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potent being, who delighted rather in dissonance and deformity than in harmony and beauty. He never looks at the magnificence of nature with the pregnant soul and overflowing heart of a christian worshipper. There is none of that pure fervour in his poetry which elevates the spirit of man to his God, in whom it recognises the origin of all that is good, and beautiful, and lovely. Tenderness and pathos are undeniably present in many of his compositions, but they are the tenderness and pathos of mere passion, not of lofty emotion. All breathes of the animal, the spiritual phases of humanity are darkened by the intensity of animal sympathy. The beauties of the external world are arrayed in a colouring often splendid and imposing, but it seems as if laid on by the hand of some potent magician, rather than by that of the divinity. It stirs the heart, but does not exalt it.

The stanzas quoted from the far-famed poem of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, have been frequently produced as a noble exemplification of Lord Byron's genius, but I trust it has been clearly shown that they cannot stand the test of severe and inflexible criticism. They are not marked with the signet of truth. I have given them at length, because of their very high celebrity as a specimen of descriptive poetry, in order to show how far they fall short of the simple grandeur, the often homely but perfect fidelity and unaffected sublimity of the Hebrew. In the one all is shadowy, murky magnificence; in the other all is clear, inspiring effulgence; the one appals, the other elevates.

If the admirers of poetry can really read with rapture the writings of Lord Byron, simply on account of the rare beauties with which they abound, there surely seems no just reason why such readers should not find equal-nay far higher gratification in the poetry of the Bible. The study of the latter moreover, beyond the gratification afforded by the poetic treasures with which it is so abundantly and so richly stored, would certainly lead to the acquisition of much more spiritual wisdom than the study of the former. Take the poetry of the Hebrew Scriptures where you will, it incomparably surpasses that of any uninspired production, though that poetry, notwithstanding the inspiration of its subject, is the sole production of human genius; the medium through which divine revelation is communicated to the mass of mankind is human, the revelation only is divine. The prophecies are transmitted to us in the language of the prophets who uttered them; the poetry in which they are clothed is exclusively their own. I shall have more to say on this subject in a future page.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Herder's version of the Thanksgiving Ode.

HERDER has some very interesting remarks upon the thanksgiving ode of Moses, and these, together with his translation, I shall give without further preface.

"The passage of the Red Sea," he says, "produced the most ancient and sonorous song of triumph which we have in this language. It is a choral ode, one voice describing perhaps the acts themselves, those of the chorus striking in, and, as it were, re-echoing the sentiment. Its structure is simple, full of alliteration and rhyme, which I could not give in our language without doing violence to it, for the Hebrew, from the simplicity of its forms, is full of such harmonious correspondencies of sound. Flowing and prolonged words, but few in number, float upon the air, and terminate for the most part in an obscure monosyllabic sound, that formed perhaps the burden of the chorus. Here is a feeble imitation of the untranslatable but most ancient triumphal ode in any language.

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Song of Moses at the Red Sea.*

Then sang Moses and the children of Israel

This song unto the Lord,

And they spake, saying,

I will sing unto the Lord,

For he hath triumphed gloriously;

The horse and his rider hath he thrown

Into the depths of the sea.

The Lord is my strength and my song,

He is become my salvation.

He is my God and I will praise him,

My father's God and I will exalt him.
Jehovah is a man of war,

Jehovah is his name.

Pharoah's chariots and his host

Hath he cast into the sea,

The choicest of his captains

Are sunk in the reedy sea.

The floods have covered them,
They sank into the depths

Like a stone.

Thy right hand, O Jehovah,

Hath shown itself glorious in majesty.

Thy right hand, O Jehovah,

Hath dashed in pieces the enemy.

By thine exalted power

Thou dashest those that rise against thee.

Thou sentest forth thy wrath,

It consumed them like stubble.

At the blast of thy nostrils

The waters were gathered together.

The swelling flood stood up like heaps,
The waves were congealed

In the depths of the sea.

The enemy said, I will pursue,

Will seize, will divide the spoil;
My soul shall glut itself with them;
My sword will I draw out
And utterly destroy them.

Then breathed thy wind,

The sea covered them,
They sank as lead

In the mighty waters.

Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, vol. 2, page 65.

Who is like to thee, O Lord!
Who, among the gods?

Who is like thee glorious in holiness,
Fearful in praises, doing wonders!
Thou stretchedst out thy hand,
The earth swallowed them up.
With gentle hand thou leddest forth

The people which thou hadst redeemed.
Thou guidest them with strength

Unto thy holy habitation.

The nations hear thereof and tremble,
Grief seizes on the dwellers in Philistia,
The princes of Edom are amazed,
The heroes of Moab are seized with dread,
The dwellers in Canaan are melting away.
Let fear and dread fall upon them,

The terrors of death from thy mighty arm.

Let them be motionless as a stone

Till thy people, O Lord, pass over,

Till thy people pass, whom thou hast redeemed.

Bring them in, O Lord,

Plant thy people

Upon the mount of thine inheritance,

The place of thy habitation

Which thou hast made ready for thyself,

The sanctuary which thy hands have made.
Jehovah reigns for ever and ever.

"The song perhaps terminated here, and the following was only a brief recapitulation of the

contents.

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Forth marched the horse of Pharoah and his chariots,

He went with his horsemen down into the sea.

Then brought Jehovah upon them

The returning waves of the sea.
The tribes of Israel passed dry

Through the midst of the sea.

So that these lines were a sort of brief memorial, such as every one might retain in memory, concerning the whole event. If passages occur in this song such as we should suppose could not yet have been sung there, let it be borne in mind that the temple, the sanctuary,

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