TOWNSEND PRIZE ESSAY.

The Leaven of the Gospel in the Poetry of Christian

Nations.

BY MARTIN SMYSER EICHELBERGER, YORK, PA.

POETRY is the expression of the various feelings, sympathies, and passions, which constitute the inner life of man. In proportion as this inner life, this microcsom, is enlarged, deepened, and purified, so poetry will receive corresponding changes.

The ancients were not destitute of the inner life; but the influences which were exerted upon it were not of the same intensity as those of our own day. The supernatural world was an unknown one to them, and they were deprived of all the material for reflection and feeling, and all the inspiration to action which its discovery has given to us. The Phenomena of the external world inspired the ancient poet: the deep mysteries of his Religion possess and animate the mind of the Christian poet. The external symptoms of strong emotion, of intense suffering, furnished themes for the heathen: the profound truths of his own soul have been revealed to the Christian.

Hence the poetry of Christian nations in the amount, the depth, and the richness of its material, and the preciousness of its results, incomparably surpasses its predecessor. And the agent which has been working in this department of literature-as it has been working in all departments, and in all human concerns-is the Christian Religion. It has revolutionized poetry; it has taken away its formalism and deadness, and given to it warmth, life, and a heart to move all human hearts.

The truths of Religion which have penetrated the soul of poetry are not of any great number; but in the arena they have opened, and the impulse they have given to it, their influence is immeasurable. Like the rod which smote the rock in Horeb, they touched the soul of man, and the streams of living waters started, which will satisfy the nations while this earth shall last. The great deep fountains beneath had been lying quiet for ages, until at length God's own minister awoke them, and they commenced to flow. The study of human life, that obscure and tangled plot, without the light of a divine revelation, might throw into ancient thought a shade of bitter doubt, or of mournful unrest; but it could never exalt and

spiritualize its operations, nor open to it those awful depths, and those high and glorious hopes, which we receive with trembling joy. Nature, that ambiguous oracle, speaking truly only to the knowing heart, and who, at the best, but

-"half reveals

And half conceals the soul within,"

with all her coquetry, could win nothing more than those lighter emotions which are but transient surface thoughts.

But when the sunlight of revelation beams upon us, exposing Nature, beautiful as she is, as the mere "shadow of things to come," and unfolding God's glorious plan in the universe, and all the wonders of his wisdom, love, and noliness,-a new and illimitable sphere is thrown open to human knowledge and reflection.

The very value of the gift, however, has imposed an additional burden on the recipients. For with the increased richness of thought the difficulty of expression increases. And this will ever constitute a difference between Modern and Ancient poetry. A close correspondence between the form and the substance was desirable, and could be obtained by the ancients; for their truths, their ideas, coming originally from without, and never entirely losing their sensuous, earthly nature, could be embodied in words with almost the same ease as the external objects from which they sprang. But the moderns have received "the unspeakable gift," and how can they do more than clothe in outline the truths which it reveals-the subtile thoughts of the brain, the secret workings of the heart, and the heaven-high aspirations of the soul !

The mind is baffled when it attempts to draw sharp lines of distinction between the agencies of the different truths of the Bible; for they are so connected with each other, working for, and with, and in each other, that their offices and results seem not distinct, but one and the same. But a comparison of Ancient with Modern poetry reveals not only the entire transformation which the art has undergone, but peculiarities also, which seem but the forms which gospel truths, penetrating the heart of poetry, have taken upon themselves. These are the leaven which leaveneth the Poetry of Christian Nations.

Five truths appear in this manner in Christian poetry-The Immortality of the Soul, The Moral Government of the Universe, The Law of Love, The Character of Jesus, The Spiritual Element.

The Immortality of the Soul manifests its presence in a spirit of cheerfulnes, and dignity-in profundity, and in energy.

The modern reader is touched by the manner in which the ancients met the problem of the future life. It stood before them like their own Sphynx, fastening its sad, earnest eyes upon them, yet presenting no clue, no fact, by which the painful mystery might be solved. They hoped, they argued, they feared, they despaired; but there it still stood, quiet, passionless, and immovable; and they must still go on, groping blindly in the dark. The first emotion, therefore, which arose when this dread uncertainty and gloom were removed, was a feeling of relief, of cheerfulness. It is the universal feeling in poetry-the rejoicing of the Spirit freed from the thraldom of sense. Life may now be the saddest, stormiest struggle with adversity and sorrow, but, there, high above all, is that promise of an eternal life, dissolving into thinest, fleeting vapors, the cares that enshroud the present. Even in Dante, on whose mind the idea of the life-long struggle between good and evil had taken such a sharp, agonizing hold, there shines through all the gloom the proud, exulting consciousness of that final state, "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.”

