Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/14

 be said or written ten years ago, on any of these subjects, will need to be reconsidered, and, in fact, re-written, at the present time. So it has been that, in preparing this volume for the press—with the notes of the lectures before me—a few passages only have seemed to me entirely available for my purpose. I have indeed adopted the title of the lectures as the title of the volume; and as much perhaps as the quantity of three of the following chapters has been transferred from those notes to these pages. This explanation is due from me to any readers of the book who, by chance, might have been among the hearers of the lectures, either at Edinburgh, or at Glasgow, in the November of 1852.

A momentous argument indeed it is that has lately moved the religious mind in England. So far as this controversy has had the character of an agitation, it must, in the course of things, soon cease to engage popular regard:—agitations subside, and the public mind—too quickly perhaps—returns to its point of equipoise, where it rests until it is moved anew in some other manner. It would however be an error to suppose that the agitation will not have brought about some per-