with him has the liberality of universal wisdom, but we are always in
a church. That Hebrew muse, which taught the lore of right and wrong
to man, had the same excess of influence for him, it has had for the
nations. The mode, as well as the essence, was sacred. Palestine is
ever the more valuable as a chapter in universal history, and ever the
less an available element in education. The genius of Swedenborg,
largest of all modern souls in this department of thought, wasted
itself in the endeavor to reanimate and conserve what had already
arrived at its natural term, and, in the great secular Providence, was
retiring from its prominence, before western modes of thought and
expression. Swedenborg and Behmen both failed by attaching themselves
to the Christian symbol, instead of to the moral sentiment, which
carries innumerable christianities, humanities, divinities, in its
bosom.

The excess of influence shows itself in the incongruous importation
of a foreign rhetoric. "What have I to do," asks the impatient reader,
"with jasper and sardonyx, beryl and chalcedony; what with arks and
passovers, ephahs and ephods; what with lepers and emerods; what with
heave-offerings and unleavened bread; chariots of fire, dragons crowned
and horned, behemoth and unicorn? Good for orientals, these are nothing
to me. The more learning you bring to explain them, the more glaring
the impertinence. The more coherent and elaborate the system, the less
I like it. I say, with the Spartan, 'Why do you speak so much to the
purpose, of that which is nothing to the purpose?' My learning is such
as God gave me in my birth and habit, in the delight and study of my
eyes, and not of another man's. Of all absurdities, this of some
foreigner, purposing to take away my rhetoric, and substitute his own,
and amuse me with pelican and stork, instead of thrush and robin;
palm-trees and shittim-wood, instead of sassafras and hickory,--seems