If powers divine

Behold our human actions, as they do,

I doubt not then but innocence shall make
False accusation blush, and tyranny

Tremble at patience. Winter's Tale, Act iii. Sc. 2.

Nor was it without reason that Laertes, seeing and hearing proofs of the madness of his sister Ophelia, appealed to the divine compassion

Do you see this, O GOD?

Hamlet, Act iv. Sc. 5.

Nor, again, that Queen Elizabeth, wife of King Edward IV., after the murder of her children, the two young Princes in the Tower, should thus expostulate :

Wilt thou, O GOD, fly from such gentle lambs,

And throw them in the entrails of the wolf?

When did'st Thou sleep, when such a deed was done?

Nor, once more, that

K. Richard III. Act iv. Sc. 4.

Queen Katharine should protest against the two cardinals who had lent themselves to accomplish her divorce from King Henry VIII. :-·

Ye have angels' faces, but Heaven knows your hearts.

K. Henry VIII. Act iii. Sc. 1.

It may be that the striking description of Divine Providence, which we read in Troilus and Cressida, is pitched too high for heathen characters (a subject of which I shall have occasion to speak presently), but if admissible there at all, it could not be better placed than it is in the mouth of Ulysses :—

The providence that's in a watchful state,
Finds bottom in the uncomprehensive deeps;
Keeps place with thought, and almost, like the gods,
Does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles.*
Act iii. Sc. 3.

In a note upon this passage, Dr. Henley asks, 'Is there not here some allusion to the sublime description of the Divine Omnipresence in the 139th Psalm? However this question may be answered, there will be no doubt in other passages that our poet's views of the providence, goodness, and justice of God were drawn directly from Holy Scripture. Thus, where Hamlet says—

There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow

Act v. Sc. 2.

we cannot doubt of the poet's allusion to our Lord's words:

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. Matt. x. 29. Or again, where good old Adam, in As you like it, says to Orlando :

I have five hundred crowns,

The thrifty hire I saved under your father,

Take that and HE that doth the ravens feed,
Yea, providently caters for the sparrow,

Be comfort to my age!

Act ii. Sc. 3.

We cannot doubt that our poet had in mind both the Psalmist and the Evangelist; the Psalmist, who writes of GOD, that

*To be pronounced, probably, as a trisyllable.

He feedeth the young ravens that call

upon Him.
Ps. cxlvii. 9.

and the Evangelist, who records our Lord's words:

Behold the fowls of the air; for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Matt. vi. 26.

From such an image it was an easy step for one with Shakspeare's imagination to moralize as he does in the following lines, spoken by King Henry VI. to the Duke of Suffolk: :

But what a point, my lord, your falcon made,
And what a pitch she flew above the rest!
To see how God in all his creatures works!
Yea, man and birds are fain * of climbing high.

K. Henry VI. 2nd Part. Act ii. Sc. 1.

And equally easy was it for a mind of Shakspeare's versatility to make a wicked man apply conversely the doctrine of God's goodness in His general providence, as does King Richard III.—the doctrine, I mean, which we read also in the Sermon on the Mount, that our Heavenly Father

maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. Matt. v. 45.

K. Rich. Then he disdains to shine; for, by the book,

He should have brav'd the east an hour ago:

A black day will it be to somebody.—

Ratcliff,

*Fond.

Rate. My lord?

K. Rich. The sun will not be seen to-day;
The sky doth frown and lour upon our army.
I would these dewy tears were from the ground.
Not shine to-day! Why, what is that to me,
More than to Richmond? for the self-same Heaven
That frowns on me, looks sadly upon him.

K. Richard III. Act v. Sc. 3.

But this assertion of the general providence and common goodness of God, as we find them asserted in Scripture, does not prevent our poet from appealing confidently to the Divine Justice, as an unerring arbiter and maintainer of the right. It is in the spirit in which Laban said to Jacob,

See, God is witness betwixt me and thee-Gen. xxxi. 50. that Malcolm says to Macduff:

God above

Deal between thee and me.

Macbeth, Act iv. Sc. 3.

And the double lesson which is taught in the following passage, viz. that kings are not to be deposed by their subjects, and that, acting rightly, we may depend upon the Divine protection, is in both respects plainly Scriptural, and therefore true; though in neither case so as to forbid qualification, or exclude exception.

K. Rich. Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm from an anointed king:
The breath of worldly men cannot depose
The deputy elected by the Lord.

For every man that Bolingbroke hath pressed.
To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown,

God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay

A glorious angel; then, if angels fight,

Weak men must fall; for Heaven still guards the right.
K. Richard II. Act iii. Sc. 2.

Both sentiments are repeated in the same playthe former thus:

K. Rich. Show us the hand of God
That hath dismiss'd us from our stewardship;
For well we know, no hand of blood and bone
Can gripe the sacred handle of our sceptre,
Unless he do profane, steal, or usurp.

And again :

Ibid. Sc. 3.

Gaunt. Let Heaven revenge; for I may never lift An angry arm against His minister. Ibid. Act i. Sc. 2. which reminds us directly of David's forbearance towards Saul, 1 Sam. xxiv. 6; xxvi. 4.

The latter sentiment is very significantly indicated in an earlier part of the same scene, where the following dialogue occurs between York and Bolingbroke :

Boling. Mistake not, uncle, further than you should;
York. Take not, good cousin, further than you should,
Lest
you mistake the Heavens are d'er your head.
Boling. I know it, uncle; and oppose not myself
Against their will.

We know with how little truth these last words were spoken. And yet the same Duke of York did not fail still to trace, with reverence and submission, the hand of Providence in the ursurpation that ensued: