this ?
Now, in speaking to this question, we have something to
concede and to premise, as we have, in part, premised and con-
ceded before. We grant that there are in Scripture no such
elaborate and finished works of art^ as some of the master-pieces
we have named. We grant, too, that, in judging of the poetic
merit of the Bible, we may be prejudiced in its favor by early
associations, by love and faith, just as its detractors, too, may
have their internal motives for dislike to it. But we are not
without reasons for the preference we give. And these are the
following :—
AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRT. 801
First, Scripture poetry is of an earlier date than Grecian,
the Muse of Greece was but a babe at the time that she of
Palestine was a woman, with the wings of a great eagle, abid-
ing in the wilderness. This accounts, at once, for her inferior-
ity in art, and her advantage in natural beauty and power.
Secondly, The Poetry of the Hebrews appeared among a
rude people, as well as in an early age — a people with few other
arts, possessing an imperfect statuary, no painting, and no
philosophy, strictly so called. Their poetry stood almost alone,
and was neither aided nor enfeebled by the influences of a some-
what advanced civilization. Hence, in criticizing it, we feel we
have to do with a severe and simple energy, as unique and in-
divisible as the torrent which broke forth from the rock in the
desert. Like it, too, it seems a voice of nature called into play
by the command of God. Whenever a nation possesses only
one peculiar gift, it will be generally found that that gift is in
perfection. And not more certainly were the Greeks once the
undisputed masters of the science of beauty, the Romans of the
art of war, and the Italians of painting, than were the Hebrews
of the sublime of poetry.
Thirdly, The purity was not inferior to the elevation of their
strains. And this, which proves that they came from a higher
fountain than that of mere genius, proves also that they are
" above all Greek, all Roman fame." Their beauties are " holy
beauties, like dew-drops from the womb of the morning." There
is the utmost boldness, without the least license, in their poetry.
With blushes, we omit to press the contrast betwixt this and
the foul offenses, against reverence and decency, found in the
cleanest of Pagan poets. Small need for a Christian to spit in
the temples of the gods, when their own poets scruple not, ha-
bitually and deliberately, to defile them.
Fourthly, Partly from their intense purity, partly from the
uniform loftiness of their object, and partly, as we deem, from
their peculiar afflatus, the bards of the Bible carry the creden-
tials of a power unrivaled and alone. Homer and Virgil are
the demi-gods of scholars and school-boys ; Sophocles and Lu-
302 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES,
cretius, the darlings of those who worship a higher art ; and
Plato, the favorite prose-poet of the devotees of ethnic philos-
ophy. But the children, in all civihzed nations, weep at the
tale of Joseph, or tremble at the picture of Moses on the Mount ;
every female heart has inscribed on it the story of Ruth and
the figure of Mary ; the dreams, even of skeptics, are haunted
by the glories of the Christian heaven or the terrors of the
Christian hell ; and on the hps of the dying, float, faintly or
fully, snatches from the Psalms of David, or the sayings of
Jesus. The name " Jesus," owns one, who, we hope, shall yet
feel more than he does his full claims, " is not so much written,
as it is plowed into the mind of humanity." Even supposing
their divine pretensions untrue, yet here is literary -power — " this
is true fame" — the only fame deserving that firmamental name,
and which not chance, nor antiquity, nor prejudice, nor the in-
fluence of criticism, but merit, must have won. Not chance,
for as soon could atoms have danced without music into a
world, as could such and so many winged words have fortui-
tously assembled — not antiquity, for this only increases the
marvel — not prejudice, for have not the prejudices of the world
been at least as strong as those of the church, and has not the
world regarded the songs of Zion much as the English, behind
Harold's entrenchments, the minstrelsy of the Norman trou-
veurs, and yet owned their music and felt their power — not
the influence of criticism, for who ever sought to lorite up the
literature of the Bible, or even gave it its just meed of praise,
till lono' after it had wreathed itself round the iraasjination and
the heart of mankind ? But how better, or how at all, solve
the problem of such power, save by drawing the old conclusion,
" This Cometh from the Lord, who is wonderful in counsel and
excellent in working." No book like this. It has stunned into
wonder those whom it has not subdued into worship ; electrified
those whom it has not warmed ; established its reign in an ene-
my's country ; and, while principally seeking the restoration of
man's moral nature, it has captivated eternally his imagination.
AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 303
and cast a shadow of eclipse upon the brightest glories of his
fiction and his poetry.
For, after the concession made in regard to artistic purpose
and polish, we are wilhng to accept the critical challenge given
us, as to the poetic beautj of the Scriptures. We dare prefer
Job to Eschylus and to Homer, and even Hazlitt and Shelley
have done so before us. There is no ode in Pindar equal
to the "Song of the Bow," and no chorus in Sophocles to the
" Ode" of Habakkuk. In all the " Odyssey" there is nothing
so pathetic and primitive as " Ruth," and the story of Joseph.
Achilles arming for battle is tame to the coming forth, in the
Apocalypse, of Him, whose " name is Faithful and True ;" who
is "clothed in a vesture dipped in blood ;" and " treadeth the
wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God." Jere-
miah and Nahum make the martial fire of the " Iliad" pale.
The descriptions of natural objects in Lucretius seem small
when compared with the massive pictures of David and Job.
If he has been said " divinely to deny the divine," the bards of
Israel have far more divinely confessed and reflected it, till you
cry — " It is the voice of a God, not of a man." The questions
of Demosthenes, what are they to those of Ezekiel or x\mos,
sublime and fearful as the round sickle of the waning moon ?
Plato and the elements of his philosophy lie quietly inclosed in
some of Solomon's sentences ; and, transcendently above all,
whether Roman, Greek^ or Hebrew, tower two, mingling their
notes with the songs of angels — the Divine Man, who spake
the Sermon on the Mount, and the Prophet who stood in spirit
beside his Cross, and sang of him whose face was more marred
than that of man, and his form than that of the sons of men.
The great modern poets still remain. And here we find but
four who can even be named in the comparison — Dante, Shak-
speare, Milton, and Goethe. First, Dante comes forward reluc-
tantly, for not Virgil nor Beatrice are dearer to him than Moses
and Isaiah. Indeed, the Hebrew bards, and not the Mantuan
poet, are his real " masters." " He is indebted," says Hazlitt,
" to the Bible for the gloomy tone of his mind, as well as for the
80-4 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES,
prophetic fury which exalts and kindles his poetry." He owes,
we should rather say, his gloomy tone of mind to himself, and
the truths and visions, which frequently cheer it, to the Bible.
But the second part of the sentence is true. The moral sever-
ity of tone, the purged perdition poured out upon his enemies,
the air of exultation with which he recounts their sufferings, re-
mind us of Ezekiel, or of him who said — " Thou art righteous,
O Lord ! who hast judged thus, and hast given them blood to
drink, for they are worthy." In his union, too, of a severe and
simple style, with high idealism of conception, he resembles the
Scripture writers, whose visions are so sublime, that they need
only to be transcribed to produce their full effect. His child-
like tone is also Scriptural — a tone, we may remark, preserved
fully in no translation, save one in prose we read lately,* which
reminded us of the "Pilgrim's Progress." But, while the pro-
phets are the masters, Dante is obviously but a scholar. His
vehemence and fury compared to theirs resemble furnace, beside
starry, flames. Too much of personal feeling mingles with his
prophetic ire. And while possessing more of the subtilty which
distinguishes the Italian mind, he has not such wealth of
imagery, and towering grandeur of eloquence, as the Hebrews,
little or nothing of their lyrical impulse, and while at home in
hell, he does not tread the Empyrean with such free and sov-
ereign steps, although there, too, he has a right, and knows ho
has a right to be.
Shakspeare — nature's favorite, though unbaptized and un-
consecrated, child — has derived less from Scripture than any
other great modern author, and affords fewer points of com-
parison with it. lie was rather a piece of nature than a prophet.
His real religion, as expressed in the words, " We are such stuff
as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep,"
seems to have been a species of ideal Pantheism. He loved
the fair face of nature ; he saw also its poetic meaning ; but did
not feel, nor has expressed so deeply its under-current of moral
law, nor the sublime attitude it exhibits, as leaning upon its
* By Dr. John Carlyle.
AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY, 305
God. Hence, while the most wide and genial, and one of the
least profane, he is also one of (he least rehgious of poets. His
allusions to Scripture, and to the Christian faith, are few an-d
undecided. He has never even impersonated a character of
high religious enthusiasm. He never, we think, could have
written a good sacred drama; and had he tried to depict a
Lulher, a Knox, a Savonarola, or any character in whose mind
one great, earnest idea was predominant, he had failed. The
gray, clear, catholic sky behind and above, would have made
such volcanoes pale. Had he written on Knox, Queen Mary
would have carried away all his sympathies ; or, on Luther, he
would have been more anxious to make Tetzel ridiculous, than
the Keformer reverend or great. Shakspeare was not, in short,
an earnest man, hardly even — strange as the assertion may
seem — an enthusiast, and, therefore, stood in exact contrast to
the Hebrew bards. He often trifled with his universal powers
— they devoted the whole of their one immense talent to God.
He, like his own Puck or Ariel, loved to live in the colors of
the rainbow, to play in the plighted clouds, to do his spiriting
gently, when he did it, but better still to swing in the " blossom
that hangs from the bough ;" they were ready-girt, stripped,
and sandaled, as those " ministering spirits sent forth to minis-
ter to the heirs of salvation." He seemed sometimes waiting
upon the wing for a great commission, which never came — the
burden of the Lord lay always upon their spirits. He was of
the " earth earthy," the truest and most variegated emanation
from its soil ; but they light upon the mountains like sunbeams
from a higher region. Even of the " myriad-minded" Shak-
speare may we not say, that " he who is least in the kingdom of
heaven is greater than he ;" and that " a little child" like John
" might lead" this giant of the drama, and miracle of men.
Milton, on the other hand, seems almost a belated bard of
the Bible. And this not simply on account of his genius, or
of the deep tinge of Hebraism which his studies gave to all
his writings, but because he has sought his inspiration from the
same sources. He has gone to the depths of his moral, as well
306 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES,
as mental nature, in search of tlie fountains of poesy. He has
cried aloud to the Eternal Spirit to send his seraphim to touch
his lips with a live coal from his altar. Hence his writings
have attained a certain sifted purity we can find nowhere else
out of Scripture. Hence a settled unity and magnificence of
purpose, which no defects in the mere mechanism of composi-
tion, nor sinkings in energy, can disturb. Hence the quotations
from the Bible fiill sweetly into their places along his page, and
find at once suitable society. "Warton, in an ingenious paper
in the " Adventurer," ascribes Milton's superiority over the an-
cients to the use he has made of Scripture ; he might rather
have traced it to the sympathy with the Hebrew genius, w^hich
has made his use of it so wise, and so eflPectual ; for mere crude
quotations, or dextrous imitation, would never have elevated him
to such a height. Unless, in conscious majesty, he had " come
unto his own," his own would not have received him. Had
not his nature been supernal, his thefts had not been counted
the thefts of a god.
But even in Milton's highest flights we miss much, besides
the untransferable prophetic differentia of the Bible poets. He
has not the perfect ease of motion which distinguishes them.
He is a " permitted guest ;" they are " native and endued" to
the celestial element. He is intensely conscious of himself —
never forgets who it is that sits on the fiery chariot, and passes
through the gates into the presence of the " thousand ardors ;"
they are lost, though not blasted, in the ocean of light and
glory. He may be hkened to one of those structures of art, the
pyramids, or the ministers which nature seems to " adopt into
her race" — the Hebrews to the cathedrals of the woods, made
oracular at evening by the wind of Heaven.
Goethe, we know, admired the Bible as a composition, took
great interest in its geography, and had his study hung round
with maps of the Holy Land. But even less than Shakspeare
did he resemble its poets. Universal genius bred in Shakspeare
a love for all things which he knew, without much enthusiasm
for any in parti(mlar. An inferior, but more highly cultured
AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 30^
degree of the same power, led Goethe to universal liJcing, -which
at a distance seemed, and in some degree was, indifference. His
great purpose, after the fever of youth was spent, was to build
up his Ego, hke a cold, majestic statue, and to surround it with
offerings from every region — from earth, heaven, and hell ! He
transmuted all things into ink; he analyzed his tears ere suf-
fering them to fell to the ground ; his tortures he tortured in
search of their inmost meaning ; his vices he rolled like a sweet
morsel, that he might know their ultimate flavor, and what
legacy of lesson they had to leave him ; his mental battles he
fought o'er again, that he might become a mightier master of
spiritual tactics ; like the ocean, whatever came within his
reach, was engulfed, was drenched in the main element of
his being, went to swell his treasures, and generally " suffered
a sea-change," into " something" at once " rich," " strange,"
and cold. This was not the manner of the rapt, God-filled,
self-emptied, sin-denouncing, impetuous, and intense bards of
Israel. Could we venture to conceive Isaiah, or Ezekiel, enter-
ing Goethe's chamber at Weimar, and uttering one of their
divine rhapsodies — how mildly would he have smiled upon the
fire-eyed stranger — how attentively heard him — how calmly
sought to measure and classify him — how punctually recorded
in his journal the appearance of an " extraordinary human
meteor, a w^onderful specimen of uncultured genius" — and how
complacently inferred his own superiority ! But no ; the chill
brow of Chimborazo is indeed higher far than the thunder-storm
leading its power and terrible beauty along his sides, and is
nearer the sun ; but the sun there is rayless and cold, the air
around is eternal frost, the calm and silence are those of death ;
whereas a hundred valleys below hear in the thunder the voice,
and see in the lightning the footsteps, of God : the one is elo-
quent, although it be with warning ; and the other warm, al-
though it be with wrath.
In that glori6cation of Goethe, so common in the present day,
we see an attempt to exalt art above nature, culture above
genius, study above impulse, the artist above the poet—- an at-
-808 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES,
tempt with which we have no sympathy. No doubt, a certain
measure of culture is now, as it always was, necessary to men
of genius ; but surely this is not an age in which culture is so
neglected, that we need inculcate it at the expense of original
power. Nay, it is now so generally and equally diffused, and
its effects are so frequently confounded with the miracles of
genius, that it becomes incumbent on the critic, with peculiar
sternness, to point to the impassable gulf of distinction, and to
assert that there is still a certain inspiration
" WhicL. comes and goes like dream,
And which none can ever trace •"
" a wind which bloweth where it hsteth" — a mysterious some-
thing which no culture can give, and no lack of it can alto-
gether take away. It is the tendency of the age — a low and
infidel tendency — to trace every phenomenon, both of mind and
matter, downward, through developments and external influ-
ences, instead of upward, through internal and incalculable
powers. Genius, with our modern philosophers, is only a curi-
ous secretion of the brain ; poetry must be " scientific," else it
is naught. Shakspeare, indeed, was an " extraordinary de-
velopment ;" but our poetical bees must not now be permitted
to follow their own divine instinct in building the lofty rhyme
— they must to school, and be taught geometry. And let
none dare to suck at the breasts of the Mighty Mother, till he
has been elaborately trained how to do it ! The first principle
of this criticism is, to avoid faults, and the second, to shuu
beauties. Beware of too many fine things. Remember the
couplet —
" Men doubt, because so thick they lie,
If they be stars, that paint the galaxy."
Now the secret of this sophistry seems to lie in the confusion
between the truly and the falsely fine. Can too many really
new and beautiful things be said on any subject ? Can there
AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 809
be too maay stars in an unbounded universe ? If artistic per-
fection is to be sought at the price even of one consummate
pearl — perhaps the seed-pearl of a great truth— were it not
better lost ? Even were it only a beautiful image, should it be
permitted to perish ? for does not every beautiful image repre-
sent, at least, the bright edge or corner of a truth ? No fear
that books, all-beautiful and full of meaning, shall be unduly
multiplied. As well be alarmed for the advent of perfect men.
Of too much truth or beauty let us complain, when we have
had a spring day too delightful, a sunbeam too delicately spun,
an autumn too abundant. The finest writers in tho world have
been the most luxuriant. Witness Jeremy Taylor, Shakspeare,
Milton, Burke, and the Hebrew bards. It is an age of barren
or cold thinkers which finds out that the past has been too
rich and tropical — wishes that Job had shorn his Behemoths
and Leviathans, and Isaiah let blood ere he uttered his cries
against Egypt and Assyria : and not only admires a book
more, because its faults are few, than because its beauties are
many, but regards the thick glories which genius may have
dropped upon it, as blemishes — its " many crowns," as proud
and putrid ulcers. And, with regard to the vaunted couplet
quoted above, we may remember that the nebular hypothesis
is exploded. They are stars, nay suns, which paint our and
every other galaxy !
The effects of all this, against which we protest, have been
to crown Goethe " a mockery -king of snow" over our modern
poetry — to create a style of m.isty and pretentious criticism, for-
ever appeahng to certain assumed principles, but destitute of
genuine instinctive insight into poetry, and of its clear, manly,
and fervid expression — to rear a set of poets who elaborately
imitate the German giants, especially in their faults, and delib-
erately " darken counsel by words without knowledge" — to
substitute for the living and blood-warm raptures of poesy,
rhapsodies at once mad and measured, extravagant and cold,
obscure and shallow — and to dethrone for a time the great
ancient Kings of the Lyre, who " spake as they were moved,"
310 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES,
and whose impetuous outpourings arranged themselves into
beauty, created their own principles of art, and secured their
own immortality, as they fell, clear and hot, from the touched
spirit and glowing heart. We need scarcely add, that while
much of the popular poetry of the day is cold with unbelief, or
dark with morbid doubt, that which it seeks to supersede was
the flower of a rooted religious faith.
We come now to speak of the influences of Scripture poetry.
And these includ-e its religious and intellectual influences.
