the psalms indited by these priests and singers of long ago reveal a depth of feeling, a consciousness of sin, and a burning desire for forgiveness, that place them side by side with the noblest productions of the ancient Hebrew Muse and the religious writings of the prophets. It is, therefore, evident that the psalmists and prophets of the Bible do not stand altogether alone as the unique product of a single branch of the Semitic family. They and their work were part and parcel of the great Semitic tradition, under the ban of which stood the whole of Western Asia from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea.
And yet Hebrew poetry has certain characteristics which single it out for special comment. It is the form in which a good deal of our Bible has been written, and in this manner it has acquired for us a peculiar meaning and significance. To write poetry, religious or secular, never became the prerogative of a single class; priests, prophets, and laymen all made use of it to express their inmost feelings. Nor has it ever lost the freshness of its source during the long vista of years that stretches from the earliest writings to be found in the Bible down to the present day. Like those whose thoughts its words expressed, it has suffered the contact of all the forces to which they have been exposed and in which they have been molded successively. Yet, it has remained substantially the same. At first, it is the naïve and untrammeled expression of a semi-agricultural people, with its songs of the well, its rough poems of victory, its laments over fallen heroes, its Jove-songs put into the mouth of an idealized king. Tn the service of Faith, it is enthroned in hymns for public service or for private use, in adorations, prayers, and supplications. It takes the message of the human heart in all its manifold changes and wings them heavenward. It bespeaks the sorrow of the sin-laden individual or of the community bowed down in public grief. During the Middle Ages it comes under the influence of its Arabic peers. It adopts the whole outward
