406 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [iS 74 - 



the living forces which moved the poet s soul. To enjoy 

 a poem is to share the emotion that inspired its author. 



&quot; If the rules of art are true they flow from the nature 

 of the feeling with which the subject of the song is em 

 braced by the poet s heart ; but characteristics of the 

 singer, the situation, the language, always combine to 

 wards the effect. The application of the rules then must 

 always be a living application, and so always partial ; in 

 brief, where they are true, who will not rather feel and 

 develop them afresh for himself in each song, than borrow 

 them from foreign models ? . . . Let the lays of the 

 Hebrews be examined in their primitive nature and 

 beauty ; let the teacher show the scholar what subject is 

 sung, and with what interest, what emotion dominates 

 the song, how it moves, into what veins of feeling it 

 expands, how it begins, proceeds, and ends.&quot; 



Herder was deeply impressed with the conviction that 

 this method of looking at the Old Testament was nothing 

 less than the rediscovery of a lost literature, which all the 

 commentators had only buried deeper in the dust of ages. 

 Away with all practical application to modern times ! 

 Let us see this primeval age, and in it the heart and mind 

 of David and his poets. 1 



The historico-psychological criticism which Herder so 

 warmly advocated no longer needs to be recommended in 

 opposition to the old method of dinning the poet s beauties 

 into the reader s ears ; but there are still many who are but 

 half convinced that its application to the sacred record can 

 be otherwise than profane. Yet it is obvious that he who 

 represents Scripture as speaking from the heart and to the 

 heart, has returned in a cardinal point to the genuine 

 Reformation conception which Protestant theology had 

 almost forgotten ; and that the theologian who is not 

 prepared to assert that the Bible has no human side .at all, 

 can exempt no element of the Psalmist s productivity 

 from the laws of psychology and history, unless on the 

 condition that in return another element shall be with 

 drawn from the sphere of inspiration. 



1 II. 2, ix. Vol. ii. p. 237. 