How much religion owes to poetry ! There is not a form of
it so false, but has availed itself of the aid of song. Thor and
Woden loom and lean over us, from the north, through the
mist of poetry, like the Great Bear and Arcturus shining dimly
down through the shifting vail of the Aurora. Seeva, Bramah,
and Vishnu, have all had their laureates, and the wheels of
Juggernaut have moved to the voice of hymns and music.
Mohammed is the hero of ten thousand parables, poems, and tales
in the East. The Fire-god of Persia has been sung in many a
burning strain. The wooden or stone idols of Africa have not
wanted their singers. Pantheism itself has inspired powerful
and eloquent strains. Lucretius has extracted a wild and mag-
nificent music from Atheism — a music played off on the dry
bones of a dead universe. Every belief or nonbelief has found
its poetry, excepting always modern materiahsm, as represented
by the utilitarian philosophy. There is no speculation in its
eye — no man of genius can make it beautiful, because it has
not one beautiful elem.ent in it, and because no m^tn of genius
can believe it ; its sole music is the chink of money ; its main
theological principle (the gradual development of mud into man,
and dirt into deity) is as incapable of poetic treatment as it is
of scientific proof; and what, unless to place it as a prime arti-
cle in the museum of human folly, can be done to acajmt ?;jor-
tmtm so hateful and so helpless ?
If poetry has thus fanned the flames of liilse religions, much
more might it have been expected to advance the interests and
glorify the doctrines of the true. And hence, from the begin-
AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 811
ning, poetry has been a " Slave of the Lamp" to the mono-
theistic faith. The first thunder- word (Be hght) that startled
the silence of the primeval deep, was a word of poetry. The
first promise made to fallen man (that of the woman's seed)
was uttered in poetry. In the language of figure and symbol,
God spake to the patriarchs. Moses, the legislator of Israel,
was a poet ; the scene at Sinai was full of transcendent poeti-
cal effect — the law was given amid the savage minstrelsies of
tempest and of thunder. In later ages, the flame of Jewish
piety was now stirred by the breath of prophetic song, and now
sunk into ashes, when that died away. The gospel was born
to the sound of ancrelic harmonies ; its first utterance was in
heavenly poetry and praise. And to poetry and song, the pres-
ent system is to pass away ; the grave to open to its golden
strains ; the books of judgment, at its bidding, are to expand
their oracular pages ; and when the fairer creation descends,
again are the morning stars to sing together, and all the sons
of God to shout for joy.
It is not easy, too, to say how much, even nov>^, the poetic
form of Scripture contributes to its preservation, and to its spread
through the world. Its poetry charms many of its professed
enemies ; and, as they hsten to its old and solemn harmonies,
their right hand forgets its cunning, and, instead of casting
stones at it, they become stones themselves. The ofiicers who
were sent to apprehend Christ went away, exclaiming — " Never
man spake hke this man." So many, who have drawn near the
Bible, as executors, not of another's, but of their own hatred,
have said, as they turned at last from it, lest they should be en-
tirely subdued — " Never book spake hke this book." Its poeti-
cal beauty has had another influence still, in regard to those of
its foes who have ventured to assail it. It has served to expose
and shame, and to rouse general feeling against them. Never
does a ruffian look more detestable, than when insulting the
beautiful ; never is a hoof more hateful, than when trampling
on a rose. When a Lauder snatches rudely at the laurels of
a Milton, intellectual Britain starts up to resent the outrage.
3 12 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES,
When even the foul spittle of a sick and angry giant falls awiy,
and threatens to sully the fair fame of a Howard, we have
seen lately how dangerous it is for the greatest to tamper with
the verdicts of the universal human heart. And so the few,
such as Paine, who have insulted the Hebrew or Greek Scrip-
tures, have been blasted with unanimous reprobation. It has
fared with them, as with Uzziah, when he went in to profane
the temple of the Lord. That instant the fatal spot of leprosy
rose to his brow, and, while all around sought to thrust him out,
he himself hastened to depart. In fact, the love that beats in the
general bosom to this book is never disclosed till at such times,
when thousands, who care little for its precepts, and are skepti-
cal of its supreme authority, rise up, nevertheless, in indignation,
and say — " The man who abuses the Bible, insults the race : in
trampling on a book so beautiful, and that has been so widely
believed, he is tramphng on all of us, and on himself Let him,
as a moral leper, be dragged without the gate, and perish in his
own shame." So wisely has God guarded his Book, by the
awful beauty which, like a hedge of roses mingled with thorns,
surrounds it all.
The same environment of poetry has not only prevailed to
defend, but to circulate the Bible. It has opened to it the
hearts of children, who, although unable to comprehend even
partially its doctrines, and feeling much in its precepts that is
repulsive to their early and evil instincts, yet leap instantly to
its loveliness, its interest, pathos, and simple majesty. Many
have sought to panegyrize the Scriptures ; but, of all such at-
tempts, only the panting praises of the dying, such as the words
of Crabbe, when he said — " That blessed book — that blessed
book !" — can be compared with the encomiums which the lips
and the looks, the day and the night dreams, of the young have
passed upon it. Perdition is often wrapped up in jelly for in-
fant palates ; but " here is wisdom" the divinest, employed in
hiding the medicine of eternal life, amid the sweet preparations
of the Psalms, the stories, and the imagery of the Book of
God.
AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 313
This beauty is as humble as it is high. It enters into the
lowliest cottages, secure, like our illustrious sovereign, in her
own native dignity and lofty innocence. No altar for this di-
vine Book superior to the dusty table of the poor, where, amid
foul fire and smoke, and fouler hearts, it lies d^ and night,
gradually clearing the atmosphere, and changing the natures
around it — where, at first regarded with awe, as a powerful foe,
it is next admired as an intelligent companion, and at last takea
to the heart, as the best friend. Fine, the " big ha' Bible, ance
his father's pride," produced by the gray-haired sage of the
simple, pious family ; but finer still, the Book dropped into a
godless house, and there left alone, save for the spirit-light of
its own pages, to work its way and God's will, till, at last, it be-
comes the center and the eye, the master and the magnet, of the
dwelling. And, but for its beauty, would it so soon have wou
a triumph like this ?
This beauty, too, is free of the world. It passes, unshorn
and -ifbmingled, into every language and every laud. Where-
ever the Bible goes, " beauty," in the words of rhe poet, " pitches
her tents before it." Appealing, as its poetry does, to the primi-
tive principles, elements, and " all that must eternal be," of the
human mind — using the oldest speech, older than Hebrew,
that of metaphors and symbols — telling few, but lifelike, stories
— and describing scenes which paint themselves easily and for-
ever on the heart — it needs httle more introduction than does
a gleam of sunshine or a flash of lightning. It soon domesti-
cates itself among the CafFres, or the ISTegroes, or the Hindoos,
or the Hottentots, or the Chinese, who all feel it to be intensely
human, before they feel it to be divine. What heart but must
palpitate at the sight of this Virgin Daughter of the Most High,
going forth from land to land, with no dower but innocence, and
with no garment but beauty ; yet pow^erful in her loveliness
as light, and in her innocence safe as her Father who is iu
heaven ?
Or, let us look at the influences her beauty exerts among the
advanced and the intelligent of her votaries, These have per-
— 9
314 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUEITCES,
haps been at first attracted by this to her feet. They have loved
her beauty before they knew her worth, for often
" You must love her, ere to you
She doth seem worthy of your love."
And even after they have learned to value her for her internal
quahties, the enchantment of her loveliness remains. The love
of their espousals is never wholly lost ; and they say, with exul-
tation — " Our beloved is not only a king's daughter, and all-
glorious within, but she is fair as the moon, and clear as the
sun." Nay, even when doubts as to this royal origin may at
times cross their mind, they are re-assured by gazing again at
her transcendent beauty, and seeing the blood of heaven blush-
ing in her cheek. In the poetical beauty and grandeur of Scrip-
ture, we have, as it were, a perpetual miracle attesting its
divine origin, after the influence of its first miracles has in a
great measure died away, and although all now be still around
Sinai's mount, and upon Bethlehem's plains.
Perhaps it may be thought that we are attributing too much
to the influence of beauty. Does not the Bible owe much more
to its divine truth ? and does it not detract from that truth, to
say that beauty has done so much ? But, first, we do not
maintain that its beauty has done so much as its truth ; sec-
ondly, the influence of beauty has been subsidiary and subordi-
nate; thirdly, had there been no background of truth, the in-
fluence of beauty would have been inconsiderable and transient ;
and, fourthly, the beauty is of that purged and lofty order
which betokens the presence of the highest truth — the wings
are those of angels, the flowers those of the garden of God.
We say not that the beauty of Scripture ever did, or ever can,
convert a soul ; but it may often have attracted men to those
means of spiritual influence where conversion is to be found.
The leaves, not the flowers, of the tree of life, are for the heal-
ing of the nations ; but surely the flowers have often first fasci-
nated the eye of the wanderer, and led him near to eat and
live. When Christianity arose, it " sti-eamed," says Eusebius,
AiTD EFFECTS OF SCRIPXrEE POETRY. SI 5
" over the face of tlie earth like a sunbeam ;" and men were too
much struck by its novelty, its bright and blessed revelations,
its adaptation to their wants, to think much of the lovely hues,
and soft charms, and lofty graces, by which it was surrounded.
It is very different now, when it needs a perception of all those
subsidiary attractions tO'induce multitudes of the refined and
intellectual to devote due investigation to its claims.
And besides such direct effects of Scripture poetry in draw-
ing men to inquire into Scripture truth, and in confirming
Christians in their attachment to it, there is a silent but pro-
found indirect moral power wielded by it in the world. It has
refined society, softened the human heart, promoted deference
and respect to woman, and tenderness to children, cleansed to
a great degree the temple of our literature, and especially of our
poetry and fiction — denounced licentiousness, while inculcating
forgiveness and pity to those led astray, and riotous living,
while smiling upon social intercourse — suspended the terrors of
its final judgment over high as well as low, over the sins of the
heart as well as of the conduct, over rich and respectable chil-
dren of hell as well as over the deA'il's pariahs and poor slaves —
and has branded such public enormities as war, slavery, and
capital punishments, with the inexpiable mark of its spirit, and
is destroying them by the breath of its power. We say Scrip-
ture poetry has done all this ; for how feeble and ineffectual
had been mere enactments and precepts, compared with the
poems in which the gospel principles have been inscribed — the
parables in which they have been incarnated — comp-#ed to
such living scenes as Jesus holding up a child in tha midst of
his disciples, or saying to the woman taken in adultery, " Go
and sin no more," or commending his mother to his beloved
disciple from the cross, or making water into wine at Cana,
or feasting with publicans and sinners — or to such pictures as
Dives tormented in that flame, or of Christ seated on the great
white throne — or to such denunciations as his reverberated woes
against the formalists and hard-hearted professoi-s of his day !
If our antiquated Jerichos of evil be tottering, and have already
516 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES,
to some extent tottered down, it is owing to the shout of poetic
attack with which the genius of Christianity has been so long
assaiHug them.
We pass to speak of the intellectual influences of Scripture
poetry. And these, also, are of two kinds — direct and indirect :
direct, as coming on minds from the immediate battery of the
Bible itself; and indirect, as transmitted through the innumer-
able writers who have received and modified the shock.
In order to try to form some conception of the influence
of the Scriptures upon the minds of the millions who have
read them, let our readers ask each at himself the question,
" What have I gained from their perusal 2" And if he has
read them for himself, and with an ordinary degree of intelli-
gence, there must arise before his memory a " great multitude
which no man can number," of lofty conceptions of God — of
glimpses into human nature — of thoughts "lying too deep for
tears" — of pictures, still or stormy, passing from that page to
the canvas of imagination to remain forever — of emotions,
causing the heart to vibrate with a strange joy, " which one
may recognize in more exalted stages of his being" — of inspi-
rations, raising for a season the reader to the level of his author
— and of perpetual whispered impressions, " This is the highest
thought and language I ever encountered ; I am standing on
the pinnacle of literature." And then, besides, he will remember
how often he returned to this volume, and found the charm re-
maining, and the fire still burning, and the fountain of thought
and deling (thought suggestive, feeling creative) still flowing
— how every sentence was found a text, and how many texts
resembled deep and deepening eyes, " orb within orb, deeper
than sleep or death" — how each new perusal showed firmament
above firmament, rising in the book as in the night sky, till at
last he fell on his knees, and, forgetting to read, began to wonder
and adore — how, after this trance was over, he took up the book
again, and found that it was not only a telescope to show him
things at)Ove, but also a microscope to show him things below,
and a mirror to reflect his own heart, and a magic glass to bring
AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRT. 31 7
the future near — and how, at last, he was compelled to exclaim,
" How dreadful is this book ; it is none other than the book of
God ; it is the gate of heaven !" Multiply this, the experience
of one, by an unknown number of millions, and you have the
answer to the question as to the direct intellectual influence of
the Scriptures upon those who have really read them.
But it is more to our purpose to trace the influence it has
radiated upon the pages of modern authors, and which from
thence has been reflected on the world. Let a rapid glance
sufiBce.
Dante, we have seen, has snatched fire from the Hebrew sun,
to light up his own deep-sunk Cyclopean hearth. Tasso's
great poem is " Jerusalem Delivered," and the style, as well as
the subject, shows the influence of Scripture -upon a feebler and
more artificial spirit than Dante's. Spenser has been called by
Southey a " high-priest ;" and his " Faery Queen," in its pure
moral tone, nothing lessened by its childlike naivete and plain-
spoken descriptions, as well as in its gorgeous allegory, betrays
the diligent student of the " Song," the Parables, and the Proph-
ets. Giles and Phineas Fletcher — the one in his " Temptation and
Victory of Christ," and the other in his " Purple Island" — are
more deeply indebted to the Scriptures ; their subjects are more
distinctly sacred, and their piety more fervid than Spenser's,
their master. George Herbert was called by excellence " holy,"
and his "Temple" proclaims him a poet "after God's own
heart :" it is cool, chaste, and still, as the Temple of Jerusalem
on the evening after the buyers and sellers •ere expelled. The
genius, rugged and grand, of Dr. Donne, and that of Quarles, so
quaint and whimsical, and that of Cowley, so subtile and cultured,
were all sanctified. Of Milton, what need we say ? His poems
deserve, much more than Wisdom or Ecclesiasticus, to be bound
up between the two Testaments. Nor let us omit a sacred
poem, to which he was somewhat indebted, "The Weeks and
Works of Du Bartas," a marvelous medley of childish weak-
ness and manly strength, with more seed-poetry in it than any
poem, except " Festus" — the chaos of a hundred poetic worlds.
318 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES,
Bunyan seems to have read scarcely a book but tbe Bible.
When he quotes it, it is by chapters at a time, and he has nearly
quoted it all. He seems to think and dream, as well as speak
and write, in Scripture language. Scripture imagery serves him
for fancy — for, with the most vivid of imaginations, fancy he
has none — and Scripture words for eloquence, for, though his
invention be Shaksperean, his language is bare and bald. He
alone could have counterfeited a continuation of the Bible !
He was not the modern Isaiah or Jeremiah, for he had no lofty
eloquence ; and his pathos was wild and "terrible rather than
soft or womanly — the " Man in the Cage" is his saddest picture ;
but he was the modern Ezekiel, in his vehement simplicity, his
burning zeal, and the almost diseased objectiveness of his genius.
Macaulay says, there were in that age but two men of original
genius — the one wrote the " Paradise Lost," and the other the
" Pilgrim's Progress ;" and he might have added, that both
seemed incarnations of the spirit of Hebrew poetry, and that
the tinker had more of it than the elaborate poet. The age of
Elisha and Amos seemed to have rolled round, when from
among the basest of the people sprang up suddenly this brave
man, like the figure in his own Pilgrim, and cried out to the
Recorder of immortal names, " Set mine down," and the song
was straightway raised over him —
" Come in, come in,
Eternal glory thou shalt win."
Macaulay, howe^r, here is wrong ; and has sacrificed, as not
unfrequently is his manner, the truth on the sharp prong of an
antithesis. There were in that age men of original genius be-
sides Milton and Bunyan ; and almost all of them had baptized
it at " Siloa's brook, which flowed hard by the oracle of God."
Cromwell's sword was a "right Jerusalem blade." Hobbes
himself had studied Scripture, and borrowed from it the names
of his books, " Behemoth" and " Leviathan." If a Goliath of
Gath, he came at least from the borders of the land of promise.
Jeremy Taylor soared and sang like Isaiah. John Scott copied
AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRT. 319
the severe sententiousness and unshrinking moral anatomy of
James ; and had besides touches of subHraitj, reminding you
of the loftier of the minor prophets. Barrow reasoned as if he
had sat, a younger disciple, at the feet of Paul's master, Gama-
liel. John Howe rose to calm Platonic heights, less through
the force of Plato's attraction than that of the beloved disciple.
And Richard Baxter caught, carried into his pulpit, and sus-
tained even at his solitary desk, the old fury of pure and pas-
sionate zeal for God, hatred at sin, and love to mankind, which
shook the body of Jeremiah, and flamed round the head and
beard, and shaggy raiment of the Baptist.
