Creation the Almighty broke the
awful stillness of Eternity, by His first creative fiat, and angels were
the first-born of God. They took their thrones in the galleries of the
universe, and in silent contemplation sat. They spoke not; for words, as
signs of thought or will or emotion, were not then conceived, and,
consequently, then unborn. They gazed in rapture on one another, and in
solemn silence thought. Their emotions bodied forth the Anthem of
Creation.

Human words being created breath, and breath being air in motion, prior
to these language was impossible. And as the deaf are always dumb,
language, like faith, comes by hearing. But hearing itself is a
pensioner, waiting upon a speaker; consequently, it must ever be
contingent on a cause alike antecedent and extrinsic of itself. It is,
therefore, equally an oracle of reason and of faith that, however God
may have communicated to angels, to _man_ He spoke in articulate sounds,
before man articulated a thought, a feeling, or an emotion of his soul.
And as an emotional soul is but a harp of many strings, a hand there
must have been to play upon its chords, before melody and harmony,
twins-born of Heaven, had either a local habitation or a name.

But, it may be asked--Is there not in the regions of Poetry an aeolian
harp, found in the cave of AEolus, on which the winds of heaven played
many a celestial symphony, without the skill or touch of human hand?
Grant all that the Poetic Muse assumes, and then we ask--Who made the
harp? And whence directed came the musing sylvan Zephyrus and his choir?
Came they not from a land of images and dreams?

But we are inquiring for originals. Images and originals are the poles
apart. An original without an image is possible; but an image without an
original is alike impossible and inconceivable. Hence, alike
philosophically and logically, we conclude that _neither man nor angel
addressed each other until they themselves had been addressed by their
Creator_. Then they intercommunicated thought, sentiment, and emotion
with one another as God had communicated to them.

The mystery of language and Poetry is insoluble but on the admission of
a revelation or communication of some sort, unconceived by the human
mind, unexecuted by the human hand. If invention and creation be the
grand characteristics of the Poet, Moses, if uninspired, was a greater
Poet than Homer, or Milton, or Shakspeare, on the hypothesis that he
invented the drama