THE TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES.

It is objected, that the fallibility of the Translator renders illusory the infallibility of the original text: it is objected, that the use made by the apostles of the entirely human version of the Septuagint renders their own Inspiration suspected:—objections are raised on account of the variations in manuscripts, imperfections in reasoning and doctrine, and inaccuracies in facts: it is objected, that the sacred writers contradict natural laws now well known:—and, finally, objections are raised on what have been termed the avowals of St. Paul. We will undertake to reply to each of these difficulties in succession; and may afterwards analyse some of those theories by which it is attempted to set aside the doctrine of a plenary inspiration.

The following is the first objection:—That if the inspiration of the Scriptures extends even to the words of the original text, of what avail is this verbal exactitude of the sacred Word, since, after all, the great majority of Christians can only use Versions more or less inaccurate?

The first remark we make upon this objection is, that it is not one. It does not contest the fact of the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures. To the majority of readers, we are told, the benefit of such an intervention of God would be lost, because instead of the infallible words of the original, they can never have other than the fallible words of a translation. But you are not justified in denying a fact because all its value is not at once appreciated, nor in rejecting a doctrine, for the sole reason that the utility of it has not been recogniscd. All the expressions, for instance, and all the letters of the Ten Commandments, were certainly writ ten by the finger of God, from Aleph, which is the first, to the Caph, with which they close; but will any one venture to assert, that the credibility of this miraculous fact is weakened through the necessity under which the majority of unlearned persons find them selves, in the present day, of reading the Decalogue through the medium of a translation? No one would venture to assert this. It must therefore be remembered, that this objection does not attack the doctrine we are defending, but only calls in question its advantages; these, it is argued, are lost to us in the work of translation—they vanish in this literary transformation.

We shall proceed to show how entirely this assertion is without foundation.

The Divine Word, which the Bible reveals to us, passes through four successive forms ere it reaches us any translation. In the first place, it was from all eternity in the mind of God; secondly, it was communicated by him to that of man; thirdly, under the operation of the Holy Ghost, and by a mysterious transference, it has passed from the mind of the prophet into the characters and symbols of an articulate language, and its words take form and meaning; then, finally, when it has undergone this first translation, as important as it is inexplicable, men have reproduced and recopied it in a new translation, from one human language into another. Of these four operations, the first three are Divine; the fourth alone is human and fallible. Are we to be told that, because this last is human, the Divinity of the other three ought to be matter of indifference to us? Let it be remarked, how ever, that between the third and fourth, that is, between the first transfer of the thought by the sensible signs of a human language, and the second translation of the words by other words, the difference is immense. Between the doubts we may entertain with regard to the correctness of versions, and those by which we may be exercised as to the accuracy of the original text, (if it were not inspired even in its language, the distance is infinite.

Such reasoning would amount to this:—What is it to me that the third operation is that of the Spirit of God, if the last is only accomplished by the mind of man? In other terms, What avails it that the primitive language is inspired, if the versions are not? " But, in speaking thus, objectors forget that we are infinitely more assured of the accuracy of the translations than we could be of that of the original text, supposing all its expressions had not been given by God.

