So

feelings that lie beyond their depth? Have
they elevated the imagination, enriched the
understanding, strengthened the judgment?
Have they pourtrayed heroism, alike in the
power
of valour, and the tenderness of affec-
tion? Have they illustrated character, de-
veloped the springs of action, revealed to
man the little world within his bosom?
has HE. But comparison implies equality,
and how much more has HE done! In some
of the most admired human compositions,
these graces of style and structure, have
formed the ultimate and only design; they
have been accounted sufficient, though but ad-
juncts to fiction and imposture. It is not so
with the scriptures. Literary enjoyment is
there combined with a sense of safety; with
a confidence, that intellectually, no less than
religiously, we are not following "cunningly
devised fables;" that the heroes actually ex.

The host of heaven, his Phoebus and his Mars,
He arms, instructed by her fighting stars.

Truth she relates in a sublimer strain,

Than all the tales the boldest Greeks could feign;
For what she sung that spirit did indite,

Which gave her courage and success in fight."

isted, that the saints were indeed what they are described, that the sages spoke the wisdom recorded as their words; that even the oriental hyperboles are rather the ornaments than the exaggerations of truth.

This imparts peculiar solemnity to the immaginative parts of scripture, and reminds me of Cowley's remark, that "there is not so great a falsehood in any poet, as the vulgar conceit of men, that lying is essential to good poetry." This great writer had a fine sense of the literary value of the scriptures, and though I shall never ask you to read his "Davideis," I beg your attention to the following extract from his preface.

"What can we imagine more proper for the ornaments of wit or learning in the story of Deucalion, than in that of Noah? Why will not the actions of Samson afford as plentiful matter as the labours of Hercules? Why is not Jephtha's daughter as good a woman as Iphigenia? And the friendship of David and Jonathan, more worthy celebration than that of Theseus and Besethous? Does not the passage of Moses and the Is

raelites into the Holy Land, yield incomparably more poetical variety than the voyages of Ulysses or Eneas? Are the obsolete thread-bare tales of Thebes and Troy, half so stored with great, historical, and supernatural actions, as the wars of Joshua, of the Judges, and of divers others? Can all the transformations of the gods, give such copious hints to flourish and expatiate on, as the true miracles of Christ, or of his prophets and apostles?"

Do not, my dear, suppose, from what I have said and quoted, that I would hazard the unguarded assertion, that no beautiful composition exists out of the bible; or that its pages contain examples of every beauty; or that every casual resemblance in a human author must necessarily be a copy from the sacred Still less would I assume, that independent of containing all things needful to salvation, they contain all that are desirable for information. Nevertheless, I have a very high idea of what the bible, as a book, is able to do for man, as an intellectual being; and I never read our standard authors (Shak

ones.

speare in particular) without a vivid impression that their perusal of the bible was more than occasional, and their obligations to it far from slight. Indeed, I think, that in England we can never ascertain exactly how far these obligations extend. A child's first reading lessons are generally selected from this book, and if, in after life, he neglects its private perusal, he hears large portions read in public worship, and unconsciously imbibes a general impression of its sentiments and phraseology. There may be gross ignorance as to doctrinal truth, even deficient acquaintance with the historical arrangement, and yet he will have this feeling of familiarity—difficult to lose, and otherwise impossible to account for.

The free perusal of the scriptures, as restored by the Reformation, had more than a remote influence upon English literature; it was at once a cause and an earnest of the intellectual splendour which marked the Elizabethan era. "I cannot think" (says an author not noted for his reverence of sacred things) "that all this variety and weight of

knowledge could be thrown in, all at once, upon the mind of a people, and not make some impression upon it, the traces of which might be discerned in the manners and literature of the age. For, to leave more disputable points, and take only the historical parts of the Old Testament, and the moral sentiments of the New, there is nothing like them in the power of exciting awe and admiration, or of rivetting sympathy. We see what Milton has made of the account of the creation, from the manner in which he has treated it, imbued and impregnated with the spirit of the time of which we speak. Or, what is there for romantic interest and patriarchal simplicity, equal to the story of Joseph and his brethren, of Rachel and Jacob, of Jacob's Dream, of Ruth and Boaz, the descriptions in the book of Job, the deliverance of the Jews out of Egypt, or the account of their captivity and return from Babylon? There is in all these parts of scripture, and numberless more of the same kind, (to pass over the orphic hymns of David, the prophetic denunciations of Isaiah, or the gorgeous