In the century that succeeded — even in the "godless eigh-
teenth century" — we find numerous traces of the power of the
Bible poetry. The allegories, and all the other serious papers
of Addison, are tinged with its spirit. lie loves not so much its
wilder and higher strains ; he gets giddy on the top of Lebanon,
the valley of dry bones he treads with timid steps, and his
look cast up toward the " terrible crystal," is rather of fright
than of admiration. Well able to appreciate the " pleasures,"
he shrinks from those tingling " pains" of imagination. Nor
has he much sympathy with that all-absorbing earnestness
which surrounded the prophets. But the lovelier, softer, simpler,
and more pensive parts of the Bible are very dear to the gentle
"Spectator." The "Song" throws him into a dim and lan-
guishing ecstasy. The stories of Joseph and of Ruth are the
models of his exquisite simpHcity ; and the 8th and 104th
Psalins, of his quiet and timorous grandeur. We hear of Ad-
dison " hinting a fault, and hesitating dislike ;" but, more truly,
he hints a beauty, and stammers out love. He says himself
the finest thing, and then blushes, as if detected in a crime. Or
he praises an obvious and colossal merit in another ; and if he
has done it abov/^ his breath, he " starts at the sound himself
has made." His encomiums are the evening whispers of lovers
— low, sweet, and trembling. Thus timidly has he panegyrized
the beauties of the Bible ; but his graceful imitations, and par-
ticularly his vision of Mirza (was he ashamed of it, too, and there-
320 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCEg,
fore left it a fragment ?) — so Scriptural in its spirit, style, acd
nameless, imconscious charm — show how deeply they had en-
graved themselves upon his heart.
Even Pope, the most artificial of true poets, has found "his
own" in Scripture poetry. Isaiah's dark, billowy forests have
little beauty in his eye ; but he has collected the flowers which
grow beneath, and woven them into that lovely garland, the " Mes-
siah." In his hands, Homer the sublime becomes Homer the
brilliant, and Isaiah the majestic becomes Isaiah the soft and ele-
gant. But, as Warton remarks. Pope's " Messiah" owes its supe-
riority to Virgil's " Pollio," entirely to the Hebrew poets. Young
has borrowed little from them, or from any one else ; he is the
most English original poet of the eighteenth century ; his poetry-
comes from a fierce fissure in his own heart : still, the torch by
which he lights himself through the "Night" of his "Thoughts"
has been kindled at the New Testament ; and his " Last Day,"
and his "Paraphrase on Job," are additional proofs of the as-
cendency of the Hebrew genius over his own. Thomson's Hymn,
is avowedly in imitation of the latter Psalms ; and his mind, iu
its sluggish magnificence and lavish ornaments, is distinctly
Oriental. Every page of the " Seasons" shows an imagination
early influenced by the breadth, fervor, and magniloquence of
prophetic song. Johnson, too, in his " Rasselas," " Rambler,"
and " Idler," is often highly Oriental, and has caught, if not the
inmost spirit, at least the outer roll and volume, of the style of
the prophets. Burke, in his "Regicide Peace," approaches
them far more closely, and exhibits their spirit as well as style,
their fiery earnestness, their abruptness, their impatience, their
profusion of met^hor, their " doing well to be angry, even unto
death," and the contortions by which they were delivered of
their message, as of a demon. How he snatches up their words,
like the fallen thunderbolts of the Titan war, to heave them at
his and their foes ! No marvel that the cold-blooded eighteenth
century thought him mad. Burns admired his Bible better
than he ever cared to acknowledge ; and during his last illness,
at the Brow, was often seen with it in his hands. Some of the
AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 821
finest passages in botli his prose and verse are colored by
Scripture, and leave on us tlie impression, that, had he looked
at it more through his own naked eagle-eye, and less through
the false media of systems, and commentaries, and critics, he
had felt it to be the most humane, the most liberal, the least
aristocratic, the most loving, as well as the sublimest and the
one divine book in the world. As it was, that dislike to it nat-
ural to all who disobey its moral precepts, was aggravated in
him by the wretchedly cold critical circles among whom he fell,
who in their hearts preferred Racine's " Athalie" to the Lam-
entations, and "Douglas" to Job. Hence he praises Scrip-
ture with something like misgiving, and speaks of the pomiwus
language of the Hebrew bards, an epithet which he means
partly in praise, but partly also in blame, and applies to the ex-
pression, as simple as it is sublime, " Who walketh on the wings
of the wind."
Cowper, the most timid of men, was, so far as moral courage
went, the most daring of poets. He was an oracle, hid not in
an oak, but in an aspen. His courage, indeed, sometimes seems
the courage of despair. Hopeless of heaven, he fears nothing on
earth. " How can I fear," says Prometheus, " who am never to
die ?" How can I fear, says poor, unhappy Cowper, who shall
never be saved ? And in nothing do we see this boldness more
exemplified than in his " Bibliolatry." Grant that Bibliolatry
it was ; it was the extreme of an infinitely worse extreme. In
an age when religion w^as derided, when to quote the Bible was
counted eccentric folly, when Lowth was writing books to
prove the prophets " elegant," a nervous hypochondriac ven-
tured to prefer them by infinitude to all other w^-iters, defended
their every letter, drank into their sternest spirit, and poured
out strains which, if not in loftiness or richness, yet in truth,
energy, earnestness, and solemn pathos, seem omitted or mis-
laid " burdens of the Lord." Blessings on this noble " Casta-
way," rising momentarily o'er the moonlit surge, which he
dreamed ready to be his grave, and shouting at once words of
praise to that Luminary which was never to rescue him,
S22 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES,
and words of warniug to those approachiDg the same fearful
waters. i
In the nineteenth century, all our great British authors have
more or less imbibed fire from the Hebrew fountains. There
had been, in the mean time, a reaction in the favor of them, as
well as of other things " old." For fifty years, the Bible, like
its author, had been exposed on a cross to public ignominy ;
gigantic apes, like Voltaire, chattering at it ; men of genius
turned, by some Circean spell, into swine, like Mirabeau, and
Paine, casting filth against it ; demoniacs, whom it had half-
rescued and half-inspired, like Rousseau, making mouths in its
face ; till, as darkness blotted out the heaven above, and an
earthquake shook Europe around, and all things seemed rush-
ing into ruin, men began to feel, as they did on Calvary, that
this was all for Christ'' s saTce ; and they trembled ; and what
their brethren there could not or did not — they stopped ere it was
too late. The hieroj^hants of the sacrilege, indeed, were dead
or hopelessly hardened, but their followers paused in time ; and
the mind of the civilized world was shaken back into an atti-
tude of respect, if not of belief, in the Book of Jesus.
This reaction was for a season complete. No poetry, no
fiction, no belles lettres, no philosophy, was borne with, unless
it professed homage to Christianity. And even after, through
the influence of the " Edinburgh Review," and other causes,
there was a partial revival of the skeptical spirit, it never ven-
tured on such daring excesses again. It bowed before the Bible,
although it was sometimes with the bow of a polite assassin, who
had studied murder and manner both in the south.
Nay, more, Scripture poetry began to be used as a model more
extensively than even heretofore, alike by those who believed and
those who disbelieved its supreme authority. Wordsworth, Cole-
ridge, and Southey, we name first, because they never lost faith
in it as a word, or admiration of it as a poem ; and hence its lan-
guage and its element seem more natural to them than to others.
Campbell was attracted to it originally by his exquisite poetical
taste. He came forth to see the " Rainbow," like some of the
AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 323
world's " gray fathers," because it was beautiful ; but ulti-
mately, we rejoice to know, be felt it to be tbe " rainbow of the
covenant." He grew up to the measure and the stature of his
own poetry. Moore, like Pope, has been fascinated by its
flowers ; and we find him now imitating the airy gorgeousness
of the " Song of Songs," and now the diamond-pointed keen-
ness of the Book of Ecclesiastes. Scott, as a writer, knew the
force of Scripture diction ; as a man, the hold of Scripture truth
upon the Scottish heart ; as a poet, the unique inspiration which
flowed from the Rock of Ages ; and has, in his works, made a
masterly use of all this varied knowledge. Rebecca might have
been the sister of Solomon's spouse. Her prose speeches rise
as to the sound of cymbals, and her " Hymn" is immortal as a
psalm of David. David Deans is only a little lower than the
patriarchs ; and time would fail us to enumerate the passages
in his better tales, which, approaching near the hne of high
excellence, are carried beyond it by the dextrous and sudden
use of " thoughts that breathe," or " words that burn," from the
Book of God. Byron, Godwin, Shelley, and Hazlitt, even, are
deeply indebted to the Bible. Byron, in painting " dark bo-
soms," has often availed himself of the language of that book,
which is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
Many of his finest poems are just expansions of that strong line
he has borrowed from it — -
" The worm that can not sleep, and never dies."
His " Hebrew Melodies" have sucked out their sweetness
from the Psalms ; and " Cain," his noblest production, employs
against God the power it has derived from his Book. Godwin
was originally a preacher, and his high didactic tone, his
'measured and solemn march, as well as many images and many
quotations, especially in " St. Leon" and " Mandeville," show
that the influence of his early studies was permanent. When
Shelley was drowned, it was rumored that he had a copy of
the Bible next his heart ; " and," says Byron, " it would have
been no wonder, for he was a great admirer of it as a composi-
324 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES,
tion.*' The rumor was not literally correct, but was so roythi-
cally. It is clear to us that Shelley was far advanced on his
way to Christianity ere he died, and was learning not only to
love the Bible as a composition, but to appreciate its unearthly
principles — that disinter^'sted heroism especially which charac-
terizes Christ and his Apostles. Indeed, he was constituted
rather to sympathize with certain parts of its morale, than with
the simple and terse style of its writing. It was the more mys-
terious and imaginative portion of it which he seems princi-
pally to have admired, and which excited the rash emulation
of his genius, when he projected a variation of " Job." Haz-
litt's allusions to Scripture are incessant, and are to us the most
interesting passages in his works. He was a clergyman's son ;
and in youth, the Bible had planted stings in his bosom, which
none of his after-errors, in thought or life, were able to pluck
out. " Heaven lay about him in his infancy," and his compar- ,
ison of the Bible with Homer, and his picture of the effects of
its translation into English, show that the earnest though erring
man never altogether saw its glory
" Die away,
And fade into the light of common day."
This is one of the features in Hazhtt's writings which exalt
them above Lord Jeffrey's. Scotchman though he was, we do
not recollect one eloquent or sincere-seeming sentence from his
pen about the beauties of the Bible. Such writers as Sheridan,
Eogers, Alison, Dugald Stewart, Lord Erskine, William Ten-
nant, Mrs. Hemans, and a hundred others, are suffocated in
flowers ; but not a word, during all his long career, from the
autocrat of criticism, about Moses, Isaiah, Job, or John. To
have praised their jDoetry, might have seemed to sanction their
higher pretensions; and might, too, have reflected indirect
credit upon that school of fervid poets, who were sitting at the
feet of Jewish men, as well as of Cumberland mountains. Need
we name, finally, Chalmers and Irving — those combinations
of the prophet of the old, and the preacher of the new economy ?
AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 325
Our living writers have, in general, shown a sympathy with
the Hebrew genius. We speak not merely of clergymen, whose
verdict might by some be called interested, and whose enthu-
siasm might unjustly be thought put on with their cloaks.
And yet we must refer to Millman's " Fall of Jerusalem," and
to Croly's magnificent " Salathiel." Keble, too, and Trench,
Kingsley, William Anderson, are a few out of many names of
men who, while preaching the Bible doctrine, have not forgotten
its literary glories, as subjects of earnest imitation and praise.
But the Levites outnumber and outshine the priests in their
service to the bards of the Bible. Isaac Taylor's gorgeous
figures are elaborately copied from those of Scripture, although
they sometimes, in comparison with them, remind you of that
root of which Milton speaks —
' " The leaf was darkish, and had prickles in it,
But in another country, as he said,
Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil"
The Eastern spirit is in them ; they want only the Eastern day.
Sir James Stephen has less both of the spirit and the genuine
color, ardent as his love of the Hebrews is. Macaulay quotes
Scripture, as Burdett, in Parliament, was wont to quote Shak-
speare — always with triumphant rhetorical effect, and seems once,
at least, to have really loved its literature. Professor Wilson
approaches more closely than any modern since Burke, to that
wild prophetic movement of style and manner which the bards
of Israel exhibit — nay, more nearly than even Burke, since
with Wilson it is a perpetual afflatus : he is like the he-goat in
Daniel, who came from the west, and touched not the ground ;
his "Tale of Expiation," for instance, is a current of fire.
Thomas Carlyle concentrates a fury, enhanced by the same
literary influences, into deeper, straiter, more molten and ter-
rible torrents. Thomas Aird has caught the graver, calmer,
and more epic character of the Historical Books, especially in
his "Nebuchadnezzar," which none but one deep in Daniel
326 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES,
could have written. From another poem of his, entitled " He-
rodion and Azala," we quote two etchings of prophets : —
" Winged with prophetic ecstasies, behold
The son of Amos, beautifully bold,
Borne like the sythed wing of the eagle proud,
That shears the winds, and climbs the storied cloud
Aloft sublime ! And through the crystaline,
Glories upon its lighted head doth shine.
* * * -jfr * * *
Behold ! behold, uplifted through the air,
The swift Ezekiel, by his lock of hair !
Near burned the Appearance, undefinedly dread,
"Whose hand put forth, upraised him by the head.
Within its fierce reflection, cast abroad,
The Prophet's forehead like a furnace glowed.
From terror half, half from his vehement mind.
His lurid hair impetuous streamed behind."
From a hint or two in Scripture, he has built up his vision
of hell, in the " Devil's Dream upon Mount Acksbeck," a vision
mysterious, fiery, and yet distinct, definite, and fixed as a
frosted minster shining in the moonlight. But in his " De-
moniac," he absolutely pierces into the past world of Palestine,
and brings it up with all its throbbing life and thauraaturgic
energies, its earth quaking below the footsteps, and its sky-
darkening above the death, of the Son of God.
Of the rising poets of the day, " two will we mention dearer
than the rest ;" dearer, too, in part, because they have sought
their inspiration at its deepest source — Bailey, of " Festus,"
and Yendys, of " The Roman." This is not the place to dilate
on their poetic merits. We point to them now, because, in an
age when so many young men and young poets are forsaking
belief in the oracular and divine inspiration of the Bible, they
have rallied around the old shrine, have expressed their trust in
that old and blessed hope of the Gospel, and may be hailed as
morning stars, prognosticating the rising of a new " day of the
Lord." May their light, already brilliant and far seen, shine
AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY. 32'?
** more and more," not only into its own, but into the world's
" perfect day."
We have not nearly exhausted the text of this chapter, nor
alluded to a tithe of the writers in this or in other lands, who
have transmitted their deep impressions of Scripture poetry to
others. But it may now be asked, is not all this exceedingly
hopeful ? What would you more ? Is not the Bible now an
acknowledged power ? Is it not doing its work silently and
effectually, through the many men of genius who are conduct-
ing its electric force ? Must not its future career, therefore, be
one of clear and easy triumph ? So, indeed, it might at first
sight appear ; but there have arisen certain dark and lowering
shadows in the sky, threatening to overcloud the sun-path of
tke Book, if not to darken it altogether ; and to a calm and
Cr>Jp»did, though brief and imperfect, examination of these, we
T ropose devoting our closing chapter.
CONCLUSION.
FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE.
"No theories, so far as we are aware, have been openly pro-
mulgated, or elaborately defended, upon exactly this question in
the present day. But, from the mass of prevailing opinions on
cognate topics, there exhale certain floating notions, which it
may be perhaps of some importance to catch in language, and
to try by analysis.
Let a quiet and earnest inquirer take up a copy of the Scrip
tures, and ask himself, " What is to be the future history of
this book ?" We suspect the following alternatives would
come up before him : — It may, by the progress of science and
philosophy, be exploded as a mass of impostures, myths, and
lies ; or it may, shorn of its fabulous rays, be reduced to its true
level, as a revelation of spiritual truth ; or it may, owing to its
great antiquity, and the leaden mists which lie around its cradle,
continue, as it is at present to many scholars and philosophers,
a book of dubious authorship and truth, and may, perhaps, be
thrown aside as a work for ages popular, but now obsolete,
without any definite verdict having been passed upon its claims ;
or it may be fulfilled, certified, supplemented, and, in a great
measure, superseded by a new and fuller revelation.
The first of those conjectures, for we freely grant that a little
of the conjectural adheres to more than one of the theories, is
so gloomy, and so improbable, that we must apologize for nam-
ing, and still more for seeking to refute it. The Bible a mass
of myths and impostures, alternating — as though JEsop's Fables
and Munchausen's Travels were bound up together in one mon-
FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE. 329
strous medley, more monstrously pretending to be the Book of
God ! Myths, indeed, fables, stories, passages manifestly meta-
phorical, poetic hyperboles, and those of every sort, there are
in Scripture ; but they are all manifestly and by contrast so.
The body of the book is either historical or doctrinal ; and to
"charge" figure upon figure in such a clumsy stjle, were no
true heraldry. Jotham's story of the " trees" is a fable, but is
Jotham himself? The parables of Jesus are truth-possessed
fictions ; but is Jesus, too, a figure of speech ; or, at least, the
mere Alexander Selkirk to the teeming brain of an ancient
Defoe ? No ! the historic and didactic element in Scripture is
a layer of light piercing through all the rest, and at once ex-
pounding and preserving the whole. Indeed, in the double
form of Scripture, we see a pledge of its perpetuity. TJie
figurative beauty above glorifies the truth, and the hard truth
below solidifies the hovering splendor. And, besides, the ques-
tion is irresistible — were the Bible such a wild, accidental,
anomalous mixture, could it have produced such miracles of
heahng power, and have so long remained unanalyzed ? Even
granting that strange unassimilated elements have met together
in it, have they not formed a whole so united, so well-cemented,
that ages have conspired to own in it the hand of God ? The
difficulty of the compound was such, that it must have issued
either in a disgraceful failure, or in a success, the wonder of the
universe ! Could it have been made by any other but a divine
hand?
But here a second theorist steps in, and says, " I grant the
book, as a whole, true. I recognize your distinction between its
myths and its histories, its figures and its doctrines ; but I find
in it many records, pretending to be historical, and lying mixed
with the histories, which I can not believe. I meet with mir-
acles ! And these seem to me such monstrous violations of
the laws of nature, so opposed to general experience, bearing
such a suspicious family-likeness to the portents and prodigies
found in the history of all early faiths, and encumbered in
their details with such difficulties, that I am compelled to deem
330 rirruRE destiny of the bible.
them fabulous, and to expect and accept an analysis which shall
separate them from the real and solid principles of Chris-
tianity."
