houghts, in heroic acts,
in hateful crimes. He founds states, he fights battles, he builds cities,
he ploughs the forest, he subdues the elements, he rules his kind. He
creates vast ideas, and influences many generations. He takes a thousand
shapes, and undergoes a thousand fortunes. Literature records them all to
the life,

Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas,
Gaudia, discursus.

He pours out his fervid soul in poetry; he sways to and fro, he soars, he
dives, in his restless speculations; his lips drop eloquence; he touches
the canvas, and it glows with beauty; he sweeps the strings, and they
thrill with an ecstatic meaning. He looks back into himself, and he reads
his own thoughts, and notes them down; he looks out into the universe, and
tells over and celebrates the elements and principles of which it is the
product.

Such is man: put him aside, keep him before you; but, whatever you do, do
not take him for what he is not, for something more divine and sacred, for
man regenerate. Nay, beware of showing God's grace and its work at such
disadvantage as to make the few whom it has thoroughly influenced compete
in intellect with the vast multitude who either have it not, or use it
ill. The elect are few to choose out of, and the world is inexhaustible.
From the first, Jabel and Tubalcain, Nimrod "the stout hunter," the
learning of the Pharaohs, and the wisdom of the East country, are of the
world. Every now and then they are rivalled by a Solomon or a Beseleel,
but the _habitat_ of natural gifts is the natural man. The Church may use
them, she cannot at her will originate them. Not till the whole human race
is made new will its literature be pure and true. Possible of course it is
in idea, for nature, inspired by heavenly grace, to exhibit itself on a
large scale, in an originality of thought or action, even far beyond what
the world's literature has recorded or exemplified; but, if you would in
fact have a literature of saints, first of all have a nation of them.

What is a clearer proof of the truth of all this than the structure of the
Inspired Word itself? It is undeniably _not_ the reflection or picture of
the many, but of the few; it is no picture of life, but an anticipation of
death and judgment. Human literature is about all things, grave or gay,
painful or pleasant; but the Inspired Word views them only in one aspect,
and as they tend to one scope. It gives us little insight into the fertile