arise, O sun! and shine. He mixes among its members; he gazes on each countenance, he marks it; it is his own for ever. One no doubt thinks how he was disappointed. As Luther went to Rome, so does Pollok come to the Alma Mater. He fancies that he will find an assemblage of fine aspiring spirits. Alas, no! -hallowed associations, and hallowed feelings, and hallowed principles, are little regarded. He sits one evening alone in his room; the sun is sinking in the horizon; gloomy clouds, and as magnificent as gloomy, are rolling onwards to the western sky; the steps of humanity become less and less frequent; the din of the city is hushed into a sweet, strange sound; he arises and looks out of the window; his large eye flashes; all his fancies, and vows, and assignations throng back; they give life, and inextinguishable thoughts again. Ah, he had wept, as he sadly imagined, over their cold remains. But they exist: yea, he feels strong in the knowledge that all at Eaglesham are talking of Robert: with the parental blessing, he dare hope. Hope on, fond youth; thou shalt not hope in vain! He forgets the unkind remarks of students; he is once more the heroic soul. There is something tangible, something worth living for in the universe. hymn arises: it is the Martyrs': it is rolled upwards to the open heavens: its echo comes back in gentle murmurings. A signal sounds; the multitude has filed. With many a scene of this description playing before his fancy, he reaches the hallowed building: he enters. The flag carried aloft at the battle of Bothwell-bridge, Captain Paton's sword, the Bible which he gave to Mrs. Paton on the scaffold, rivet his attention; they are engirt with a thousand expressions, deep-toned, of liberty and manly bearing. The poet catches the divine sounds; the light of freedom glances from his eye. Often would he stroll thither, and as often did he return invigorated and strengthened. Visions of old beamed on his spirit, not to enervate, but to brace and elevate. Whilst attending the various courses of appointed studies, he drank in the rich mellifluous strains of Britain's highest bards; he heard the mighty swellings of their harps; he listened to their liquid cooings, and their everlasting thunderings. The paper which he read at this time before a literary society is redolent with poetic beauty. Pollok's college life is at last ended. He enters the Divinity Hall; he studies full well divine theology; not man's theology, but God's. At the end of his twenty-fourth year, he stands up with his first discourse: inattention is marked on nearly every countenance. "By one man's disobedience many were made sinners!" But loneliness is felt most on the Sabbath. He paces by the Canongate after the solemn services of the quiet day, and there is an agonizing solitariness within his soul; he paces onwards-homewards, we were going to say-The tremendous assertion falls unheeded. A would that it were so !-but to his cold rooms. There are no smiling faces to greet him, no warm and tender welcome, no converse of love, no artless chat of children-all is chilly, all is dismal. He passes many a blessed home, and beholds through the window the happy inmates gathered around the blazing hearth, and his thoughts wander to his own cottage upon the distant moor. How sweet it were to be on that far-off spot once again, and gaze upwards on its mantling heavens. So he wishes; but there must be work and stern denial now. Thus, college-life is oftentimes one dark scene in the spirit's toil: so Milton and Jeremy Taylor found it. One morning, and this Pollok is seen strolling towards Lochgoin: it is situated on a beautiful part of Ayrshire. He rambles on, his spirit thinking deeply of the Covenanters. This house was once their haunt; during the persecution of 1660, hither they retired. Strange that men should be hunted like beasts of prey because they choose to offer heart-worship to the Lord! Twelve times did their foes search every room-in vain: Providence took care of those who forgot not the lily's lesson. His steps are tending hitherwards; his dreams are of those ancient men-his sympathies are linked with their holy cause-he already is amongst them. It is a calm, soft-like hour; no breeze is stirring-no leaf trembles. A vast assemblage stands listening to the legate of the Eternal. There he is the fine, clear sky, and the quiet dell, and the luxuriant foliage, and the jagged rocks, and the heather, and the blue-bell, and the wild flowers, complements of himself. The scene is in perfect keeping: in Christ's fair creation, Christ's fair name is sounded. A true soul, he speaks poetically: his hearers at once fix on him their gaze: he proceeds; smiles are seen; laughter is heard: he moves not; goes on undisturbed. The insult provokes not yet the fire of his lips; he enumerates the blessings consequent on Adam's obedience : the scoffs continue: he changes his position, and utters, with a look of stern indignation, 'Had sin not entered our world, no idiot smile would have gathered on the face of folly to put out of countenance the man of worth! It is a note of the Course of Time's deep music. Some ten or eleven months after this, we find Pollok giving an address on preaching to a small society of