Upon this subject of miracles, let us proceed to sum up what
we conceive to be the truth, in the following remarks : —
Now we grant that, firstly, miracles must be tried not only
by the test of the evidence in their favor, but by the character
of the system they were wrought to prove, which introduces a
new element into the discussion, nay, makes it a discussion en-
tirely new. Secondly, That, instead of miracles being the
strongest evidence of Christianity, Christianity appears to us a
far stronger proof of miracles : a book so divine as the Bible
can not be supposed mistaken in its facts. Thirdly, That the
chief things in Scripture whicli stagger the Christian are not
likely to be the most powerful in convincing the enemy.
Fourthly, That miracles seldom seem to have made converts
either among those who originally witnessed them, or among
those who have since heard the echo of their report. And
fifthly. That miracles were wrought, not so much to convert in-
dividuals, as to decorate and magnify the system, which clothed
itself even in its cradle with those awful ornaments, rung no
bell save the " great bell of the universe," and used no playthings
but the thunderbolts of God. But then, we ask, if miracles be
Mse, how comes it that they are connected with what is granted
to be substantially a divine revelation ? Again, we maintain
that the difference between the prodigies of profane history and
the miracles of Jesus is immense : the latter were attested by
the character of the person, the character of the fciith, and the
pure and benevolent purposes for which they were wrought, not
to speak of the confession of some of the adversaries, and the
impossibility of explaining otherwise the instant attention and
impetus the faith of the Carpenter received. And, once again, we
deny that miracles can be explained, as the able and Christian
author of " Alton Locke" tries to do, by the operation of un-
known natural causes, or resolved, with Carlyle, into "Natural
Supernaturalism." For, first, this does not remove the diffi'
FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE. 331
culty — ^How came Jesus to the knowledge of such occult prin-
ciples — principles no philosopher has since discovered ? Sec-
ondly, Is not the multiplication of bread in the miracle of the
loaves and fishes very similar to the " supplying of an ampu-
tated, limb ?" * Is not each a creation ? and who but a God can
create ? Knowledge of occult principles might have enabled
Christ to heal obstinate diseases, but not positively to make
something out of nothing ! Thirdly, Does not the restoration
of life to a dead and putrid body seem to run altogether coun-
ter to nature's course? for, although nature revives and restores,
it is never the "same body" — she deals in transformation, not
resurrection. Wherefore the raisino- of Lazarus seems desio*ned
as a deliberate anomaly, a grand and sovereign setting aside of
a natural law, to produce a moral effect. Fourthly, Is not the
exceptional aspect of miracles a pro'of that they were rather a
temporary triumph over nature, than an evolution of some of
its own inner laws ? Why did miracles cease ? Why did the
knowledge of those occult principles die out of the Church ?
And why is the reappearance of miracles predicted always in
connection with the return of the Savior from heaven, when
HE shall raise the dead, and convene before him all nations,
thus again, through his divine power, triumphing over the laws
of nature ? If such astonishing future changes had been the
mere blossoming of natural principles, they had not been uni-
formly traced to the personal agency of Christ Jesus. Fifthly,
This view of miracles, as mysterious, occasional, and fluctuating
infractions of natural laws, is, we think, most in keeping with
the actual history of Christ. Had his powers of working mir-
acles sprung from his knowledge of occult principles, it had
always been alike, and had been exerted in a more systematic
manner, and on a broader scale. As it was, it is used with
severe economy, and is preceded sometimes by ardent and
yearning prayer to the Father, as if he were reluctant to inter-
fere with the solemn and measured roll of his laws. He says,
too, repeatedly, " I am come to do the ivorJcs of my Father"-—
* This Mr, Eingsley specially desiderates,
332 FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE.
not to observe his laws, but to perform works as distinctly crea-
tive and divine as his fiat, " Be light, and there was light."
Sixthly, This power of suspending the laws of his Father's
creation — a power possessed by Christ, and bestowed, through
him, on his apostles, as it had been on some of the prophets —
is quite in keeping with his peculiar and abnormal character, as
being the strangest and sublimest birth in the universe, bone of
our bone, and flesh of our flesh, and yet the offspring of the
miraculous conception, and the Son of the Blessed — who is still
a glorious anomaly in heaven as he was on earth — and with tho
wondrous and solitary work which was given him to do. "We
never see in him the philosopher working his way to his result,
upon natural principles — but the Son walking in his Father's
house, and having " authority" to issue what commandments,
to diseases or demons, to waves or winds, to life or death, it
pleased him.
But why, Alton Locke will ask again, should the laws of na-
ture ever require suspension ? When once satisfied of the fact,
many reasons occur to account for it. One may be, to show
that these laws are not eternal and unchangeable, and that it is
thus impossible to confound them with their author — for what
is not eternal and unchangeable can not be God. Miracles con-
fute Pantheism. All can not be God, since here is something
which is not, in the Pantheist's sense, God, and yet has been.
Miracles prove the dependence of matter upon God, who in an
instant can repeal his most steadfast laws. Miracles evince the
power of spirit over matter. What can show us this in a more
striking light, than the sight of Jesus rebuking the thousand
brute waves of the Galilean lake ? Miracles prove God's bound-
less love to the family of man ; for it was for his sake that such
a power was intrusted to his Son. Miracles represent God as
possessing a liberty to act, if we may use the expression, in
difierent styles at different times — now in that of regular and
unvaried sequence, and again in sudden and mystic change. A
hundred other reasons of a similar nature might be adduced.
Have these miracles, then, been wrought 1 Devoutly do we
FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE. 333
believe that they have ; but we are not at all sanguine of their
power as an argument with the infidel. Till he has learned to
appreciate the moral and spiritual aspects of the religion of
Jesus, he will continue, we fear, to stumble at that old stum-
bhng-stone. But if he persist in his insolent assertion, that the
miraculous part of Christianity shall soon be shorn away as fab-
ulous, we must answer, " Thou fool, who art thou that rephest
against God. He that wrought miracles in the past, is able to
work more, and mightier, in the future ; and beware thou lest
they be miracles of judgment. The Savior who came last in
swaddling-bands, is again to be revealed in flaming fire, taking
vengeance upon them who know not God, and obey not the
gospel of Jesus Christ."
Suppose that the credit of the supernatural portion of the
Bible were to fall, what would be the general results ? First,
Those who base their belief in Scripture on its miracles, would
rush into skepticism. Secondly, Those who did not, would yet
be surrounded by peculiar and formidable difficulties — by such
questions as, why has God produced such deep and general
effects by a tissue of falsehoods ? and why has he connected
that tissue so closely with a web of truth ? must not the truth,
power, and beauty so misplaced, be human instead of divine ?
Yes, the Book would instantly be degraded, if not destroyed —
discrowned, if not banished. The strange mantle it had worn,
with all those starry and mysterious ornaments, would fall from
it ; it could scarcely be recognized as the same ; and, if ceasing
to .be a " Prince," would it remain a " Savior ?"
Others — probably, however, a small class — may be inclined
to support a third theory ; this, namely, that we never can
satisfy ourselves now, more than we have done, as to the claims
of the Bible — that the question is a moot and insoluble point,
like those of the " Iron Mask," the guilt of Queen Mary, and the
authorship of " Junius" — that it is a question which is likely to
decline in interest, as man becomes more advanced in culture —
and that by and by it may be dropped silently out of mind, like
the controversies of the schoolmen, without having attained any
S34 S^tTtTRE DESTINY OP THE BiCtE.
definite or absolute resolution. But it is surely not probable
that God would allow a question involving such vast and vital
interests to remain unsettled, or to pass into the dim limbo of
unresolved and half-forgotten logomachies. Hitherto, the result
of all new discoveries has been to dart new notice, new hght,
new interest, upon the pages of this marvelous book, which,
hke the full moon, shines undimmed, whatever stars come up
the midnight. v(Iii her majestic simpHcity, she fears no rival
among all those new telescopic orbs, which are arriving every
hour, and can suffer no eclipse from them ; and neither need the
Bible, in its pure, and mild, and crystal sphere, be alarmed at
all the starry revelations of science.) Nor will man allow this
question to sink into obscurity, or to be buried in everlasting
indifference. Nay, he seems even now to be girding himself for
a more minute, earnest, and persevering inquiry into the claims
of the Book. To solve this problem, many of the noblest of tho
race have sat down, like Archimedes, gluing themselves to the
task, determined to conquer or to die. This mighty and awful
shade, like the " dead majesty of buried Denmark," such bold
watchers must at all hazards bespeak, to ascertain its actual na-
ture, and to gather real tidings ; this thing, so majestical, they
must cross, though it blast them. The Bible forgotten ! There
never was an ao-e when there was less dano;er of that. It is not
merely that its unequaled literary power secures its vitality,
but over that, as a professed revelation from God, there has
begun a keen, hotly-contested fight, closing every day into
deadlier earnestness, and which, at no very distant period, prom-
ises to be finally decided.
Such is the threefold skeptical expectation. It is, in all its
phases, melancholy, and tends to teach nothing but an evangel
of despair. Should the Bible sink, what remains ? Where are we
to find a substitute for it ? What manual of duty so broad and
practical ? What narrative so broad, humane, and melting ?
What book of genius so full of the pith and lustihood of pri*
meval manhood ? Where another such two-edged sword, baring,
on the one side, the bosom of God, and, on the other, the hear/
FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE. 835
of man ? Where a book with such a Gospel ? Where another
such combination of truth so humble, power so meek, virtue so
merciful, poetry so holy, beauty so condescending, celestial
wisdom so affable ? A book of which all this is true found a
cheat — an old wives' fable — swarming with lies, or saved only
from the charge, under the plea of the dotage of age I Alas !
alas! And suppose a substitute found — suppose, by some
conjunction of mental forces, extraordinary as that of material,
which is said to have produced the deluge, another book writ-
ten, equally wide, and equally intense, equally sublime and
equally useful, equally profound and equally plain — which
should mete the ocean of this troubled age in its span, and
weigh its great mountains and its small dust of doubts and
difficulties ahke in its balance, and be hailed by exulting mil-
lions as divine — where the security for its permanent power ?
v/ho should dare to say that it, too, might not outlive itself —
wax old, and vanish away, after enduring the pains and penal-
ties, the contempt and insults, which track dishonored age to
the dust, and cause it to cry to the rocks of neglect and to the
mountains of obscurity to cover it ? Then, too, might the Bible
say to it — " Art thou also become weak as I ? I, too, once
caused my terror in the land of the living, and was even be-
lieved to stretch my scepter over the shadowy mansions of the
dead."
As never book so commanded, roused, affi'ighted, gladdened,
beautified, and solemnized the world, so the horrors of its fall
are too frightful almost for conception. We were borne away
in vision to see this great sight — in vision only, thank God !
ever to be seen. We saw this new plague of darkness passing
over the world. As it passed, there was heard the shriek of
children, mourning for their New Testaments, and refusing to be
comforted because they were not. There arose next, the wail
of women : of mothers, whose hope for their dead babes was put
out ; of wives, whose desire for the salvation of their husbands
was cruelly quenched ; of aged matrons, whose last comfort, as
they trembled on the verge of eternity, was extinguished. Then
335 FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE.
came a voice, saying, " Philantliropists, abandon your plans of
universal amelioration, for the glad tidings to all people have
died avfay ! Preachers of the word, pause on your pulpit
stairs : your message is a lie ! Poets, cut your gorgeous dreams
of a Millennium in sunder : they are but dreams, and the dream-
book is dead ! Missionaries, throw down your sickles : the ' end
of the world' ye may see, its ' harvest' never ! Poor Negroes,
CafFrarians, and Hindoos, look no more upward to those
teachers, once deemed to drop down honey and milk on your
parched lips : they are the retailers of exploded fables ! Mille-
narians — ye who hoped that the world was soon, to be touched
by the golden spur of Jesus, and to spring onward to a glorious
goal — ' why stand ye gazing up into heaven ?' Heaven there is
none, and no Savior is preparing to descend ! Bearers of that
corpse to the grave, cast it down, and flee; for he that f(ill
asleep in Jesus fell asleep in a lie, and if ye sow in hope, ye are
liars, too ! Poor prisoner in the cause of humanity — poor slave,
turn not your red and swollen eyes to heaven, for on the side of
your oppressors there is power, and ye have no helper ! Stop
your prayers, ye praying ones, for the Great Ear is shut — nay,
it was never open ! Dying sinner, clench thy teeth in silence :
hope not, for there is no pardon ; fear not, for there is no punish-
ment ! But, while prayer, and praise, and the cheerful notes of
Christian and hopeful toil — the voice of the Bridegroom rejoicing
over his bride, united by the sacred tie of Christian marriage —
and the voice of the Christian mother, bending and singing over
the cradled features, where she reads immortality — and all melo-
dies which have wedded Christian hope to poetry and music,
should be forever dumb, let the maniac howl on, and the swearer
curse, and the atheist laugh, and the vile person sneer and gibber,
and the hell-broth of war bubble over in blood, and the sound of
the scourge become eternal as the growth of the cane ; and if mirth
there be, let it be expressed in one wild and universal dance
between a grave forever closed below, and a heav^ forever
empty, and shut, and silent, above !" — All this we saw and
FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE. SSV
heard, and, starting from a slumber more hideous than death,
found our Bible in our bosom, and behold it was but a dream !
" Again in our dream, and the vision was new." We stood
in the midst of a great plain, or table-land, with dim, shadowy-
mountains far, fiir behind and around, and a black, midnight,
moonless sky above. A motley ^multitude was met, filling the
whole plain ; and a wild, stern hum, as of men assembled for
some dark one purpose, told us that they were assembled to
witness, or to assist at, a sacrifice. In the midst of the plain,
there towered a huge altar, on which crackled and smoked
a blaze, blue, livid, and the spires of which seemed eyes, eager
and hungrily waiting for their victim and prey. Around,
" many glittering faces" were looking on. They were tho
faces of the priests, who appeared all men of gigantic stature.
Their aspects otherwise were various. Some seemed, like the
flames, restlessly eager ; others seemed timid, were ghastly pale,
and looked ever and anon around and above ; and in the eyes of
one or two there stood unshed tears. Above them, in the smoke,
dipping at times their wings in the surge of the fire, and fre-
quently whispering in the ears of the priests, we noticed certain
dark and winged figures, the purpose in whose eyes made them
shine more fiercely far than the flames, and sparkle like the
jewelry of hell. On the altar there was as yet no victim. All
this we saw as clearly as if noon had been resting on the
plain, for all, though dark, shone like the glossy blackness of
the raven's wing. We asked in our astonishment, at one stand-
ing beside us, " What meaneth all this ? What sacrifice is this ?
Who are these priests?" And he replied, "Know you not
this ? These priests are the leaders of the new philosophy — the
successors of those who, in the nineteenth century, sapped the
belief of the nations in the Bible. They have met to burn the
Bible, and to renew society through its ashes." " And is all
the multitude of this mind ?" " The majority are ; but a few
are so weak as to believe that the book will be snatched by a
supernatural hand from the burning ; and it is said that even
two or three of the priests share at times in the foolish delu-
333 FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE.
sion : but I laugli at it." " But who are those winged figures ?"
" Winged figures," he replied ; " I see them not." And he looked
again. " Yes," we said, " with those plumes of darkness and
eyes of fire." His countenance fell ; he stared, trembled, and
was silent. It appeared that the multitude saw not them.
The hum of the vast congregation meanwhile increased, like
that of many waves nearing the shore. At last, voices were
heard crying, " It is time : forth with the old imposture." And
it was brought forth, and one of the priests, a gray-haired man,
took it into his hands. " Who is this ?" we asked. " He was
once," said our neighbor, " a believer in the Bible, and has
been chosen, therefore, to cast it into the flames, and to pro-
nounce a curse over it ere it is cast." Words would fail us to
describe the multitude when the Book appeared. Some shouted
with savage joy, others muttered " curses, not loud, but deep."
One cried, " It maddened my mother." Another, " It made my
sister drown herself." A third, " It has cost me many a night
of agony." Some we saw weeping, and wiping away their
tears, lest they should be seen ; and other some looking up with
the protest of indignation and appeal to Heaven. One face we
noticed — that of a youth ; and there was a poet's fire in his eye,
who seemed about to speak in the Book's behalf, when one be-
side put his hand to his lips and held him back from his pur-
pose, like a hound by the leash. And methought we heard,
half-stifled in the distance, from a remote part of the assembly,
a deep hollow voice, saying " Beware !"
The priest approached the altar, held the volume over the
flames, and uttered the curse. AVhat it was, we heard not dis-
tinctly, for each word was lost in loud volleys of applause, which
the priests began, and the vast multitude repeated. But as he
held it in his grasp, and was uttering his slow maledictions over
it, we saw the Book becoming radiant with a strange luster,
brightening at every word, as if it were uttering a silent protest,
and giving the lie in light to the syllables of insult. And when
he ceased, there was silence ; and he is about to drop the Book
into the burning, when a voice is heard saying, not now, in a
FUTURE DESTIMY OF THE BIBLE. 839
wriiisper, but as in ten tliunders — " Beware !" and, turning
round, we saw, speeding from the mountain boundary of tbe
plain, the figure of a man — his eyes shining hke the sun — ^his
hair streamino- behind him — his rio-ht hand stretched out be-
fore. And as the multitude open, by their trembling and fall-
ing to the ground, a thousand ways before him ; and as the old
priest stiffens into stone, and holds the Book as a statue might
hold it ; and as the priests around sink over the altar into the
flames, and the winged figures fly, he approaches, ascends, takes
the Book, and, looking up to heaven and around to earth, ex-
claims — " The Word of the Lord, the Word of the Lord en-
dureth forever !" And lo ! the altar seemed to shape itself
into a throne, and the man sat upon it, and " the judgment
was set, and the books opened." And again we awoke, and
behold it was, and yet tvas not, a dream.
