3. Far more of the Old Testament belongs to the department of _Poetry_ than appears in the Authorized Version, the Bible in common use. The He'brew mind was poetic rather than prosaic, and the thought of this people naturally fell into the form of poetry. But there is a great difference between our poetry or verse and that of the He'brews. With us there is apt to be rhyme, never sought by the Bible poet; or else a certain measure in length of line or emphasis on certain vowel sounds, the "feet" or "meter," in the verse, equally unknown in the Bible. He'brew verse consists in a peculiar symmetry and balance of clauses, which is called "parallelism," for instance: "He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: He that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, he that keepeth Is'ra-el Shall neither slumber nor sleep" (Psa. 121. 3, 4). Poetry is to be found in nearly all parts of the Old Testament. There are: 1.) _Odes_, as the song of Mir'i-am (Exod. 15), of Deb'o-rah (Judg. 5), and the book of Lam-en-ta'tions. In the latter book there is an acrostical arrangement, each stanza beginning in the original text with a letter of the He'brew alphabet, and arranged in their order. 2.) _Lyric poems_, songs of emotion or feeling, as most of the Psalms. 3.) _Dramatic poems_, illustrative of action, as Job and the Song of Sol'o-mon. 4. _Oratory_ figures extensively in the Old Testament, as we should expect to find in the literature of any Oriental people, among whom the public speaker exercises a mighty influence. The orations or discourses of the Bible are sometimes in prose, sometimes in poetry, sometimes in both forms of expression. The speeches in the book of Job, Sol'o-mon's dedicatory prayer (2 Chron. 6), almost the entire book of Deu-ter-on'o-my, the opening chapters of Prov'erbs, and many of the discourses of the prophets belong to this department. Note how readily the passage in Deut. 8. 7-9 falls into verse: "For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, A land of brooks of water, Of fountains and depths, Springing forth in valleys and hills; A land of wheat and barley, And vines and fig trees and pomegranates; A land of oil olives and honey," etc. (Rev. Ver.) 5. _Philosophy_, or "wisdom-literature," is also found in the Old Testament. The book of Prov'erbs is a collection of the "sayings of the sages" among the Is'ra-el-ites; while Ec-cle-si-as'tes is a series of connected essays on human life.