Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/15

 manent changes in religious thought; and moreover, if a supposition of this kind would be an error, something worse than simply an error would be implied if any should indulge a wish that things might be allowed to collapse into their anterior position, unchanged and unbenefited, by the recent controversy. A wish of this sort would indicate at once extreme ignorance as to the cause and the nature of the argument, and moreover a culpable indifference in relation to the progress and the re-establishment of Christian belief.

Animated, or—it may be—passionate, religious controversies are hurricanes in the world of thought, ordained of God for effecting purposes which would not be effected otherwise than by the violence of storms; and let this figure serve us a step further.—The same hurricane which clears the atmosphere, and which sweeps away noxious accumulations from the surface of the earth, serves a not less important purpose in bringing into view the fissures, the settlements, the forgotten rents in the structures we inhabit. It is Heaven's own work thus to purify the atmosphere; but it is man's work to look anew to his own house—after a storm, and to repair