friends. The poet is easily distinguished throughout the whole. The conclusion is beautiful::-"While we would have the preacher to be plain and simple in language, always to preach Christ and him crucified, never to lose sight of the great atonement, and the truths connected with it, we would have him to give a tongue to the sun and the moon, and every star of heaven, to speak forth our Saviour's praise,- we would have him to bring forth the beasts of the forest and cast them down to do homage at the cross of Christ,-we would have him command the ocean to be silent, and listen to the still small voice of the gospel,-we would have him make the four winds messengers of the word of God,-we would have him make the mountain bow down to the footsteps of the Redeemer, and the valley rise up and meet his goings,-we would have him teach the oak and the plane to spread their shelter, and the sweetbriar and the hawthorn to breathe their incense in the lowly course of the meek and humble Jesus,-we would have him teach every flower of the field-the violet, the rose, and the lily-to adorn the garden of Gethsemane; make the ravens of heaven bring an offering to the Holy One; and instruct the lark and the nightingale, and every daughter of heavenly song, to lift up, with man, hosannahs to Him who came from the right hand of the Ancient of Days, to bind up the brokenhearted, and to comfort all that mourn.' with us out of time into the help and solace of eternity, but must be left, the unredeemed and unredeemable of death, are little worth harbouring about us. It is the everlastingness of a thing that gives it weight and importance; and surely it is not impossible, even now, to have thoughts and ideas that may be transported over the vale of death, and not be refused the stamp and signature of the Eternal King. No doubt, the clearest eye must unscale when it comes in view of the uncreated light; and the purest earthly thought must wash itself before it enters into the holy of holies on high; but there are different eyes from those which have never tried to see, and there are different thoughts from those which must be exiled for ever beyond the confines of purity." And his brother responded with the heart's warmth. He cheered him amid his many difficulties; and perhaps we had never heard the solemn music of the poet's harp had it not been for David's faithful love. His letter, dated from Auchindinny, May 25, 1826, is one of the noblest in the English language. Humanity owes him eternal gratitude. On the 24th of March, 1827, the song fell on the public ear: the Course of Time was issued; it excited marked attention; it roused every thinking mind; it stamped once and for ever greatness on the genius of its author. He was placed along with kindred spirits; he stood in the temple of fame; his strain rolled onwards The latter part of 1824 realized Pollok's ruling desire. He then found a fitting theme for a great poem. Heaven gave him music; he struck the harp's strings, and heard its melody; he felt confident of success: his eye kindled with enthusiasm; his whole soul poured itself forth in song. It was a glorious, a divine hour. Each note, as it died away, served only to enshrine the Deity within; earth, sea, and sky rolled their treasures at his feet; they adorned his verse; but to them his spirit gave additional brilliancy and splendour. Now he sang for immortality; he knew his strains would live: his presentiment was true-no false prophet he. Cease from touching the vibrating chords he could not; it became his very life-his very existence; his being was wrapt up in their intonations; they yielded him joy, delight-all that the soul deems happiness. The sedate student gave full freedom to the glowing impulses that swept over his heart; henceforth he was no longer confined in a room; its four walls sank away; creation -the bright and magnificent creation stood around there was infinite range; no prisonairs heard he. He was quickened: Inspira--it was immortal. The poet saw and heard, tion and Revelation descended; he bathed his forehead in the pearly light of Paradise. He became thought-lovely and everlasting thought. And Eternity came: it unfolded sublimer realities and more solemn beauty. There was a deeper quietude-a holier hush. Ages poured along; were scrolled backwards; still unruffled infinitude before, unruffled infinitude behind. He beheld the verdant plains of heaven; he tasted their unfading sweets; the dew, when it fell, fell in music; the flowers, as they breathed upwards, breathed silver melody. He saw angels; hierarchy above hierarchy, towering in grandeur, with brows resplendent as the rainbow; and the anthem issued; the past visioned itself; time's events gathered their sounds into his song. Nor was the earth forgotten: it stood, blushing as Vesper, amid its sunny hopes, and hallowed peace, and tender whisperings, and rapturous glances, and deep, inexpressible bliss, and constancy, and truth, and dulcet harmonies. : Our poet thus writes to his brother-the letter is dated January 8th, 1825:-"Before the new year, I had about three weeks of glorious study. Soaring into the pure ether of eternity, and linking my thoughts to the everlasting throne, I felt the healthy breezes of immortality