God's goodness and love, but that suffering, by perfecting patience, by teaching knowledge, should, while humbling man's pride, elevate his position, and put into his hands the most powerful of all telescopes-that of a tear. "Perfect

through suffering" must man become; and, then, how do all apparent enemies soften into friends! how drop down all disguises; and misfortunes, losses, fevers, falls, deaths, stand out naked, detected, and blushing lovers.

One thing more, and the atonement is complete. Man has about him another burden besides that of misery-it is a burden of sin. To this he cannot be reconciled. This must

be taken away ere he can be perfectly at one with the universe or its Maker. This, by the great sacrifice at Calvary, and the sanctifying power of the Spirit, has been taken away; and now, whoever, convinced of God's benevolence by the voice of his own soul echoing the language of the creationsatisfied, from experience, of the benefits of suffering-is also forgiven, through Christ, his iniquities, stands forth to view the reconciled man. Be he of dark disposition, his gloom is now tempered, if not removed; he looks at it as the pardoned captive at his iron bars the last evening of his imprisonment. Be he profoundly fascinated by moral evil, even with its dark countenance a certain morning twilight begins to mingle. Has he becn sick of the hollowness of the world, now he feels that that very hollowness secures its explosionit must give place to a truer system. Has he entertained doubts-he drowns them in atoning blood. Has he suffered -his sufferings have left on the soil of his mind a rich deposit, whence are ready to spring the blossoms of Eden, and to shine the colors of heaven. Thus reconciled, how high his attitude, how dignified his bearing! He knows not what it is to fear. Having become the friend of God, he can look above and around him with the eye of universal friendship. In the blue sky he dwells, as in a warm nest. The clouds and mountains seem ranged around him, like the chariots and horses of fire about the ancient prophet. The roar of wickedness itself, from the twilight city, is attuned into a melody, the hoarse beginning of a future anthem. Flowers bloom on every dunghill-light gushes from every gloom-the grave itself smiles up in his face-and his own frame, even if decaying, is the loosened and trembling leash which, when broken, shall let his spirit spring forth, free and exulting,

amid the liberties, the light, the splendors, and the "powers of the world to come." *

CHAPTER VI.

POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS.

THE entire history of Israel is poetical and romantic. Besides the leading and wide events we have already indicated, as nourishing the spirit of Hebrew poetry-such as the creation, the flood, the scene at Sinai-there were numerous minor sources of poetic influence. The death of Moses in the sight of the promised land; the crossing of the river Jordan; the wars of Canaan; the romantic feats of Samson; the immolation of Jephtha's daughter, the Iphigenia of Israel; the story of Ruth, "standing amid the alien corn," with all its simplicity and pathos; the rise of David, harp in hand, from "the ewes with young," to the throne of his country; his adventurous, checkered, and most poetical history; the erection of the temple, that fair poem of God's; the separation of the tribes; the history and ascent of Elijah; the calling of Elisha from the plough; the downfall of the temple; the captivity of Babylon; the return from it; the rise of the new temple, amid the tears of the old men, who had seen the glories of the former-these, and many others, were events which, touching again and again, at short and frequent intervals, the rock of the Hebrew heart, brought out another and another gush of poetry.

We speak not now of David's Psalms, or those which followed his time, but of those songs which are sprinkled through the historical works of Joshua, Judges and Samuel (inclusive of one or two of David's strains), and which shine as sparkles struck off from the rolling wheel of Jewish story. It is beautiful to see history thus flowering into poetry—the heroic deed living in the heroic lay-the glory of the field, separated from its gore, purified, and, like the everburning fire of the temple, set before the Lord of Hosts. What Macaulay's "Lays of

*The author means, if God spare him, to develop further his views of the reconciliation of man, in another, and probably a fictitious, form.

Ancient Rome" have done for the fabulous legends and halftrue traditions of Roman story, have Jasher, Iddo, Deborah, and David, in a higher and holier manner, done for the real battles and miracles which stud the annals of God's chosen people.

Has not

Need we refer to the grand myth-if such it be of the standing still of the sun over Gibeon, and of the moon over the valley of Ajalon. Supposing this literally true, what a picture of the power of mind over matter-of inspired mind over passive matter! The one word of the believing man has arrested the course of nature. His stern, commanding eye has enlisted the very sun into his service, and the moon seems a device upon his banner. It is a striking verification of the words, "All things are possible to him that believeth." That matter which yields reluctantly to the generalizations of science, is plastic, as soft clay, in the hands of faith. Suns and systems dance to the music of the throbs from a great heart. Should we, on the contrary, suppose this a poetical parable, and thus rid ourselves of the physical difficulties, how grandly does it express modern experiences! man, through astronomy, made the sun stand still, and the earth revolve? Did not the genius of Napoleon arrest the sun of Austerlitz, for many a summer, over his fields of slain? Is not each extension of the power of the telescope causing firmaments to yield, to recede, to draw near, to dissolve, to curdle, to stand, to move, to assume ten thousand various forms, colors, and dimensions? Is not man each year feeling himself more at home in his house, more at liberty to range through its remoter apartments, with more command over its elements, and with a growing consciousness, that his empire shall yet be complete? Joshua commanding the sun and moon, is but an emblem of the man of the future, turning and winding the universe, like a " fiery Pegasus," below him, on his upward and forward career.

