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LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION.
like, a parler enfantin of religion. But the world has its childhood, and when it was a child it spoke as a child, it understood as a child, it thought as a child; and. I say again, in that it spoke as a child its language was trué, in that it believed as a child its religion was true. The fault rests with us, if we insist on taking the language of children for the language of men, if we attempt to translate literally ancient into modern language, oriental into occidental speech, poetry into prose? * It is perfectly true that at present few interpreters, if any, would take such expressions as the head, the face, the mouth, the lips, the breath of Jehovah in a literal sense.
Per questo la Scrittura condescende A vostra facultate, e piedi e mano Attribuisce a Dio, et altro intende 2.
But what does it mean, then, if we hear one of our most honest and most learned theologians declare that he can no longer read from the altar the words of the Bible, God spake these words and said'? If we can make allowance for mouth and lips and breath, we can surely make the same allowance for words and their utterance. The language of antiquity is the language of childhood: ay, and we ourselves, when we try to reach the Infinite and the Divine by means
1.An early Oriental historian does not write in the exact and accurate style of a nineteenth century Occidental critic.' Canon Rawlinson, in the Lectures delivered under the auspices of the Christian Evidence Society.
2 Dante, 'Paradiso,' iv. 44-40.
