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'tis only a skilful application of that passage in Isaiah, which represents the shades of the monarchs of earth gathered in Acheron, and awaiting the coming of the shade of the mighty king of Babylon: "The abyss from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth: it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak, and shall say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!" Isaiah 14: 9-12.

So also that affecting picture which the noble poet presents to the widowed husband of the lamented princess:

"Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made,
Thy bridal fruit is ashes: in the dust
The fair-hair'd daughter of the isles is laid ;—
The love of millions,

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(Childe Harold, Canto IV., clxx.)

is but a judicious application of the figures which are furnished in the Hebrew prophet's delineation of the afflicted daughter of Judah, Lam. 2: 10: "The elders of the daughter of Judah sit upon the ground, and keep silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads, they have girded themselves with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground." And also Jeremiah 6: 26: “Oh, daughter of Judah, gird thee with sackcloth, and wallow thyself in ashes: make thee mourning as for an only son, most bitter lamentation."

Nor is it a far-fetched, nor an improbable idea, that would attribute the poetic beauty which invests the introduction, by Shakspeare, of the ghost of Banquo, and of that of Hamlet's father, to the ideas awakened in the poet's mind by the Old Testament record of the raising up of the spirit of the prophet Samuel, by the Witch of Endor; and also the whole of the great dramatic bard's supernatural machinery of the witches in Macbeth, the fairies in the Midsummer Night's Dream, and the obedient spirits of Prospero in the Tempest, to the obscure intimations given in the sacred record, of men's having attempted, in times of old, to have dealings

with familiar spirits. We here hazard no conjecture as to the true interpretation of such passages in holy writ. We are alluding merely to the influence, which the popular understanding of them has had on prevalent superstitions, and on our literature, into which these superstitions have been wrought with so much skill, and so fine an effect. Nor can we doubt that the idea of Mephistophiles in his Faust, and of his dance and song of the witches, was so suggested to Goethe-and of his Manfred to Byron. In this last mentioned poem, also, the appearance of the shadowy outline of the fiend before Manfred, slowly only, and with horror, discerned by the pious Abbot, thus

"MANF. Look there!-what dost thou see?
AB. Nothing!

MANF. Look there, I say,

And stedfastly:-now tell me what thou seest!

AB. That which should shake me,

I see a dark and awful figure rise,

but I fear it not.

Like an infernal god, from out the earth;
His face wrapt in a mantle, and his form
Rob'd as with angry clouds ;"

strongly brings to mind that sublime passage in the book of Job (Job 4: 14-16): "In thoughts from visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men, fear came upon me and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up. It stood still,-but I could not discern the form thereof: an image was before mine eyes;-there was silence, and I heard a voice." The dream of Clarence, in Shakspeare's Richard III., is cast in the same mould. These are but specimens, hastily selected, in illustration of our position, that many of the finest sentiments and the most beautiful images that adorn our modern literature, are only the echoes of thoughts expressed in the Bible.

And nowhere is this rich echo of Bible thoughts more distinctly perceptible, than in that inimitable address of Portia, when personating the learned Dr. Balthazar, to the relentless Shylock, in order to move him to abate the rigor of his demand against Antonio, in the Merchant of Venice: "The quality of mercy is not strain'd; It droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the earth beneath. It is twice bless'd: It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:

13.

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute of awe and majesty,

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Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute of God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's,
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew!
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy."

So clearly does this fine passage re-echo Bible thoughts throughout, that it is difficult, as we hear it, not to feel as though listening to sentences selected directly from the Bible itself. And truly the language used in the Bible comes very near it: e. g., “Mercy rejoiceth against judgment," Jas. 2: "The discretion of a man deferreth his anger, and it is his glory to pass by a transgression," Prov. 19: 11. "Mercy and truth preserve a king; and his throne is upholden by mercy," Prov. 20: 28. "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us." "Verily I say unto you, if ye forgive not every man his brother their trespasses, neither will your heavenly Father forgive you."

