Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Book of Job: A Rhythmical Version With Introduction and Annotations
Poetry and music came from the same God as religion itself, and are intended for the same holy end. They are the handmaids of religion, and the wings of devotion. Nothing can be more preposterous than to assume or establish an antagonism between them. The abuse can never set aside the right use. The best gifts of God are liable to the worst abuse. Some have the fals'e notion that poetry is necessarily fictitious and antagonistic to truth. But poetry is the fittest expression of truth, its Sabbath dress, the silver picture of the golden apple, the ideal embodied in and shining through the real. Let those, says Lowth,1' who affect to despise the Muses, cease to attempt, for the vices of a few, who may abuse the best of things, to bring into disrepute a most laudable talent. Let them cease to speak of that art as light and tri?ing in itself, to accuse it as profane or impious; that art which has been conceded to man by the favor of his Creator, and for the most sacred purposes that art, consecrated by the authority of God Himself, and by His example in His most august minis trations. Dean Stanley says i There has always been in certain minds 8. Repugnance to poetry, as inconsistent with the gravity of religious feeling. It has been sometimes thought that to speak of a book of the Bible as poetical, is a disparagement of it. It has been in many Churches thought that the more scholastic, dry, and prosaic the forms in which reli gious doctrine is thrown, the more faithfully is its substance represented. Of all human compositions, the most removed from poetry are the Decrees and Articles of Faith, in which the belief of Christendom has often been enshrined as in a sanctuary� To such sentiments the towering greatness of David, the acknowledged preeminence of the Psalter are constant rebukes. David, beyond king, soldier, or prophet, was the sweet singer of Israel. Had Ra phael painted a picture of Hebrew as of European Poetry, David would have sate aloft at the summit of the Hebrew Parnassus, the Homer of J ewish song.
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