that we are not invited to contemplate these as admirers simply of nature's grandeur, but for a definite religious end and purpose. And while there are some magnificent descriptions of individual objects, of the horse, for example, and the eagle in the 39th chapter, and of the crocodile in the 41st, there is no loving description of an object nor of a landscape for its own sake. There is no passionate contemplation of a scene from the mere aesthetic pleasure of beholding it, and the purpose of the writing is to overawe rather than to awaken the love of the beautiful. It is the wisdom and power, and the mystery of the ways of God as revealed in nature, and not nature's beauty or grandeur in itself that is set before us. We are brought face to face with the sublime; and we are made to feel that the writer must have been familiar with the emotion which he makes us realize. We may have been left in uncertainty by the remnants of their art whether it was known to the Egyptians and Assyrians, but we can hardly doubt that it was known to the author of Job. And yet we are not to lose sight of the possible, the likely differences between the feelings with which we read the book nowadays and the feelings with which it was listened to or produced at first. We should not forget that we go to it in the fulness of the nineteenth century, and that we may be able to see a meaning and a grandeur in it which it had not to its author or to those who first received it. We should not forget that there has been a development of sentiment and emotion with the growth of the ages and the world's life. But whatever may be the difference between the feelings with which we read it nowadays in our devouter moods and those with which it was spoken or read in ancient times, there can be no question about the sublimity to us to-day of the language of Hebrew bards and prophets. From Longinus, who noted the sublimity of the saying, "Let there be light, and there was light," men of the most diverse opinions theologically and philosophically have been unanimous as to that. "God is the Creator of the universe. This," says Hegel, “is the purest expression of sublimity." And he quotes from the 104th and 90th Psalms as "classic examples of genuine sublimity." Principal Shairp calls the same 104th Psalm the "crowning hymn of the visible creation," and he declares that it 'presents, as has often been remarked, a picture of the entire universe, which for completeness, for breadth, and for grandeur, is unequalled in any other literature.”2 And Grant Allen believes that "there is more true sublimity in half a dozen Psalms or four chapters of Job than in all the odes of Pindar and all the tragedies of Aeschylus." And these testimonies are so far true; but they are incomplete, as they convey to us no idea of the extent to which the sublime is characteristic of the Old Testament Scriptures, when read in the light of our present experience, and especially when read in an evangelical spirit and from the point of view of the older criticism and of orthodox theology. There is sublimity to most of us in the lives of Abraham, and Moses, and Elijah; in the song of Moses and his people over their delivery from the Egyptians, in the song of Hannah, and in the prayer of Solomon at the dedication of the temple, as well as in the first chapter of Genesis and the Book of Job; in Psalms 8, 19, 23, 33, 34, 36, 102, 103, 139, 145, and 147, as well as in the 1 Aesthetik, vol. i. 2 The Poetic Interpretation of Nature, pp. 126-7. 3"The Origin of the Sublime," Mind, July, 1878. OLD TESTAMENT INFLUENCE. 31 90th and 104th; in the lives and declarations of the prophets, and in the whole Old Testament conception of the history of the children of Israel, as cared for and guided by God. It is found in short sayings and phrases as well as in whole chapters and books, in sayings and phrases like these-" Let there be light, and there was light," "They sank as lead in the mighty waters," "The breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it"; and, in fact, we might about as well try to take the blue from the sky for exhibition as to extract from them by quotation their sublimity from the Old Testament Scriptures. It is bound up in them by conception from beginning to end and throughout, and their last declaration is as sublime as their first. But it is not in its direct contribution to the expression of the sublime that the value of the Old Testament in the historic development of aesthetic perception and pleasure is mainly to be sought. It is rather in its educative influence through the ages, in its tendency to stimulate the whole intellectual and spiritual nature of man and lead him to larger liberty, and so to truer observation, through its great fundamental religious conceptions. Let a man who has arrived at the conception of God as in sympathy with him and caring for him as a friend (and such a conception we may say was involved in the revelation of God as Jehovah),-let such an one but grasp and take home to himself the first statement of the Old Testament in its wide significance and spiritual import, and he will be comparatively free from the superstitious fears of demons which oppressed the old Egyptians, Babylonians, and Assyrians, and all primitive peoples as well as those of the Middle Ages, and he will feel himself at liberty, nay, called upon by all that is in him as a religious being, to take note of and admire the works of God around him, and not only of the works, but of the ways of God in nature; for, in the idea of Psalmists and Prophets, God was not away from His works, as if, after a momentary exertion of His power in creation, He had again withdrawn into an abstract infinitude, or was pleased with only contemplating His works at a distance. He is represented as in them and as revealing Himself by them for ever in creation. "The heavens declare the glory of God, And night unto night sheweth knowledge." He clothes Himself "with light His voice is upon the waters; everything saith, Glory." (Psalm xix. 1-2.) as with a garment"; "and in His "and in His temple "Thou makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to rejoice. Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it; Thou greatly enrichest it; The river of God is full of water: Thou providest them corn, when Thou hast so prepared the earth. Thou waterest her furrows abundantly; Thou settlest the ridges thereof: Thou makest it soft with showers; Thou blessest the springing thereof. Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; And thy paths drop fatness. They drop upon the pastures of the wilderness: And the hills are girded with joy. The pastures are clothed with flocks; The valleys also are covered over with corn; They shout for joy, they also sing." (Psalm lxv. 8-13.) INCITEMENT TO STUDY OF NATURE. 333 The world was thus thought of as a continuous revelation. Thou doest it; Thou doest now. "By His strength He setteth fast the mountains, He stilleth the roaring of the seas, the roaring of the waves, and the tumult of the peoples." And what God has made and reveals Himself by it is for man to take note of and admire; and there is something wrong, something blameworthy, in the man who, with all his faculties about him, does not stand in wonder and in awe of the works of His hands. "Because they regard not the works of the Lord, nor the operations of His hands, He shall break them down and not build them up." And so there is a direct encouragement and incitement to study the world as a thing of beauty, and marvellous in its construction; and where there is the deepest feeling of the presence of God and the divinity of the earth, there will be, other things being equal, the most passionate love of all that is beautiful in nature and the deepest pleasure in the lonely hills, for when with them we are not away from the source of life, but in living communion with Him, "in whom, and through whom, and to whom, are all things." It is to be observed, and it needs to be emphasized, that the thought of the presence of God did not in any way depress the ancient Hebrews or dispose them to gloom or fear, and so deprive them for the time of mental freedom and elasticity. On the contrary, it filled them with joy-a great joy-and gladness, and disposed them to praise to music and the dance and the adoption of every means within their power for the demonstration of joy. Even the idea of His coming in judgment gave exultation. "Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice, C |