revive my intellectual nerves, and found a point, unshaken and unthreatened by the rockings and stormings of this world. Blank-verse, the language of assembled gods, the language of eternity, was the form into which my thoughts fell. Some of them, I trust, shall outlive me in this world; and nothing, I hope, shall make me ashamed to meet them in the next. Thoughts, acquirements, appendages of any kind, that cannot be carried and his heart was grateful. His wish—his morning wish was accomplished: he came into being for this. His work was done; his labour at an end; the laurel-wreath of everlasting emerald graced his manly brow. On Thursday, the 3rd of May, he preached his first sermon: it commanded great interest. His appearance was solemn; his countenance altogether unearthly: long study had given him an ashy paleness; but the fire of his eyes remained. He sacrificed in Jehovah's presence. Thrice afterwards he ministered; then came illness: he waxed feeble; health gradually forsook him. He thought Italy's calm and Italy's balmy air might recruit his wasted strength; he prepared to leave his fatherland; and on the 15th of August he bade an adieu, an everlasting adieu, to its hallowed coast. On his arrival at Southampton, he took up his residence, until he could depart for the golden southern sky; but sickness increased; his nights were restless; death was on the wing; it soon entered. In Christ he trusted, hoped, and confided: he felt that all was safety and security there. Its sting was therefore harmless; its venom, nectar. On the 18th of September he breathed his last on earth. There is something peculiarly touching in all this. Just emerged from obscurity into refulgent day-taken with sickness-leaves his own fine country-endures the pangs of death far from kinsmen and friends-one sister only present. We almost think that it would have been sweeter to have died surrounded by his own hills, and beside his own kindred; and yet perhaps it was more merciful as it was. The bitter agony of separation was over. had bidden farewell to all he loved; he had done with sublunary things; he was in a more He immediate communion with the Everlasting; that Power walked with him through death's dark and cheerless valley. Two days afterwards, his mortal remains were entombed in the churchyard of Millbrook. They lie not far from the sea-shore; a spot suitable for a poet; the waves, softened by distance, murmur a dirge-like melody. In a land of strangers he lies, far off from his kindred and the home of his love. Over the grave stands an obelisk of granite, bearing, with the dates of his birth and death, this inscription: "The grave of Robert Pollok, A.M., author of the Course of Time:' his immortal poem is his monument. Erected by admirers of his genius." Some may deem his death premature: but what if he accomplished the work of a long life what if he compressed the feelings, and experience, and labours of fourscore years into twenty-eight-call we death then premature? The story of his life gives a deeper interest to his song; to strike the lyre with a master's hand was his ruling, sovereign, imperial passion; from his infancy this was his one great object. He passed his fingers over the strings, and the hymn issued; that hymn is immortal: his work was done the vows and assignations of his youth were kept-his soul's desire was reaped. He had written an everlasting remembrance: what more could avail him on earth? Nothing. His labour was performed-his hope realized; he had climbed nearly to the summit of Parnassus; only a few above him: he had plucked the laurel-its leaf unfading: what more? He had tasted every joy and every sorrow of this lower region; he had lived and known all the witcheries of creation, and all the diviner witcheries of thought; he had traced the golden links of that chain which binds the universe to its God: he had seen the lovely form that excelleth, and drank in the delicious warblings of the highest heaven: what more? Quaffed he not the cup of life? what further to complete his knowledge?-He had attained to all its science and all its lore; he had communed with the mighty, the great, the gigantic-ah, he had been with Jesus, and the Sanctifier had descended: he looked up at Vesper, twinkling ever brightly in evening's shadowy hemisphere, and lo, it was the work of His fingers: he gazed on the golden cornfield, "ripe already to harvest," as the wind swept over it, and beheld in its waving sunshine the goodness of Him who listened to the cry of the raven. Illustrations of His Providence teemed everywhere: he felt that he was cared for and loved by the Deity; he viewed all the actions and all the concerns of time in the light of revelation; he ascended daily in the scale of moral worth; he approached nearer the throne; he arrived closer to the empurpled empyrean. His heart-his brave and sincere heart-clothed in the unsullied purity of the Anointed, awaited the summons to enter the world of spirits. What wonder, then, if the angels came?