But that blind clamour made me wise;
Then was I as a child that cries,
But, crying, knows his father near;
"And what I seem beheld again
What is, and no man understands:
And out of darkness came the hands
That reach thro' nature, moulding men."
This is a subject of the deepest personal as well as speculative interest. In the works of Augustin, of Baxter, Howe, and Jonathan Edwards, and of Alexander Knox, our readers will find how large a place the religious affections held in their view of Divine truths as well as of human duty. The last-mentioned writer expresses himself thus:—"Our sentimental faculties are far stronger than our cogitative; and the best impressions on the latter will be but the moonshine of the mind, if they are alone. Feeling will be best excited by sympathy; rather, it cannot be excited in any other way. Heart must act upon heart—the idea of a living person being essential to all intercourse of heart. You cannot by any possibility corddialise with a mere ens rationis. 'The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,' otherwise we could not have 'beheld his glory,' much less 'received of his fulness.'" *
Our young author thus goes on:—
"This opens upon us an ampler view in which the subject deserves to be considered, and a relation still more direct and close between the Christian religion and the passion of love. What is the distinguishing character of Hebrew literature, which separates it by so broad a line of demarcation from that of every ancient people? Undoubtedly the sentiment of erotic devotion which pervades it. Their poets never represent the Deity as an impassive principle, a mere organizing intellect, removed at infinite distance from human hopes and fears. He is for them a being of like passions with themselves, ** requiring heart for heart, and capable of inspiring affection because capable of feeling and returning it.