_The Language of Scripture._
The Word of God speaks to men, and therefore it speaks the language of
the Children of Men. This just and pregnant thought was suggested to
Leighton by Gen. xxii. 12. The same text has led me to unfold and
expand the remark.--On moral subjects, the Scriptures speak in the
language of the affections which they excite in us; on sensible
objects, neither metaphysically, as they are known by superior
intelligences; nor theoretically, as they would be seen by us were we
placed in the sun; but as they are represented by our human senses in
our present relative position. Lastly, from no vain, or worse than
vain, ambition of seeming _to walk on the sea_ of Mystery in my way to
Truth, but in the hope of removing a difficulty that presses heavily
on the minds of many who in heart and desire are believers, and which
long pressed on my own mind, I venture to add: that on _spiritual_
things, and allusively to the mysterious union or conspiration of the
Divine with the Human in the Spirits of the Just, spoken of in Romans
viii. 27, the word of God attributes the language of the Spirit
sanctified to the Holy One, the Sanctifier.
Now the Spirit in Man (that is, the Will) knows its own State in and
by its Acts alone: even as in geometrical reasoning the Mind knows
its constructive _faculty_ in the _act_ of constructing, and
contemplates the act in the _product_ (that is, the mental figure or
diagram) which is inseparable from the act and co-instaneous.
Let the reader join these two positions: first, that the Divine Spirit
acting _in_ the Human Will is described as _one with_ the Will so
filled and actuated: secondly, that our actions are the means, by
which alone the Will becomes assured of its own state; and he will
understand, though he may not perhaps adopt my suggestion, that the
verse, in which God _speaking of himself_, says to Abraham, _Now I
know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thy
only son, from me_[51]--may be more than merely _figurative_. An
_accommodation_ I grant; but in the _thing expressed_, and not
altogether in the Expressions. In arguing with infidels, or with the
weak in faith, it is a part of religious Prudence, no less than of
religious Morality, to avoid whatever looks _like_ an evasion. To
retain the literal sense, wherever the harmony of Scripture permits,
and reason does not forbid, is ever the honester, and, nine times in
ten, the more rational and pregnant interpretation. The contrary plan
is an easy and approved way of _getting rid_ of a difficulty; but nine
times in ten a bad way of solving it. But alas! there have been too
many Commentators who are content not to understand a text themselves,
if only they can make the reader believe that they do.
Of the figures of speech in the sacred volume, that are only figures
of speech, the one of most frequent occurrence is that which describes
an effect by the name of its most usual and best known cause: the
passages, for instance, in which grief, fury, repentance, &c., are
attributed to the Deity.--But these are far enough from justifying the
(I had almost said, dishonest) fashion of metaphorical glosses, in as
well as out of the Church; and which our fashionable divines have
carried to such an extent, as in the doctrinal part of their creed, to
leave little else but metaphors. But the reader who wishes to find
this latter subject, and that of the Aphorism, treated more at large,
is referred to Mr. Southey's 'Omniana,' Vol. II. p. 7-12; and to the
Note in p. 62-67, of the author's second 'Lay-Sermon.'[52]
[51] Gen. xxii. 12.--ED.
[52] An edition of the 'Lay Sermons' is published with Bohn's edition
of Coleridge's 'Biographia Literaria.' The corresponding pages to
those referred to would be pp. 409-10. The passages in 'Omniana'
referred to are in Coleridge's own contributions to that work, and are
reprinted in his 'Remains' (1836, v. 1, pp. 321-330), under the heads
"Pelagianism" and "The Soul and its Organs of Sense."--ED.