of which would be that its highest affections would remain unexercised. For without the fascinating combinations in which imagination groups, and the picturesque lights in which it variegates the conclusions of the reason, the objects of perception, the reminiscences of memory, and the anticipations of hope, it may be questioned whether the exercises of these faculties would long be tolerable. But assign to imagination its due place among the mental powers, and then all are harmonized-the sharp angles at which they would infringe and grate on each other are rounded and smoothed; intellectual labor becomes a pleasure, while the intellect itself is exalted, refined, enlarged.

From its excursive nature, the imagination requires to be kept under the government of the understanding, otherwise it might run into mere fantasies. But when under proper control, the beautiful forms and imagery into which it shapes our thoughts, though some of them more beautiful than actually do exist, are not necessarily untruthful or delusive. For the idealizations, we do not say of mere fancy, but of the imagination in its higher sense, are a reality and a truth, in so far as they are the expression of that yearning in the human soul after some things better, purer, more beautiful-in short, after perfection.

It can not, therefore, be that so sublime a faculty was given to man unless to be used by him. And in cultivating it, are we to throw open to it every

domain except that in which it might expatiate with the purest pléasure, and from which it may bring back the richest gatherings? In a word, is imagination to be excluded from the precincts of revelation? We emphatically answer, that no such interdiction has come from the God of revelation. On the contrary, the pages of his inspired prophets are made redolent with the voice of song, as if purposely to woo the approach of that faculty which poetry specially addresses. And even where the voice of song is not heard there often breathes the spirit of poetry throughout the Bible, which, not to be a continued poem, is perhaps, of all books, the most poetical. Then the style of the Scriptures is so richly figurative; and the pattern which has been wrought into the web of inspiration is of the most gorgeous description. Now, from this two inferences appear to be inevitable. First, that imagination was employed in the composition of the Scriptures; for without their possession of this faculty, and in a high degree, neither Ezekiel into his prophetic, nor John into his apocalyptic visions, could have worked so splendid an imagery; not less then this faculty, than memory or reason, was inspired in these writers. Second, if God availed himself of the imaginative faculty of the writers in the composition of the Scriptures, he certainly must have intended the same faculty to be used in the perusal of them. For just as there are beauties on the pages of a Milton, or a Cowper, which the reader

would not discover, and still less appreciate, unless he brings imagination's eye to peruse what it needed imagination's finger to pencil; so is it with the pages of Isaiah, or Jeremiah, or Ezekiel. Fully to perceive the beauties of these writers, we must bring with us the same imaginative faculty, which in them was inspired, and which in us may be rightly guided by the same Spirit.

Closely allied with the imagination there belongs to the human mind another faculty, which, by a metaphor borrowed from one of the bodily senses, has been called taste. Though mental philosophers differ as to whether this is an original or a derivative faculty, they are all agreed that it is universal in human nature. Exactly to define this faculty were not easy, for it is indeed, as Edmund Burke says of it, "delicate and aerial," and "seems too volatile to endure even the chains of a definition." Without precisely defining we may describe taste to be that faculty of the mind by which we both perceive and enjoy whatever is beautiful or sublime in any works, whether Divine or human. The pleasures of taste are of a pure and exalted kind, and though in themselves not strictly virtuous, yet they have this much to do with virtue, that one of the best aids in cultivating a correct taste is goodness of heart, or moral purity; for when it is allied with this its perceptions are quickened and its pleasures enhanced.

Can this fine faculty have justice done to it if it

is interdicted the contemplation of the literary beauties of the Bible? We certainly think not. For believing as we do that the created is, as it were, the vestibule to the revealed-the beautiful and sublime in form as exhibited in the former preparing the mind, so far at least, to appreciate the higher beauty and sublimity of spiritual ideas in the latter we claim for taste that if it comes with its eye purged as with rue, it shall be admitted through the vestibule into the shrine of the temple. And if it shall be said that all its eye can perceive is the mere embroidery or ornaments on the vestments of celestial truth, and all its ear can listen to is the music of her voice, then we may answer that he who can do this is so far prepared for gazing on her form and entering into her thoughts.

The truths of physical science have often to be searched for over paths that are rugged, and in places where beauty rarely dwells. On the rough steep of the mountain, among the rifted rocks, down in dark mines, the geologist, with toilsome patience, has to gather the materials of his science. But when he comes to some sequestered nook, where the fossil-bed is festooned with flowers, as if a couch prepared by Nature's own hand for beauty's self to lie upon-is he to pass on that only among the rough and stony places he may glean his specimens? Is he to have no eye for Nature's living charms in exploring the catacombs of her ancient dead? Must his emotional sensibilities be turned

to stone-fossilized into something as hard as the flints, which he has to break with his hammer to get at the incased fossils? Will it hinder his geologic researches, if he has a keen appreciation of Nature's beauties, whether in her sublime or her softer forms? or, rather, without this will he ever become an enthusiastic geologist? And why should it be otherwise with sacred science? We will own that it also has its rough and rugged paths, where, with little of external beauty to woo the patient searcher, its truths must be explored. But if it has likewise its fair and lovely places, which a correct taste can not fail to be delighted with, are these to be passed by, and truth, because of pleasing form, not to be contemplated? If sometimes, a stern eremite of the rocks, she must be sought in her cell, is she to be shunned when she appears, as with the footsteps of Summer, to beautify her bowers?

II. Our second argument, in enforcing the study of the literature of the Bible, is drawn from the design of revelation itself; for in whatever form a Divine revelation is made, whether in creative acts or inspired utterances, and to whomsoever made, whether to beings innocent or unfallen, or to beings guilty and apostate, its radical idea, or primary design, is to make known God as the Allbeautiful-the First Fair as well as the First Good. Plainly this must lie at the basis of all the uses intended by a revelation, since the only preservative