spiritual landscape, has been laid out on the same principles. As in nature there are single objects which, viewed apart, might certainly be more beautiful, so in the Bible there are passages of which the diction might have been more felicitous-sentences which, in point of grammatical construction, might be improved-solecisms which could have been avoided, and periods which might have been more euphoniously balanced. But had these been avoided, by every part being worked up to the same high level of such perfectness as might please the grammarian or the rhetorician, there would have been wanting the picturesqueness of contrast; that harmony which occasional discord only hightens, and that higher beauty, which slight blemishes rather enhance, would have been missed, and in their place we should have had a bald exactness, a tame precision, a polished monotony; and who does not see that the Scriptures, laid out after this fashion, would, in a literary point of view, be quite as tiresome, and full as tame, as, in an artistic point of view, would be a landscape whose rivers are all of equal length, breadth, and current; its valleys all of one foliage and verdure; its mountains all of the same altitude, contour, and stratification?

And how is it that the Great Artist of Nature can thus afford to paint his landscapes so much on the principle of contrast, while the ordinary artist does not risk the same bold treatment? The reason is obvious. The ordinary artist paints on a small

scale, having to fill but a few yards of canvas; whereas the Divine Artist works on a grand scale, his pictures being so vast that what would be blemishes on the bit of canvas serve to harmonize and to enhance the effect of the more beautiful parts, when the eye ranges over miles of landscape. And just so it is that the Author of the Bible, in composing a book so marvelously comprehensive, can admit inequalities, having room and verge enough to harmonize them, which the author of an ordinary book, confined within so much narrower limits, could not with safety introduce; and thus the occasional inelegancies in its style, which to the fastidious critic might seem to be blemishes, and which the mere grammarian might set down as faults, are to us among the proofs of the divinity of the Bible. The author of a lesser book would not have ventured, could not, indeed, have afforded, to admit them; but in God's vast book they highten the general effect; just as in God's vast landscapes the jagged corners of the riven rock, while giving picturesqueness to its contour, cause the wild flowers which creep up or hang over its uneven spiracles to look still more beautiful.

CHAPTER III.

THE FIGURATIVE IN SCRIPTURE.

THE term figure, in its ordinary use, signifies the shape or form of any piece of matter which distinguishes it from other pieces. By dropping the idea of mere shape or form, and retaining that of distinction, various secondary meanings have been attached to the term figure. Those persons whom rank in life or political influence distinguish from the bulk of mankind, are said to be men of figure; and we say of men of eminent learning or shining parts, or of the authors of useful discoveries and inventions in arts and sciences, that they will make a figure in their country's history. Precisely on the same principles has this term been appropriated in its application to language. Certain forms of speech, as possessing more mark or distinction than the ordinary form of expressing the same thought, have been called figures. Hence figurative language is opposed to plain, ordinary, or literal speech.

When we say "the parched ground absorbs the rain" we express a familiar fact in common language; but when we say "the thirsty ground drinks in the rain" we convey the same fact in the language of figure. To call youth "the early part of

life" is to speak literally; to call youth "the morning of life" is to express ourselves figuratively. In both the examples given it will be perceived that certain words are used in a different sense from that which they properly signify; being changed, or as we might say, turned from their own strict proper meaning to another which has been suggested by the association of ideas. Hence a figure of speech is also called a tropein Greek τροπος, from τρέπω, to turn-and this change is made for the sake of giving life, beauty, and emphasis to the thought.

Although it has been the business of the grammarians to classify and give names to the various figures of speech, as well as to lay down rules for their proper management, it is not to be supposed that it was the work of the grammarians to invent them. Instead of an artifice of rhetoric, they have their origin in human nature itself; and, accordingly, were in use long before rhetoric, or grammar, or criticism, had been heard of.

I have said that it is the business of the grammarian or critic to classify the figures of speech; but their attempts toward a simple and exact classification have been attended only with partial success; for when tropes are divided into figures of language and figures of thought, a basis of classification is assumed which is itself shifting; since language and thought often so run into each other, that it were impossible to say by which of them more than the other the effect is produced. A bet

ter division is into figures of the imagination and figures of the passions; although here, also, the basis of classification will be found to be a variable line; for although in themselves distinct, when are the imagination and the passions in their hightened workings ever entirely separate?

Fortunately it is not necessary that I should classify the figures of speech, my task merely requiring me to show that the principal ones, at least, are to be found in the Bible, and that when any one of these is introduced, this is done with propriety, both as respects the treatment of the figure itself, and the elucidation or enrichment of the thought which is figuratively expressed.

Did I deem it deserving the necessary space on these pages, it would be easy to show that there is not any considerable figure or trope recognized by the grammarians, of which examples may not be selected from the sacred writings. We shall find in them the comparison, the metaphor, the allegory, the hyperbole, the interrogation, the antithesis, the climax, the ellipsis, the prosopopia or personification, the apostrophe; as also pleonasm, exclamation, inversion, metonymy, prolepsis, vision, catachresis, synecdoche, irony, antonomasy. But I do not see that it would serve a material purpose to give a mere string of specimens of this long catalogue of figures. A preferable course seems to be to make a selection, thus leaving sufficient space for some remarks on the nature of the figures themselves, and