Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/44



HE mere use of any such phrase as this—The Hebrew Poetry, or the speaking of the Prophets as Poets—is likely to give alarm to Bible readers of a certain class, who will think that, in bringing the inspired writers under any such treatment as that which these phrases seem to imply, we are forgetting their higher claims, and thus disparage them as the Bearers of a message immediately from God to men.

Alarms of this kind arise, either from a misapprehension of the facts before us; or from absolute ignorance of those facts; or, it may be, from some inveterate confusion, attaching to our modes of thinking on religious subjects. The remedy must be found in the removal of this ignorance—in the clearing up of these confusions, and especially—and most of all—in the attainment of a thorough and deep-felt confidence in the Divine origination and authority of the Canonical writings. Those religious alarms or jealousies which impede the free