tyr's calcined ashes, on the winds of heaven and the waters of the earth; it has been immured in dungeons; has been interdicted by mailed princes and mitered priests; has been denounced as a dangerous and laughed at as a silly book; has been a butt for the shafts of ridicule, and a mark for the arrows of persecution; the skeptics of modern times had done to it what the ancient skeptics did to its Divine Master-buried it in the grave; and the priests of Rome, after the manner of the priests of Jerusalem, had rolled a stone on its grave's mouth, and sealed it with a seal. But this immortal book has come forth from its sepulcher, and by many wonders and signs has showed itself alive to the people; it has flung back from its invulnerable breast the shafts of the scoffer and the arrows of the skeptic; has shaken from its eagle wings the calumnies of slander; and as the phenix, not of mythologic fable, but of heavenly truth, it has risen from its ashes to light the world, when the stormy bale-fires of superstition shall blaze no more.

It is sublime in the destiny which it marks out for itself. What is to be the future history of this book? It is, say some, by the progress of science and philosophy to be exploded as an imposture, a myth, a dream of the human mind while it slept in the lap of superstition; it is, say others, to continue what it is, a mysterious child of antiquity, mantled in its age by the same mists which lay around the cradle of its infancy; it is, say others,

to come out of the crucible of the critics, not altogether consumed, but with much of the alloy which mixes with its virgin gold burned away; it is, say others, to be supplemented, and in a great measure superseded, by a new and fuller revelation. Idle prophets all! The book itself has a sublimer vaticination of its destiny: "The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away"-philosophy may perish, and science may cease, and literature may fail-"but the word of the Lord endureth forever."

Verily the Bible itself-its very existence-the bare idea of it, not to speak of its contents, is an example unparalleled in the history of letters, of the truly sublime.

CHAPTER VII.

THE PATHETIC IN THE SCRIPTURES.

It belongs to the pathetic to touch and set in motion the softer feelings of the breast. Less powerful perhaps than the sublime, its voice is more plaintive and persuasive. It seeks not to overawe and amaze, but to merit and subdue the soul to all tender emotions-sympathy with the sorrowing, pity for the distressed, charity toward all. Sighs are its natural utterance; tears its natural signs. Sublimity is as the rush of storm winds which wake up the grand music of the mighty forest; pathos as the breath of zephyrs when they stir the gentle music of the Aonian harp. If it needs less genius, it requires more knowledge of human nature, and a soul more finely set to human sensibilities, to be a master of the pathetic.

Of true pathos, as it vents itself in articulate utterance, there are many touches exquisitely affecting to be found in the Scriptures. David's lament over Saul and Jonathan is no less remarkable for its pathetic tenderness, than for its lyric passion. For what burning words of desolate grief are these, which would cover with a desolation equal to its own, the place where the mighty had fallen: "Ye

mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be rain upon you, nor fields of offerings; for there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of Saul, as though he had not been anointed with oil." And then how softly sinks the voice of sorrow after this outburst, into a subdued plaintiveness, like a sad, sweet murmuring round the heart: "I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant hast thou been unto me; thy love to me is wonderful, passing the love of women." David's apostrophe to his dead son is a still more striking instance of the pathetic: "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!" Nor reckon this a passionate outburst of extravagant sorrow, or the raving of maddened grief which knows not what wild words it is uttering; but think of the father who had suffered such cruel wrongs at the hand of this unnatural son, and then you will admire the pathos of paternal love which forgets all, except that the dead one was his son. Think, too, not merely of the untimely fate, but also of the character of the wretched youth who, without a moment to cry to Heaven for pardon, had been hurried into the eternal world with his unrepented sins on his head; and, ah, no wonder that the sainted father, who was himself ready to meet death, should in the anguish of his pity and his fears cry out, "Would God I had died for thee!" Take as another example of the truly pathetic, that incomparable

monody, the 137th Psalm. Here at first each word comes slowly as a labored breathing, but gradually the current swells, till at last the surcharged bosoms of the exiles overflow into a torrent of grief. How pathetic also are many of the penitential Psalms, where godly sorrow melts into a strain of the most tender repentance! Though one can not admire the man, yet is there something inexpressibly touching in Esau's sorrow, on finding that his brother had received the parental blessing: "And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry, and said unto his father, Bless me, even me also, my father!" As pictures of natural tenderness, what could be more simply touching, or more artlessly told, than the sacrifice of Isaac, especially at that part where the unsuspecting victim says to his father, "Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" Or the story of Jacob and Rachel; or of Joseph and his brethren; or of Ruth and Naomi. We challenge the whole circle of literature to produce any thing more truly pathetic than this: "And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for whither, thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried." Poets in all ages have attempted to describe the love and constancy of woman-who in the first mutterings of the approaching storm trem