paint applied to his face, it was wisely announced that for the future
the Deity should be covered by a cloud. These plays, carried about the
country, taken up by the baser sort of people, descended through all
degrees of farce to obscenity, and, in England, becoming entangled in
politics, at length disappeared. It is said they linger in Italy, and
are annually reproduced in Spain.

The Bible is incapable of representation. For a man to act the Supreme
Being would be as revolting in idea as profane in practice. One may in
words portray the divine character, give utterance to the divine will.
This every preacher does. But to what is the effect owing? Not to
proprieties of attitude or arrangement of muscle, but to the spirit of
the man magnified and flooding with the great theme, and to the thought
of God that surrounds and subdues all; in other words, the imagination
is addressed, not the sight,--the sentiments and affections are engaged,
not the senses. As Lamb says of the Lear of Shakspeare, it cannot be
acted; so, with greater force, we may say of the Bible, it cannot be
acted. When we read or hear of the Passion of the Saviour, it is the
thought, the emotion, burning and seething within it, at which by
invisible contact our own thought and emotion catch fire; and the
capabilities of impersonation and manufacture are mocked by such a
subject.

But the Bible abounds in dramatic situation, action, and feeling. This
has already been intimated; it only remains that we indicate some
examples. The history of David fulfils all the demands of dramatic
composition. It has the severe grandeur of Aeschylus, the moving
tenderness of Euripides, and the individual fidelity of Shakspeare.
Could this last-named writer, who, while he counterfeited Nature with
such success, was equally commended for his historical integrity,--could