nd instinctive effort of the poet's inspiration to soar
above the limitations of time and to liberate itself from the transient
accretions of a living, and therefore constantly changing, mode of
speech. He strove after an enfranchisement of utterance, devoid of
stratifying peculiarities, assignable to no age or epoch, and
understood of all. A soul-shaking thought, prevalent throughout
Christendom, was felt imaginatively by a highly endowed poet, and, like
impetuous volcanic fires that fling heavenward mighty fragments and
boulders of mountain in their red release, found magnificent expression
in elemental grandeurs of language, shot through with the wild lights
of hidden flames and transcending all pettiness of calculated artifice
and fugitive fashion.

The dominating idea in the "Hound of Heaven" is so familiar, so--one
might say--innate, that it is almost impudent to undertake to explain
it. Even in the cases of persons to whom the reading of poetry is an
uncultivated and difficult art, there is an instantaneous leap of
recognition as the thought emerges from the cloudy glories of the poem.
Still, modern popular systems of philosophy are so dehumanizing in
their tendencies, and so productive of what may be called secondary and
artificially planted instincts, that it is perhaps not entirely useless
to attempt to elucidate the obvious.

"The heavens," says Hazlitt, "have gone farther off and become
astronomical." The home-like conception of the universe in mediaeval
times, when dying was like going out of one room into another, and man
entertained a neighborly feeling for the angels, has a tendency to
disappear as science unfolds more and more new infinities of time and
space, new infinities of worlds and forms of life. The curious notion
has crept in, that man must sink lower into insignificance with every
new discovery of the vastness and huge design of creation. God would
seem to have over-reached Himself in disclosing His power and majesty,
stunning and overwhelming the intellect and heart with the crushing
weight of the evidences of His Infinity. We have modern thinkers
regarding Christian notions of the Godhead as impossible to a mind
acquainted with the paralyzing revelations of scientific knowledge.
The late John Fiske used to deride what he called the anthromorphism of
the Christian idea of God, as of a venerable, white-bearded man. And
these philosophers deem it more reverent to deny any personal
rel