Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/55

 compass of these nine verses the celestial and the terrestrial systems, and the human economy are not only poetically set forth; but they are truly reported of, as the three stand related to Religious Belief, and to Religious Feeling. Grant it, that when David the Poet brings into conjunction "the moon and the stars," he thought of them, as to their respective bulks and importance, not according to the teaching of Galileo; and yet, notwithstanding this misconception, which itself has no bearing whatever upon his function as an inspired writer, he so writes concerning the Universe—material and immaterial, as none but Hebrew prophets have ever written of either. What are the facts? The astronomies of Oriental sages and of Grecian philosophers are well-nigh forgotten; but David's astronomy lives, and it will ever live; for it is true to all eternity.

A sample of another kind is presented in the Fiftieth Psalm. This Ode, sublime in its imagery and its scenic breadth of conception, is a canon of the relationship of men, as the professed worshippers of God, toward Him who spurns from His altar the hypocrite and the profligate and the malignant, but invites the sincere and the humble to His presence, on terms of favour. This Psalm is sternly moral in its tone:—it is anti-ritualistic—if rites are thought of as substitutes for virtue; and moreover, by the singularity of its phrases in three instances, it makes its way with anatomic keenness through the surface to the conscience of those who are easily content with