Again, that much admired passage in the Tempest:

"The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind: We are such stuff

As dreams are made of, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep,”

is nothing more than a fine amplification of two short passages from the Bible: "The fashion of this world passeth away." And again, "What is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away!" From the same source, doubtless, sprung that fine passage in Prior's Solomon:

"A flower that does with opening dawn arise,
And, flourishing the day, at evening dies;
A winged eastern blast, just skimming o'er
The ocean's brow, and sinking on the shore;

A fire, whose flames thro' crackling stubble fly;
A meteor, shooting from the summer sky;

A bowl, adown the bending mountain roll'd;
A bubble breaking,-and a fable told:

A noontide shadow, and a midnight dream;

Are emblems, which, with semblance apt, proclaim
Our earthly course."

So, also, that of Fawkes:

"If life a thousand years, or e'er so few,
'Tis repetition all, and nothing new:

A fair, where thousands meet, but none can stay;
An inn, where travellers meet, and post away."

And how majestically does Shakspeare make the fallen Woolsey echo the sentiment of the Hebrew prophet, "All flesh is grass, and the glory thereof as the flower of grass,"

etc.

"Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness!
This is the state of man: To-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope: to-morrow, blossoms,
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him:
The third day comes a frost,-a killing frost;
And, when he thinks, (good easy man,) full surely
His greatness is a ripening,-nips his root,
And then he falls as I do."

Just so says the prophet, "The wind passeth over it, and it is gone."

The Bible is replete with passages of the highest sublimity, passages, many of which breathe, also, a most touching eloquence. Such are, the song of Deborah and Barak, in Judges: the reception given by the shades of Hades to the spirit of Babylon's king, as presented in Isa. chap. 14, already referred to. Such, also, is the triumphant song of the Israelites, on viewing the destruction of Egypt's martial hosts in the Red Sea (Exodus, chap. 15.) Such is the prayer of Jonah (Jonah, chap. 2); and where shall we find, in any writings, a passage fuller of grand imagery than the prayer of the prophet Habakkuk, chap. 3: 3-16? Where are sublimity and beauty more richly combined than in the 104th Psalm? "O Lord my God, thou art very great," etc. Where can you find a more touching description of goodness worthy of the Deity, than in Psalm 103? "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him," etc. How beautiful and how appropriate, too, is the picture

drawn by Moses (Deut. 32: 9, 14) of the care of Jehovah for his own covenant people! "The Lord's portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings; so the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him. He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock." But we forbear; the Bible is full of such imagery, grand, striking, and affecting. Do we look for pathos? What more pathetic than David's lament over Jonathan and Saul, slain in battle? (2 Sam. 1: 17-27.) What more affecting than the royal father's heartpiercing lamentation over his fair-haired, but rebellious son? "O my son, Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!"

Would we ponder deeply the treasured results of wisdom, the dear-bought fruits of experience? We have, in the book of Proverbs, an exhaustless storehouse of wisdom, for the guidance of our conduct in all the diversified circumstances of human life. The one short book of Proverbs contains more sound practical wisdom, than can be gathered from all the boasted teachings of all the renowned philosophers of antiquity and of modern times combined.

Now, the Bible, thus teeming with wisdom, and blazing with beauty of thought and splendor of imagery, has, for ages, been in the hands of men; and these thrilling passages have been before their eyes and present to their minds; and they have mingled in the thoughts and assisted to mould the conceptions and to determine the phraseology of our most masterly writers.

Let the Bible and its influences, direct and indirect, be blotted out of existence, and we at once extinguish the sun that illumines our literary heavens, and impair the strength and mar the beauty of our whole literature.

That book which, whenever possessed, has fostered the spirit of learning in all its varied departments; which has given birth to some of the profoundest works in existence, written solely for its illustration; which has laid a broad foundation for the science of jurisprudence; has promoted

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