INTRODUCTION. IF F the reader may wisely ask why this book has been made, it is but right that he should fairly weigh what may be said to justify its being. He must not, however, look for a thorough unfolding of the religious and literary excellences of the Biblea work for a large volume-in a brief prelude, nor hope to find the manifold merits of religious poetry fitly set forth within bounds so narrow. Though it behooves the philosophic sceptic heedfully to study such a phenomenon as the Bible, in order to a becoming selfrespect, no discreet friend of the Scriptures fears that their authority can be lastingly impaired through scientific discoveries, or by just criticism. The chief and unfailing attractions of the Bible are the wondrous originality, scope, and freshness of its truths. It is a flower-garden which the devout reader approaches, not as the analytic botanist does his herbarium, but as a true lover of nature, to be delighted by graceful forms and variegated hues, and to be regaled by fragrant odours. As the latter is cheered by the pearly freshness of the summer's morning, is entranced by genial noontide glories, and is won to peaceful musings by the teeming aromas and the dreamy stillness at evening twilight, so does the earnest and loving reader of the Scriptures find the morning of life's day cheered by sweet hopes, its noon dauntless and assured under the glowing light of the divine teachings, and its evening calm and joyful, as he waits for the approach of a day whose glories no cloud shall dim, and no night shall follow. But since so much of this book is taken from the Bible, it is worth while to consider what that volume is, and how it should be treated as containing special revelations from God to men, and as being His best gift to them. Its divine origin and authority are here assumed, not argued! If there be those who regard the accounts of the Creation, the Fall, and the Deluge as mere fables, it is for them to justify their unbelief; if any think they have such sure and thorough insight of the great world of matter, mind, and spirit, that they know there is no room for God to work otherwise than through natural laws and forces, they ought to be satisfied with the grounds of their knowledge; and if there be those who cannot believe the miracles of the Hebrew Scriptures, while they hold to the truth of those recorded in the New Testament, let them, if they can, maintain their consistency. If the faith of any is overtasked by the story of Jonah's entombment in the whale, they are told in the Gospels that the Saviour treated it both as a fact, and as a symbolic prophecy of His own burial and resurrection. A like toleration may be justly claimed for the large majority of Christians, who hold that God, the Creator of all things, may work, and has wrought, otherwise than through such laws and forces as He has originated. They believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and the Saviour of men, because they find His coming and character foreshadowed and foretold by the types and prophecies of the Old Testament. Finding, in the New Testament, that He emphatically declares Himself to be THE TRUTH, they deem it soundly philosophical to regard all other truths subordinate and supplementary. Being there taught that He is "before all," and "head over all," and that "all power" belongs to Him, such Christians, recognizing in that wonderful personage the Messiah of the Hebrews, see ample reason for the constrained separation of that people from idolaters, and for their long and strict religious discipline, that thus He might be duly introduced to the world both as the son of David and the Son of God. It does not disturb the faith of such believers to be reminded that the Jews, so long and highly favoured by Jehovah, and trained to a ceremonial holiness, were exceedingly perverse, and often outrageously wicked; for they also believe that when their crimes culminated in the rejection and crucifixion of their Messiah, and He had cried, "It is finished," and the vail of the temple had been rent in twain, the peculiar mission of that people had ended. At that hour they passed from a state of privilege to one of doom. In former times their ancestors had felt the rod of divine chastisements for correction; but the bitterness of the cup which they had so often quaffed was tempered by the kindness of their faithful and loving Father. In vain was it for them, though He still yearned to show forgiveness to repentant believers. While the trustful followers of the crucified One were bidden to pray and hope for a baptism of heroic strength, there was no remedy for the madness of those who had imprecated upon themselves the guilt of His blood! They had forfeited their heritage of life and peace through wilful blindness. Confronted by the retributive severity which soon came upon Jerusalem and her infatuated people, it ill becomes sinful men to cavil against the works and ways of Jehovah. Their knowledge of them is too shallow and confined. With only the horizon of a snail, one would be a poor geographer. Though words may help us to right views of the Bible, no pen can fitly and fully set forth its character and mission. While God is its author, it is, in a lower sense, the work of many human agents who were widely separated as to the times and circumstances of their action. A collection of utterances, often fragmentary, and sometimes seeming to clash, it is, nevertheless, a whole and harmonious book. While it treats of things mostly unseen by men, their relations to them are supremely momentous. The things that are seen show forth the goodness, wisdom, and majesty of Jehovah, while His gracious charter of