both of the influence itself, and of the Weal or Woe that were its consequents. How should it be otherwise? The histories and political economy of the present and preceding century partake in the general contagion of its mechanic philosophy," ['still harping on my daughter'] "and are the product of an unenlivened generalizing understanding. In the Scriptures they are the living educts of the Imagination; of that reconciling and mediatory power, which incorporating the reason in Images of the Sense, and organizing (as it were) the flux of the Senses by the permanence and self-circling energies of the Reason, gives birth to a system of symbols, harmonious in themselves, and consubstantial with the truths, of which they are the conductors. These are the Wheels which Ezekiel beheld when the hand of the Lord was upon him, and he saw visions of God as he sat among the captives by the river of Chebar. Whither soever the Spirit was to go, the wheels went, and thither was their spirit to go; for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels also. The truths and the symbols that represent them move in conjunction, and form the living chariot that bears up (for us) the throne of the Divine Humanity. Hence by a derivative, indeed, but not a divided influence, and though in a secondary, yet in more than a metaphorical sense, the Sacred Book is worthily entitled the Word of God," p. 36.
So that, after all, the Bible is not the immediate word of God, except according to the German philosophy, and in something between a literal and metaphorical sense. Of all the cants that ever were canted in this canting world, this is the worst! The author goes on to add, that "it is among the miseries of the present age that it recognises no medium between literal and metaphorical," and laments that "the mechanical understanding, in the blindness of its self-complacency, confounds Symbols with Allegories."—This is certainly a sad mistake, which he labours very learnedly to set right," in a diagonal sidelong movement between truth and falsehood."—We assure the reader that the passages which we have given above are given in the
