=The Book of Job= is worthy of special mention, as the most artistic specimen of Hebrew genius. Whether this unique poem was the work of Job himself in his later days, or of some other whose name is lost, its author was evidently proficient in all the scientific knowledge of his time. The hero, a native of northern Arabia, whose name has become a synonym for patient suffering, is reduced to the very depths by family bereavements, bodily anguish, and the well-meant reproaches of his friends; yet his faith in God is unshaken, and in the end that faith is amply vindicated and rewarded. (_See Dr. Rossiter W. Raymond’s “The Book of Job.”_) Bold imagery, vividness of description, life-like delineations of lofty passion as well as the gentler emotions, combined with master-touches of dramatic art, stamp this poem as the greatest in Oriental literature. Its passages relating to the war-horse, behemoth, and leviathan (chapters xxxix., xl., xli.), are cited by writers on the sublime as among the grandest illustrations of their subject; and its descriptions of the Deity, as manifested in his works, exhibit the noblest conceptions of the Infinite that man’s finite intellect is capable of forming. GOLDEN AGE OF HEBREW POETRY. =The Psalms.=—The flourishing period of David (1085-1015 B.C.) ushers in the Augustan age of Hebrew poetry. The Lyric was then carried to perfection by the poet-king himself and his contemporaries in their Psalms,—“those delicate, fragrant, and lovely flowers,” as Luther calls them, “springing up out of all manner of beautiful joyous thoughts toward God and his goodness.” The strains of “Israel’s sweet psalmist,” who began as a shepherd-lad to cultivate the arts of music and poetry, breathe a spirit of plaintive tenderness that distinguishes them from the statelier productions of other contributors to Hebrew psalmody. A utopian theory of the great Plato, but one that he declared could be carried out only by “a god or some divine one,” was the training of the Grecian youth in odes like the Psalms: and this—the religious instruction of the people—was the very object of the Hebrew lyrics. The plan of the Greek philosopher had been put in practice centuries before his day in Palestine, and on a far grander scale than ever he imagined. In the royal city of Jerusalem, four thousand musicians appointed by David chanted hymns of triumph and praise, to the accompaniment of harp and flute; while in the gorgeous temple of David’s son, the sublime worship of Jehovah challenges description. For three thousand years, these Hebrew anthems, unapproached by the religious songs of any other age or people, have been the glory of the Jewish and the Christian Church, eloquently testifying that “there has been one people among the nations—one among the millions of the worshippers of stocks—taught of God.”