Of these questions some, however they be answered, so little affect our
estimates of the Prophet and his teaching that we may leave them alone.
But there are at least four of them on the answers to which does depend
the accurate measure of the stature of Jeremiah as a man and a prophet, of
the extent and variety of his gifts and interests, of the simplicity or
complexity of his temperament, and of his growth, and of his teaching
through his long ministry of over forty years.

These four questions are

(1) The authenticity of the account of his call in Ch. I.

(2) The authenticity of the account of his support of the
promulgation of Deuteronomy, the Old Covenant, in Ch. XI.

(3) The authenticity of his Oracle on the New Covenant in Ch.
XXXI.

(4) And an even larger question--Whether indeed any of the prose
Oracles attributed to him in the Book are his, or whether we must
confine ourselves to the passages in verse as alone his genuine
deliverances?

The first three of these questions we may leave for discussion to their
proper places in our survey of his ministry. The fourth is even more
fundamental to our judgment both of the Book and of the Man; and I shall
deal with it in the introduction to the next lecture on "The Poet
Jeremiah."

Lecture II.

THE POET.

From last lecture I left over to this the discussion of a literary
question, the answer to which is fundamental to our understanding both of
the Book and of the Man, but especially of the Man.

The Book of Jeremiah has come to us with all its contents laid down as
prose, with no metrical nor musical punctuation; not divided into
_stichoi_ or poetical lines nor marked off into stanzas or strophes. Yet
many passages read as metrically, and are as musical in sound, and in
spirit as poetic as the Psalms, the Canticles, or the Lamentations. Their
language bears the marks that usually distinguish verse from prose in
Hebrew as in other literatures. It beats out with a more or less regular
proportion of stresses or heavy accents. It diverts into an order of words
different from the order normal in prose. Sometimes it is elliptic,
sometimes it contains particles unnecessary to the meaning--both signs of
an attempt at metre. Though almost constantly unrhymed, it carries
alliteration and assonance to a degree beyond what is usual in prose, and
prefers forms of words more son