ed," but not created; no green earth springs in a moment from the
indefinite void. Instead, too, of the simple loneliness of the Old
Testament, several angelic officials are in attendance, who help in
nothing, but indicate that heaven must be plentifully supplied with
tame creatures.

There is no difficulty in writing such criticisms and indeed other
unfavorable criticisms, on "Paradise Lost." There is scarcely any book
in the world which is open to a greater number, or which a reader who
allows plain words to produce a due effect will be less satisfied with.
Yet what book is really greater? In the best parts the words have a
magic in them; even in the inferior passages you are hardly sensible of
their inferiority till you translate them into your own language.
Perhaps no style ever written by man expressed so adequately the
conceptions of a mind so strong and so peculiar; a manly strength, a
haunting atmosphere of enhancing suggestions, a firm continuous music,
are only some of its excellences. To comprehend the whole of the
others, you must take the volume down and read it,--the best defense of
Milton, as has been said most truly, against all objections.

Probably no book shows the transition which our theology has made since
the middle of the seventeenth century, at once so plainly and so fully.
We do not now compose long narratives to "justify the ways of God to
men." The more orthodox we are, the more we shrink from it, the more
we hesitate at such a task, the more we allege that we have no powers
for it. Our most celebrated defenses of established tenets are in the
style of Butler, not in that of Milton. They do not profess to show a
satisfactory explanation of human destiny: on the contrary, they hint
that probably we could not understand such an explanation if it were
given us; at any rate, they allow that it is not given us. Their
course is palliative: they suggest an "analogy of difficulties"; if our
minds were greater, so they reason, we should comprehend these
doctrines,--now we cannot explain analogous facts which we see and
know. No style can be more opposite to the bold argument, the boastful
exposition of Milton. The teaching of the eighteenth century is in the
very atmosphere we breathe: we read it in the teachings of Oxford; we
hear it from the missionaries of the Vatican. The air of the theology
is clarified. We know our difficulties, at least: we are rather prone
to exaggerate the weight