The following considerations will, however, meet this question:—

The operation by which the sacred writers express in words the mind of the Holy Ghost, is itself, we have observed, a version, not of words by other words, but of Divine thoughts by sensible symbols. Now, this first translation is infinitely more undefined, more mysterious, and more exposed to error (if God's hand were not in it) than could be afterwards that by which we would render a Greek word of the original text by a vernacular equivalent. In order that a man may exactly express the mind of God, it is requisite, if his language be not dictated from on high, that he should entirely apprehend it in its full measure and in all the extent and depth of its meaning. But it is not thus with a simple version. The Divine mind being, as it were, already incarnate in the language of the sacred text, the question is no longer, when we would trans late it, about giving it a form, but merely of changing its garb—to make it speak in French or English what it speaks in Greek, and modestly to replace each of its words by an equivalent term. This is an operation,. comparatively far more simple in its nature, without mystery, and infinitely less subject to error than the preceding. It even requires so little spirituality, that it might be perfectly done by an honest—minded heathen, provided he were perfectly acquainted with both languages. The version of an educated rationalist, who confined himself to the simple labour of translation, would afford us more security than that of an orthodox believer, who allowed himself to paraphrase, who at tempted to complete the sense of the text, and who endeavoured to present truth more clearly in his own language than it was found in the Greek or Hebrew original. And let not this assertion excite surprise: it is justified by fact. At the present day, in Germany, is not the translation by De Wette esteemed above that of the great Luther? Is it not felt that there is more likelihood of possessing the thought of the Holy Spirit in the lines of the Professor of Basle than in those of the Reformer, because the former has adhered closely to the expressions of his text, as a scholar subject to the laws of philology, while the other has seemed to seek after something more, and has written rather as an interpreter than as a translator? The more, then, we reflect upon this first consideration, the greater must appear the difference between these two operations—II mean, the transference of the Divine thoughts into the words of human language, and the translation of these same words into the equivalent terms of another language. It need not then be said, What good can it do me that the one is Divine, if the other is human?

Translations can always be compared and confronted with the Divine text, to be corrected and recorrected by this eternal model, until they become its perfect counterpart. The inspired word never leaves us; we have not to ascend for it to the third heaven; it is still on the earth, pure as God himself originally vouchsafed it. We can, therefore, study it throughout time, for the purpose of subjecting the human work of our translations to its immutable truth. We can now, equally well, correct the versions of former days, by applying to them more closely their infallible rule; after three hundred years we can test the work of Luther; and after fourteen hundred, that of St. Jerome. The phraseology of God continues ever the same as God himself dictated it, in Hebrew or in Greek, at the day of its revelation; and with our lexicons in hand, we can return to, and re—examine, from century to century, the infallible expression which he has deigned to give of his Divine mind, until we are assured that modern versions have received the impress of their original, and that we have obtained, for our use, the most faithful facsimile. Say no longer, then, What does it avail that one is Divine and the other human?

If some friend, returning from the East Indies, where your father, far from you, had breathed his last, were the bearer of a letter written with his own hand, or dictated by him, word after word, in the Bengalee dialect, would you feel indifferent whether this letter was entirely from him, because, being ignorant of the Bengal idiom, you could only read it through the medium of a translation? Do you not know that you might get translated versions of it multiplied, until you could have no more doubt as to the import of the original, than you would have if you were a Hindoo? Would you not admit that, after successively receiving these translations, your incertitude would go on diminishing, until it would no longer be appreciable? It is thus with regard to the Bible. If I believe that God has dictated the entire book, my incertitude as to its versions would be limited to a very narrow compass, the boundary of which would be in a continual course of restriction, in proportion as translations were multiplied.

Who does not therefore now feel to what an immeasurable distance all these considerations separate the Bible and its versions, with regard to the importance of verbal inspiration? Between the transference of the mind of God into human words, and the simple turning of these words into other words, there is a distance equal to that of heaven from earth. The one required God; while for the other man sufficed. Let us there fore no more hear the question, Of what advantage to us is the verbal inspiration of the one, if we have not this inspiration in the other?—for between these two terms, which it is sought to equalise, there is almost infinity.

Of the Use made by the Sacred Writers of the Septuagint Version.

It is insisted as follows:—We will admit that the fact of modern translations can in no degree affect the first inspiration of the Scriptures; but there is another point of importance to be considered.

The sacred authors of the New Testament, when they themselves quote in Greek the Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures, make use of the Greek translation called the Septuagint, executed at Alexandria two centuries and a half before Jesus Christ, which no one will now affirm to be an inspired work.

We are gratified in touching here upon this difficulty; because, like many others, a close examination changes objections into arguments.

An inquiry into the manner in which the apostles employed the Septuagint alone suffices to discover a striking indication of the verbal inspiration under which they wrote.

