What made these writings, however, so
notable at the time, and so memorable since, was that sincerity and
deep religious feeling of the writer which we have already alluded
to. Here were new elements introduced into the current literature,
destined to revivify it, and to propagate themselves, as by seminal
vitality, in myriad minds and forms. These utterances were both
prophetic and creative, and took all sincere minds captive. Dry and
arid in comparison as Egyptian deserts, lay all around him the
writings of his contemporaries. No living waters flowed through them;
all was sand, and parch, and darkness. The contrast was immense: a
living soul and a dead corpse! Since the era of the Commonwealth,--the
holy, learned, intellectual, and earnest age of Taylor, Barrow,
Milton, Fuller,--no such pen of fire had wrought its miracles amongst
us. Writers spoke from the intellect, believed in the intellect, and
divorced it from the soul and the moral nature. Science, history,
ethics, religion, whenever treated of in literary form, were
mechanized, and shone not with any spiritual illumination.
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