Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/28

 modern, oriental or western. Philosophers, or founders of theologies, aiming and intending to promulgate a Divine Theory—a scheme of theism— have spoken of God as the object, or as the creation of human thought. But the Hebrew writers, one and all, and with marvellous unanimity, speak of God relatively only; or as He is related to the immediate religious purposes of this teaching. Or if for a moment they utter what might have the aspect of an abstract proposition, they bring it into contact, at the nearest possible point, with the spiritual wants of men, or with their actual moral condition; as thus—"Great is the Lord, and of great power, and His understanding is infinite. He telleth the number of the stars: He calleth them all by their names;" but this Infinite and Almighty Being is He that "healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds." It is the human spirit always that is the central, or cohesive principle of the Hebrew Theology. The theistic affirmations that are scattered throughout the books of the Old Testament are not susceptible of a synthetic adjustment by any rule of logical distribution; and although they are never contradictory one of another, they may seem to be so, inasmuch as the principle which would show their accordance stands remote from human apprehension:—it must be so; and to suppose otherwise would be to affirm that the finite mind may grasp the Infinite. The several elements of this Theism are complementary one of another,