If a modern prophet were sent from God to the churches of our land, how think you would he proceed in quoting the Scriptures? Undoubtedly he would quote them in English, and from the authorised version, whenever the translation appeared to him sufficiently exact. But as often as the sense of the original did not appear to him to be conveyed with sufficient fidelity, he would be especially careful to supply his own translation. Sometimes, perhaps, he would do The better to convey to us the exact sense in which he desired to apply such or such passages of even more. Scripture, he might paraphrase the quoted passage, and neither follow the letter of the original text nor that of the common translation.

This is precisely what the sacred writers of the New Testament have done with regard to the Septuagint.

Although the universal custom of the Greek Jews, throughout the East, was to read in the synagogues, and to cite in their discussions, the Old Testament from this ancient version, the apostles, by the three different ways in which they make their quotations, show us the independence of the spirit which guided them.

In the first place, when the Alexandrine translators appeared to them accurate, they did not hesitate to adopt what was familiar to the ears of their Greek auditors, and to quote literally the Septuagint version.

Secondly, (and this mode is very frequent,) when they are not satisfied with the rendering of the Septuagint, they correct it, and make their quotations from the original Hebrew, which they re—translate more exactly.

Thirdly, when they desire to indicate more clearly in what sense they quote this or that declaration of the Old Testament books, they paraphrase in quoting it. Compare, for example, Micah v. 2, and Matt. ii. 6; Mal. iii. 1, and Matt. xi. 10; Mark i. 2, and Luke vii. 27, & c.

These details will suffice for us to estimate the independence with which the Holy Ghost cites in the New Testament what he had aforetime caused to be written in the Old. We not only reply to the objection, but convert it into a witness.

The Various Readings found in the Original Text.

Other opponents say, We must leave the Translations; we admit that they in no wise affect the question of the first inspiration of the original text; but in this text itself there are numerous differences between the various ancient manuscripts which our churches consult, and from which our printed editions are compiled. What becomes of verbal inspiration before the evidence of such a fact, and of what use is it to us?

Here again the reply is easy. We might repeat, with reference to the variations of the manuscripts, what  we said respecting the translations—Do not con found two orders of facts which are absolutely distinct—that of the first inspiration of the Scriptures, and that of the actual integrity of the copies which have been made from it. If it were God himself who dictated the very letter of the sacred oracles, we have there a settled fact; and none of the copies which have been made from it, nor any translation of it, can annul this first act.

When a fact is consummated, nothing that follows thereupon can obliterate it from the history of the past.

There are then before us two questions which must be most carefully distinguished. Was the entire Scripture divinely inspired? is the first question, and to this we must first apply ourselves. The second is, Are the copies made by learned men and monks, in later times, accurate?

This latter question can in no degree affect the former; do not therefore seek to subordinate the first to the second: they are altogether independent. A book is from God, or it is not from God. In the latter case, it would be vain for us to transcribe it a thousand times with accuracy: we could not make it Divine. And in the first case, equally vain would it be for us to make a thousand incorrect copies: our inability, inaptitude, or unfaithfulness could not at all invalidate the divinity of the original. The Decalogue, we will here repeat, was entirely written by the finger of Jehovah, on two tables of stone; but, supposing the manuscripts which have transmitted it to us do exhibit some variations, this latter fact would not prejudice the former. The sentences, words, and letters of the Ten Commandments would not the less have been written by God. The inspiration of the first text, and the integrity of the subsequent copies, are two orders of facts absolutely different, and separated widely the one from the other. Be careful not to confound what right reason, time, and place require us to keep distinct.

It is by precisely analogous reasoning that the indiscreet admirers of the Apocrypha are reproved. The ancient oracles of God, they are told, were confided to the Jewish people, as in these last times the new oracles have been to Christians. If therefore the Book of Maccabees was simply a human book in the days of Jesus Christ, a thousand decrees of the Christian Church could never cause it to be transubstantiated into a Divine book.

The prophets wrote the Bible either with words of human wisdom, or with words given them by God. This is the question before us.

But you will perhaps say, Have they been faithfully copied from century to century, from manuscript to manuscript? This is doubtless important, but it is wholly a different question. Do not confound what God has separated.

