important part in the adjustments which are necessary between the heart's action and the changing demands which are put upon it as the result of bodily exertion.

The chief purpose which I have had in mind in constructing this talk has been this: to show, in the first place, the mystery with which investigators have been confronted in the study of this phenomenon of the beating heart; to show the development of ideas, suggestions and conceptions by the study of the same phenomenon in organisms low in the animal scale; and to show how ingenuity of study based upon these conceptions has succeeded in solving much of the mystery in the more complex structure and at the same time has demonstrated its essential identity in the vertebrate kingdom.

I have not alluded to practical applications: it may be sufficient to say that just as Harvey's discovery of the function of the heart laid the foundation for all accurate knowledge concerning the treatment of organic heart disease, so this newer information, obtained by men whose interests were relatively remote from those of practical medicine, is serving as the foundation for a sound and an important advance in the diagnosis and treatment of functional disorders of the heart.

THE USES AND SOURCES OF IMAGERY

AND ALLUSION IN THE BIBLE

BY JOSIAH H. PENNIMAN

Vice-Provost and Professor of English Literature

NOTE. The matter contained in this lecture is taken from A Book about the English Bible, by Josiah H. Penniman, copyright 1919 by the Macmillan Co., New York, and is used by permission.

In reading the Bible we must always bear in mind the fact that it has come to us from an Oriental people whose modes of life and manner of thought were determined largely by their race and environment and therefore differ in some respects from those of the Western world. If one has not already had this fact impressed on his mind by actual contact with Orientals, he will readily be brought to realize the immense importance of it in the study of the Bible by reading such a book as The Syrian Christ, the author of which says truly: "You cannot study the life of a people successfully from the outside. You may by so doing succeed in discerning the few fundamental traits of character in their local colors, and in satisfying your curiosity with surface observations of the general modes of behavior; but the little things, the common things, those subtle connectives in the social vocabulary of a people, those agencies, which are born and not made, and which give a race its rich distinctiveness, are bound to elude your grasp. There is so much in the life of a people which a stranger to that people must receive by way of unconscious absorption. "1 "And it is those common things of Syrian life, so indissolubly interwoven with the spiritual truths of the Bible which cause the Western readers of Holy Writ to stumble and which rob those truths for them of much of their richness. By sheer force of genius, the aggressive systematic Anglo-Saxon 1 A. M. Rihbany, The Syrian Christ, Boston, 1916, p. 7.

mind seeks to press into logical unity and creedal uniformity those undesigned, artless, and most natural manifestations of Oriental life, in order to 'understand the Scriptures.'" To the Oriental the Annunciation was "in perfect harmony with the prevailing modes of thought and the current speech of the land"—"I do not know how many times I heard it stated in my native land (Syria) and at our own fireside that heavenly messengers in the form of patron saints or angels came to pious, childless wives, in dreams and visions and cheered them with the promise of maternity." "To the Orientals 'the heavens declare the glory of God' and the stars reveal many wondrous things to men. "Deeps beyond deeps are revealed through that dry, soft and clear atmosphere of the 'land of promise,' yet the constellations seem as near to the beholder as parlor lamps." "So great is the host of the stars seen by the naked eye in that land that the people of Syria have always likened a great multitude to the stars of heaven or the sand of the sea. "1

Ordinary ideas of the Oriental often seem to the AngloSaxon extraordinary, demanding analysis and explanation. The physical characteristics of Palestine and the customs of the inhabitants are the natural reasons for many of the modes of expression, and figures of speech employed in the Bible, which present interesting questions not only in regard to the source of the imagery, but also in regard to the constant use of it.

Much of the finest poetry of the Bible is contained in single lines or couplets, in which the poet by his use of imagery, or allusion, rises into the higher regions of the imagination, and gives us a wonderfully beautiful and significant picture. The following verses illustrate the use of familiar sights of Palestine. They tell of the great-out-of-doors world so characteristic of the Bible:

"The trees of Jehovah are filled with moisture, The cedars of Lebanon which he hath planted; Where the birds make their nests: As for the stork, the fir-trees are her house." Psalm 104:16-17.

1A. M. Rihbany, The Syran Christ, pp. 11, 12, 31, 32.

"As willows by the water-courses."

Isaiah 44:4.

"A tree planted by the streams of water." Psalm 1:3.

"For he grew up before him as a tender plant, And as a root out of a dry ground." Isaiah 53:2.

"In the morning they are like grass which groweth up, In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; In the evening it is cut down and withereth." Psalm 90: 5-6.

"Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades, Or loose the bands of Orion?" Job 38:31.

"He giveth snow like wool; He scattereth the hoar frost like ashes. He casteth forth his ice like morsels: Who can stand before his cold? He sendeth out his word and melteth them: He causeth his wind to blow, and the waters flow." Psalm 147:16-18

"The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; But the word of our God shall stand forever." Isaiah 40:8.

"We do all fade as a leaf." Isaiah 64:6.

"The fading flower of his glorious beauty." Isaiah 28:4.

"As a lily among thorns, So is my love among the daughters." Song of Solomon 2:2.

"He feedeth his flock among the lilies." Song of Solomon 6:3.

"And his heart trembled, and the heart of his people, As the trees of the forest tremble with the wind." Isaiah 7:2.

"I smote you with blasting and with mildew and with hail in all the work of your hands." Haggai, 2:17.

The ordinary figures of speech used in the Bible require no special discussion, but there is one figure which is used constantly with the result of increasing greatly the appeal to the imagination by presenting, sometimes in considerable detail, a dramatic picture instead of an abstract idea. The common name of this figure is "personification," which usually means that inanimate objects or abstract ideas are spoken of as though they were persons. The use of this figure is characteristic of the writings of Dickens, for example, and gives them much of their highly imaginative character. As employed in the Bible the figure is better described by its Greek name "prosopopoeia," for, in one of its most important uses, it consists, not in the endowing of inanimate objects, or abstractions, with personality, but in representing an actual person as present, or as speaking, when this will add force or vividness