tial on the world's destiny than Caesar's, epic poetry,
lyrics, and a sublime drama. The Bible is not a book, but a library;
not a literary effort, but a literature. It sums up the literature of
the Hebrew race, aside from which that race produced nothing literary
worthy of perpetuation. One lofty theme stung them to genius, their
mission and literature converging in Christ and there ending. The
Bible as literature marks the book as unique as a literary fact as it
is as a religious fact; in either, standing solitary. That lovers of
literature have passed these surprising literary merits by with
comparative inattention is attributable, doubtless, to the
over-shadowing moral majesty of the volume. The larger obscured the
lesser glory. But, after all, can we feel other than shame in
recalling how our college curricula contain the masterpieces of Greek,
Latin, English, and German literature, and find no niche for the Bible,
superior to all in moral elevation and literary charm and inspiration?
"Ruth" is easily the superior of "Paul and Virginia" or "Vicar of
Wakefield." "Lamentations" is as noble an elegy as sorrow has set to
words; the Gospels are not surpassed by Boswell's "Johnson" in power of
recreating the subject of the biography; the Psalms sing themselves
without aid of harp or organ; "The Acts" is a history taking rank with
Thucydides; and Job is the sublimest drama ever penned. If these
encomiums are high, they must not be deemed extravagant, rather the
necessary eulogy of truth.

What are the sublimest poems of universal literature? Let this stand
as a tentative reply: Aeschylus's "Prometheus Bound," Dante's "Divine
Comedy," Shakespeare's "Hamlet," Milton's "Paradise Lost," and Job,
author unknown. To rank as a sublime production, theme and treatment
must both be sublime, and the poem must be of dignified length.
Prometheus has a Titan for subject; has magnanimity for occasion; has
suffering, on account of his philanthropy, as tragic element; and the
barren crags of Caucasus as theater; and the style is the loftiest of
Aeschylus, sublimest of Greek dramatists. Perhaps "Oedipus Coloneus"
is nearest approach among Greek tragedies to the elevation of
"Prometheus Bound," and Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound" has much of the
Greek sublimity and more than the Greek frigidity. Dante is nearest
neighbor to Aeschylus, though fifteen hundred years removed, and the
"Divine Comedy" has all elements of sublimity. T