No ; for we think that we have thus expressed, in outline
and allegory, a great reality. That the Bible is to go down,
we believe as impossible as it were shocking ; but that there
is a deep danger before it, a partial eclipse awaiting it, a " rock
ahead," we are firmly persuaded. Nay, we are satisfied that
the dangers are so numerous and varied, that no pilot but one
can rescue it, and in it, us, the church, the world !
The spread of skepticism is the most obvious of these dangers.
That in past ages seemed to stagnate, unless when it was fanned
by the breath of political excitement., or forced on by the influ-
ence of some powerful genius, or unless its waters were strength-
ened by the foul tributary flood of licentiousness. Now it is
more of an age tendency — a world-wide calm and steady cur-
rent — a tide advancing upon young and old, wise and foolish,
vicious and moral, cold and hot, male and female, half informed
and learned, high and low. Skepticism has been found of late
in strange places, even in the sanctuary of God. In proof of
this, we have but to name Foster and Arnold, men of great,
though unequal name, of ardent, religious feelings, representing
thousands, and who both died, torn and bleeding, in the breakers
of doubt. The effects of this abounding and overflowing stream
3-40 FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE.
of tendency are most pernicious. It has made the rash and
inconsiderate abandon churches, and openly avow their unbe-
lief; it has driven one species of the timid into the arms of
implicit faith, and another into a shallow and transparent
hypocrisy ; while, meantime, the bigotry of some is hardening,
and their narrowness closing up every day ; while others are,
from various causes, " detained before the Lord ;" and while a
large class are striving to forget their doubts, amid the clatter
of mechanical activities and the roar of the applauses by which
the report of these is in public rehgious meetings always re-
ceived. But on still the dark tide is fioiving^ and alas ! gaining
ground. One is reminded of a splendid drawing-room, in a
room adjoining to which a secret murder has been newly com-
mitted. Brilliant is the scene, gay the lights, beautiful the
countenances, soft the music — a wall of mirrors is reflecting
the various joy ; but below the feet of the company there is
slowly stealing along the silent blood, biding its time, and too
secure of producing, to hasten, the terrible effects of its dis-
covery.
But how to meet and counteract this wide current ? Some
say — laissez faire — it is good for us, quietly, to wait ; there was
a similar tide in the days of the French Revolution — it passed
away, and the old landmarks were again seen, the stronger and
dearer for the danger. And so it may be again. But there
are important differences. That was, to a great extent, a polit-
ical movement. It involved, too, more of a hcentious spirit ;
it was a revolt against the ten commandments ; it was sup-
ported, in a great measure, by practical Antinomians. The
movement, now, is quieter, deeper — altogether irrespective of
politics, and partly of morals. And though we were willing to
let it alone, it will not let us. Its consequences, in the language
of Burke, are " about us, they are npon us, they shake public
security, they menace private enjoyment. When we travel,
they stop our way. They infest us in town, they pursue us
to the country." No ; whether we can stop this current or not,
it is vain to wait till it pass — vainer to seek to let it alone.
FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE. 341
Efforts indeed to check it are numerous, in the form of lec-
tures and essays on the Evidences ; and of them we may say,
valeant quantum valere. They browbeat insolent and shallow
skepticism — they check the progress of individuals on their er-
roneous way — they at least add to the smoke of the right side
of the field, if not to its effectual defense or raking fire. But
our hopes of all or any of them, including our own efforts in
this volume, are, so far as general effect upon the skeptical
mind is concerned, not very sanguine. The old Adam, the
natural infidel tendency of the heart, strengthened at present
by the contagion of that vast religious corpse, the Continent —
by the perplexed state of the critical and metaphysical questions
connected with the Evidences — by the dominance of fashion, a
false power, but waxing greater every day — and by the influence
of a large portion of the press, is becoming too strong for our
Melancthons, young or old ; who, besides, do but too manifestly
evince that their own hearts are failing them for fear of those
things which are coming upon the world. Books, accordingly,
are loosened, each after each (like the horses from a Russian
sledge pursued by the wolves), in sacrifice to the destroyers,
who swallow all greedily, pause a moment, and then resume
their pursuit and hungry howl.
Associations, too, have been formed from which much good
was expected. We have no desire to dwell on the faults, or to
record the failure, of such alliances. They resemble rather an
imperfect census of population, than a great conscription of ac-
tive force. If in aught successful, they have been so rather in
showing a sense of the danger and dise^e, than in providing
the remedy. Earnest and good are their leaders and many of
the followers ; but they have excluded many who are better still
— they have turned Catholicism into a party thing ; instead of
generalizing the particular, they have particularized the general,
and their partial success has been altogether in keeping with
their partial and poor idea.
We have heard another plan suggested (indeed, we have the
credit or discredit of it ourselves), that a meeting or committee
342 FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE.
should be called, not to stereotype and circulate the points in
which all average Christians agree, but to consider, first, the gen-
eral question of the Christian Evidences ; and, secondly, the points
on which Christians differ. Dr. Johnson roared and stamped, a
century ago, in behalf of another " Convocation of the Church
of England ;" would God, we once thought, that a selection of
the wise of all denominations could be trusted to meet now in
an oecumenical council, with no dictator but the invisible spirit
of Jesus, to settle the many quick, subtile, and formidable
questions which are at present stumbling their thousands, and
imbittering their millions ! Such an idea, however, we resign,
because, first, the name " Utopian" is prepared to measure the
plan already; because, again, we know well how multiplied
wisdom often becomes singular folly, convocated liberality the
worst of bigotry — how a thousand in council will decree at
night what every individual among them shall be ashamed of
on the morrow — how fatal to human progress and the cause of
Christian truth, have been the results, in written shape, of such
meetings already ; and because, once again, the decision of this
supposed court, however " frequent and full," however well se^■
lected and well managed, could never in this age exert so much
authority as a " Thus saith the Lord," proceeding from a single
accredited messenger or prophet from heaven.
Others continue to trust implicitly in old forms of faith and
old shapes of agency, provided the first be made still more
stringently orthodox, and the second be intensified in energy
and zeal. But, alas ! these agents are carrying now their
shadoivs along with them to their work, and are finding that
those they visit have theirs too ! They are bringing darkness to
darkness ; or, too often, they gain a partial and mean triumph
by dogmatizing down, instead of meeting fairly and kindly, the
doubts they hear from the more intelligent of the poor, or the
heathens. And while they are, by fair or by foul methods,
breaking in upon the ignorant or brutified gloom of the masses
at home or abroad, behind, with sure, noiseless footstep, the
illuminated darkness of this twilight age is following in their
PUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE. S43
track, shadowing their own souls, and by and by threatening
to engulf those of their converts too.
Our agencies are doing a good woi'k, and ought to be en-
couraged ; our creeds are exerting still a powerful influence,
and should not lightly be tampered with. But there is an un-
belief abroad which our agencies can not reach, and there is
also a faith abroad which our creeds can not consolidate or con-
tain. The assault our churches and our creeds are at present
sustaining, is partly of light and partly of darkness ; and hence
the strange peculiarity and difficulty of the Christian's position.
" The morning cometh, and also the night." Light is dawning
in the East, but is it dawning at such an angle as to reach the
valley of vision where he stands, or only to show how dark
and dim that valley is ? That question he can not fully answer,
and must wait patiently till another do.
Our agencies are excellent, but imperfect ; our creeds excel-
lent, but with something wrong in all of them. And till these
imperfections be remedied, we calmly, yet fearlessly, expect the
following phenomena — an increasing indifference to forms of
faith ; a yearly increase of deserters from churches and public
worship ; the increase, too, among a class, of a fashionable,
formal, and heartless devotion ; the spread, on the one hand, of
Popery and superstition, and of fanaticism and bigotry on the
other, which shall each react into doubt by its very violence ;
the increase of determination and unity among philosophical
skeptics ; continued and fierce assaults on the bulwarks of the
Bible from without — feebler and feebler resistance from within ;
a growing impatience and fury on the subject in the general
mind ; all the signs, in short, that the Book, as a religious
authority, is tottering like an old crown, and must be sup-
ported from within or without, from around or from ahove.
It is the very tale of the Jewish Temple, before the Advent
of Christ. It had fallen into comparative contempt; it was
imder an enemy's hand ; it was not only forsaken of many
men, but God's fire was burning low upon the altar, and not a
few voices were heard saying, " Raze, raze it to the foundation."
344 FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE.
Its young worshipers seem very generally to have forsaken it.
Still Simeon and Anna, Joseph and Mary — in other words, the
old disciples — and the middle class of men and of women, were
to be found faithfully worshiping — and Zacharias and Elisa-
beth were diligently ministering there. They still believed at
once in its former divine consecration, its present connection
■with heaven, and its future glory. And two events by and by
convinced the land and the world that their belief had been
sound.
The first of these was the rise of the Baptist. He came in
haste, to announce the approach of the mightier than he. He
roused the whole land by his startling words. And, " while he
was yet speaking," the Master appeared. But have the words,
" Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming
of the great and dreadful day of the Lord," been exhausted by
his coming ? Was the day he introduced a " dreadful day ?"
Must there not be a reference in the prophecy to events still
future ? We, for our parts, expect the Master to be again
preceded by a forerunner. We have already seen (in " Paul")
the qualifications that forerunner must possess. His loorh, like
the Baptist's, may be partly conservative and partly destructive.
" Down with all that oppresses the genuine spirit of Christianity,
and impedes its free motions," shall be one of his cries. But
*' Hold to the Book with a death's grasp, till the Master come to
explain, supplement, glorify it anew," shall be another. And
a third and loudest shall be, " He is behind me ; the kingdom
of heaven is at hand."
The full amount of impression such cries may produce we
can not tell. Rouse many they must ; check many they may ;
fan the flame of hope in the hearts of many drooping believers
they will. But they will not, nor are meant to stop the pro-
gress of the " mist of darkness," gathering on to that gloomiest
hour which is to precede the dawning of the great day — an
hour in which the Word of God may seem a waning moon,
trembling on extinction, and in which every Christian heart
shall be trembling too. " There shall be signs in the sun, and
FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE. 345
in the moon, and in the stars ; and upon the earth distress of
nations, with perplexity ; the sea and the waves roaring ; men's
hearts faihng them /or /ear, and for looking after those things
which are coming on the earth, for the powers of heaven shall
be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of Man coming
in a cloud, with power and great glory."
'Tis a remarkable saying w^hich follows, " Heaven and earth
shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." It is as
if the Savior anticipated the crisis which was before his " words."
They are in danger of passing away — nay, they are passing
away — when he comes down and says, " No, heaven and earth
must pass away first^ must pass away instead ;" and they are
sti*^ightway changed, and his waning words catch new hght
and fire from his face, and shine more brightly than before. It
is as it were a struggle between his works and his words, in
which the latter are victorious.
We are fast approaching the position of the Grecians on the
plains of Troy. Our enemies are pressing us hard on the field,
or from the Ida of the ideal philosophy throwing out incessant
volleys. There are disunion, distrust, disafiection among our-
selves. Our standard still floats intact, but our standard-bearers
are fainting. Meanwhile our Achilles is retired from us. But
just as when the Grecian distress deepened to its darkest, when
Patroclus the " forerunner" had fallen, when men and gods had
driven them to the very verge of the sea, Achilles knew his
time was come, started up, sent before him his terrible voice,
and his more terrible eye, and turned straightway the tide of
battle ; so do we expect that our increasing dangers and multi-
plying foes, that the thousand-fold night that seems rushing
upon us, is a token that aid is coming, and that our Achilles
shall " no more be silent, but speak out," shall hft his
" Bow, Ins thunder, his almighty arms" —
" shall take unto him his great power and reign." And even as
Cromwell, when he saw the sun rising through the mist on the
^4d FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE.
field of Dunbar, with the instinct of genius, caught the moment,
pointed to it with his sword, and cried, " Arise, God, and let
thine enemies be scattered," and led his men to victory, let us
accept the same omen, and breathe the same prayer.
Nor does it derogate from the Bible to say, that it must re-
ceive aid from on high to enable it to " stand in the evil day,
and having done all, to stand." It has nobly discharged its
work ; it has kept its post, and will, though with difficulty,
keep it, till the great reserve, long promised and always ex-
pected, shall arrive. It was no derogation to the old economy
to say, that it yielded to the " New Shekinah" — it had accom-
plished its task in keeping the fire burning, although burning
low, till the day-spring appeared ; nor is it a derogation to tTie
New Testament to say, that it has carried, like a torch in the
wind, a hope, two thousand years old, till it now seems about
to be lost in the light of a brighter dispensation.
And while the hope is to be lost in its fruition, what shall be
the fate of the volume which so long sustained it ? "What has
been the fate of the Old Testament ? Has it not retained its
reverence and power ? Is it not every day increasing in clear-
ness ? Has not the New Testament reflected much of its own
radiance upon it ? Do they not lie lovingly and side by side
in the same volume ? And why should not the New Book of
the Laws and Eevelations of the Prince of the Ejngs of the
earth (if such a book there were) form a third, and complete
the " threefold chord which is not easily broken ?" And would
not both the New and the Old Testament derive glorious illus-
tration from the influences and illuminations of the Millennial
Day ? *
* To these views of tlie probable personal Advent of Christ, objec-
tions may be anticipated. It may be said, for instance, " Do you not
in one place of the chapter lay little stress upon miracles ; and in an-
other expect every thing from a future miraculous interference ?" But
what have we said, after all, save that the miracles recorded in the
New Testament have not converted the world ? But why should not
other miracles, if conducted upon a grander scale, and accompanied
FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE. 347
But the " scene is mingling with the heavens." Pisgah is
past. Mount Zion itself is appearing. The city of God is
bursting into view. But who shall describe that sight? Pro-
phets have seen the skirts of its glory, and fallen down as dead
men. The changes and birth-pangs which shall usher in these
new heavens and that new earth, we can not even conjecture ;
of the nature of that new theocracy, we have but dim concep-
tions; and our words being necessarily faint, must be few.
Suffice it, that it shall be a just government. It shall judge
" righteous judgment." It shall judge, no longer by the out-
w\^rd appearance, but by the heart. It shall be a government
of souls, as well as of bodies. It shall be a government of
commanding mildness — overbearing love. It shall be a gov-
ernment securing for the first time perfect liberty, brotherhood,
and equality to the nations. It shall be the first government
that ever united all interests in its care, and made all men
equally happy under its dominion. It shall unite the race into
with Christ's personal presence, effect a stupendous change upon it ?
Tlie raising of Lazarus did not move the obstinacy of the Jews ; but
surely the raising or changing of all men would convince all men of
the reality of the Savior's power. What doubt but must expire in the
blaze of judgment? Surely there is a difference between miracles
wrought during a state of probation, and miracles wrought to bring that
state of probation to a close. It would seem, too, that punitive pur-
poses are more contemplated in the miracles of the last dispensation^
than those of conversion. " Behold, I come quickly, and my reward is
with me, to give to every man according to his work." We can retort,
too, upon our opponents, by saying, " You admit that the agency of
the Spirit has not accomplished the work of converting the world, and
yet you expect that event from a different measure of the same agency."
It may be said next, " But might not the Spirit perform all the
work?" We answer, undoubtedly; but, first, if a Pentecostal revival
take place, it will, in all probabihty, like that of old, be accompanied
with miracles, and why not with the additional marvel of the Son's
appearance ; especially as, secondly, we find the promise of his coming
so frequently connected in Scripture with the destruction of his ene-
mies, and the advancement of his Church. If no Pentecostal revival be
sent — if the Church is to proceed at its present creeping and crippled
348 FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE.
one band of laborers, to develop tbe riches and beautify the
surface of the planet. It shall unite the churches into one great
throng of worshipers, " with one Lord, one faith, and one bap-
tism."
How beautiful, then, shall seem, renewed and glorified, this
" great globe, the world !" The promises of ten thousand days
of loveliness in the past, of innumerable mornings and evenings,
or nights trembling all over with starry pulses of glory, shall
be realized in the permanent aspects of earth and of sky. The
prophecies of all genuine poets, since the world began, shall
have a living fulfillment in the general countenance, and charac-
ter, and heart of man. Nor shall the spirit of progress and
aspiring change be extinct. To meet the new discoveries be-
low, and the new stars and constellations flashing down always
from the Infinite above, or drawing nearer and becoming
brighter in the mystic dances of the heavens, men's minds
must arise in sympathy and brighten in unison. "Who shall
picture what the state of society, and what the progress of hu-
rate — when, we ask, is its Millennium to dawn ? SJiall it ever i ISTo
alternative can we see, but Jesus advenient, and prayer and work done
in this prospect, or despair.
"We have in the text anticipated objections which might be urged to
our belief in a " Forerunner." Such a being would answer the same
end with the Baptist. He would encourage the friends and check the
foes, till the hour for the Divine Man should strike. He might, in some
measure, prepare the Church, if not the world, for the Advent, al-
though both, in some measure, it shall, according to Scripture, take by
surprise.
But to defend this ancient "hope" of the church is not our special
purpose. We recommend those who are ignorant alike of its grounds
and its grandeur, to read Edward Irving's Preface to " Ben Ezra," a
production little known, but in power, simplicity, and dignity, not
equaled since the apostles fell asleep, or equaled by the Areopagitica
of Milton alone. And when shall George Croly, or William Anderson,
write a great apology for this " hope that is in them," in a style which
shall at once rebuke sciolists, convince inquirers, and blow a blast of
mingled music and thunder to a sleeping Church and a gainsaying
world 2
FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE. 349
man souls, at that astronomical era, when the Cross shall shine
in our southern heaven, and the Lyre shall include our Polar
star amid its burning strings ? Must there not then break forth
from our orb a voice of song, holier than Amphion's, sweeter
than all Orphean measures, comparable to that fabled melody
by which the spheres were said to attune their motions ; com-
parable, say, rather, to that nobler song wherewith, when earth,
a stranger, first appeared in the sky, she was saluted, by the
" Morning stars singing together, and all the sons of God shout-
ing for joy."