It is undoubtedly true, it will be said, that the fidelity of a copy does not render the original Divine when it is not so; and the inaccuracy of another copy does not render it human if it be not human. (This is not the point we aim to establish.) The fact of the inspiration of the sacred text in the time of Moses, or of St. John, cannot of course depend upon the copies which we have made from it in Europe or in Africa two or three thousand or less years after them; but if the second of these facts does not destroy the first, at least it renders it illusory, by depriving it of its value and utility.

Here then is the objection. The question has been shifted; it is no longer the inspiration of the first text, but a question of its present integrity. It was in the first place a question of doctrine: Is it declared in the Bible, that the Bible is inspired even in its language? But now it is reduced to a mere question of history or criticism. Have the copyists transcribed accurately? Are the manuscripts faithful?

We might be silent on a subject of which we are not here commissioned to undertake the defence; but the answer is so easy, I will say more,—God has rendered it so triumphant, that we cannot forbear giving it. Moreover, the faith of the simple has been so often disturbed by a sort of scientific phantasmagoria, that it may be useful to expose the true nature of this objection. And although it takes us rather out of the field of our treatise, we must reply to it.

It was once specious; but in the present day it is regarded by all who have examined it as but a baseless illusion. The rationalists themselves have avowed that it is valueless, and must be renounced.

The Lord has miraculously watched over his word. Facts demonstrate this. In the first place, by constituting the Jews its depositaries, and afterwards the Christians; his providence thus charged itself with watching that the oracles of God should be faithfully transmitted to us. This has been done; and to attain this result, various causes were brought into operation, of which we shall have to speak hereafter. Recent researches of science have placed this fact in the light of day. Herculean labours have been undertaken to collect all the readings, or variations, which could be supplied, either by the diligent examination of the manuscripts of the sacred writings, preserved in the various libraries of Europe, the study of the most ancient versions, or the investigation of the innumerable quotations made from the sacred books throughout the writings of the Fathers of the church and this immense labour has furnished a result admirable in its insignificance,—imposing by its nullity.

All this labour has established so convincingly the astonishing preservation of the text, copied nevertheless so many thousand times (in Hebrew during thirty three centuries, and in Greek during eighteen hundred years), that the hopes of the enemies of religion in this channel, have been overwhelmed: they have ceased to hope for anything from the critical researches which they were at first so vehement in recommending, be cause they expected discoveries which have not been made. Å learned rationalist himself acknowledges, that the different readings of the Hebrew manuscripts scarcely afford enough interest to repay the labour be stowed upon them. But these very miscalculations, and the absence of these discoveries, have been a precious discovery for the Church of God. This was what she expected; but she has to rejoice in owing it to the labours of her adversaries:—" In truth," says a scholar of our times, " if we set aside those admirable negative conclusions at which they have arrived, the obvious result obtained by the lives of so many men consumed in these mighty researches appears to be nothing; and it may be said that to arrive at it they have foolishly squandered time, talent, and science."

But, as we have said, this result is immense by its nothingness, and all—powerful by its insignificance. When it is remembered that the Bible has been copied during thirty centuries, as no book of man ever was, or ever will be; that it has borne with Israel all their vicissitudes and captivities; that it was transported for seventy years to Babylon: that from the days of the Philistines to those of the Seleucidæ it has been so often persecuted, forgotten, interdicted, and burnt; when it is remembered that from the time of Jesus it had to endure the first three centuries of imperial persecutions, in which those convicted of having it in their possession were sentenced to be torn by wild beasts; after which came the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, in which were everywhere multiplied false books, legends, and decretals; the tenth century, in which so few men knew how to read, even among princes; the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth, in which the use of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue was punished with death;—in the remembrance of all this, it will be well understood how necessary it was that God should always keep his powerful arm uplifted, in order that, on the one hand, the Jewish church should give us, in full integrity, that word which re cords their rebellion, predicts their ruin, and testifies of Jesus; and on the other, that the Christian Churches (the most powerful of which, and especially the Roman sect, prohibited the people from reading the sacred books, and set aside the word of God for traditions) should notwithstanding transmit to us, in all their purity, those writings which condemn all their traditions.

