garded by many, as indifferent to the highest interests of morals and religion. We boldly retort the charge. We carry the war into Africa. We affirm that the impiety in the matter is with those who condemn as essentially evil, or of essentially evil tendency, a form of composition, which was not only used in Scripture, but abounds in Scripture, which was not only used by Christ, but was characteristic of Christ. The greatest and largest truths are most fitly conveyed in the form of fiction, which bears the same relation to a specific, historical statement, however exact, which algebra bears to arithmetic. The one is particular and limited, the other is general and comprehensive. The highest and noblest truth will always exhibit itself in the forms of poetry and fiction.*

We are not apologizing for a polluted, fictitious literature. We loathe it. "Tis the object of our implacable disgust." We earnestly warn the young especially, not to read any work in any form of composition and under any pretext whatever, which is likely to sully the purity or to sap the strength of their moral principles. We only protest against proscribing any legitimate and delightful form of literary composition. We would only distinguish between the use and abuse of a thing. All that we mean to contend for is, that there is nothing inherently, essentially, invariably evil in fictitious composition. We condemn bad fictions and approve good."

"The very head and front of our offending
Hath this extent, no more."

We condemn bad fictions, not because they are fictions, but because they are bad; not even because they are bad fictions, but because they are bad things; not because of their form, but because of their spirit. The capital error of those with whom we are dealing is, that they condemn the form when they should condemn the spirit of fiction. A pure mind, in whatever form it may appear, whatever garment it may wear, will still be pure, and the spirit will glorify the form, as the shining forth of our Saviour's divinity on Tabor tranfigured his

*There is more profound and universal truth in Hamlet, than in any equal portion of any professed historian.

human body. A depraved mind, on the contrary, whatever the form of its manifestation, whether in philosophy or fiction, in history or poetry, will show its depravity. Solomon tells us that it is of the very essence of folly, that it shall proclaim itself, that it is the badge and the business of a fool to say to every one that he is a fool. And a greater than Solomon has said, how can ye being evil, speak good things, for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh? A good man out of the good treasure of his heart, bringeth forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth evil things. These words exhaust the philosophy of the subject, so far as the moral bearing of literary fiction is concerned. But the use of the imagination is not merely capable of vindication as legitimate. It has, as we have already hinted, a positive and an exceedingly important function to perform for the instruction and delight of mankind. Thierry,* a French historian at once popular and profound, remarks, that the domestic life and usages of England, at the period just succeeding the Norman Conquest, are not only more vividly, but more faithfully portrayed in Ivanhoe, than in any authentic history. The inner and spiritual life of England is more perfectly reflected in Shakspeare's historical plays than in the elaborate works of Hume and Lingard; than it is anywhere indeed, unless we except the Gothic and chivalrous chronicles of Sir John Froissart, which are scarcely more authentic and less fanciful than Shakspeare's plays, although he professes to relate what, for the most part, was subjected to his own faithful eyes, or was confided to him at first hand, by eye or ear-witnesses. Niebuhr, who has turned so many long accredited historical facts into airy nothings, "Like fairy gifts fading away,"

assuredly does not give so beautiful and life-like, nor probably so true a picture of early Rome as Livy, whose authority he has done so much to discredit. There is a large part of history, perhaps the most instructive, unquestionably the most charming, for a knowledge of

*Historical Works. Essay 8th, on the Conquest of England, by the Normans, apropos of the Novel of Ivanhoe.

which, we must be entirely indebted to imaginative writers. We learn, incomparably, more of the ordinary and real life of Athens from the ribald plays of Aristophanes and from the tragic dramatists, than from Herodotus and Thucydides. To be either useful or entertaining, history must not disdain to employ and address. the imagination. The third chapter of Macaulay's recent and splendid history of England, is confessedly, drawn from various sources-scattered notices of the times contained in such works as the Spectator, the most popular plays and ballads and the like. It is, accordingly, the most instructive and delightful chapter of the most popular historical work of our day.