Changes more stupendous still may follow. These skies
may be entirely dissolved. This earth, notwithstanding all her
wondrous history, may be removed like a cottage. The whole
universe may be thrown into a new mold, or be used as mere
scaffolding to some ulterior building of yet grander purpose, and
more spiritual symmetry and beauty. The sun may " sleep on
in his clouds, careless of the voice of the morning." The red
eye of Sirius may shut upon his old battle-field. The Wolf may
no more —
" With looks of lightning, watch the Centaur's spear."
Orion may no longer pass in slow and martial pomp as a sen-
tinel through the midnight heavens. The Milky Way may
have shut its two awful arms, and ceased its dumb prayer.
But let not the heart of the Christian tremble. His safety is
independent of all materiahsm. His Savior "made," and
shall survive the "worlds." His soul, too, bears on it the
stamp of absolute immortality. His earth may sink under his
feet ; but the Pilot of the Galilean lake shall be there, and shall
save the cSrew of the dear vessel. His skies may wither ; but
there is a spiritual firmament forever o'er his head, which shall
get brighter every moment. His Bible may not be found in
his hands ; but its truths shall be engraven on his heart, its
pictures shall be written on his imagination, and the memory of
its old powers and glories shall never decay, xind what though
350 rUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE.
star-spangled vail after vail of matter fall, if, by the downfall of
eacli, he be brought nearer and nearer to the Great Spirit ; and
what though he leave room after room of splendor behind him
on his rapid way, if he be approaching always — though never
absolutely to reach — that "secret place of thundering," that
" holiest of all," where dwells the always Old, the always
Young, the All-Wise and the Ever-Silent, the Inscrutable and
Eternal One.
Here we draw down the curtain, and drop the theme. If we
have, in the volume now concluded, taught one man to love the
Bible more, or one to hate it less — if we have stumbled but one
on his dreary w^ay to the wrong side of the great Armageddon
valley, or have cheered but one spirit that was trembling for
the ark of God — if we have shot but one new pang of the feel-
ing of the Bible's surpassing truth and beauty, across the minds
of the literary public, or expressed but a tithe of our own youth-
implanted and deep-cherished convictions and emotions on the
surpassing theme, then this volume, with all its deficiencies, has
not been written in vain.
The spirit of the whole production seems to demand it to
close in the words of a poet's invocation : —
" Come, then, and, added to thy many crowns,
Receive yet one, the crown of all the best,
Thou who alone art worthy ! It was thine
By ancient covenant, ere nature's birth,
And thou hast made it thine by purchase too,
And overpaid its value by thy blood.
Thy saints proclaim thee king, and in their hearts
Thy title is engraven with a pen,
Dipped in the fountains of eternal love.
Thy saints proclaim thee King, and thy delay
Gives courage to thy foes, who, could they see
The dawn of thy last Advent, long desired,
Would creep into the bowels of the hills,
And flee for safety to the falling rocks.
The very spirit of the world is tired
FUTURE DESTINY OF THE BIBLE. 351
Of its own taunting question asked so long,
* Where is the promise of your Lord's approach V
******
Come, then, and added to thy many crowns,
Receive yet one, as radiant as the rest,
Due to thy last and most effectual work,
Thy work fulfilled, the conquest of a world."
SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER.
THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE.
Beside tlie authors and poets of the Old and "New Testaments,
there are, in the course of both, a number of characters depicted,
teeming with pecuhar and romantic interest, and who are abun-
dantly entitled to the epithet poetical. It were unpardonable,
in a book professing to include a summary of all the poetical
elements of the Book of God, to omit a rapid survey of these,
neither mute nor inglorious, although no songs have they sung,
nor treatises of truth recorded, but who, "being dead, yet
speak,!' in the eloquence, passion, devotion, or peculiarity and
wickedness, of their histories. We are, therefore, tempted to
annex the following chapter, as an appendix to the volume.
First among these, stands Adam himself. How interesting
the circumstances of his formation ! Mark with what dignity
God accompanied the making of man. Behold th^ whole
Trinity consulting together ere they proceeded to this last and
greatest work of the Demiurgic days. God had only said —
"Let there be hght, let there be a firmament, let the waters be
gathered together, let the earth bring forth the living creature
after his kind ;" but, when man was to be taken out of the
clay, the style of Deity rises, if we may so speak, above itself,
and he says — " Let us make man after our own likeness."
We may imagine ourselves present at this thrilling moment.
A mist is watering the face of the ground, and partially be-
dimming the sun. Slowly, yet mysteriously, is the red clay
drawn out of the ground, fashioned, and compacted into the
shape of man, till the future master of the w^orld is, as to his
ME POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 353
bodily part, complete, and lies, statue-like and still, upon tbe
dewey ground. But speedily, like a gentle breeze, the breath
of the Lord passes over his face, and he becomes a hving soul,
and his eyes open upon the green glad earth, and the orb of
day shining through a golden mist, and his ears open to the
melodies, which seem to salute him as Lord of all, and he starts
to his feet, and stretches out his hands to the sun as if to em-
brace it, and the mists disperse, and the beams of noon show
him Eden shining in all its beauty — the abode of man, and the
garden of God. His emotions can no more be conceived than
described. The infant is introduced step by step into the sight
of the great temple of the creation. But it must have burst in
all but an instant upon the view of the man-boy, Adam. His
happiness, however, was not yet complete : he was still alone.
And he could not be long in the world till he desired a com-
panion. The sun he could not grasp ; the moon, walking in
her brightness, he could not detain ; the trees cooled his brow,
but yielded no sympathy to his heart. His own shadow was
but a cold and coy companion. And, probably, while full of
cravings after society, which mingled with and damped his
new-born raptures of joy, he felt creeping over him the soft in-
fluences of slumber. He slept. There was sleep in Eden:
perhaps there may be sleep in heaven ! Man was scarcely
created till he slept ; and, while asleep, " God took one of his
ribs, and made of it a woman," not of rude clay, but of the
finished portion of a finished man, forming her from a finer
material, and clothing her with a more fascinating loveliness.
"He brought her to* the man," as a companion to his joys, for
sorrows as yet he had none, to talk with him in Eden, in the
large sweet utterance of a tongue tuned and taught by God him-
self, to wander with him by the rivers of paradise, to be united
to him by a tie of tender and indissoluble affection. "With joy
he welcomed her as the breathing essence — the perfumed mar-
row of his own being — " bone of his bone, and flesh of his
flesh ;" and surely we may believe that the harps of angels, as
well as the glad sounds of nature, celebrated the happy union.
354 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE.
This fair and noble product was made in " God's image" —
understanding not by this, as some suppose, his erect bodily
form — a form possessed by apes as well as by men— but a simil-
itude of mental and moral character, mingled together in large
and equal proportions. We deny not, indeed, that this may
have expressed itself in the outward hneaments of our first
parents, nor will call those mere enthusiasts who may tell us
that Adam was fairer far than any of his sons, and Eve, than
any of her daughters ; nay, that the sun is not more glorious
than the face of the first man, nor the rising moon of evening
more beautiful than that of the first woman. But the glory was
chiefly mental and moral. Adam bore a mental resemblance
to his Maker. He had an ample intellect, a rich imagination,
united together by a hnk of burning soul, as superior to that of
Milton, who sang him in strains which shall never die, as that
to the trodden worm. But he had not only a high, but a holy
spirit — a conscience the most undefiled — a sense of duty elec-
trically quick — affections sunning themselves in God — and a
love pure, and bright, and constant as the lamps which, while
shining in the divine presence, owe their radiance to the divine
eye. Eve, in a more soft and shadowy light, reflected the ar-
dent splendors of his character. Alas ! that two such children
should ever have erred, and that a crown so beautiful and so
delicately woven, should have dropped from their heads !
Drop, however, it did. That first hour of the world's
prime was as short as it was beautiful. Eden is gone, and gone
forever. It was but a spot in a dark earth, after all, supernatu-
rally gilded, and its very wreck remains not; No more do its
bowers shower "roses on the first lovers ;" no more do its
streams murmur music in their ears ; no more are the shadows
of mailed angels reflected in the four rivers ; no more is the voice
of God heard in our groves, or in our gardens, in the cool of the
day. But let the prospects of the future cheer us in the memory
of the sorrows of the past. Let the breezes soon to begin to
blow upon us from the land of Millennial rest — or, at all events,
let the prospects of an eternal heaven, of a paradise in the skies,
THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 355
of a Sim to which that of Eden was darkness, of rivers to which
those of Eden were shallow and dumb, of groves to which those
of Eden had no beauty and no music — console us for all that
Adam had, and for all that Adam lost.
Adam, in Genesis, is entirely, and, from the shortness of the
history, necessarily, a representative person. He has no pecu-
liarities of character, apart from his federal connection with the
race. He seems but an outline, far and faint, which every
imagination is left to fill up ; and thus, when he falls, we mourn
not at all for him, nor for Eve, but for the general happiness
lost, and the general gulf of woe and wickedness opened.
And it is one of Milton's greatest triumphs, that he has invested
Adam and Eve with such an individual interest, that, at the
tidings of their ruin, w^e grieve for them as for dear friends, and
feel sadder for Eve's flowers than for the whole federal ca-
tastrophe.
Of Cain, Adam's eldest son, too, we can hardly judge accu-
rately or distinctl}^, apart from the many poetic shapes which,
since the account of Moses, he has assumed, yet our idea of him
may be uttered. Born amid great expectations, called by his
mother " the man, the Lord," he grew up, disappointing every
fond hope, and becoming a somewhat sullen drudge, " a tiller
of the ground." Meanwhile, his younger brother is exhibiting
the finer traits of the pastoral character. The " elder is made
to serve the younger." Fiercely does the once-spoiled child
kick against the pricks, till at last the fury of conscious inferior-
ity breaks out in blood- — the blood of Abel. Conscience-struck,
hearing in every wind the voice of his brother's gore — nay,
carrying it in his ear, as the shell carries inland the sound of
ocean's waters — he flees from his native region, and a curse
clings to him, and the whole story seems to prove — first, the
evil of over-excited and disappointed hopes ; secondly, the
misery of the murderer ; and thirdly, how God can deduce good
from evil, and mingle mercy with judgment. Abel's blood
probably promoted the separation of two races who had been
too long mingled — the race of those who worshiped, and that
356 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE.
of those wlio liated God ; and God was pleased, no doubt sig-
nificantly, to let tlie first sliedder of man's blood escape.
Poets have done with Cain as it seemed good in their own
eyes. Gessner's " Death of Abel" is a somewhat mawkish,
though rather elegant production, full of the first froth of that
German genius, which seems now, so far as poetry is con-
cerned, in its lees. Coleridge has given us a noble fragment,
the " Wanderings of Cain" — the sweetest and most Scriptural
of all his productions, but in which he tries to graft a new and
strange machinery on the Scripture narrative, which he would
have found it difficult to have reconciled with it, or to have
managed in itself. Byron has dropped on the rude and sullen
" tiller of the ground" a metaphysical molting from his own
dark wing. Yet his poem is a magnificent mistake, though, as
really as that of Coleridge, it is a fragment. And Edmund
Reade has tried to finish this tewible Torso, but the " foot of
Hercules" seems to spurn him for his insolence in the attempt.
Enoch, the seventh from Adam, enjoys a singular and short
prominence in the early Scripture narrative. A few sentences
sum up his history. All at once he is seen walking with God.
In a httle while, he is heard prophesying — " Behold the Lord
cometh with ten thousand of his saints ;" and again a little
while, he is seen and heard of no more. " He was not, for God
took him." No chariot of fire for him. He was taken, or hfted,
away by God's own hand. It is a rumor of the Rabbis, that
he was on the point of being murdered by an assemblage of
the flood-deserving and flood-doomed children of Cain, when
he disappeared : he was not — he was melted down in God. It
is remarkable, that, though the first of the prophets, he yet pro-
phesied of the last event in the history of the world — the com-
ing of the Lord. It is as if no event betwixt w^ere majestic
enough for him to touch — as if this coming of Christ from heaven
best suited the tongue of him who, even on earth, was breath-
ing the air of the upper paradise, and was, in a little while, to
be caught up among the visions of God. Enoch's history rests,
like a drop of glory, upon that ancient page.
THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN" SCRIPTURE. 357
Having come to " this side of the flood" — omitting Ham,
that sun-burned giant of the old world, and Canaan, whose
one mockery has been fearfully avenged — we see Nimrod, the
mighty hunter, towering near the ruins of the Tower of Babel.
A savage, primeval form he seems, looming large among the
mists of the past, dressed in a reeking lion hide, measuring a
wilderness of destructive creatures in his glance, and drawing a
bow, from which you might foncy that shaft newly discharged
which, as bold Chapman assures us, was
" Shot at tlie sun by angry Hercules,
And into shivers by the thunder broken."
Indeed the Hercules of mythology is a composite of the ]N"im-
rod, and the Samson of Scripture, with Nirarod's club in his
hand, and Samson's strength and blind raging fury in his blood.
We come next to Abraham, the " friend of God," the father
of the faithful, the ideal of an ancient patriarch, a nation ia
himself. His motions so total and sublime, like those of a
cloud which " moveth altogether, if it move at all ;" his con-
stant connection in all his wanderings with heaven ; the knock
of God coming to his peaceful tent, and the emphatic whisper
which told him to go westward ; his fearless obedience, although
not knowing whither he went ; the sensation his advent and
the altars which he raised made among the degraded nations of
Canaan ; his progress, traced by the silent smoke of worship ;
his sudden upstarting into a warrior, at the news of Lot's cap-
tivity, and the brave deed of deliverance which he wrought for
him ; the solemn moment when he was taken out by God be-
low the starry canopy, and told that these innumerable orbs
were an emblem of his seed for multitude ; the moment, more
awful still, when, amid the fragments of his sacrificial victims,
a deep sleep came upon him, and a horror of great darkness
came with it ; his covenant, renewed again and again with
Jehovah ; the coming of three angels to his tent, to announce
the birth of Isaac ; his passionate pleading with God in be-
858 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE.
half of Sodom, then near to destruction — a pleading which more
than once touches the brink of the presumptuous, and yet evites
it by an hairVbreadth ; his sending forth of Hagar and her
son Ishmael into the wilderness — a tale touching the inmost
fountains of the heart ; and, above all, his princely journey to
the Mount Moriah, with his son Isaac, " led as a lamb to the
slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers was dumb" — a
scene where filicide itself seems just mounting into a sacrament,
and the knife-point of a son's sacrifice is reddening with glory,
■when God mercifully interferes to accept the will for the deed,
and the ram for the child, are a few of the incidents of Lis re-
markable story.
The great charm of Abraham's character, is its union of sim-
plicity with grandeur. He rises like one of those great stones
which are found standing alone in the wilderness, so quiet in
their age, so unique in their structure, and yet on which, if tra-
dition be believed, angels have rested, where sacrifices have been
offered up, and round which, in other days, throngs of worship-
ers have assembled. His prayers pierce the heavens with the
reverent daring of one of the mountain altars of nature. He
is at once a shepherd and a soldier. He is true to the living,
and jealous of the honor of the ashes of the dead. He is a
plain man, dwelling in tents, and yet a prince with men and
God. Peace to his large and noble dust, as it reclines near that
of his beloved Sarah, in the still cave of Machpelah. He was
one of the simple, harmless, elephantine products of an age
when it was not a " humble thing to be a man," and when
all the " giants in those days" were not robbers and oppressors.
Across the history of Abraham there shoot two curious epi-
sodical passages, both wrapt in the grandeur, and one in the
gloom, of mystery. One is the story of Melchisedec. " With-
out father, without mother, without beginning of days or end
of life," this man comes suddenly forth from Salem, meets Abra-
ham on his way from the slaughter of the kings, presents bread
and wine, blesses him, receives tithes of all the spoils, and dis-
appears, whither, no one can tell. In our perplexity, wc can
THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IX SCRIPTURE. 359
scarce deem him a being of this earth. "Was he an Antedi-
hivian ? Had he witnessed the deep waters ? Was he Shem ?
Was his head covered with hair, which had been gray before
the deluge ? Had that eye of his seen Adam and Eve ? Had
his young hand toyed with their coats of skins ? Or was he a
transient incarnation of the Divinity — was this the Son stepping
down upon the stage of his after-labors before the-time ? We
can not tell. The mystery is as yet impenetrable. Stat nominis
umbra. We know only that he was so great, that Abraham
gave him a tenth part of the spoils — that he is called a king,
a priest, and one of the most striking emblems of the Son of
God. He is the only specimen of a dynasty of monarch-priests,
who remind us, in magnitude and in mystery, of the mighty
creatures which tenanted the still cooling chaos .of the primeval
planet.
A darker shade rests upon the cities of the plain. Imagina-
tion shivers as she ventures to pass, with the " two angels," to
the house of Lot, through the streets of the doomed cities on
the last evening of their existence, and watches the bubbling
fullness of a cup, in which licentiousness, murder, blasphemy,
and unnatural lusts, were the ingredients, and listens to the cry
of the city's sin coming to its sharpest and shrillest pitch be-
fore the abused door of the patriarch. We feel the horrors of
the night infinitely worse than the terrors of the day, and are
almost relieved, when after the brief mockery of brightness,
" when the sun rose upon Sodom," the sky darkens, as, since
the deluge, it never darkened before ; and there begin to be
wafted down from above flakes of flame and masses of bitumen,
and the guilty cities are lost to sight in the embrace of a storm
of fire-snow, and over their smoking ruins rise the waters of the
Dead Sea, and then the lustration is complete ; and from one
of the fairest pages in nature's book the foulest blot of man's
defilement is in one morning, by the tongue of fire " from the
Lord out of heaven," licked forever away. How succinctly do
God and nature always deal with ripened transgression of
their laws ! How needful such blood-lettings, when the blood
360 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN" SCRIPTURE.
has become desperately foul ! And how sure of recurring in
every other age have those judgments hitherto been, as if to
preserve the equilibrium of morals, and to prevent the perma-
nent degradation of man, who is ever and anon aiming at a
worse incarnation than his own, and, but for such fearful checks,
would be " more vile" than the very beasts of the field.
