entertained towards theirs. The Jews accompanied the Greeks in the use
of the chorus, but they could not go with them any farther. They both
united in employing music and the dance, and all the pomp of procession
and charm of ceremony, in divine worship; but when it came to displaying
the object of their adoration in personal form to the popular eye, and
making him an actor on the stage, however dignified that stage might be,
the Jews could not consent.

This, we think, will explain, in part, why others of the ancient
nations, the Arabs and Persians, rich as they were in every species of
literature, had no theatre; they were monotheists.

But there is the department of comedy, of a lighter sort, which does not
converse with serious subjects, or necessarily include reference to
Deity; why do we find no trace of this among the Jews? We may remember,
that all festivals, in very ancient time, of every description, the
grave and the gay, the penitential and the jubilant, had a religious
design, and were suggested by a religious feeling. We think the peculiar
cast of the Judaic faith would hardly embody itself in such a mode of
expression. Moreover, tragedy was the parent of comedy,--and since the
Jews had not the first, we should hardly expect them to produce the
last. It is not difficult to perceive how the Greeks could convert their
goat to dramatic, or even to comic purposes; but the Jews could not deal
so with theirs.

We approach another observation, that there is no comedy in the Bible.
There is tragedy there,--not in the sense in which we have just denied
that the Jews had tragedy, but in the obvious sense of tragic elements,
tragic scenes, tragic feelings. In the same sense, we say, there are no
comic elements, or scenes, or feelings. There is that in the Bible to