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tion; this book demands it—it speaks with authority, and not as the Scribes. Other books glide 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 conflagration. 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 tendencies 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 because 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-j 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 approach to the idea of a prose poem on the subject. A new and fuller effort seems to be demanded. Writers,

too, far more adapted for the work than we, have diverged from it in various directions. Some have laudably devoted themselves to building up anew, and in a more masterly style, the evidences of the authenticity and truth of Scripture; others are employed in rebutting the startling objections to the Bible which have arrived from across the German Ocean. Many are redarguing the whole questions of supernatural inspiration and the Scripture canon from their foundations; some are disposed to treat Bible poetry as something above literary criticism; and others as something 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 develop their matchless merit as masters of the lyreto 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 altogether 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 adaptation to their nature. It may strengthen some faltering convictions, and tend to withdraw enthusiasts from the exclusive study of imperfect modern and morbid models to those great ancient masters. may, possibly, through the lesson of infinite beauty,

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successfully insinuate that of eternal truth into some souls hitherto shut against one or both; and as thousands 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 become rather a friend than a fiery revelation-to the proclamation of which, as containing a Gospel of Peace, we have devoted the most valued of our years -and to the illustration of which, as a word of unequaled genius, we now devote those pages, commending them to the Great Spirit of the Book.

THE BARDS OF THE BIBLE. .

CHAPTER I.

CIRCUMSTANCES CREATING AND MODIFYING OLD TESTAMENT POETRY.

ences.

THE admitted principle that every poet is partly the creator and partly the 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 influAnd 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 incomparably 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 doctrines, from Oriental scenery, or from the structure of the Hebrew 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 detracts from its merit to record the occasions which gave it birth, the sparks of national or individual feeling from which it exploded, or the influence of other minds in lighting its flame.

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