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and of the youthful Daniel judging the two elders. In the next sentence we have a hint of Moses' miracle in Horeb (Exodus xvii.), and in the passage, "Great seas have dried," etc., reference is made to the children of Israel passing through the Red Sea, when the power by which such miracles were wrought was denied by "the greatest," evidently alluding in this case to Pharaoh.

But, although such numerous allusions undeniably prove a most intimate and ready acquaintance with the Bible, it is not the literal evidence these afford, so much as the general tone and morality of the works of Shakspeare that reveal the eminently scriptural tendency of his genius. The letter in many cases yields but a doubtful testimony. Shakspeare himself tells us that even "the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose," and it is not so much in these verbal proofs, as in the purely scriptural character of his exalted philosophy that the most conclusive evidence of this distinguishing tendency is shown. Outside the Scriptures themselves there is no more eloquent exponent of divine truth than he ; and so comprehensive is the range of his intelligence in this specialty of his many-sided power, that there is scarcely a valuable truth in the wide field of moral philosophy the Scriptures unfold, he has not wielded with the overwhelming power which genius only can, and illustrated with that colossal breadth of utterance which is his, and his alone.

One of the greatest attractions in the biblical tone of his philosophy, arises from its being so eminently characterized by those influences which flow more im

mediately from Christian sources, and from the fact of its never sinking to the dead level of that respectable pagan morality which constituted the greater part of the philosophy of his classical times, and, unfortunately, still continues to hold its place in a great deal of the morality, and more especially of the preached morality of our own. In our own day, however, it is unquestionably exhibiting symptoms of a steady decline. The regular trade article in morality has not the ready market it once had, and is not listened to with anything like the same degree of patience. The dispensers of these "beggarly elements" of philosophy have almost had their day; the age has out-grown them, and exhibits a daily increasing impatience of their distressing unfitness. Perhaps they will not be much longer wanted. In these times of miraculous mechanical contrivance, I live in daily expectation that some moral Babbage will invent a machine, something of the nature of the calculating hand-organ of his name, which, with every revolution, shall evolve these respectable old truisms, with a corollary of appropriate reflections to each, so many in the minute, that will effectually supersede the flesh and blood apparatus now in use for that purpose. Such an invention would not only save the conscientious hearer that harassing irritation that arises between the duty of listening and the difficulty of listening to any profit, but it would save the speaker also the moral twinge that, in every honest man, must accompany the heartless reiteration of such barren twaddle.

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But to return to our subject: it is impossible to find any of this ready-made article in Shakspeare. You never detect his morality arranged in graceful folds about him for purposes of exhibition; far less in any case in the shape of mere literary padding. As you read you feel that it is in the blood and bone; that his philosophy and he have indeed "grown together," and that their parting would be "a tortured body."

The peculiarly Christian spirit I have referred to as leavening his whole philosophy is everywhere observable in the fondness with which, through the medium of his nobler characters, he produces in endless change of argument and imagery, illustrations of that wisdom which is "first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated." In his allusions to the Almighty, he delights in those attributes that more particularly represent him in the character of his New Testament title of of "The God of Peace;" and between man and man would rather inculcate the humanizing doctrine of forgiveness, and recommend the "quality of mercy," than the rugged justice of the "eye for eye and tooth for tooth" morality of the first dispensation. With what tenderness, and yet with what power he advocates, in innumerable passages, those virtues which more immediately grow from the seed sown in the Christian revelation; of that gentle spirit that "seeketh not her own."

"That hath a tear for pity, and a hand
Open as day for melting charity."

Of Forgiveness: the forgiveness that, carrying the fifth

Of Kindness,

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nobler ever

petition of the Lord's Prayer in its heart, can say, "I pardon him, as God shall pardon me." "the cool and temperate wind of grace," than revenge ;" Kindness, that to help another in adversity

“Will strain a little,

For 'tis a bond in men."

Of Forbearance, that teaches "To revenge is no valour but to bear ;" and that

"The rarer action is

In virtue than in vengeance."

Of Charity ("an attribute to God himself"), that droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, upon the place beneath." Of Peace, that "draws the sweet infant breath of gentle sleep; " not the peace, however, of inaction; not the maudlin peace at any price of the half-hearted and timid, for he teaches also that,

"Rightly to be great

Is greatly to find quarrel in a straw,

When honour's at the stake;"

but that self-restraining, self-denying, self-victorious peace; that peace which

"Is of the nature of a conquest;

For then both parties nobly are subdued,
And neither party loser."

*

Of Pity "that's a degree to love." Of Compassion

*Relation.

that hates "the cruelty that loads a falling man," and tells us

""Tis not enough to help the feeble up,
But to support him after."

And again, of the duty of charitable judging, a duty so emphatically prominent in New Testament morality, where can we find a more pointed and more powerfully beautiful rendering of the text "Judge not lest ye be judged," than in the following passage from "Measure for Measure"-words that might arrest an unkind speech on the very lips, sending it back "as deep as to the lungs."

"How would you be,

If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are? O, think on that,
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made."

On the other hand, there is scarcely a vice he has not helped to make more repugnant, and which he has not gibbeted in its turn. On this side of the question he utters no uncertain sound, nor ever incurs the woe the prophet threatens "unto them that call evil good and good evil.” For although possessing above all men the power to " season with a gratious voice," he never uses it to "obscure the show of evil," but with a rhetoric that gives no quarter, and that in some cases would be inexcusably coarse, except upon the plea of his own proverb, that "diseases desperate grown" are only to be remedied by "desperate appliance," he attacks the enemy with the zeal of a reformer. With a matter of fact liter

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