old poet's grand imagination is imposed on us as adamantine
everlasting truth, and God's own word! Pythagoras says, truly
enough, "A true assertion respecting God, is an assertion of
God"; but we may well doubt if there is any example of this in
literature.

The New Testament is an invaluable book, though I confess to
having been slightly prejudiced against it in my very early days
by the church and the Sabbath school, so that it seemed, before I
read it, to be the yellowest book in the catalogue. Yet I early
escaped from their meshes. It was hard to get the commentaries
out of one's head and taste its true flavor.--I think that
Pilgrim's Progress is the best sermon which has been preached
from this text; almost all other sermons that I have heard, or
heard of, have been but poor imitations of this.--It would be a
poor story to be prejudiced against the Life of Christ because
the book has been edited by Christians. In fact, I love this
book rarely, though it is a sort of castle in the air to me,
which I am permitted to dream. Having come to it so recently and
freshly, it has the greater charm, so that I cannot find any to
talk with about it. I never read a novel, they have so little
real life and thought in them. The reading which I love best is
the scriptures of the several nations, though it happens that I
am better acquainted with those of the Hindoos, the Chinese, and
the Persians, than of the Hebrews, which I have come to last.
Give me one of these Bibles and you have silenced me for a while.
When I recover the use of my tongue, I am wont to worry my
neighbors with the new sentences; but commonly they cannot see
that there is any wit in them. Such has been my experience with
the New Testament. I have not yet got to the crucifixion, I have