his heart open to the purest effluences of virtue, and sublimed by the holy communications of innocence, in a world where sin had then no existence A creature, who, not prone And brute, as other creatures, but endued His stature, and upright, with front serene, when we consider that the first man was produced in the highest maturity of reason; his body full of healthy and robust life; his mind, under such a beautiful and all-wise dispensation, equal to the sustentation of the deepest and subtlest processes of thought, for the Deity would not have created a rational being otherwise than gifted with the most consummate faculties of intellect; complete in all the circumscribed attributes assigned to those faculties by that God who had just placed the great progenitor of our race, the pride of his creation, the masterpiece of his Almighty workmanship, in a place of unlimited enjoymentof enjoyment precisely adapted to an unsinning agent, to whom no impure pleasure was known, and, until corrupted by sin, utterly unsusceptible of such pleasure;-when from this grand induction of particulars we force our thoughts backwards, through the long lapse of ages, into that earthly paradise where the first sentient creature was placed, perfect and pre-eminent, how completely does it realize that beautiful summary of human excellence from the pen of our immortal Shakspeare"What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a God! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!" It is moreover asserted by Plato, that the first man was poropwrarоs, the greatest of philosophers, which would seem to prove that the Greek sage was not ignorant of the Mosaic account of man's origin. It is but a natural inference from this account, that Adam was a person eminently gifted, his intellectual faculties being no less transcendent than his moral, which he then possessed in their full perfection. Such a being, coming from his Maker's hands pregnant with divine communications and beaming with the untarnished lustre of that Maker's image, without a single antagonist quality, either spiritual or carnal, mental or physical, would surely be endowed with intellectual capabilities nothing inferior to those of the greatest and wisest men who have proceeded from him, under the degradation, and its consequent defalcations, of a broken covenant. There was nothing within the compass of mental acquirement beyond the reach of such a mind, and it is but natural to suppose that, conscious of its vast resources, the primitive races, the immediate descendants of the first and most highly endowed man, would not fail to draw upon those resources for rational enjoyment which they were capable of affording. Then any Who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being— In the wide womb of uncreated night, The sister arts of music and poetry were no doubt among the first, if they were not the very first, inventions of man. The earliest inhabitants of the world, as I have endeavoured to show, were unquestionably men highly endowed and fully capable of availing themselves of that vast mental energy with which the Creator had blessed them,-for there is no just reason to suppose that sin, though it deadened or paralyzed the moral faculty, had any immediate or positive influence in abridging the intellectual. The one might exist in the full and bright maturity of its power, while the other was emasculated by the fearful accession of that destructive agent which the treacherous author of human delinquency first introduced into paradise. It does not follow as a natural consequence of the fall, that the mind is enfeebled because the heart is corrupted; for if this were the case, the best men would be the wisest-a moral consequence contrary to the experience of all times. We frequently see talent of a high order united with great depravity, proving that if the ascendency of mind is freed from the control of virtue, which ever fructifies from the seeds of religion, the heart will not be improved, but on the contrary debased. This, however, is not the effect of mind upon matter, but of matter upon mind; not limiting its power or narrowing its resources, but tainting the moral channels through which it flows, and thus impregnating it with the elements of spiritual mischief. There can be little doubt that the earliest literary compositions were poetical, as all the original fragments, of which there are several introduced by Moses into the Pentateuch, are of this character;-it was, moreover, the form most consonant to the taste and circumstances of a primitive race, whose fancies would be naturally luxuriant, partaking as they did of the perfection of the recent mundane creation, in proportion as they were attracted by the rich productions of a young and exuberant world, and not fettered by the scholastic discipline introduced in remoter times, when the pristine earth had been deformed and crippled by the deluge, and the stern appliances of reason prevailed over the more sportive exercitations of fancy. It may not, therefore, be altogether beside our purpose to inquire into the causes of the early influence of poetry, and of its application to sacred themes. We shall thus the more readily apprehend why it was so extensively employed by the inspired writers; the book of Job, the Psalms, the Proverbs, Solomon's Song, and by far the larger portion of the prophecies, being decidedly poetical. 66 Poetry," says Dacier, a critic of great taste and erudition, "is the offspring of religion;" and Plato affirms of it, that it awakens the spiritual empire of the soul. Such being its character and influence, can we feel surprised that it was employed so largely by the sacred writers, as an agent to infuse such feelings of reverence towards God, and benevolence towards man, as those sublime compositions, of which they were the inspired authors, are so well calculated to engender? Take the poetry of the Hebrew scriptures where you will, and it abounds in these divine records, it incomparably surpasses that of any mere human production. Its variety is unbounded, its richness inexhaustibly copious, and its eloquence sublime. This has been admitted by persons who have denied altogether the inspiration of those scriptures. As one proof of this, among many, I have been assured by a person intimately acquainted with the late Percy Bysshe Shelley, a name deservedly classed among the greatest poets of the nineteenth century, that this highly endowed, but misguided genius, considered the sacred volume as unequalled by any other work, in any language, in the riches of its poetry. He always carried with him a small pocket edition of the Bible when he travelled; and it is said that one was found upon the body when recovered from the waves, in which so unhappy a career was terminated. It is sadly to be lamented that so fine a taste, a mind so exquisitely alive to the beautiful and sublime, should so readily have discovered both in the Bible, and yet have failed to perceive the inspiration of that divine book, the universal presence of the former leading, as it does, so convincingly to the irrefragable proof of the latter. 66 Poetry," says Bishop Lowth, "in its rude |