How the narrow things of earth shrink into nothingness before this feeling. The soul is lifted high above them all. They shall all pass away; the earth itself shall pass away; and man, with his ten thousand cares and anxieties, shall be swept from the face of it; but the Soul, like God's own truth, shall abide for ever and ever. Mysterious thoughts are born. The " deep things" of life unfold themselves, and life itself seems a higher, holier, awfuller thing. Hence profundity. The soul stands at the threshold of the supernatural world. Trains of thought arise, which never appeared before, and from which it shrinks at first.

But they are thoughts

They

-"that wake

To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy

Can utterly abolish or destroy!"

"Force their way without the will,"

and demand an audience. They give the mind no rest, until under the impulse of their resistless activity, it starts out on its new career with the energy they have communicated to it, and with powers rapidly developing under the influence of the work.

The next great truth in Christian Poetry is the Moral Government of the Universe, appearing in the idea of the discipline of this life, and of a righteous God. Milton speaks of the Ancient Tragedians as teachers

"Of fate, and chance, and change in human life,
High actions and high passions best describing,"

and in these two lines gives the result of ancient thought on the subject of human life. All the reflection of the ancient poets on the strange contrarities in human fortunes, on the prosperity and adversity of virtue and vice, revealed to them no higher law than "fate, and chance, and change." Many of them, therefore, made no attempt to reconcile the apparent contradictions in human existence, but contented themselves with simply portraying, in vivid colors, strong passions and emotions. In Aeschylus may be noticed an attempt to solve “the riddle of the painful earth," and to deduce order and system from the confused clements around him, but his attempt did little more than cast a shade of deeper gloom over his writings, leaving the great problem still unsolved.

The true answer is in the revelation of the Moral Government of the Universe. In the light of this truth the inconsistencies of life are reduced to order and system, in their subserviency to God's high and holy plans. The sufferings of life are no longer the unaccountable decrees of a blind and hateful destiny, nor the capricious acts of changeful fortune, but they are for a high moral purpose, for a discipline for all eternity. The gentle spirit of Desdemona breathes its last, unavenged on this earth of its grievous wrongs, while the "damn'd Iago's" successful intrigue ruins all its victims; but the very sufferings of Desdemona work out for her a recompense greater than earth can give, and the temporary success of Iago is the surest guarantee of the fearful reckoning yet to come. But the explanation of life's fortunes is not the highest work of this truth. Inseparable from it is the revelation of the righteous God who is the moral Governor of the Universe, who is not the subject of like passions with ourselves, but is himself the representative of highest benevolence, justice and wisdom. It is this truth which has given clearness and distinctness to the imperfect teachings of nature. It marks

out the broad line dividing sin from holiness, and discloses the eternal antagonism between them. It gives us an infallible standard of right, by which all men are judged, and toward which all virtues tend. Of this the ancients were destitute.

They could not obtain it from their religion, for their Gods were the personifications not only of human virtues, but of the foulest human vices. They could not obtain it from within, for evil had drawn its fatal folds around every idea of good in their souls.

Hence ancient poetry has no complete characters. The moral ignorance of the poet forced painful weakness or open vice into incongruous association with the noblest virtue. And the same ignorance prevented them from drawing the high moral lessons from the working of the human passions which it has become the mission of modern poetry to teach. In the light of this revelation the poet holds up for our admiration the lovely character of a Desdemona or Cordelia and teaches us to emulate their virtues, to shun the fatal weakness of a Macbeth, and detest the utter depravity of an Iago. He shows the lofty virtues on which the characters of the former are grounded, and lays bare to our gaze the moral deficiencies which led to Macbeth's easy fall.

A remarkable characteristic of Pagan Poetry is the utter absence of any acknowledgment of humanity. There is no love to man as man. The characters of the ancient drama are unnatural from their cold selfishness. Their perfection is the dead perfection of a statue rather than the warmth of a living man. The Christian religion is a religion of love. Love to God and love to man are the letter and spirit of its teachings. Love to God is the highest form of worship; for "perfect love casteth out fear." Love to man is the natural result, and it is another form of worship

"He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all."

In the "new commandment" was first asserted the dignity of man, and the brotherhood of the race; and this has made Christian Poetry a thing for all men, a common inheritance.

The poetry of humanity! It is dearer to every human heart than the grandest epics of ancient days. Burns was the first to give full expression to its spirit. In the extremest poverty he found the worth and nobleness which are dear to all.