INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. THE truths of Revelation borrow no authority from the judgment, the invention, or the admiration of men. They stand in their own strength. They shine by their own light. The grandest human intellect can no more lend power to the Original Word than mortal monarchs can provide stability for the throne of Omnipotence or confirm the empire of the King of kings. Indeed, it is questionable whether the interests of a spiritual faith have not been rather weakened than promoted by the practice of adducing the testimonies of philosophers and scholars in its support, more especially when these testimonies were so brought forward as to carry only an intellectual impression, or as if it were expected that those "things of the spirit" which are "spiritually discerned" can be made credible by any patronage of the brain. Religion is humiliated in the hands of her advocates and apologists, when the approving criticism of the shrewdest statesman, or the most ingenious poet, or the most brilliant orator, is ostentatiously paraded as an argument for her divine, everlasting, and self-attested verities. This is a part of that poor "worship of genius” which both betrays and fosters the secret Atheism of an age of conceited culture, and only offends the holy majesty of that Scripture which "is given by inspiration of God." Just this must have been in the meaning of Paul when he wrote, out of his profound Christian realism and his brave trust, that there are words of man's wisdom which "make the cross of Christ of none effect." Christ's religion is not beholden to letters nor to science, to logic nor to learning, to the drama nor to the university. All men need her message of commandment, promise, warning, pardon, consolation; but she does not in the least need the countenance or tribute of the most imperial of them all. Still, as of old, the immortal and glorious things are often hid from the wise and prudent" and "revealed unto babes." We should do quite as well to seek the true "evidences of Christianity" in the hearts of the humble and the lives of the unlettered as in the pages of bards or the speeches of senators. "Wise men the secret cannot tell." "None of the princes of this world knew it." "Not many noble are called, but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to con found the wise, and weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty." Reverence knows that the oracles of the Book of Life receive no touch of beauty nor breath of energy from the most creative of created intelligences. Even from the marvels of Shakespeare, child and master of the centuries, we turn to repeat again and again, "A glory gilds the sacred page, It gives a light to every age; It gives, but borrows none." While all this remains beyond question, the laws of association and suggestion wrought into our nature may, on the other hand, sometimes render us susceptible to the interior influence of the Bible through sympathy with the involuntary confessions of vigorous minds. Though the divine realities take no new dignity, they may gain currency from the assent of clearsighted men. Sincere believers may be multiplied by the believing words of thinkers who were not able to deny, and who believed even against the bias of pride, prejudice, or passion,—of their class, their calling, or their time. In presenting, therefore, a reprint of these instances of correspondence or resemblance between the expressions of that mind which the riper ages of the world have agreed to call foremost in the compass and variety of its powers among the minds of men, and expressions in the Bible, I do not understand the purpose to be to confer honor on the Bible, but to illustrate an element of worth in Shakespeare himself. Incidentally, also, it can hardly fail to prove a source of honorable satisfaction, to see how vast is the debt owed by the very highest literature of the English tongue to the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. The criticism that is most likely to be passed upon this work, I suppose, is that the attempt to collect and compare has been pushed too far ; that many of the alleged resemblances are fanciful, and many of the apparent correspondences purely accidental. This is doubtless true. Yet there appears to be no reasonable objection to a republication,-in any form which does no injustice to either,-of passages from Shakespeare or from the Bible. Those here selected from the dramatist are certainly among the best he ever wrote; and neither these nor the sentences of Holy Writ are likely to be made too familiar. The whole collection is perhaps more remarkable as showing to what a wonderful extent the phraseology of the Bible has penetrated, colored, and shaped our native language and the productions of its writers, even when they were unconscious of its influence, than as displaying a direct acquaintance of this particular master with the Sacred Volume. F. D. H. PREFACE. ALL minds attached to the memory of our immortal Shakespeare, feel a longing desire,— an ardent anxiety, to know something of his childhood, his adolescence, and, indeed, of every minute circumstance relating to him, preluding his arrival in London,-where he appears to have come the child of Nature, the ward of Providence. There does not exist any record or traditional account of his having manifested any distinguished precocity during his youth; and now more than two hundred years have rolled away without any important records having been found to throw a light upon his early history. It would be most gratifying to have been furnished with some historical traits illustrating the dawn of his mighty genius, and the progression of his intellectual development; that gratification is denied us,-contemplation, and amazement, fill the void. Born in 1564, at Stratford-upon-Avon, we find him arrived in London in the year 1586, at |