-what marvel if he winged his flight with them to the fair city of eternity! The Course of Time is a magnificent monument of the author's genius; it abounds in splendid passages; it teems with descriptions which, for pathos and sweetness, grandeur and sublimity, have rarely been surpassed. He has, indeed, none of the luscious beauty of Keats, nor the fine finish of Campbell, nor the oriental gorgeousness of Croly, nor the rich classical melody of Tennyson, nor the gigantic wildness of Edward Irving: his paintings remind one often of Nat Lee. He has, too, much of the dark gloom and powerful energy of Blair, but his lines are not so firm or compact; his style is peculiarly his own. Instead of light effusions, the youthful bard pours forth the secrets of the invisible world; he breaks down the partition wall which men have raised to shut out the daylight of that land; he shadows forth the miseries of hell; he opens up the glories of heaven; and around these he has entwined the flowers and the weeds of earth. Many of his speculations have been pronounced rash and daring. We cannot agree with such criticism. Pollok, indeed, thought for himself: no fainthearted soul he. But he had a guide—a divine Being. He trusted not in his own strength; nor did he lean on man's: he examined the Oracles with the Spirit's teaching: he found therein full and frequent descriptions of the blessed world: he clung to them: they were reality. It might have been that the whole of Christendom was ranged against him; but Christendom's greatest sons were forsaken for the Holiest. Rightly so! False men cling to high names, and hide themselves behind these semblances; but this Pollok was not one of them. One of our poet's distinguishing features is, the high estimate he gives to moral greatness. This excites our astonishment the more, since students worship little else than intellectual: the intellect is their idol: at its shrine they bow and do homage; on its altar, immolate themselves. Pollok entered the heathen temple-beheld the pompous rites—listened to the magnificent, outbursting hymn; but it arose not to the Supreme. He saw through the splendid and radiant semblance: true men ever see clearly-no film on their eyes. Moral greatness was alone good, alone holy-it sanctified all; without it, everything was worthless and unhallowed. He departed from the marble pile, and proclaimed the oracle, that "man is great only as he is good." Pollok, however, is much too dark and gloomy; he delights in terrible paintings: hell's blackness is the great theme; he has here room for his imagination-it is his fancy's highest play. Even the beautiful things of earth are somewhat dimmed and blighted, and the affections, too, are looked upon with a jealous eye. Why is this? Surely religion does not militate against them? Mother, love thy babe; it is not sin: love it ever; thou canst not err: and when at eventide it comes to thee, and throws its little arms around thy neck, and hides its little head within thy bosom, tell it of heaven-that heaven is as soft and as sweet as a mother's love—and it will never forget. Thou canst not love it too well. Cling to it-cleave to it; caress it ever; and it will pour all its affections, and all its cares, and all its desires into thine own lap. Mother, love thy child!-to love it is not idolatry; if it be so, then welcome idolatry. Ah, that fond babe, with its clear blue eye, and ruby lips, and rosy cheeks, and open countenance, and full-hearted tenderness, and gushing feelings, and confiding trust, will learn the delicious quiet of heaven on thy arms and on thy bosom. There let it repose; and when the anxieties of life press sore, and friends prove faithless, and kinsmen and dearest objects die, will it remember that heaven is a haven sweeter and more secure than even a mother's love. And what exquisite joy for thee! In cherishing thine infant, thou dost reap some foretaste of the coming bliss; to thee it is a symbol. Entwine thy purest affections around it, and bathe it ever with the bursting emotions of thy soul: love it; there is not, there cannot be idolatry in loving thy child! Why should the yearning heart be constrained and straitened with the censure of excessive love: censure, away! Oh, Jesu, whom man despised, and whom man insulted, was nursed on a mother's knee, and " drew milk as sweet as charity" from a mother's breast!-and he whom none cared for, and whom all rejected, enlivened the lonely watchings of his mother and charmed away her toils with his lispings and his prattle. Prattle on, dear babe, and lean on the bosom of her who brought you forth, and deem that the better land is all as beautiful and all as true as the throbbings of that maternal breast: and, mothers, love your little ones; they will remind you of the clime where the wild olive, and the cedar, and the violet grow; where the birds sing their hymn in the twilight hour; where the sound of running waters soothe the spirit to a serene repose; where the moon and the stars gleam down upon its blessed intelligences, and where all is sacred and inviolate tenderness. Mother, love thy child! Religion is not dark-religion is not gloomy. Young man, who now gazest on that sweet being sitting by thy side, and deemest her all too good for earth, think not that religion will make you dull-will blight your new-sprung bliss; think not that it will shadow that face, which beams so confidingly and so tenderly on yours, with austerity and with sternness; think