sense it was effected, in what sense not effected, we know nothing. But
this by mere human meditation, this profound difficulty we may humanly
understand and measure, viz., the all but impossibility of reaching the
man who stands removed to an extent of fifteen centuries. But here comes
in the unspiritual mind which thinks only of facts--yet mark me so far,
Rome by an augury of wicked gods stretched to a period of 1,200 years.
Yet how open to doubt in one sense! Not, I am sure, in any sense
understood by man, but I doubt not in the ominous sense intended.
Changed in all things essential, she was yet a mighty sceptered potentate
for the world until her dependency on Attila's good-will and
forbearance. 444 after Christ added to 752 B. C. complete the period.
But period for what? For whom? For a great idea that could not be lost.
The conception could not perish if the execution perished. But, next
think of the temptation to _mythus_. And, finally, of God's plan
unrealized, His conceptions unanswered. We should remember that by the
confusion introduced into the economy of internal Divine operations
there is a twofold difficulty placed between the prayer and the
attainment of the prayer. 1st, the deflection, slight though it may seem
to the man, from the state of perfect simplicity and of natural desire;
2ndly, the deflection of the object desired from the parallelism with
the purposes _now_ became necessary to God in order to remedy
_abnormous_ shifting of the centre by man. And again, in the question of
the language of Scripture, I see the same illustration. Sir William
Jones, in a fit of luxurious pleasure-giving, like Gibbons' foolish
fit[34] as to the Archbishop of Carthagena, praises the language of
Scripture as unattainable. I say, No. This is hypocrisy. It is no
dishonour if we say of God that, in the sense meant by Sir William
Jones, it is not possible for Him to speak better than powerful writers
can speak. They have the same language as their instrument, and as
impossible would it be for Apollonius or Sir William Jones to perform a
simple process of addition better than an ordinary keeper of a shop. In
the schemata, because in the original ideas, God says indeed what man
cannot, for these are peculiar to God; but who before myself has shown
what they were? As to mere language, however, and its management, we
have the same identically. And when a language labours under an
infirmity, as all do, not God Himself could