justly
expects, and from good poetry always obtains, the enlargement of his
comprehension and the elevation of his fancy; but this is rarely to be
hoped by Christians from metrical devotion. Whatever is great,
desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name of the Supreme Being.
Omnipotence cannot be exalted; Infinity cannot be amplified; Perfection
cannot be improved.

"The employments of pious meditation are _faith_, _thanksgiving_,
_repentance_, and _supplication_. Faith, invariably uniform, cannot be
invested by fancy with decorations. Thanksgiving, though the most joyful
of all holy effusions, yet addressed to a Being without passions, is
confined to a few modes, and is to be felt rather than expressed.
Repentance, trembling in the presence of the Judge, is not at leisure
for cadences and epithets. Supplication to man may diffuse itself
through many topics of persuasion; but supplication to God can only cry
for mercy.

"Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simple
expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre and its power,
because it is applied to the decoration of something more excellent than
itself. All that pious verse can do is to help the memory and delight
the ear, and for these purposes it may be very useful; but it supplies
nothing to the mind. The ideas of Christian Theology are too simple for
eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic for ornament; to
recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirror
the sidereal hemisphere."

Here Dr Johnson confesses that sacred subjects are not unfit--that they
are fit--for didactic and descriptive poetry. Now, this is a very wide
and comprehensive admission; and being a right, and natural, and just
admission, it cannot but strike the thoughtful reader at once as
destructive of the great dogma by which Sacred Poetry is condemned. The
doctrines of Religion may be defended, he allows, in a didactic
poem--and, pray, how can they be defended unless they are also
expounded? And how can they be expounded without being steeped, as it
were, in religious feeling? Let such a poem be as didactic as can
possibly be imagined, still it must be pervaded by the very spirit of
religion--and that spirit, breathing throughout the whole, must also be
frequently expressed, vividly, and passionately, and profoundly, in
particular passages; and if so, must it not be, in the strictest sense,
a Sacred poem?

"But," s