Abraham, in leaving Isaac behind him, left rather a shadow
than a son. He has less body and bulk, less grandeur, less
boldness, but shadow-hke he kneels, and looks up to God in
imitation of his original. He has all Abraham's piety, and
more than his peace. His cast of mind is given in one sen-
tence — " And Isaac digged again the wells which they had
digged in the days of Abraham his father." And when these
wells became the subject of contest, he meekly retires in search
of others. He is one among other proofs, that the children of
very great men are sometimes inferior to their parents. The
rationale of this may either be that the mothers are inferior to
their mates, or that the education of the children of men much
engrossed in public affiiirs, is often neglected ; or that there is,
what we may call, either an exhaustion or an economy in na-
ture, which makes the sight of two men of eminence in the
same fomily, or of two men of eminence in the relation of father
or son to each other, more rare than the reverse. Glorious ex-
ceptions will occur, such as David and Solomon, Chatham and
Pitt, to the memory of our readers ; but still there have been a
Solomon and a Rehoboam, a Ilezekiah and a Manasseh, an
Oliver and a Richard Cromwell, a Milton and a Mrs. Clarke,
his daughter, and a thousand more, proving that lofty hills are
apt to subside into lowly hollows.
ISTevertheless, to Isaac there pertained certain amiable and
uncommon properties. He is, perhaps, the most blameless of
all characters in Scripture but 07ie. Save a single falsehood,
absolutely nothing is recorded against him. He was the faith-
ful husband of one wife. He seems, too, to have possessed a
certain gentleness, sweetness, and simplicity of disposition. His
figure, " going forth into the fields to meditate at the evening
THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 361
tade," is painted forever on the eye of the world. An action
common now becomes glorified in the Hg'ht of the past. It is
the same with David's going to his chamber to weep, and with
Christ's walking out " 'mid ripe corn on the Sabbath-day.''
And it seems no wonder, that the same person who had medi-
tated ia his early days should, in his old age, '*remble very
exceedingly" at the discovery of the fraud practiced on him by
his son Jacob. It is the genuine history of his peculiar tem-
perament.
Jacob, again, is a thorough Jew. In him, subtiity, love of
this world's goods, and timidity, co-exist with profound attach-
ment to the God of his fathers, and ardent devotion. His pa-
tience, too, in so waiting and working for his bride, reminds
you of that of his people, who have, for ages, been looking up
to a heaven, which, whether it be black or bright, never opens,
nor ever shall, to let forth their beloved Messiah.
The poetical incidents in Jacob's history are exquisitely pe-
culiar and interesting. Indeed, his whole life is as entertaining
and varied as a romance. There is his journey to Padan-aram,
and the dream, which, says Hazlitt, " cast a light upon the
lonely place, which shall never pass away." No picture has
hitherto done this complete justice. Even Rubens has but
dimly expressed the ideal of the smiling face of the young
patriarch, itself a dream of beauty — the vast silent desert,
stretching like eternity around — the stone pillar, shining hke a
lump of gold in the radiance — and the undefined blaze of splen-
dor (like a ladder, mountain, or stair ; the original word is
uncertain), rising up in brightening gradations, till lost in one
abyss of crudded glory, and with angelic shapes swimming up
and down, like motes of light, in the liquid luster. And who
shall paint the bewildered and amazed aspect of the awakened
patriarch, when, looking around and above, he finds the warm
light of the vision gone, the dread yet tender, voice past, and
nothing around him but the dark desert, nothing beside him
but the stone pillow, and the cold light of the stars of morning
Q
3G2 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE.
above, and when he says, " Surely the Lord is in this place,
and I knew it not ?"
The scenes which follow around the well-side, where he met
the daughters of Laban, are in the sweetest pastoral vein. His
meeting with Esau has made many a heart overflow in tears.
But a deeper and stranger interest surrounds him, as he wrestles
at Peniel, until the dawning of the day, with that mysterious
figure of a " man" who seems to drop at once from heaven,
shapes into dubious form during the shadows of the night, and
melts away in the morning sunshine. The passage is one of
those strange pits of darkness which occur amid the narrative
plains of the Pentateuch, taking you down in an instant, like
Joseph, out of the clear shining of the sun, into a place of im-
penetrable mystery. Yet it is full of deep significance. It is
one of many proofs that the Word, ere identifying himself with
flesh, tried on, once and again, if we may so speak, the robe of
human nature, which he was everlastingly to wear. " Jacob
called the name of the jilace Peniel : for I have seen God face
io face, and my life is preserved."
We must plead guilty, too, to an attachment to poor Esau.
We like him as he "comes out red" even "all over hke an
hairy garment." We love to watch him in his impetuous way
over the mountains and the valleys, another Nimrod, a mighty
hunter, but not " before the Lord." We sigh as we see him
devouring, with a hunter's hunger, the red pottage, into which
he has recklessly shred his birthright. We pity him still more, as
he " cries with an exceeding groat and bitter cry, Bless me, even
me also, O my father !" We feel, as we witness the scene of
reconciliation with Jacob, how plaintive is the grief of a rugged
nature when weep it must, and that rivers are the tears of rocks ;
and, as we see him, for the last time, " returning on his way"
to his own shaggy Seir, to become the founder of a rough race,
inhabiting a country of fire and sand, we are not afraid to re-
echo Isaac's blessing upon his head. He was not a child of
grace, or of the promise, but he was a sincere and stalwart son
THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN" SCRIPTURE. 363
of nature, with a " strong heart, fit to be the first strong heart
of a people."
Who forgets the affecting circumstances of Rachel's death in
child-birth, when nature in lier called the child Benoni, the " son
of my sorrow," and grace in Jacob called him Benjamin, the
" son of my right hand ?" The history of Joseph, again, is a
succession of scenes, constituting the finest prose drama in the
world. If ever drama possessed all the constituents of that
species of composition, unity of plot, a " beginning, middle, and
end," vicissitude of interest, variety of character, pathos of feel-
ing, elegance of costume, and simplicity of language, it is this.
Its comm.encement is so simple, its denouement so ingenious, its
close so satisfactory and triumphant ! And yet we never lose
the feeling for a moment — " This is truth, although truth
stranger far than fiction." And just as a drama looks more
beautiful when spotted with lyrics, we have here one spot, at
least, of transcendent beauty — Jacob's blessing, namely, when
a-dying, over his children. It is intensely figurative. He ranges
his children, hke zodiacal signs, around his bed, not by name
only, but by emblem. Reuben is a foul and trembling wave ;
Simeon and Levi are "instruments of cruelty;" Judah is a
lion ; Zebulun's sign is a ship ; Issachar is a strong, couching
5ss ; Dan is a serpent by the way ; Gad is a troop ; Asher, a
loaf of rich bread ; Naphtali is a hind let loose ; Joseph is a
fruitful bough ; and Benjamin is a ravening wolf.
Passing farther down into the history, and omitting many
points and characters touched on before, we mark with interest
the spies on their v/ay to the land of promise. They appear
one company as they go* as they return, they bear between
them the same grapes of Eschol, and yet how different the re-
ports they bring ! Even the land flovv'ing with milk and honey,
has two sides to two different sets of eyes and hearts. To see
the Millennial land, to see heaven aright, there must, in liko
manner, be purged hearts, prepared spirits, eyes cleansed with
" euphrasy and rue." Let two men, of different faiths and
tempers, enter into one peaceful and Christian house, they will
S64 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURfi.
bring back accounts conflicting to contradiction : one has seen
nothing but dull commonplace, or harsh austerity ; the other
has descried the quiet luster of the peace that passeth under-
standing, and the half-formed halo of the joy that is unspeak^
able, and full of glory. Coleridge says of nature —
" 0, lady, we receive but what we give ;
Ours is her luminous vesture, ours her shroud."
This is but a part of the truth. We must meet nature, man,
God himself, and his glory, half-way. He gives a sun or a
Shekinah to be admired ; but, on our part, there must be a
soul to admire the same. Nay, in a profounder sense still, God
gives all — the beauty, and the sense of it — the landscape, and
the eye — the moral loveliness, and the moral vision — the heaven,
and the heart — and is at once the adored and the adorer : " for
o/him, and through him, and to him, are all things — to whom
be glory forever. Amen."
Among the spies, there stood up two men of clear insight and
firm faith, Caleb and Joshua. They were in the minority, but
they were right. Overborne by numbers at first, their word
became stronger every hour, till it had been madness to deny it.
Thus it is always with the deeper and stronger insight of true
men. It increases, because it is real, as well as strong ; whereas,
the eyesight of the multitude, defective at first, soon weakens
and fades away.
Two other incidents in the history of Israel, ere the Jordan
was passed, must be noticed: the rebelHon of Korah, and the
rise of Phinehas. There are forcefl and shallow eruptions in
the moral and political world, which have little connection with
its general current. They resemble breakings out on the skin,
rather than attacks on the seat of life ; they are transient re-
volts, and not revolutions, nor hardly rebellions. The wise
man is ever ready to distinguish their true character, and to
take his measures accordingly. While he must bow before an
inevitable and profound convulsion of the internal elements, the
THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 865
outbreaks of petty disaffection he will at once burn away. The
revolt of Kurah and his company had an imposing aspect, but
was, in reahty, skin-deep. 13y one energetic effuit, therefore,
by one appeal to the prayer hearing guardian of the camp of
Israel, Moses removes it. The whole disaffection is gathered
into one point — into one inch, as it w^ere, of envious fury against
Moses and Aaron ; and below that inch, destruction yawns but
once, and for a moment, and it sinks down and disappears for-
ever. With censer in hand, with their strange fire burning in
it, those would-be priests are swallowed up and hid, killed and
buried, and a clean, and smooth, and sandy surface, conceals
the particulars of their horrible doom.
A deeper disaffection soon after seizes the camp. It is not
this time so much against Moses, as it is against God ; it is not
the disaffection of a clan of nobles, but of many of the congre-
gation. " Israel joins himself unto Baal-peor." Moses him-
self is appalled. The plague is in the camp. He has received
a command, and has circulated it, to " hang up the heads of the
offenders." But he is yet hesitating about its execution, when,
lo ! the sin comes to its open climax in his very sight, and in
that of the congregation, who were weeping for it before the
tabernacle; an "Israelite brings unto his brethren aMidianitish
woman," and then the " wild justice" of nature can slumber no
more. Phinehas, an obscure priest, arises, pierces them both
through with his dart, and the plague straightway is stayed.
So, when rampant and inveterate evils reach their point, the
schemes of the wise are not required. God selects the nearest
instruments, and the " things that are not," the very nonenti-
ties of this world, bring to naught the things which are, but
should not continue to be.
The Book of Judges is the most miscellaneous history in
Scripture. It records the events of a period when every man
did as it was right in his own eyes. In this anarchy, as in all
subsequent anarchies, there arose many peculiar characters, who
rather defended God's cause by their prowess, than adorned it
by their piety. Still the short dagger of Ehud gleams upon
366 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE.
US, and his words — " I have a message fi'om God unto thee"—
ring in our ears, as did thej once in Eglon's, the King of Moab.
The ox-goad of Shamgar, too, is still preserved in the museum
of our memor3^ Was it not one of the curiosities shown to
Christian in the house which is called Beautiful ? Gideon's
famous emblems were there also — the " fleece," the cake ftilling
on the tent, besides the pitchers, the lamj^s, and the trumpets
of his wondrous warfare. Then there succeed three heroes,
each with a bend sinister either in his birth or his character.
Abimelech, Jephtha, and Samson, remind us of Montrose,
Claverhouse, and Rob Roy, in their close succession, equivocal
reputation, and daring power and courage, and present us with
the pictures of the first cleft through the skull by a stone from
a woman's hand, the second presiding at his daughter's sacri-
fice, and the third blinded, and bound in Delilah's lap.
Samson, a personage with whom the blind giant of English
poetry thought proper to measure his old but unfaded strength,
is less remarkable, for beautiful or holy interest, than for strik-
ing points : such as his elephantine mildness, ere he was roused
— the strong impulses which came upon him, and seemed neces-
sary to develop his full powers — his unconsciousness, even in
his mightiest feats, of doing, or afterward having done, any
thing extraordinary — his lion-like love of solitude — his magna-
nimity — his childlike simplicity — his tame subjection to female
influence, and the sacred trust in which he held his unequaled
energies. In the complete assortment and artful presentment
of Samson's qualities as those of a patriot-hero, there is more
of the mythic semblance than in the history of any other of the
Scripture worthies ; but the distinct and definite account given
of his parentage, and the particulars of his death, as well as
Paul's allusion to him in the Hebrews, as an historical character,
forbid us to doubt his reality. His religion, which has been
questioned, is proved by the success, if not by the spirit, of his
last prayer.
The name of Ruth suggests the other female characters iu
Scripture. A modest rosary might be strung from their names.
THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 367
Simplicity, innocence, gentleness, piety, and devotedness to
tiieir husbands, falhi^'s, or God, are qualities distinguishing- the
mjijority. Tiiere is little individnalitij of excellence. iNaomi
is an old Ruth, Ruth a young Naomi — Hannah a middle-aged
Naomi or Ruth — Mary, Lydia, Anna, and twenty others, aro
similar in all hut age and circumstances. Deborah, indeed,
towers over the rest, holding her harp and staff-scepter upon
the top of Tabor. Miriam, with timbrel m her hand, seems to
emulate Deborah's prospective grandeur, till the leprosy of envy
smites her forehead, and she is " shut out seven days." Next
to them, the little maiden in the fiimily of Naaraan has her own
niche, and close to her appear the " widow with the two mites ;''
Mary Magdalene ; the nameless woman, " who loved much,
and to whom much was forgiven ;" and she, also nameless, of
Samaria ; besides Phebe, Priscilla, and the elect lady. Nor
must Esther, the magnificent and maidenly upstart, nor the
wise and wealthy Queen of Sheba, be forgotten. Ignoble or
cruel females are also to be found, such as Jezebel, and she who,
in the quaint language of old Fuller, " danced off the head of
John the Baptist," and Sapphira, and Bernice.
The mention of the beautiful suggests to us the name of
Absalom, the most beautiful and foolish of the sons of men. He
is a striking illustration of the austere and awful compensations
of the universe. We find a strict parsimony always exercised
in doling out the precious gifts of the Creator. The thorn and
the rose growing on one stem ; poison and beauty dividing the
serpent between them ; fidelity, sagacity, and niadness, equally
characterizing the canine species ; sense, mildness, power, and
clumsiness, united in the elephant ; the peacock, with his splen-
did plumage and hideous scream ; the nightingale, with her
sober livery and matchless song; the tropical clime, with its
magnificent vegetation, its diseases, and its lothsome reptile^
— these apparent anomalies are probably fragments of one wide
law, portions of one wise, benevolent, but mysterious arrange-
ment. " Nothing is given, all things are sold." Thus, Absalom,
with intellect, popular graces, and the face and form of an angel,
S68 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE.
began as a spoiled child, and ended in a composite of fool and
villain. Like the horns of the stag in "the fable, his long hair,
which had been his glory, became his ruin. "What a pitiful and
shocking figure he presents, dangling from the oak, and with
Joab's dart quivering in his heart ! He lived and died " child-
less," but has had a large spiritual seed. Men speak with dis'-
gust of the griffins and other motley forms of heraldry ; and
with a kind of shudder of that stranger heraldry of nature,
the quaint composites of geology ; but such combinations as
Absalom^ of "Beauty and the Beast" — such moral para-
doxes — are ineffably more appalling and more unaccountable.
Joab, whom we have just mentioned, shines in a savage and
lurid light. Faithful, as his shadow, to David, he is to all other
" fierce as ten furies," and " false as hell." He i& one of the
homicides of history. His soul is incarnate in his sword. To
" dare, and to dare, and to dare," is his whole creed and mo-
rality. Yet his decision, his thorough-going courage, his fidel-
ity, and his rough, strong sense, give him great influence over
David, who fears, hates, but can not part with, and dare not
quarrel with him. Thus, men of genius often yield to the
power of men, who possess mere rude intellect and a determined
will. Men of genius fluctuate, like the wide, uncertain ocean ;
men of will pass on, and pierce it with an iron prow.
The next character of much interest, except Elijah, already
characterized, is Elisha. He is a soft and moonlight reflection
of his master. Elijah floats up in fire to heaven ; Elisha makes
iron swim on the waters. Elijah commands rain from heaven
to stay the progress of famine ; Elisha obtains the same pur-
pose, by frightening away the Syrians from their camp. Elijah
brings down fire from the clouds to kill ; Elisha sprinkles meal
into the pot to cure. Elijah passes into heaven — the '' nearest
way to the celestial gate" — far above the valley and the shadow
of death ; Elisha dies in his bed, although even there he is
great, infusing migbt and the prophecy of victory into the
hands of Joash, as he shoots his emblematic arrows against the
THE POETICAL CHARACTERS m SCRIPTURE. 369
Syrian foe ; and did not his very bones in the grave revive the
dead?
But, perhaps, nowhere does this prophet assume a more dig-
nified aspect than in reference to Naaman and Gehazi. Never
was a more singular group assembled than that which, on
Naamau's return from Jordan, met at Elisha's humble door.
