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father? or who hath begotten the drops of the dew?" And how bold its flights, how inexpressibly striking and beautiful its antitheses, when from the warm and sweet Pleiades, it wanders to the sterner Orion, and in its rapid course, hears the "young lions crying unto God for lack of meat"— sees the war horse pawing in the valley-descries the eagle on the crag of the rock-and in all that is vast and minute, dreadful and beautiful, discovers and proclaims the glory of him who is " cellent in counsel and wonderful in working?" The style of Hebrew poetry is everywhere forcible and figurative beyond example. The book of Job stands not alone in this sententious, spirited and energetic form and manner. It prevails throughout the poetic part of the Scriptures; and they stand confessedly the most eminent examples to be found of the truly sublime and beautiful. I confess I have not much of the feeling of poetry. It is a fire that is enkindled at "the living lamp of nature," and glows only on a few favoured altars. And yet I cannot but love the poetic associations of the Bible. Now, they are sublime and beautiful, like the mountain torrent, swollen and impetuous by the sudden bursting of the cloud. Now they are grand and awful as the stormy Galilee, when the tempest beat upon the fearful disciples. And again, they are placid as that calm lake when the Saviour's feet have pressed upon its waters and stilled them into peace.

There is also a sublimity, an invention in the

imagery of the Bible that is found in no other book. Here you see "a land shadowing with wings" a "star coming out of Jacob, and a sceptre arising out of Israel"-the "lion of the tribe of Judah”—and the "tongue of the Egyptian Sea.” -You read of "New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven"-of a "rain-bow round about the throne"-of a "sea of glass”—and of a "woman clothed with the Sun, and the Moon under her feet." Here you have allegory, apologue, parable and enigma, all clearly understood and enforcing truth with a strong and indelible impression. Here you have significant actions uttering volumes of instruction; as when "Jesus called a little child and set him in the midst of his disciples and said, except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven”—as when he cursed the barren fig-tree— as when he "washed his disciples feet." And where is there a comparison like this,-" And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together." Where is there a description like this,“And I saw an angel standing in the Sun-and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the Great God." Or where is there a sentence like the following,"And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them." English literature is no common debtor to the

Bible. In what department of English literature may not the difference be discovered between the spirit and sentiments of Christian writers and those who have drawn all their materials of thought and of ornament from Pagan writers? In the language of an anonymous writer, "Not to say that antiquity furnishes no example of a philosopher who could think like Newton; or a moralist who could illustrate human obligation like Edwards or Johnson; we find a proof of the superiority of Christian principles even in those works of imagination which are deemed scarcely susceptible of influence from religion. The common romance and the novel, with all their foolerics and ravings, would be more contemptible than they are, did they not sometimes undesignedly, catch a conception, or adorn a character from the rich treasury of revelation. And the more splendid fictions of the poet derive their highest charm from the evangelical philanthopy, tenderness, and sublimity that invest them. But for the Bible, Homer and Milton might have stood upon the same shelf, equals in morality, as they are competitors for renown. Young had been ranked with Juvenal; and Cowper had united with Horace and with Ovid to swell the tide of voluptuousness."

There is not a finer character, nor a finer description in all the works of Walter Scott, than that of Rebekah in Ivanhoe. And who does not see that it owes its excellence to the Bible? Shakespeare, Byron and Southey are not a little indebted for some

of their best scenes and inspirations to the same source. At the suggestion of a valued friend, I have turned my thoughts to the parallel between Macbeth and Ahab-between Lady Macbeth and Jezebel-between the announcment to Macduff of the murder of his family, and that to David of the death of Absalom by Joab-to the parallel between the opening of the Lamentations of Jeremiah and Byron's apostrophe to Rome as the Niobe of nations-to the parallel between his ode to Napoleon and Isaiah's ode on the fall of Sennacherib-and also to the resemblance between Southey's chariot of Carmala in the Curse of Kehama, and Ezekiel's vision of the wheels; and have been forcibly impressed with the obligations of this class of writers to the sacred Scriptures.

May it not be doubted whether scholars have been sufficiently sensible of their obligations to our common English Bible. It is the purest specimen of English, or Anglo-Saxon to be found in the world. It was made by the order of James the I. in 1607, by forty-seven of the most able and learned men of Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge. It has stood the test of two hundred and thirty years experience and is a noble monument of the integrity, fidelity, and learning of its venerable translators. Addison remarks "There is a certain coldness in the phrases of European languages, compared with the oriental forms of speech. The English tongue has received innumerable improvements from an infusion of Hebraisms, derived out of the practi

cal passsages in holy writ. They warm and anı mate our language, give it force and energy, and convey our thoughts in ardent and intense phrases. There is something in this kind of diction, that often sets the mind in a flame and makes our hearts burn within us." Nor has it been at all improved by American Philologists. Was it too much for a learned Commentator to say, "Our translators have not only made a standard translation; but they have made their translation the standard of our language. The English tongue in their day was not equal to such a work. But God enabled them to stand as upon Mount Sinai, and erane up their country's language to the dignity of the originals; so that after the lapse of two hundred years, the English Bible, with very few exceptions, is the standard of the purity and excellence of the English tongue."

The Bible has also been the instrument of preserving and diffusing classical learning among the most polished and literary nations. On the subversion of her fairest temples, ofttimes has literature taken refuge in the asylums of Christianity. Since the Ark that once contained and preserved this sacred book was destroyed, this hallowed volume has been itself the ark in which were contained and preserved for the long night of a thousand years, and amid the rude assaults of barbarous nations, "the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." More than once, when ignorance has enslaved the human mind, has the Bible stricken off its fetters,