own vineyards, shod with the iron and brass of his mines. The whole line of the tribes past, Moses lifts hands and voice in the final blessing.

There is none like unto God, O Jeshurun,
Who rideth upon the heaven for thy help,
And in his excellency on the skies.
The eternal God is thy dwelling-place,

And underneath are the everlasting arms.

From the height of lyric song we drop to simple, bare prose: fittest of forms to convey the solitary journey from which there is to be no return; the going up to the top of Pisgah, the long gaze over the land of promise; the lonely death; the burial in the sepulchre that no man knoweth. So the days of weeping in the mourning for Moses were ended.

CHAPTER XIII

FORMS OF WISDOM LITERATURE

'Wisdom' Literature

THIS fifth book is reserved for the Philosophy of the Bible; that is to say, for the wide range of Scriptural literature which is the counterpart of our modern Philosophy and Science. These two names, however, are scarcely to be found in the sacred writings; the literature we are to consider is, in the Bible itself, uniformly designated 'Wisdom.' The word is suggestive of one, if not both, the main distinctions which separate Biblical Philosophy from modern thought. If it be not pressing the word too far, there is a picturesqueness in the name 'Wisdom' that harmonises with the picturesqueness of form never absent from Scriptural literature of thought. Modern works of science confine themselves strictly to severe prose style. But the literature of Wisdom borrows often the form of lyric, and sometimes even of dramatic poetry, and where it is furthest removed from these, it still leaves the impression of attaching as much consequence to the artistic form as to the thought. More important than this is the suggestion in the name 'Wisdom' that its literature will have a practical bearing on human conduct. A great part of such writings is made up of specific observations or precepts in matters of social and family life, of business management, public policy, and general self-government. And where such works as Ecclesiastes or the Wisdom of Solomon1 are occupied in

1 I assume throughout this part of my subject the Apocryphal books of Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus. The distinction implied in the word 'Apocryphal' is one of theology: according to the Anglican formula," the Church doth read [them]