A Cyclopædia of Sacred Poetical Quotations / Consisting of Choice Passages from the Sacred Poetry of All Ages and Countries, Classified and Arranged, for Facility of Reference, Under Subject Headings; Illustrated by Striking Passages from Scripture, and Forming Altogether a Complete Book of Devotional Poetry.

by Unknown

PREFACE.

The favour with which our former compilation—the “Cyclopædia of Poetical Quotations”—was received, and the numerous calls which we had for an extension of the plan of that work, induced us to determine on the issue of this companion volume, which, although exactly similar in size and price, and method of arrangement, yet possesses a decidedly distinctive feature in the sacred character of all the pieces included. We have endeavoured to make it one of the most complete collections of Religious Poetry ever offered to the public; and cannot doubt that, as such, it will be acceptable to a very large class of readers. As the matter in this volume had to be arranged under a far less number of distinct headings than that of the work above named, there was space for the introduction of longer pieces, and thus many of the most beautiful specimens of devotional poetry, which are to be found in the literature of this and other nations, are given with little or no curtailment. Although there is much poetry of a religious character scattered through the former volume, yet—inasmuch as it is presumed that most persons who possess the one will also desire to have the other—none of the pieces which may there be found are admitted into this compilation, except in some cases where it was felt that by re-uniting the portions there arranged under several headings, so complete and beautiful a whole could be presented, that its insertion here was almost rendered necessary.

As we wished to make our volume entirely unsectarian in its character, we have endeavoured to avoid the insertion of poems which involve merely doctrinal points. Those grand truths and principles of Christianity on which all denominations of the Saviour’s professed followers are agreed, offered ample scope for poetic illustration; and happily we could, alike from the pages of a Milton, a Watts, a Doddridge, a Wesley, a Montgomery, and a Keble, find plenty of matter for our purpose, without entering at all upon the thorny paths of controversy. The introduction of Scripture quotations at the head of each subject will, we apprehend, be considered a useful feature of our compilation. As might be expected, the noblest poetry that ever was written is to be found in the inspired volume, and those passages which we have selected therefrom, as specimens of poetic composition alone, will, we apprehend, be considered the true gems of the collection.

While we are upon the subject of Scripture quotations, we may perhaps be allowed to place before our readers a fine passage from Gilfillan’s “Bards of the Bible,” in reference thereto:—

“The charm which Scripture quotation adds to writing, let those tell who have read Milton, Bunyan, Burke, Foster, Southey, Croly, Carlyle, Macaulay, yea, and even Byron, all of whom have sown their pages with this ‘orient pearl’ and brought thus an impulse from divine inspiration, to add to the effect of their own. Extracts from the Bible always attest and vindicate their origin. They nerve what else in the sentence in which they occur is pointless; they clear a space for themselves, and cast a wide glory around the page where they are found. Taken from the classics of the heart, all hearts vibrate more or less strongly to their voice. It is even as David felt of old toward the sword of Goliath, when he visited the high-priest, and said, ‘There is none like that, give it me;’ so writers of true taste and sympathies feel on great occasions, when they have certain thoughts and feelings to express, a longing for that sharp two-edged sword, and an irresistible inclination to cry ‘None like that, give it us; this right Damascus blade alone can cut the way of our thought into full utterance and victory.’”

From the Psalms of David, as giving expression in the most poetical and devotional form, to almost every variety of passion and emotion of which the human mind is cognizant, we have, of course, taken a large proportion of our Scripture passages, and therefore do we think it well to quote the above author’s apostrophe to these sublime compositions.

“Wild, holy, tameless strains, how have you run down through ages in which large poems, systems, and religions have perished, firing the souls of poets, kissing the lips of children, smoothing the pillows of the dying, stirring the warrior to heroic rage, perfuming the chambers of solitary saints, and clasping into one the hearts and voices of thousands of assembled worshippers; tinging many a literature, and finding a home in many a land; and still ye seem as fresh, and young, and powerful as ever; yea, preparing for even mightier triumphs than when first chanted! Britain, Germany, and America now sing you; but you must yet awaken the dumb millions of China and Japan.”

It has been beautifully and truly observed by the eloquent and learned Bishop Lowth, that “We shall think of Poetry much more humbly than it deserves, unless we direct our attention to that quarter where its importance is most eminently conspicuous, or unless we contemplate it as employed on sacred subjects, and in subservience to religion. This indeed appears to have been the original office and destination of Poetry, and this it still so happily performs, that in all other cases it seems out of character, as if intended for this purpose alone. In other instances Poetry appears to want the assistance of art, and in this to shine forth with all its natural splendour, or rather to be animated by that inspiration, which on other occasions is spoken of without being felt.”

These observations apply more especially to Hebrew Poetry, that loftiest and noblest manifestation of true poetic inspiration; and are quoted by Dr. Caunter in his able and judicious treatise on “The Poetry of the Pentateuch,” in reference to which the learned writer observes that “Sacred themes have inspired the greatest poets of almost every age, and of every civilized country where the true God has been adored, the doctrine of redemption promulgated, and the divine attributes avowed. Those sublime themes have called forth the highest intellectual endowments of man.” Herder, another profound critic, and lover of Poetry in its most sublime forms, says of it, that “without God it is a showy Papyrus without moisture; every system of morals without Him is a mere parasitical plant. It makes a flowery display in fine words, and sends forth its branches hither and thither; nay, it insinuates itself into every weak spot and crevice of the human soul; but the sun rises and it vanishes.”

All true Poets have felt and known this, although they have not always acknowledged it; sometimes it was but a dim confused perception of the truth which they obtained; being dazzled by the blaze of their own genius, they have mistaken that for a divine effluence, and worshipped it in the place of that greater glory, of which it was but a faint reflex and emanation. Sometimes it was pride of intellect which forbade them to bow down to any other God than that which bore the impress of self: sometimes it was a kind of pantheistic worship of nature, as an abstract divinity; so enamoured were they of the fair face of creation, that they forgot the Creator; the works, how beautiful! how perfect! But the workman, what of Him? We have spoken in the past tense, and it might be thought that our remarks were meant to apply to poets of pagan lands, and of benighted ages of the world’s history; but alas! they are equally applicable to all ages, and to all lands; and especially to our own country and age of Christian enlightenment. Many of the most gifted singers of the present day, of the most fervent and devoted spirits, might have served as high-priests in the temple of Apollo, and offered adoration at the shrine of Flora, Ceres, and the Bona Dea, and other pagan impersonifications of the sun, and the earth, with its beauties and riches. To such as these the flowers, those stars of earth, are not the living, glowing, breathing “charactery” in which the Almighty writes instructive lessons of His wisdom and goodness, telling the sick, the weary, and the sad at heart, that

“Whoso careth for the flowers

Will care much more for them.”

To such the stars, those flowers of heaven, are not bright revelations of the Deity who sustains and directs them in their courses.

“For ever singing as they shine,

The hand that made us is divine.”

To such the whispering gales, the rustling boughs, the humming insects, the singing rills, and the warbling birds, speak not of an ever watchful, ever wakeful Power, to which in every emergency the prayerful soul may turn. Calm and soothing as is doubtless the influence of nature, upon the troubled souls of all who submit themselves to her gentle teachings, yet with how much greater satisfaction and delight must those contemplate her beauties and share her calm enjoyments, who see in her various changes and aspects but so many revelations of Almighty love, and read in her fair lineaments the wondrous story of redeeming grace.

“Alas! that mankind sees Him not,—the Great

And Everlasting Framer of all worlds;

Who paints himself upon the leaves of flowers,

And flings his portrait on the breasted clouds,

And sheds his syllogisms in the shape

Of suns, and moons, and planetary systems,”

as J. Stanyan Bigg, the latest, but not the least, of the true poets of the present cycle, has finely said. We must give another extract from his “Night and the Soul,” published too late for quotation in the body of our volume:—

“Nature is still, as ever, the thin veil

Which half conceals, and half reveals the face

And lineaments supernal of our King,—

The modifying medium through which

His glories are exhibited to man,—

The grand repository where he hides

His mighty thoughts to be dug out like diamonds;—

Still is the day irradiate with His glory,

Flowing in steady, sun-streaked, ocean gush

From His transcendant nature,—still at night

O’er our horizon trail the sable robes

Of the Eternal One, with all their rich

Embroidery and emblazonment of stars.”

This is high and holy teaching. Well were it if every mere nature-worshipper could be brought to the same conviction as the poet of “Night and the Soul,” and confess that—

“Religion is the true Philosophy!

Faith is the last great link ’twixt God and man.

There is more wisdom in a whispered prayer

Than in the ancient lore of all the schools:

The soul upon its knees holds God by the hand.

Worship is wisdom as it is in heaven!

‘I do believe! Help Thou mine unbelief!’

Is the last greatest utterance of the soul.”

“I do believe!” how few are there among the gifted children of song, who can stoop from the lofty heights of intellectual glory, to utter this confession of the insufficiency of human reason, the littleness of human power.—

“Stoop, stoop, proud man! the gate of heaven is low,

And all who enter in thereat must bend!

Reason has fields to play in, wide as air,

But they have bounds; and if she soar beyond,

Lo! there are lightnings and the curse of God.

And the old thundered ‘Never!’ from the jaws

Of the black darkness and the mocking waste.

Come not to God with questions on thy lips,

He will have love—love and a holy trust.

And the self-abnegation of a child.

’Tis a far higher wisdom to believe,

Than to cry ‘Question’ at the porch of truth.

Think not the Infinite will calmly brook

The plummet of the finite in its depths.”

God and His attributes are undoubtedly the poet’s noblest themes, and to celebrate the greatness and glory of His works, the wonders of His power, and the riches of His grace, have the highest efforts of human genius in all ages been directed. From the time when Moses sung his song of triumph as the waters closed over Pharaoh and his host, when the Prophets uttered their rapt predictions, and the inspired Psalmist sent forth those strains of supplication and thanksgiving which are still sounding daily in our ears, and stirring our hearts to devotion, down to the period when Milton wrote his great epic,

“Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world,”

has the lyre been consecrated to the service of religion—has religious poetry been the most beautiful and touching, as well as the most lofty and sublime of all poetry. As Dr. Caunter well observes, “The noblest epics which have elicited the poetic genius of different countries, have been based upon subjects either immediately connected with, or remotely allied to, religion. The authors of the Mahabarat and the Ramayana, two Hindoo epics of high celebrity and extraordinary magnitude, extending each to several hundred thousand lines, of the Iliad and the Odyssey, of the Inferno, of the Jerusalem Delivered, of the Paradise Lost and Regained, have, either directly or consequentially, all made the Deity and His illimitable perfections the subjects of their immortal song.”

And so it is; every true poet is essentially a religious poet; his religion may not be Christianity, his views of the divine nature and attributes may be distorted, and he may be altogether ignorant of the great truths of scripture revelation, yet there will ever be in minds of the greatest reach and capacity, a striving after that which is good and holy, and a knowledge, approximating to the truth, of the relationship between the Creator and the created; for

“Spontaneously to God will tend the soul,

Like the magnetic needle to the pole.”

Would that all whose “tranced hands have woke the lyre,” and chanted such strains as the world would not willingly let die, had had such clear views of the nature of the obligation which lay on them to dedicate their powers to the service of true religion, as our own Milton, who commenced his immortal epic thus:—

“And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer

Before all temples, the upright heart and pure,

Instruct me, for Thou know’st: Thou from the first

Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread

Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast abyss,

And mad’st it pregnant. What in me is dark

Illumine; what is low, raise and support;

That to the height of this great argument

I may assert eternal Providence,

And justify the ways of God to men.”

Would that all could bear some such testimony to the truth as it is in Jesus, and exclaim with him—

“O, unexampled Love!

Love no where to be found less than Divine!

Hail, Son of God, Saviour of men, Thy Name

Shall be the copious matter of my song

Henceforth, and never shall my harp Thy praise

Forget, nor from Thy Father’s praise disjoin.”

A similar spirit of fervent piety animated the breast of the Italian poet Lorenzo de Medici, who made this solemn request at the footstool of the Almighty, previous to entering on the composition of a poem:—

“In ardent adoration joined,

Obedient to Thy holy will,

Let all my faculties combined

Thy just desires, O God, fulfil!

From thee derived, eternal King,

To thee our noblest powers we bring:

O, may thy hand direct our wandering way!

O, bid thy light arise, and chase the clouds away!”

Listen also to the author of the “Night Thoughts,” and hear his acknowledgment of the true sources of poetic inspiration:—

“O Thou bless’d Spirit: whether the Supreme,

Great ante-mundane Father; in whose breast,

Embryo creation, unborn being, dwelt,

And all its various revolutions rolled,

Present, though future; prior to themselves;

Whose breath can blow it into nought again;

Or, from His throne some delegated power;

Who, studious of our peace, dost turn the thought

From vain and vile, to solid and sublime!

Unseen Thou lead’st me to delicious draughts

Of Inspiration, from a purer stream,

And fuller of the God, than that which burst

From famed Castalia.”

Alas! how often has been, and is, this noble gift of poesy abused and prostituted to base purposes; of how few could it be said that he had written no line which dying he might wish to blot. Dryden, we may remember, exclaims

“O gracious God! How far have we

Profaned Thy heavenly gift of poesy!

Made prostitute and profligate the muse,

Debased to each obscene and impious use,

Whose harmony was first ordained above

For tongues of angels, and for hymns of love!”

Yet even he cannot altogether escape the reproach conveyed in these lines to such as have, at times, shown themselves unworthy of the sacred gift, and of this he appears to be conscious when he says “how far have we,” etc. Cowper might with great propriety act the censor on such a dereliction of duty, and say—

“Debased to servile purposes of pride,

How are the powers of genius misapplied!

The gift, whose office is the Giver’s praise,

To trace Him in His word, His work, His ways,

Then spread the rich discovery, and invite

Mankind to share in the divine delight;

Distorted from its use and just design,

To make the pitiful possessor shine,

To purchase at the fool-frequented fair

Of vanity, a wreath for self to wear,

Is profanation of the basest kind—

Proof of a trifling and a worthless mind.”

So also might one of the sacred poets of our own day, many of whose strains of simple, earnest, and pure devotion, will be found in our volume. He has just passed from hence to sing in a heavenly choir; and fain would we embody in this preface a slight tribute of our admiration for his genius, and our gratitude for the service he has rendered to the Christian Religion.