Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/353

A STRANGE BOOK 337 spirit, with none to detect flaws or gas-bubbles and separate the slag. He does his utmost to prepare his house for munificent reception of the Spirit, and then as the Divine guest enters by one door he walks out by another. Is this a cordial welcome? Is it not unworthy both of visitor and host? Abraham in the old legend knew better how to receive heavenly guests. When the Lord and the two men or angels came to him, he did not abandon his tent and leave them to shift how they could for themselves ; no, he had water fetched that they might wash their feet, and cakes of the finest flour baked, and a calf, tender and good, killed and dressed, and this he himself served to them with butter and milk and the cakes — and what was the consequence ? Why, when the two men or angels had departed for Sodom, the Lord blessed Abraham with the renewal of the promise of a son in his old age and the old age of Sarah, and held much gracious conversation with him, as friend with friend, and even relented for his sake to spare Sodom could but ten righteous persons be found therein. Ah, Dr. Wilkinson, why did not you at least bring water to wash your Lord's feet? — even the feet of many of these verses, which are exposed, sorely blistered and bruised and dirty, through your studied neglect of the plainest duties of hospitality ? As if abnegation of reason, torrential speed, and total abstinence from correction were not burdens heavy enough for these poor poems to stagger under, another grievous load is inflicted, many of them being written by Swedenborgian correspondences. For myself, I frankly avow that this rigid and frigid system of minutely detailed symbolism does not Y