Here stands the prophet, in serene self-control, in majestic sim-
plicity, declining the offered reward. There, Naaman, the gene-
rous and noble, slowly, reluctantly returns the money into the
bag. Behind him, his servants stare out their wide-mouthed
astonishment at the scene ; and, in a corner, you see the mean
Gehazi, his eye glistening and his face falling, as he loses sight,
he fears forever, of his darling coin. Equally striking is Elisha's
-interview with him, on his return from his fraudful following of
the Syrian. Gehazi shrinks under his eye, as he says — " Went
not mine heart with thee, when the man turned again from his
chariot to meet thee ?" Forth, thou base one, from my presence !
But, ere going, take my gift, as thou hast taken Naaraan's. He
gave thee two talents of silver, which will support thee for only
a few years ; my present will last thee for life, and be handed
down as an heirloom to thy seed. Thou hast taken the money ;
take now the stamp with it. Let the Syrian's leprosy follow
his lucre. " The leprosy of jS'aaman shall cleave unto thee, and
unto thy seed forever." And speechless, confounded, feeling
the white heat of the fell disease beginning to burn upon his
brow, he less goes than vanishes from the prophet's presence,
" a leper as white as snow."
Certain characters of energetic and various evil now pass over
our page. Hazael holds up in his hand the wet cloth with
•which he has choked his master, and seems to say — "That
is my flag and terrible title to fame." Rabshakeh seems to
rail on from the wall for evermore. Jehu, who is just Joab
mounted in a chariot, driveth furiously to do his brief work
of destruction, and then to commence an inglorious and god-
less reign. And Haman, after conspiring against the life of
a nation, has his " face covered" in awful silence, and hangs
870 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE.
on his own gallows — a substitute, without merit and with-
out honor, for a whole people. Ravens these, preserved in
Noah's ark, but not the less birds of foul feeding and of bad
omen.
In fine contrast with them, appear Mordecai, Ezra, and Ne-
hemiah. Mordecai — that silent Jew — sits at the kino-'s ffate,
an eternal emblem of the amari aliquid — the sad something,
■which not only mars the joy of wicked men, but infects the lot
of all. That silent, somber Jew, do not seek to approach or to
disturb ! Leave him alone ; for, though he seems a serpent, if
you touch him, he may start up the enemy :
*' That fiend, whose ghastly presence ever
Near thee, like thy shadow, hangs.
Dream not to chase ; the mad endeavor
"Would scourge thee to severer pangs.
Be as thou art, thy settled fate,
Dark as it is, all change would aggravate."
Ezra again figures as the wise counselor and diligent scribe ;
and Nehemiah, the generous, bold, cautious, and devout " king's
cupbearer," has left us one of the first and most delightful of
autobiographies. Honor to him, who still seems to stand at
the unfinished wall, while over his head the " stars" are coming
out, with a trowel in one hand, and a sword in the other I It
is the attitude of man, to whom the command has come with
burning urgency — " Work God's work, and resist the enemies
of thy soul, even unto blood, striving against sin." How strik-
ing, too, is the heroism of his language, when tempted to hold
a conference with his subtile foes. " I am doing a great work,
so that I can not come down ;" or when urged to flee into the
temple to save his life, he said, " Shall such a man as I flee V
There spoke a genuine ancient Puritan — a Jewish Hampden
or Cromwell.
We pass now to the New Testament, and find John the
Baptist standing upon its yery threshold. We remember the
Bingular circumstances of this man's birth, and the strange pro-
THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IX SCRIPTURE. 37l
phecy that lay aforetime on liim. He was to be the prophet of
the lligliest, and to go before the Lord to prepare his ways.
But previously jie had to underg-o a severe and secret training:
*' lie waxed strong in spirit, and was in tlie deserts till the day
of his showing unto Israel." He was to come forth in the atti-
tude of a mighty and dauntless reformer, lie was to stem the
torrent of a godless age, and to stem it at first alone. It was
fit, then^ that he should obtain a hardihood of temper, an in-
difierence to reproach, and a defiance of danger — that he should
be able to confront a tyrant, and rebuke a Pharisee, and counsel
a soldier, and " know how to die." And where did he receive
this strength of spirit ? Where was he nursed and hardened
into a hero and a reformer ? In an appropriate school — in the
deserts. There he received his prophetical education. He at-
tended no school of the prophets, he sat at the feet of no
Gamaliel ; but among the rocks, and the caves, and the soli-
tudes of the wilderness, he extracted the sublime and stern spirit
of his office. The tameless torrent, dashing by, taught him his
eloquence. The visions of God furnished him with his theology.
Perhaps, like Elias, his great prototype, he took a journey to
Horeb, the Mount of God ; stood upon the black brow of
Sinai; and imbibed the remanent influence which still floated
round that hill of fear. Furnished he must be, in no ordinary
measure, for the duties of this extraordinary office. He was
the immediate forerunner of the Messiah. His Master's feet
were just behind him. He seemed afraid of being overtaken.
He had but the one brief, bright hour of the morning star.
The Sun of Righteousness was soon to darken his beams, and
melt him down in the hght of the new economy.
Hence, his sermons are very short. They were the broken
and breathless cries of a messenger, who is barely in time to
announce the coming of his Lord. " Repent ye ! Be baptized !
Behold the Lamb of God ! The kingdom of heaven is at hand !"
He w^ a voice — a stern and melancholy voice — " the voice of
one crying in the wilderness." His aspect was in keeping with
his mission. It was somewhat wild and salvage. He was clad
SV^ THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE.
in camel's hair, and had a leathern girdle about his loins. His
food was locusts and wild honey. Such was the apparition
•who, standing with one foot in the desert, and the other on the
polluted soil of Palestine, uttered his stern and continuous cries.
Men saw in him a resuscitation of the ancient prophet. He
had, indeed, no rhythmic utterance, and no figurative flights ;
but he had the dress, the spirit, the power, the wild-eyed fer-
vor, and the boldness of his prototypes ; and hence the wilder-
ness of Jordan rang to his voice, Judea was struck to the heart
at his appearance, and Jerusalem went out, as one man, to his
baptism.
Besides the rough and furrowed garment of peculiar char-
acter possessed by John, we are struck with many subordinate
traits, with his keen-eyed recognition of Jesus, the wisdom
and prudence he displays in his advices to various classes of
his auditors, with his perfect integrity and disinterestedness,
and with the unaffected good grace with which he consents
to be merged in his successor and superior. Many men yield
to such a necessity with the reluctance of those rivers which
wax intolerably noisy at the moment they are joining the
larger streams. John easily, softly, yet eagerly, sinks on the
bosom of the mightier one, and it becomes a wedding, not an
extinction. '^
One bold word cost him dear. Declined as he was, in the
reaction of his great popularity, Herod ventures to cast him into
prison, and there allows a rash oath to a dancing minion to en-
tangle him in the ghastly crime of the murder of a man he
esteemed. That head, which had shone on the edge of the des-
ert like a rising star of eve, and been mistaken by many for
the head of the Christ, appears now all clotted with gore, and
gray with previous anguish, upon a charger. It is ever thus
that the world has used its protesting and inspired souls. And
though the hemlock no more stops the mouth of a Socrates,
nor the saw crashes through the body of an Isaiah, and oui
chargers be empty of such heads as the Baptist's, yet Wisdom's
children are still subject to pecuHar pains and penalties — mis-
THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IK SCRIPTURE. 373
understood, if not murdered — neglected, if not gagged — and, if
not torn limb from limb, have, how often, their feelings lace-
rated, their motives and their characters recklessly reviled!
The Baptist possesses one honor altogether peculiar to him-
self. His epitaph was spoken by Christ: "Verily, I say unto
you, among them that are born of women, there hath not risen
a greater than John the Baptist." AVho would not wish to have
died John's death twice over, to have attained such a tribute
from such lips ?
Among Christ's disciples, besides the two formerly character-
ized, stand out boldly distinct other two — Thomas and Judas.
Thomas is the incarnation of doubt. He may represent that
class who demand demonstrative or sensible evidence for their
faith. This is not, perhaps, the highest species of believers, but
it is a class which, like Thomas, shall yet receive satisfaction.
Now, there are many Thomases, and they may probably be
satisfied sooner than they think, and sooner than many of them
need desire. " For who may abide the day of his coming ? and
who shall stand when he appeareth ? For he is like a refiner's
fire, and like fuller's soap."
Judas Iscariot — what a host of dark thouo-hts and imaojes
start up at the mention of that detested name ! His name
seems hung up on a gallows in the sight of all men, that hu-
man nature might, in the course of ages, pay its full arrears
of hatred, contempt, and disgust, to the guilt it represents.
Children lothe him, and stammer out curses from their little
hearts. Divines in every age have lanched invectives, burning
in truth and eloquence, against him. Dante heats for him a
circle in hell seven times hotter, and classes him next in crime
to Lucifer himself. Jesus utters but one word ; but it is a fear-
ful one — "One of you is a devil." To other criminals, repent-
ance, however late, conciliates forgiveness, and suicide procures
an awful pity. But men and devils seem to unite in trampling
on the scattered bowels and broken rope of this suicide. Even
in the place of woe, many will fancy the poet's words realized
for him, and him alone : —
S74 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTDRB.
" The common damned shun his society,
And look uj)on themselves as fiends less foul,"
His history, indeed, seeras a frightful anomaly, even in the an-
nals of crime. He was a treasurer and a traitor, an apostle and
a thief; while listening to Christ, he was measuring hina for the
cross ; when he sold him, it was for the price of a dog ; when
he betrayed him, it was with a kiss of hypocrisy so vile, that
it seems yet to ring through the earth, eternal in its infamy ;
when remorse awakened, he rushed in to the high-priests with
bloodshot eye, and the money chinking in his trembhng hands,
and said — " I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent
blood ;" and to give the whole a dark consistency, he hies to a
field, and there, amid the gloom of night, hangs himself: the
rope breaking, and his bowels gushing out ; and we seem to
hear the fiends, with a yell of unusual joy, seizing on their
prey.
How account for a crime and a character so portentous and
unnatural as this ? In vain, to say with Whately and Home,
that Judas betrayed Christ for the purpose of forcing him to
reveal himself as the King of the Jews. In this case, would
Christ have spoken of him in language so strong ? Besides,
Christ had positively declared that he was to die. And Judas
had been too long in Christ's company not to know that all his
words were sure of fulfillment.
Our notion of Judas is, that he " had a devil, and was mad"
— that he was a demoniac — that probably, for crimes committed
by him formerly, he was handed over to the enemy, and had
Satan instead of soul. He became the mere vessel of an in-
fernal will. With this agree many circumstances in his story,
and the language used concerning him by Christ. His rush to
suicide especially reminds you of that of the demon-filled swine.
In stating this view, we do not mean to palliate his crime, or
to whitewash his character. He had undoubtedly " tempted
the devil," and been consigned over to him for his sins. But
the theory commends itself to us as the more probable, and
as taking the character out of the category of monsters of
THE POETICAL CHAllACTERS IN SCRIPTTJIIE. S75
>^-ickedness — -a class so rare in the world. We would, in short,
divide Judas into three parts, and assign one to guilt, a second
to madness, and a third to hell.
And although we have, to complete- the picture of the com-
mon view of his character, spoken of the demons snatching his
soul, we are far enough from being inclined to dogmatize upon
his future fate. All that Peter ventures to say of it is, that be
went to his " own place ;" and God forbid that we should dare
to say any more.
The Book of Acts presents us with a great many characters,
of whom, besides the apostles, the rapt Stej^hen, the Ethiopian
Eunuch, the brave Cornelius, the most marked are unhappily
evil. Barnabas, Ananias, Philip, Aquila, Mark, Silas, Timo-
theus, and Luke himself, have not much that is individual and
distinctive. The sameness of excellence attaches to them all.
It is very different with the others. Their shades are all dark,
but all strikingly discriminated.
There is, for example, Simon Magus, the begetter and name-
giver to a distinct and dreadful crime (Simony), an original
in wickedness, a genuine and direct '^ child of hell." 'No mis-
take about him. He thinks every thing, as well as every per-
son, " has its price," and would bribe the very Spirit of God.
You see him retiring from Peter's scorn and curse, blasted,
cowering, half-ashamed, but unconverted.
Then there is Herod, appearing on a set day, in (as early his-
torians tell us) a dress spangled with silver, which, as it caught
the sun, shone and glittered, and giving an oration to the people,
who shout, " It is a voice of a God, not of a man ;" till, as he
is just beginning to believe the insane incense, a deputation
from the grave — a company of worms — claim a closer audience,
and he is at once flattered and festered to death.
Then there is Ananias the liar, smitten down amid his sin,
and seen writhing in the lightnings of Peter's eye.
Then there is Elyraas the Sorcerer, reduced in a moment to
the level of his own gods, who have " eyes, but see not," and
SYG THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE.
made for the first time in his life earnest, as he gropes in vain
to find the day.
Then there is Gallio, another great original in the world of
evil, the first representative of a large class who, in all ages
succeeding, have thrown the chill of their careless and cutting
sneer upon all that is earnest and lofty in nature or man, in life
or in religion.
Then there is the town-clerk of Ephesus, one of those persons
who substitute prudence for i)iety, and who find a sun in the
face of a time-piece — who tell men when they are not to act,
but never when the hour of action has fully come, and when
delays are as contemptible as they are dangerous.
Then there is Tertullus the tool, servile, wiry, accommodat-
ing, plausible ; who talks, but never speaks ; and whose character
may be studied as representing, in a full and ideal manner, all
courtly pleaders who have since appeared, as well as many who
have pleaded in nobler causes.
Then there is Felix, whom one trembling has immortalized.
Kude the lyre ; but a great master stood once before it, and it
vibrated to his touch. Even nettleshade has sometimes been
made musical in the blast.
Then there is Agrippa, the "almost Christian" — one of
thousands who, were Christianity and the thrill produced by
eloquence the same thing, would be behevers ; but who, as it
is, will lose heaven by a hair's-breadth, and feel little sorrow !
Then there is Festus, the emblem of the cool, intellectual
man, who finds an easy solution for the problem of earnest-
ness, or genius, or enthusiasm, or religion — a problem which,
otherwise, would distress and disturb him in the cheap cry
— " It is madness — Paul, Burke, Chalmers, and Irving, were
mad."
Then, in the Epistles, we find a glimpse, and no more, of
Nero, the mysterious tyrant of Rome, the delicate infernal, the
demon in elegant undress, the musical murderer, so whimsi-
cally graceful in the management of his horrors, combining the
Boul of a Moloch with the subtilty and attractiveness of man-
THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE. 377
ner possessed by a Belial. We cnn fancy Paul, whose siibtilty
was not the least of his powers, foiling the tyrant at his own
weapons, and thus " escaping the mouth of the //on" — a word
expressing rather the fear with which he was regarded than the
character he possessed.
We close this rapid glance at the more peculiar and striking
of Scripture characters, by expressing our amazement : — First,
at their multitude ; secondly, at their variety ; thirdly, at the
delicacy with which they are discriminated ; fourthly, at the
manner in which they are exhibited — so artless, brief, and mas-
terly — not by analyses or descriptions, but by actions and
words ; fifthly, at the great moral and emblematical lessons which
they teach ; sixthly, at the fact that the majority of these char-
acters have left duplicates to this hour ; seventhly, at the hon-
esty of the writers who record them^ and, lastly, at this signifi-
cant fact, there is one character who appears transcendent above
them all, at once, in purity, power, and wisdom. The Scripture
writers register the fall of Adam, the drunkenness of Noah, the
incest of Lot, the falsifications of x\braham, the passionate wrath
of Moses, the adultery and murder of David, Peter's lie, John's
ambition, and Paul's over-subtilty ; but to Jesus, they ascribe
nothing but what is amiable, good, and godlike. They ex-
hibit him more eloquent than Isaiah, and more wise than Solo-
mon ; and yet holy as an angel, and humble as the poor woman
who brake the alabaster box of ointment at his feet. There
are spots in the sun ; but there are none in thy beams, Sua
of Righteousness !
This spotless Lamb is. He exists somewhere. He is, we
believe, at God's right hand. He is preparing, as he has prom-
ised, to come down. We must appear at his bar. Our lives
must be tested and our natures searched in the light of his
countenance. Let us prepare for this meeting, which must be,
and may be soon, by putting on the only character in which it
shall be safe to confront his eye — that, namely, of little children.
The Divine Child must be met by " little children ;" and amid
their hosannas (as he entered into the ancient temple), must he
S78 THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE.
enter again into the prepared and consecrated temple of earth
and heaven. Let us listen to his voice, which he sends before
him along his dread and glorious way, saying, '"Except ye be
converted, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise
enter into the kingdom of heaven."
THE END.
Valuable it)0rk0,
IN THE DEPARTMENTS OF
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lirrpn k foxMjuB, Mtm ^nri
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Comprising, Xerxes the Great, Cyrus the Great, Darius the Great,
Alexander the Great, Hannibal the Carthaginian, Julius Caesar,
Cleopatra Queen of Egypt, Alfred the Great, William the Con-
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Lives of the Queens of Scotland,
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Lord Holland's Foreign Reminiscences.
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Life of John Calvin.
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Dr. Johnson : his Religious Life and his Death.
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The Conquest of Canada.
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History of the Confessional.
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Dark Scenes of History.
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Josephus's Complete Works.
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History of the French Revolution.
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Letters and Speeches of Cromwell.
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Life of Madame Guyon.
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History of AVonderful Liventions.
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Life and Writings of Cassius M. Clay ;
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Pictorial History of England.
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Life of the Chevalier Bayard.
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History of Europe,
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Life and Speeches of John C. Calhoun.
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Life of Charlemagne.
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Life of Henry IV.,
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History of Chivalry and the Crusades.
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Lives of Celebrated British Statesmen.
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY