Other literatures boast of their epics and dramas; but the Hebrew, without either, has exerted a far more exalted influence on the human mind than any other. In vain do we search the Veda and the Avesta for conceptions as grand as those in the Scriptures. God is apprehended in all his majesty by the Hebrew bards, and speaks through them to nations that are yet to be. The Bible poets wrote not merely for the purpose of pleasing; as teachers and prophets, they had a divine mission and a loftier aim. The graces of rhetoric were employed to present their impressive subjects in the strongest and clearest light. Frequent metaphors embellished their style, and striking personifications endowed it with life and energy. Imagery drawn from the picturesque scenes about them,—the hills, the streams, the plains of Palestine,—or from their every-day employments as tillers and herdsmen, they used without stint; while _parallelism_, whether it consisted in the repetition of the same sentiment or in a contrasting of opposite ideas, was a peculiar beauty of their poetry. Their language significant and striking, their thoughts lofty and solemn, their tone severely moral, their themes of the deepest interest to man, what wonder that the Hebrew poets tower above the sublimest writers of other times and countries? “Whatever in our literature,” says Taylor, “possesses most of simple majesty and force, whatever is most fully fraught with feeling, whatever draws away the soul from its cleaving to the dust and lifts the thoughts toward a brighter sphere—all such elements we owe directly or indirectly to the Hebrew Scriptures, especially to those parts that are in spirit and form poetic.” =Parallelism= has been mentioned as a distinctive feature of Hebrew poetry. This is defined by Bishop Lowth as “a certain equality, resemblance, or relationship between the members of a period, so that things shall answer to things and words to words, as if fitted to each other by a kind of rule or measure.” Parallelism may be either cumulative, antithetical, or constructive. In the first, a proposition, after having been once stated, is repeated in equivalent words of similar construction, as in Isaiah, lv., 6, 7:— “Seek ye the Lord, while he may be found; Call ye upon him, while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, And the unrighteous man his thoughts: And let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; And to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” Antithetical parallelism is similar, except that the two periods correspond with each other by an opposition of sentiments and terms; as in Proverbs, xxvii., 6:— “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; But deceitful are the kisses of an enemy.” In the third kind of parallelism, there is neither correspondence nor opposition in the sentiment, but simply a similarity of construction in the two periods, as in Psalm xix., 8, 9:—