The bards of the Bible

Front matter

S&L'f

I

Qassjil

Preface

it was used. Even favorite passages, in this guise, seemed new and cold to him. This, of course, was in some measure, he knew, the effect of associations ; but such associations, he knew also, were not cofined to him. He may say this the more fearlessly, as translations of the great masterpieces 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 " Galleries," 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.

SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER.

The Poetical characters in Scripture, . . . . 302

Introduction

That so much of Scripture should be written in the language of poetiy, has excited some surprise, and created 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 language 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 God. It was meet that, when man was called into the presence of his Maker, he should not be addressed with cold formality, nor in the words of lead, nor yet in the harsh thunder of peremptory command and warning, but that he should hear the same figured and glowing speech, to which he was accustomed, flowing in mellower and more majestic accents from the lips of his God.

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 the 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 elements 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, ine 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 mountains, 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 designed from their creation to represent Him to whom 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 Immanuel, 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 fulness, in finished fragments, that shape of the universal truth which instantly incarnates 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 w T hich 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 proceeds ; 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 the 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) the tyrannous ruler of our earthlynight, " 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 minutely 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 conchology; its allusions to the subjects of science are incidental, 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 conscious, compact, distinctly enounced, and elaborately defended system. An artistic work it can scarcely be called, so slight is the artifice of its language and rhythmical construction. It is rude in speech, 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 remain unsolved 'phenomena — the aerolites of history — speaking like those from the sky of an unearthly region — the narrative, too, of a life (that of

Jesus) at once ideally perfect, and trembling all over with humanity, 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 of man and 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 which 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 adaptation to general needs, their cheering influence, their progressive development, and their close-drawn connection with those marvellous 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 principles of his belief; it is the manual of the leading rites and practices of his worship ; as the manifold echo of the voice of his conscience, it constitutes the grand standard of his morality ; it is his fullest and most authentic missive 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 unfolding 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

Georgics, 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 philosophy 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 man, the old column, gliding slow, but guiding certainly 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 peculiar 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 God. 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, ancient Breath of the upper world, unconventional, unmixed, 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, speaking 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 sweltering nations. Thus burst forth cries of nature — the 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 profound 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 unconscious page seems, like the wheel in EzekiePs 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 purpose pervading the Book, which is to trace and promulgate the existence of certain spiritual laws, originally communicated by God, developed in the history of a peculiar people, illustrated by the ruin of nations, proclaimed in a system of national religion and national 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 Fiery 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 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 quantity 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, earnest as the stars, speaking to us in language which, by its very heat, impetuosity, unworldliness, fearlessness, almost if not altogether imprudence, severity, and grandeur, proves itself sincere, if there be sincerity in earth or in heaven." Once more, the Bible, you feel, answers a question which other books cannot. This — the question of questions, the question of all ages— is, in our vernacular and expressive speech, " What shall I do to be saved ?" " 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 V 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 simpleminded, have at last been content to lean their living' confidence and their dying peace.

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 forestalls 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 masterpieces of human genius ; — what comparison in elaboration, any more than what comparison in girth and greatness, 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 structures and aspirations — in earth, but not of it — communicating with the omniscience, and recording the acts of the omnipotence, of God — 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 this 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 attention; this book demands it — it speaks with authority, and not as the Scribes. Other books guide gracefully along the earth, or onwards 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 for ever 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 itself 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 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 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. It may, possibly, through the lesson of infinite beauty, 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 unequalled genius, we now devote those pages, commending them to the Great Spirit of the Book.

THE BARDS OE THE BIBLE.

Chapter I. Circumstances Creating And Modifying Old Testament

POETRY.

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 influences. 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 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, 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 creation itself, as it appeared to the Jewish mind. The austere simplicity of that remarkable verse of Genesis, u In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," sounds a fitting keynote to the entire volume. Never shall we forget the emotion 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 our 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 effect, throwing us back into the gulf of ages, and giving us a dim retrospect of gigantic cycles rolling forward in silence. The history of the creation, indeed, is all instinct with poetry. As including 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 veiled, 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 u in dance," its stately and fruit-bearing trees, to feed the appetite and relieve the solitude of man. And then, the preparations for his coming being complete, he 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 preparations 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 afterwards are numerous. Solomon, for instance, in his personification of Wisdom, describes it in language lofty as that of Moses. u When he appointed the foundations of the earth, then was I by him, as one brought up with him." Job abounds in references to this cardinal truth. Isaiah, speaking in the person of God, and throwing down a gauntlet to all the heathen deities, says, u 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 for ever — and, amid all this 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 encompasseth 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. a# The Lord." says David, " sitteth upon the floods," alluding not altogether to the swellings of Jordan, nor to the swellings, 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 immensity 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 should 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 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.