not that, when ye walk out at eventide beneath the foliage of majestic trees, it will give a harshness to that voice which now sounds more delicious than the enchanting and mystic melody of the twilight hour; think not that it will withdraw that affection which is riveted upon you for ever, and give instead thereof a reserved attachment. If it did so, then perish religion! But the faith of Jesus does not this; and herein it proves its divine origin and divine commission. Love that being still; love her infinitely; and this faith will but make that face more beautiful, and that bosom more constant, and that affection more hallowed, and that confiding trust more confiding still, and that heart more throbbing, and yearning, and devoted, and blessed. It is much to be lamented that religion is so often portrayed in such dark and gloomy colours, as if we had no right to enjoy the beauty and the tenderness of this lower world; as if the deepest and the purest affections of the breast were unhallowed and unholy. Religion is not thus scowling-is not thus a black, thunderous cloud; it is rather the blue empyrean, and the soft, mellowed light in which float all things lovely and all things fair. We read-" Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church.' What means this "even as"? What signifies this model of love? Does it speak of shackles, and chains, and fetters, and bondage? Did Jesus bind his affections with any cords? Could they be estimated? Are they not measureless? Were they reckoned and weighed? Was he afraid of loving too much? Was it not rather his glory that he loved so like a God? Did he count it sinful and idolatry to give all his being and all his existence to an unchanging and everlasting love? Was it not the consummation of his magnificent character that he loved so well and so truly? And shall we talk of wrong in loving those united to us by so near and precious a relationship? Shall we enchain our deep, deep feelings? Shall we give them boundaries? Shall we place landmarks? Shall we compress the dilated breast? Shall we dim the Deity within us? Did Christ thus ? Ah! there was no coldness and reserve in him; shall there be any in us? Call religion, and repose on her sweet, soft bosom: dedicate thyself to Jesus; it will not make thee dull; it cannot bedim thy ecstatic joy. How can it, when its essence is love; its rule, love; its precepts, love; its influence, love; its beamings, love? Can love, then, render one gloomy? Ah, no! It will gild the hill-tops with golden light, and cast radiant beauty into the vales below. Go then, and give thyself to the meek, the gentle Saviour; his tenderness is softer than the balmy breath of a summer's eventide; and thy love for friend and kin will deepen and strengthen until it becomes as profound as the vast tide of existence, or the infinite range of being. And, indeed, this love to Jesus does but call into finer play the other loves of the soul; just in the same manner as the love of a friend quickens and deepens the love to wife and child. The more we love, the more we may love; each affection is, however, different and distinct from the rest; they never commingle, but they receive a sevenfold lustre from each other; just as some woodland dell is beautiful, but it puts on a more winning grace when the slant rays of the morning sun light up its dark and luxuriant foliage. The purest affection of the human breast is the love of God as revealed in the Mediator; and it is this which renovates the soul, and casts on the once dismal chaos gleams of the coming glory. But whilst we acknowledge this, we see no necessity to disparage the other attachments which swell in the spirit of man; that is never raised by the censuring of these; Christ did not thus; he knew what was in us, and he acted as became the divine Original. Our love to parent, and friend, and kin may be infinite; our love to wife may be infinite; our love to Jesus may be infinite; and it does not necessarily follow that any one of these will cast a shade upon its fellows. Folly and idiocy to think so! Dive below the surface, and we shall see, that instead of clashing with each other, they but gleam beauty and radiant band, love thy wife, and behold, in that beautisweetness. Do the colours of the rainbow look ful eye and fair countenance, gleams of the discordant?-breathe they not a perfect sym- coming sunshine. Oh, shame to term the metry and a perfect harmony?--blend they not heart's fondest feelings, and the heart's fondest so softly and so delicately, yet each keeping love, idolatry!