Deborah-what a strong solitary ray of light strikes from her story and song, upon the peaks of the past! A mother in Israel, the wise woman of her neighborhood, curing diseases, deciding differences, perhaps, at times, conducting the devotions of her people-how little was she, or were they, aware of the depth which lay in her heart and in her genius. It required but one action and one strain to cover her with glory. In her, as in all true women, lay a quiet fund of

strength, virtue, and courage, totally unsuspected by herself. While others wondered at her sudden patriotism and poetry, she wondered more than they. The Great Spirit, seeking for a vent through which to pour a flood of ruin upon the invaders of Israel, found this woman sitting under her palmtree, on the mountain-side, and she started up at his bidding. “I, Deborah, arose." The calm matron becomes the Nemesis of her race, the mantle of Miriam falls on her shoulders, and the sword of Joshua flames from her hand. This prophetic fury sinks not, till the enemy of her country is crushed, and till she has told the tidings to earth, to heaven, and to all after-time. And then, like a sword dropped from a hero's side, she quietly falls back into her peaceful solitude again. It is Cincinnatus resuming his plough-handle in mid-furrow. How wonderful are those gusts which surprise and uplift men, and women too, into greatness-a greatness before unknown, and terrible even to themselves.

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In her song, the poetry of war comes to its culmination. Not the hoofs of many horses, running to battle, produce such a martial music, as do her prancing words. How she rolls the fine vesture of her song in blood! How she dares to liken her doings to the thunder-shod steps of the God of Sinai! The song begins with God, and with God it ends. One glance—no more-is given to the desolations which preceded her rising. Praises, like sunbeams, are made to fall on the crests of those who perilled themselves with her, in the high places of the field. Questions of forked lightning are flung at the recreant tribes. Why did Dan abide in ships?" Ah! Dan was a serpent in the way, biting the horse-heels, and causing the rider to fall backwards; but here he is stung and stumbled himself! Over one village, Meros, she pauses to pour the concentration of her ire, and the "curse causeless doth not come." For the brave, the light of Goshen; for the recreants, the night of Egypt; but for the neutral, the gloom of Gehenna! "All power," then, "is given her," to paint the battle itself; and it, and all its scenery, from the stars above, fighting against Sisera, to the river Kishon below, that "ancient river," rolling away in indignation the last relics of the enemy, appear before us. Then her imagination pursues the solitary Sisera, unhelmed, pale, and panting, to the tent of Heber, and with a yet firmer nerve, and a yet holier hypocrisy, she re-enacts the part of

Jael, and slays again her slain. And then, half in triumph, and half in the tenderness which often mingles with it, she sees the mother of Sisera looking out at her window, with the flush of hope on her cheek fading into the deathlike paleness of a mother's disappointment and a mother's anguish; and then-for Deborah, too, "is a mother in Israel"-she can no more, she shuts the scene, she drops the lattice, and her voice falters, though her faith is firm, as she exclaims, "So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord; but let them that love him be as the sun, when he goeth forth in his might."

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It is a baptized sword which Deborah bears. It is a battle of the Lord which she fights. It is a defensive warfare that her song hallows. Carnage," says Wordsworth, "is God's daughter." We reverenced and loved the Poet of the Lakes, whose genius was an honor to his species, and whose life was an honor to his genius; but seldom has a poet written words more mischievous, untrue, and (unintentionally) blasphemous, than these. We all remember Byron's inference from it," If Carnage be God's daughter, she must be Christ's sister." Blasphemous! but the blasphemy is Wordsworth's, not Byron's. Here the skeptic becomes the Christian, and the Christian the blasphemer. If Carnage be God's daughter, so must evil and sin be. No, blessed be the name of our God! He does not smile above the ruin of smoking towns; he does not snuff up the blood of a Borodino, or a Waterloo, as a dark incense; he does not say, over a shellsplit fortress, or over the dying decks of a hundred dismasted vessels, drifting down the trembling water on the eve of a day of carnage, "It is very good;" he is the Prince of Peace, and his reign, when universal, shall be the reign of universal brotherhood. And yet, we will grant to Carnage a royal origin; she is, if not the daughter of our God, yet of a god, of the god of this world. But shame to those who would lay down the bloody burden at the door of the house of the God of Mercy-a door which has opened to many an orphan and many a foundling, but which will not admit this forlorn child of hell.

Never did genius more degrade herself than when gilding the fields and consecrating the banners of unjust or equivocal Here, the gift of Scott himself resembles an eagle's feather, transferred from the free wing of the royal bird to the cap of some brutal chieftain. The sun and the stars must

war.