it was used. Even favorite passages, in this guise, seemed new and cold to him. This, of course, was in some measure, he knew, the effect of associations; but such associations, he knew also, were not cofined to him. He may say this the more fearlessly, as translations of the great masterpieces of foreign literature into plain English prose are becoming the order of the day. He has also to explain, that two, or, at the most, three, passages are here repeated from his "Galleries,” for the reason, simply, that they at first belonged to a rough draft of the present work, which he began to draw out before his "First Gallery" appeared. They are now restored to their original position. DUNDEE, November 14, 1850. INTRODUCTION. THAT SO much of Scripture should be written in the language of poetry, has excited some surprise, and created some inquiry; and yet in nothing do we perceive more clearly than in this, the genuineness, power, and divinity of the oracles of our faith. As the language of poetry is that into which all earnest natures are insensibly betrayed, so it is the only speech which has in it the power of permanent impression. As it gives two ideas in the space of one, so it writes these before the view, as with the luminousness of fire. The language of the imagination is the native language of man. It is the language of his excited intellect-of his aroused passions-of his devotion-of all the higher moods and temperaments of his mind. It was meet, therefore, that it should be the language of his revelation from God. It was meet that, when man was called into the presence of his Maker, he should not be addressed with cold formality, nor in the words of lead, nor yet in the harsh thunder of peremptory command and warning, but that he should hear the same figured and glowing speech, to which he was accustomed, flowing in mellower and more majestic accents from the lips of his God. The language of poetry has, therefore, become the language of the inspired volume. The Bible is a mass of beautiful figures—its words and its thoughts are alike poetical—it has gathered around its central truths all natural beauty and interest-it is the temple, with one altar and one God, but illuminated by a thousand varied lights, and studded with a thousand ornaments. It has substantially but one declaration to make, but it utters it in the voices of the creation. Shining forth from the excellent glory, its light has been reflected on a myriad intervening objects, till it has been at length attempered for our earthly vision. It now beams upon us at once from the heart of man and from the countenance of nature. It has arrayed itself in the charms of fiction. It has gathered new beauty from the works of creation, and new warmth and new power from the very passions of clay. It has pressed into its service the animals of the forest, the flowers of the field, the stars of heaven, all the elements of nature. The lion spurning the sands of the desert, the wild roe leaping over the mountains, the lamb led in silence to the slaughter, the goat speeding to the wilderness, the rose blossoming in Sharon, the lily drooping in the valley, the apple-tree bowing under its fruit, the great rock shadowing a weary land, the river gladdening the dry place, the moon and the morning star, Carmel by the sea, and Tabor among the mountains, the dew from the womb of the morning, the rain upon the mown grass, the rainbow encompassing the landscape, the light God's shadow, the thunder His voice, the wind and the earthquake his footsteps-all such varied objects are made as if naturally designed from their creation to represent Him to whom the Book and all its emblems point. Thus the quick spirit of the Book has ransacked creation to lay its treasures on Jehovah's altar-united the innumerable rays of a far-streaming glory on the little hill, Calvary— and woven a garland for the bleeding brow of Immanuel, the flowers of which have been culled from the gardens of a universe. This praise may seem lofty, but it is due to the Bible, and to it alone-because it only, of all poems, has uttered in broken fulness, in finished fragments, that shape of the universal truth which instantly incarnates itself in living nature-fills it as a hand a glove-impregnates it as a thought a word-peoples it as a form a mirror. The truth the Bible teaches is not indeed the absolute, abstract, entire truth; but it is (in our judgment, and as it shall yet be more fully understood) the most clear, succinct, consistent, broad, and practical representation of the truth which has ever fallen, or which in this world ever shall fall, upon the fantastic mirror of the human heart, or of nature, and which from both has compelled the most faithful and enduring image. It does not occupy the whole compass of the sky of the infinite from which it proceeds; it does not waylay all future, any more than all past, emanations from that region; but it covers, and commands as a |