ill the soul. Therefore never will "The
Excursion" become a bosom-book, endeared to all ranks and conditions of
a Christian People, like "The Task" or the "Night Thoughts." Their
religion is that of revelation--it acknowledges no other source but the
word of God. To that word, in all difficulty, distress, and dismay,
these poets appeal; and though they may sometimes, or often,
misinterpret its judgment, that is an evil incident to finite
intelligence; and the very consciousness that it is so, inspires a
perpetual humility that is itself a virtue found to accompany only a
Christian's Faith.

We have elsewhere vindicated the choice of a person of low degree as
Chief of "The Excursion," and exult to think that a great poet should
have delivered his highest doctrines through the lips of a Scottish
Pedlar.

"Early had he learn'd
To reverence the volume that displays
The mystery of life that cannot die."

Throughout the poem he shows that he does reverence it, and that his
whole being has been purified and elevated by its spirit. But fond as he
is of preaching, and excellent in the art or gift, a Christian Preacher
he is not--at best a philosophical divine. Familiar by his parentage and
nurture with all most hallowed round the poor man's hearth, and guarded
by his noble nature from all offence to the sanctities there enshrined;
yet the truth must be told, he speaks not, he expounds not the Word as
the servant of the Lord, as the follower of Him Crucified. There is very
much in his announcements to his equals wide of the mark set up in the
New Testament. We seem to hear rather of a divine power and harmony in
the universe than of the Living God. The spirit of Christianity as
connected with the Incarnation of the Deity, the Human-God, the link
between heaven and earth, between helplessness and omnipotence, ought to
be everywhere visible in the religious effusions of a Christian
Poet--wonder and awe for the greatness of God, gratitude and love for
his goodness, humility and self-abasement for his own unworthiness.
Passages may perhaps be found in "The Excursion" expressive of that
spirit, but they are few and faint, and somewhat professional, falling
not from the Pedlar but from the Pastor. If the mind, in forming its
conceptions of divine things, is prouder of its own power than humbled
in the comparison of its personal inferiority; and in enunciating them
in verse, more rejoices in the consciousness