Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, no. 22, August 1859 | Page 9

the
paint applied to his face, it was wisely announced that for the future the
Deity should be covered by a cloud. These plays, carried about the
country, taken up by the baser sort of people, descended through all
degrees of farce to obscenity, and, in England, becoming entangled in
politics, at length disappeared. It is said they linger in Italy, and are
annually reproduced in Spain.
The Bible is incapable of representation. For a man to act the Supreme
Being would be as revolting in idea as profane in practice. One may in
words portray the divine character, give utterance to the divine will.
This every preacher does. But to what is the effect owing? Not to
proprieties of attitude or arrangement of muscle, but to the spirit of the
man magnified and flooding with the great theme, and to the thought of
God that surrounds and subdues all; in other words, the imagination is
addressed, not the sight,--the sentiments and affections are engaged, not
the senses. As Lamb says of the Lear of Shakspeare, it cannot be acted;
so, with greater force, we may say of the Bible, it cannot be acted.
When we read or hear of the Passion of the Saviour, it is the thought,
the emotion, burning and seething within it, at which by invisible
contact our own thought and emotion catch fire; and the capabilities of
impersonation and manufacture are mocked by such a subject.
But the Bible abounds in dramatic situation, action, and feeling. This
has already been intimated; it only remains that we indicate some
examples. The history of David fulfils all the demands of dramatic
composition. It has the severe grandeur of Aeschylus, the moving
tenderness of Euripides, and the individual fidelity of Shakspeare.
Could this last-named writer, who, while he counterfeited Nature with
such success, was equally commended for his historical
integrity,--could Shakspeare have performed that service on this history,
which Milton, More, and others have undertaken on other portions of

the sacred volume,--could he have digested it into a regular dramatic
form,--he would have accomplished a work of rare interest. It would
include the characters of Samuel and Saul; it would describe the
magnanimous Jonathan and the rebellious Absalom; Nathan, Nabal,
Goliah, Shimei, would impart their respective features; it would be
enriched with all that is beautiful in woman's love or enduring in
parental affection. It is full of incident, and full of pathos. It verges
towards the terrible, it is shaken with the passionate, it rises into the
heroic. Pursued in the true spirit of Jewish theology, the awful presence
of God would overhang and pervade it, while the agency of his
providence should attend on the evolutions of events.
There is one effect which, in the present arrangement of the canon, is
entirely lost to view, and which could be revived only by the
synchronizing of the Psalms with their proper epochs. For instance, the
eighth Psalm is referable to the youth of David, when he was yet
leading a shepherd life. The dramatic form of his history would detach
this from its present place, and insert it amid the occasions and in the
years to which it belongs. What a scene we should then have! The
youthful David, ruddy he was, and, withal, of a beautiful countenance,
(marginal reading, fair of eyes,) and goodly to look to; and he was a
cunning player on the harp. There is the glow of poetic enthusiasm in
his eyes, and the fervor of religious feeling in all his moods; as he tends
his flock amid the quietness and beauty of his native hills, he joins to
the aspirations of his soul the melodies of music. So the night overtakes
him, the labors of the day are past, his meditations withdraw him from
the society of men, he is alone with Nature and with God;--at such a
moment the spirit of composition and utterance is upon him, and he
hymns himself in those lofty and touching stanzas,--
"O Jehovah, our Lord, How excellent is thy name in all the earth!
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, The moon and
the stars which thou hast ordained, What is man that thou art mindful of
him, And the son of man that thou carest for him? Yet thou hast made
him a little lower than the angels, Thou hast crowned him with glory
and honor; Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hand,
Thou hast put all things under his feet,-- All sheep and oxen, Yea, and
the beasts of the forest, The birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea,
And whatsoever passes through the deep. O Jehovah, our Lord, How

excellent is thy name in all the earth!"
Again, the fifty-seventh Psalm is