INSTRUMENT for his fire-tipt fingers to traverse, while every several
nerve of emotion, passion, thought, that thrids the flesh-and-blood
of our common humanity, responded to the touch,--that this SWEET
PSALMIST OF ISRAEL was himself as mere an instrument as his harp, an
AUTOMATON poet, mourner, and supplicant;--all is gone,--all sympathy,
at least, and all example. I listen in awe and fear, but likewise in
perplexity and confusion of spirit.

Yet one other instance, and let this be the crucial test of the
doctrine. Say that the Book of Job throughout was dictated by an
infallible intelligence. Then re-peruse the book, and still, as you
proceed, try to apply the tenet; try if you can even attach any sense
or semblance of meaning to the speeches which you are reading. What!
were the hollow truisms, the unsufficing half-truths, the false
assumptions and malignant insinuations of the supercilious bigots,
who corruptly defended the truth:- were the impressive facts, the
piercing outcries, the pathetic appeals, and the close and powerful
reasoning with which the poor sufferer--smarting at once from his
wounds, and from the oil of vitriol which the orthodox LIARS FOR GOD
were dropping into them--impatiently, but uprightly and holily,
controverted this truth, while in will and in spirit he clung to it;-
-were both dictated by an infallible intelligence?--Alas! if I may
judge from the manner in which both indiscriminately are recited,
quoted, appealed to, preached upon by the routiniers of desk and
pulpit, I cannot doubt that they think so--or rather, without
thinking, take for granted that so they are to think;--the more
readily, perhaps, because the so thinking supersedes the necessity of
all afterthought. Farewell.