Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/48

 dium of its conveyance to us, although never separated therefrom. That which we find, and which "finds us" also, is not the parchment and the ink, nor is it the writing, nor is it the Hebrew vocables and phrases, nor is it the grammatical modes of an ancient language; nor is it this or that style of writing, prosaic or poetic, or abstract or symbolical; for as to any of these incidents or modes of conveyance, they might be exchanged for some other mode, without detriment to the divine element—the ulterior intention, which is so conveyed. We all readily accept any, or several of these substitutions—and we moderns necessarily do so—whenever we take into our hands what we have reason to think is a trustworthy translation. It is not even the most accomplished Hebraist of modern times (whoever he may be) that is exempted from the necessity of taking, from out of his Hebrew Bible, a meaning—as to single words, and as to combinations of words—which is only a substitute for the primitive meaning intended to be conveyed by the Hebrew writer to the men of his times. Thought, embodied in words, or in other arbitrary signs, and addressed by one human mind to another human mind, or by the Divine mind to the human mind, is subjected to conditions which belong to, or which spring from, the limitations of the recipient mind. The question is not of this sort, namely, whether Thought or Feeling might not be conveyed from mind to mind with unconditioned purity, in some occult