428 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874- 



in the Old Testament the noblest poetry of nature and the 

 loftiest spiritual conceptions are linked together in an 

 indissoluble bond, and that universality of poetic sym 

 pathy from which nothing in nature is estranged is 

 realised only when creation in all its plenitude and in all 

 its changefulness appears as the direct expression of the 

 will of the ever-present King and Saviour of Israel. 



We find in the Old Testament a series of Psalms in 

 which natural scenes are so depicted that they yield up 

 their spiritual meaning, and appear as witnesses to the 

 existence and attributes of Jehovah. 1 A comparison of 

 these hymns with the treatment of similar themes by 

 Western writers is sufficiently characteristic of the Hebrew 

 genius. The Western poet, or even a W 7 estern prose 

 writer on natural theology, will not fail to begin by setting 

 before him the scene in its objectivity, reproducing the 

 natural features of his subject by pictorial description 

 before proceeding to draw a religious inference or lesson. 

 But the Hebrew needs no process of inference to set 

 Jehovah before him as the prime mover in all he sees. He 

 needs no argument a fortiori to rise from the glory of the 

 creature to the supreme majesty of the Creator. The 

 spiritual meaning of the scene so fills his soul, so inter 

 penetrates all that he beholds, that he is never able to 

 linger on the production of a finished picture, or to rest on 

 the natural scene as in itself the adequate object of poetic 

 contemplation. His first word is praise to Jehovah, with 

 which his soul is overflowing, and every feature of his 

 description, instinct with the same emotion, looms through 

 a mist of religious awe, love, and fervour, and attains 

 harmony only in this subjective and unplastic medium. 

 Let the reader take up Psalm civ., and observe how no 

 part of nature is able to detain the poet. He hurries from 

 point to point, with the restless eagerness of a man who 

 only seeks in the objects around him food for an engrossing 



1 Among the more notable of these are Psa. viii., the first part of 

 xix., xxix., Ixv., civ. 