It is evident, in the third place, that imaginative sensibility is peculiarly important to the interpreter of the Bible, to the minister of the Gospel. We have seen that of all books, the Bible is most thoroughly pervaded by the poetical element; that it abounds more than any other in the most daring, animated, and sublime figures of poetry. No one, therefore, whatever his piety and learning, can bring out its full meaning without the imaginative sensibility which will enable him to recognise, to appreciate, to enjoy, and to unfold this great element of God's revelation to mankind. We have seen the most exquisite creations of fancy illumined by the Eternal Spirit, rudely crushed in the hands of "strong-minded" expositors, like fairy frost-work under the hammer of Thor, or a delicate flower beneath the unconscious heels of an iron-shod war-horse. On account of the predominance of the poetical element, much of the Scripture must remain a dead letter, a sealed book, to a large class of interpreters. They do not bring to the exposition of the book, the requisite taste and imagination. They may be men of eminent logical ability and thorough doctrinal and philological knowledge, but these cannot do the proper work of the imagination. They are indispensable in their place, but they were never designed for this particular service. It is the knight of the sleeping Leopard with his coat of linked mail, with plated gauntlet, and a steel breast-plate-his weighty charge burdened with accoutrements scarcely less massive and unwieldy, on the hot sands of Syria, where better a light-armed

and half-naked Saladin on his nimble Arabian steed. It is the Feast of Roses, to which the battle-axe is brought as a carving-knife, and the massy shield used as a trencher.

This delicacy of taste, this dramatic faculty of entering into the circumstances and characters of the scene, and so rendering them "in form and moving, express and admirable," this telescopic glance that brings near the distant past, this divine energy that breathes into the dead of a thousand years the life of to-day, may seen even a dangerous gift, at enmity with sober, safe, sterling, common sense. But they are, in fact, intimately allied. The danger of rejecting or perverting important doctrinal truth, through an excess or abuse of poetical sensibility is, other things being equal, not greater surely, than the opposite peril of making non-sense, or, what is worse, heresy, of Divine truth, by mistaking figures of speech for literal propositions. The greatest errors in the history of Theology have, directly, sprung from confounding poetic figures with literal verities. Of this disastrous confusion, the idolatrous dogma of transubstantiation is a memorable instance.

In Scripture there are a multitude of passages, perfectly plain to him that understandeth and perfectly dark to all others; and their transparency or obscurity, depends altogether, on the proper interpretation of figurative language. Of all the Old Testament, that part is most figurative which, in type or symbol, in prophetic song or saying, shadows forth the promised branch of Jesse's stem. Of all the New Testament, the most figurative are the recorded discourses of our blessed Lord. The prophecies of Isaiah, Zachariah, and other holy men of old, who spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, touching the person, the kingdom, the government and glory of the Messiah, and the relations which he should sustain toward his church, especially as they are bodied forth in the song of Solomon, are all in the highest style of poetic imagery. The parables of Christ are figurative throughout, and can be adequately interpreted by no man, whatever his logic and learning, who is void of poetic and imaginative sensibility. This may help to explain the fact, that preaching, even by good

men of respectable parts and education, so little attracts the public. It will not do to reply that the public feel little interest in the truths presented. This is a very common and convenient answer indeed, and it may seem almost profane to expose it. But how are we to explain the prodigious popularity of men who confessedly preach the whole counsel of God, but who have been favoured by nature with poetical fancy, and are not ashamed or afraid to use it.

Speaking of the ordinary ministrations of the English clergy, Sidney Smith says that "an adventurous preacher is afraid of violating the ancient tranquillity of the pulpit, and the audience are apt to consider the man who fatigues them less than usual, as a trifler or charlatan." It is, notwithstanding, a fact remarkable and undeniable, that in all ages, the men who have preached the glorious truths of Divine revelation in a style most in keeping with the imaginative and figurative structure of the Bible itself, have had most immediate popularity and most permanent usefulness. It may suf fice to mention three inen "in three different ages born," of entirely different genius, and surrounded by utterly unlike circumstances, alike only in the highly poetical cast of their minds, and in the vast power which they wielded during life, and are likely to wield through all generations.

The first is Chrysostom, the Golden Mouth, the glory and the idol, first of Antioch, afterwards of Constantinople. It is of him that Gibbon, no partial critic, thus writes: "The monuments of that eloquence which was admired near twenty years at Antioch and Constantinople, have been carefully preserved, and the possession of near one thousand sermons of homilies, has authorized the critics of succeeding times to appreciate the genuine merit of Chrysostom. They unanimously attribute to the Christian orator, the free command of an elegant and copious language, the judgment to conceal the advantages which he derived from the knowledge of rhetoric and philosophy, an inexhaustible fund of metaphors and similitudes of ideas and images to vary and illustrate the most familiar topics, the happy art of engaging the passions in the service of virtue, and of ex