intellect,
removed at infinite distance from human hopes and fears. He is
for them a being of like passions with themselves,[41]
_requiring heart for heart, and capable of inspiring affection
because capable of feeling and returning it_. Awful indeed are
the thunders of his utterance and the clouds that surround his
dwelling-place; very terrible is the vengeance he executes on
the nations that forget him: but to his chosen people, and
especially to the men 'after his own heart,' whom he anoints
from the midst of them, his 'still, small voice' speaks in
sympathy and loving-kindness. Every Hebrew, while his breast
glowed with patriotic enthusiasm at those promises, which he
shared as one of the favored race, had a yet deeper source of
emotion, from which gushed perpetually the aspirations of prayer
and thanksgiving. He might consider himself alone in the
presence of his God; the single being to whom a great revelation
had been made, and over whose head an 'exceeding weight of
glory' was suspended. For him the rocks of Horeb had trembled,
and the waters of the Red Sea were parted in their course. The
word given on Sinai with such solemn pomp of ministration was
given to his own individual soul, and brought him into immediate
communion with his Creator. That awful Being could never be put
away from him. He was about his path, and about his bed, and
knew all his thoughts long before. _Yet this tremendous,
enclosing presence was a presence of love. It was a manifold,
everlasting manifestation of one deep feeling--a desire for
human affection._[42] Such a belief, while it enlisted even
pride and self-interest on the side of piety, had a direct
tendency to excite the best passions of our nature. Love is not
long asked in vain from generous dispositions. A Being, never
absent, but standing beside the life of each man with ever
watchful tenderness, and recognized, though invisible, in every
blessing that befell them from youth to age, became naturally
the object of their warmest affections. Their belief in him
could not exist without producing, as a necessary effect, that
profound impression _of passionate individual attachment_ which
in the Hebrew authors always mingles with and vivifies their
faith in the Invisible. All the books of the Old Testament are
breathed upon by this b