Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/40

 to the sensual and sordid, or the contumacious and impious, there is none. These passages are as a stream of the effulgence of the upper heavens, sent down through an aperture in a dense cloud, to rest with a life-giving power of light and heat upon the dwelling of the humble worshipper. Whether this humble worshipper be one who turns the soil for his daily bread, or be the occupant of a professor's chair, it shall be the same theology that he hence derives: the former will not think to ask—and the latter will be better trained than to ask—how it is that the Omnipresent can be said, either to be seated on a throne in an upper heaven, or to make earth His footstool:—neither the one nor the other will take offence at the solecism of "inhabiting eternity." A solecism if it be;—nevertheless it is probable that no compact of words coming within the range of language has better conveyed than this does the inconceivable idea of the Divine Existence—irrespective of Time.

Biblical utterances of the first truths in Theology possess the grandeur of the loftiest poetry, as well as a rhythmical or artificial structure; and they hold off from entanglement with metaphysic perplexities—was it because the writers were men of a nation incapable of abstract thought? If this were granted, then, on merely natural principles, we ought to find them sometimes forgetful of their purpose as religious teachers, while they wander forth, in oriental style, upon grounds of gorgeous imagination. Never