to open this surpassing problem, and with "a great chain," to bind its conflicting interpreters. Our notion rather is, that the full 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 artistsand 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 believe and to examine it; or, as we believe, with those grand enigmas of Nature, Providence, and Faith, which can only be stated, and can only be solved, by God himself.

CHAPTER XVII.

COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, INFLUENCES, AND EFFECTS OF SCRIPTURE POETRY.

THIS would demand a volume, instead of a chapter, inasmuch 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 before them all brilliant triflers, elegant simulators, men who "play well upon an instrument," and who have found that instrument in the lyre-who have turned to common uses the aerolite which has fallen at their door from heaven, and "lightly esteemed" the little, 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 via" 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, contorted 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

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 reluctance-nay, who are disposed to dispute the Hebrew preeminence. 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 Israel. 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. Nature is portrayed, not as self-subsisting or glorious in her own beauty, but ever in relation to a higher, an overruling, a spiritual power."

We 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 materialist 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

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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 universe 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 compréhensive 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 communication from God, imperfect only from the nature of the material 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 contemptuously 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 perpetual 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 vulture digesting blood-are all clothed in a light, the same in kind,

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 always 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 elevation 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 creation, 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 soliloquy," filling up the pauses in a universal anthem. And, while rejecting the Pagan fable of absorption into the Deity,