Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/37

 schemes of metaphysic theism, we must admit it to be true, in fact, that whatever the unsophisticated instincts of the human mind (if such could anywhere be found) might prompt men to accept and profess, their actual dispositions—perverted as these are—impel them to put, in the place of this belief, either a sensuous and debasing polytheism, or a vapid pantheism. So it has been in all time past, and so at the moment now passing:—so it has been among brutalized troglodytes;—and so is it among "the most advanced thinkers" of modern literature.

Always, and now, it is true that the Hebrew writers stand possessed of an unrivalled prerogative as the Teachers—not merely of monotheism, but of the spirit-stirring belief of God—as near to man by the nearness or homogeneousness of the moral consciousness. Near to us is He, not only because in Him "we live and move and have our being," but because He—infinite in power and intelligence—is in so true a sense one with us that the unabated terms of human emotion are a proper and genuine medium of intercourse between Him and ourselves.

To remove this Bible belief to as great a distance as possible from daily life and feeling, has been the intention of all superstitions, whether gay or terrific; and it has been the aim also of abstract speculation, and, not less so, of Art and of Poetry, with their manifold fascinations; and therefore it is that the Hebrew Scriptures are so specially distasteful