Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/29

 only in relation to the needs, and to the discipline of the human mind;—not so in relation to its modes of speculative thought, or to its own reason. Texts packed in order will not build up a Theology, in a scientific sense:—what they will do is this—they meet the variable necessities of the spiritual life, in every mood, and in every possible occasion of that life. Texts, metaphoric always in their terms, take effect upon the religious life as counteractive one of another; or as remedial appliances, which, when rightly employed, preserve and restore the spiritual health.

If we were to bring together the entire compass of the figurative theology of the Scriptures (and this must be the theology of the Old Testament) it would be easy to arrange the whole in perifery around the human spirit, as related to its manifold experiences; but a hopeless task it would be to attempt to arrange the same passages as if in circle around the hypothetic attributes of the Absolute Being. The human reason faulters at every step in attempting so to interpret the Divine Nature; yet the quickened soul interprets for itself—and it does so anew every day, those signal passages upon which the fears, the hopes, the griefs, the consolations of years gone by have set their mark.

The religious and spiritual life has its postulates, which might be specified in order; and under each head they are broadly distinguishable from what, on the same ground, might be named as the postu-