priceless and imperishable blessings to mankind is unfolded in the Bible. That volume is a great central sun, flooding their earthly being with light, vital and glorious; piercing the gloomiest mazes of spiritual ignorance, wickedness, and despair, and begetting joyful hopes and experiences of God's benignity and love. As the great king of day safely rules the revolving planets, so the Bible. surely guides every loyal soul in the only pathway to its blissful home in heaven. It brings knowledge to the ignorant, wisdom to the foolish, hope to the despairing, peace to the guilty, divine joy to the sorrowing, the choicest comforts to the sick, and life to the dying. "Most wondrous brook! bright candle of the Lord! Star of eternity! the only star By which the bark of man could navigate The sea of life, and gain the coast of bliss Securely; only star which rose on time, Of heaven's own light, and to the hills of God, While no book is worthy of such earnest heed as the Bible, it is unpardonably neglected by most men in Christendom. If it be well to regret the evil, it were better to find a remedy. With such an end in view, every worthy effort should win encouragement from the wise and the good. Whatever shall quicken in men a zest for, or delight in, the Scriptures, or do aught to unfold their truths, or to enhance their power over the minds and hearts of those who read, should be deemed both needful and beneficent. Although it may not be easy to show why so many fail to become pleasurably and profitably familiar with the Bible, the grounds of such failure may not wholly lie in what that book is, nor yet in the characters and tastes of mankind. Indeed, there are manifold sources of good in the realm of Nature, neither duly known nor prized by most men, though by her devoted disciples they are loudly challenged and urged to the study of them as supremely important. Thus the ocean, by its solemn grandeur, and the mountains, by their majestic proportions, may awe and charm the beholder, though he be blind to untold other blessings which flow from their ministries. The man who should prize the atmosphere only for its relations to musical sounds, would be less pitiable and blameworthy than is he who can find nothing in the Bible to admire but its matchless literary attractions. It has other and higher claims. Enough, that it deserves to be placed foremost, as making known the only remedy for human guilt and remorse. Enough, that it is the best means of arousing men, and leading them to the chief good, and of restraining them from evil. Yet it is not enough to claim that the Bible is the best moral and spiritual guide and teacher. From no other source can we so clearly learn the design and destiny of this world and of the universe. Plodding and bewildered scientists have been slow to discover and concede that to man belong that dignity and lordship with which the Bible authoritatively invests him. Though all branches of secular knowledge are valuable, and ought to be thoroughly studied by some, it were wiser to ignore and banish them altogether than that the Scriptures should not be daily and lovingly read. More hopeful were it for a man to strive for a true knowledge of astronomy, the sun and his benign sway being kept from view, than to achieve life's great ends untaught and ungoverned by the truths of the Bible. It would be as unreasonable, however, to assert that all parts of the sacred volume are to be equally prized, as that every member and function of the human body is alike essential to life and health. Were one the owner of a store-house filled with ingots of various metals, it could not be justly inferred that he undervalued the others, should he first pick out and arrange the gold. So it is no disparagement of any portion of the Bible, if preference and prominence be given to passages allowed to be of surpassing value, or remarkable for beauty and interest. Some features of the Book of books, moreover, are more plain and pleasing than others, especially to youthful readers, while the charge of faultiness cannot be justly urged. The Bible would be incomplete without the genealogical tables, and the details of the Mosaic ritual; yet few would rank them, for interest, with the history of Joseph or with the parables of the Saviour. Though such details have great value with profound and comprehensive scholars, most readers know too little to prize them duly. And hence they may, perhaps pardonably, if not fitly, adopt this couplet of Goethe, "A hindrance, all that we employ not; Since Religious Poetry makes so large a feature of this book, such forced, even though fit, alliance to the divine Word, may seem to need apology. Eminently a product of deep feeling and of a lively imagination, poetry is best employed on themes of the highest concern. The great and matchless poem was completed, when the chief Poet, the Maker of all things, had wrought out from the broad and dreary realm of chaos the wondrous mechanism of the universe, a work so vast and varied, so massive and minute, yet so delicately exact in the adjustment of its countless parts and qualities, and in its complex movements. It was most fitting, therefore, that the Hebrew prophets and bards, when moved by the all-quickening and beautifying Spirit, should deliver their messages and discourses in the sublimest strains of poetry ever reached by mortals. - While the poetry of the Bible is acknowledged to be every way unequalled, and while the good sense of translators and revisers in forbearing to signalize it by a factitious garb is to be praised, may not the choicest gems of the Christian poets serve worthy ends, when read jointly with those passages of Scripture whose |