—it is not so. We complain not its own distinct hue, that if one were gone, all of this: ye cannot love parents, and wife, and the rest would suffer in their loveliness? And child too much: sacrilege to love them with the first streak in the east, when dawn awakes, a weak, limited, and vacillating faith! We doth it not gather much of its brightness from admire you for regarding those beings with an the surrounding twilight and the darkened infinitude of love; we delight to witness this, hemisphere? Hast thou ever cast thine eye-ah, no coldness, no icy chilliness, for us. But, on a bed of flowers, and hast thou not remarked whilst we glory in such attachments,-mark, how their varied tints fell into one rich and spiritual soul, here is the distinction, we cengolden whole? And in looking back on thy sure you, that with all this exhaustless love, past life, does not every event and every cir- and all these exquisite feelings, and all these cumstance, however distinct, and however trembling emotions, you have no eye and no separate, become suffused with the same glow- heart for the Creator; we blame you, not that ing colouring and the same soft, mellowed you love child, and deem its innocent face so grace? And higher: Do not the attributes of fair; not that you love wife, and deem her so the Eternal, which are infinite and immaculate, fondly precious; not that you love parents, pour upon each other a more refulgent splen- and deem them the sweetest semblance of the dour and a more exhaustless magnificence? divine; but that, with all this bursting affection and unutterable clinging, you have no regard for the altogether lovely and the altogether beautiful: that whilst your eye can melt into tears, and your heart soften into sensibility at the sight of those "whom God has given," you have no tear and no sensibility for the bountiful Giver himself. So with the affections: to raise one at the expense of another is unwise; rather cultivate them all; and each will then breathe a fragrance sweeter than the woodbine at the first glimmer of day, and give forth a more delicious music than the dying fall of an Æolian harp, when the sun sinks down; and undulations softer than the gentle swelling of the bosom, when wrapt in blissful dreams; and a cadence more enchanting than the sigh of sleeping babe; and a sound more still and richly melodious than when the dew trembles on the early primrose; and a strain more thrilling than when the calm murmur of the sea breaks on the shore. And the religion of Jesus will throw starlight, and moonlight, and sunlight on them all; and they shall kindle with a brighter radiance, and glow with a more luscious beauty, and blush with a deeper grace, and speak a language more spiritual than when man turns upwards his eye on the vast heavens, and feels the divinity within! Young man, love thou thy wife! no limit place to that affection; darken it not with the calumny that it is idolatry; shackle it not with self-forged fetters; let it be infinite and boundless; in it thou shalt find delicious bliss; it will teach thee of heaven; it will reveal things unspeakable; it will open up the fair beauty of that orient clime where all is unfading as the Everlasting; it will roll music on thine ear; it will pour unutterable sweets into thy lap; thy home will beam with loveliness; it will be a symbol of the everlasting rest. Love her; cherish her thy reward will be vast; - love her; cherish her: thy nature will be elevated; -love her; cherish her: thine heart will gush with sublime and imperishable joy. And when this world has wounded thee, and grieved thee, then turn thee to her bosom, and thou shalt find thy heaven of trust and bliss; and soon ye shall both turn to the soft, sweet haven of serene repose. It is not idolatry, this connubial love; thy being will become perfected and ennobled. What! idolatry to love that faithful creature who has reposed her all of earthly happiness, and much of her heavenly, in your arms? Surely God never meant this. Idolatry! if this be idolatry, we know not what it means. Hus We are not to look jealously upon the affections and the sanctities of home; the Oracles do not require this: we are to give up our sins, our evil thoughts, our roving dispositions, our wanderings, our love to the moral debased world, our pride of life, our pollutions, our unhallowed hearts: we are to become holy, meek, gentle; we are to be as God-like God; Jesus is to be in us; we are to do his work; abound in his labours. Temptation after temptation must be overcome; assault after assault beaten off the Spirit is to sanctify, to spiri tualize: but we are to enjoy God's mercies; we are to reap happiness from those things he has given; we are to be fond and fonder parents; we are to be dutiful and more dutiful children; we are to be loving and more loving husbands; we are to be tender and more tender wives; we are to be faithful and more faithful friends; we are to be all that is "true, and honest, and lovely, and of good report;" and truer, and more honest, and more lovely, and of better report. Religion, instead of snapping these asunder, gives them a loftier and higher import; irradiates with a sunnier beam: it teaches, inculcates, commands the enforcement of every one; it kindles all its angers and fulminates all its wrath at their non-performance. We do not believe there is such a thing as idolatry in these: the Bible never yet said so; and what are man's words? Idolatry is the paying of that regard and worship to a semblance, or simulacrum, which belongs only and simply to the thing or being it personates. Now, we love a child as a child; we love a wife as a wife; we love them for what they are, and not for what they are not. Idolatry is something distinct and different: it loves and worships the star, or flower, or painted wood, because it deems the flower, or star, or painted wood to be God; hence it is idolatry, semblancy, falsity. |