Now, although all the libraries which possess ancient copies of the sacred books have been summoned as witnesses; although the commentaries of the Fathers of every country have been examined; although the Arabic, Syriac, Latin, Armenian, Ethiopic, and other versions have been compared; although all the manuscripts of all countries, and of every age, from the third to the sixteenth century, have been examined a thou sand times by innumerable critics, who sought with ardour, as the reward and glory of their sleepless toil, for some new reading; and although the learned, not con tent with the libraries of the West, have visited those of Russia, and extended their researches to the convents of Mount Athos, of Asiatic Turkey, and of Egypt, in quest of new records of the sacred text:——yet has no thing been discovered, not even a single reading, which can cast doubt upon any of the passages hitherto received as authentic. All the variations, with scarcely one exception, leave untouched the essential meaning of each sentence, and relate merely to points of secondary importance, such as the insertion or omission of an article or conjunction, the position of an adjective before or after its substantive, and the accuracy, more or less important, of grammatical construction.

It is well known that among the Jews it was the profession of the Masorites, or doctors of tradition, to transcribe the Scriptures; we know to what extent these indefatigable scholars carried their respect for the letter; and when we read the rules under which their labours were carried on, we understand the use that the providence of God (who had " confided his oracles to the Jews") made of their reverence, severe exactitude, and even of their superstition. They reckoned the number of verses, words, and letters in each book. They tell us, for instance, that the letter A occurs forty—two thousand three hundred and seventy—seven times in the Bible; the letter B thirty—eight thousand two hundred and eighteen times; and so on to the end. They were scrupulous of changing the position even of a letter, though evidently misplaced, but limited them selves to noting it in the margin, supposing some mystery was involved. They tell us which is the middle letter of the Pentateuch, as well as of each of the books of which it is composed. They never allowed them selves to correct their manuscript; and if any mistake escaped them, they rejected the papyrus or the skin which they had blemished, and recommenced upon a fresh one; for they were equally interdicted from even correcting one of their errors, and from retaining for their sacred volume a single parchment or skin in which an erasure had been made.

This intervention of the providence of God in the preservation of the Old Testament will be seen still more strikingly, if we compare the astonishing integrity of the original Hebrew (at the end of so many centuries) with the decided and important alteration which in the days of Jesus Christ, at the end only of 200 years, the Greek Septuagint version had suffered. Although this book had acquired throughout the East, after the almost universal propagation of the Greek language, a semi—canonical authority at first among the Jews and afterwards among the Christians; although later it was the only text whence the Fathers of the East and the West (with the exception of Origen and Jerome) drew their knowledge of the Old Testament; the only one that Ignatius, Chrysostom, and Theodoret commented on; the only one whence Athanasius, Basil, and Gregory of Nazianzen took their arguments and illustrations; although the Western world as well as the Eastern have during so many ages been illumined only by this borrowed light; (since the ancient Italian Vulgate, which they used universally, had been made from the Greek, and not from the original Hebrew;) hear notwithstanding what these learned men tell us of the alteration of this important Version, of the additions, changes, and interpolations which it had suffered, first by the ancient Jews before the days of Jesus Christ, afterwards by the (infidel) Jews, and later by the imprudence of Christian copyists.

" The evil was of so serious a nature," says Dr. Lee, " that, in certain books, scarcely could the ancient version be recognised; and when Origen (in the year 231) had consecrated twenty—eight years of his noble life to search the different manuscripts, to undertake on this text (in his Tetrapla and his Hexapla) what the modern critics have accomplished on that of the Old and of the New Testament; not only he could not find any edition which was correct, but he even aggravated the evil. By the ignorance of the copyists (who neglected to transcribe his obelisks, his asterisks, and his other marks), the greater part of his marginal corrections glided into the text; so that new errors being interspersed there, they were unable in the time of Jerome to distinguish his annotations from the original text."

These facts, we repeat it, together with the astonishing preservation of the Hebrew text (twelve hundred years more ancient than that of the Septuagint), plainly tell us how the intervention of the mighty hand of God was needed in the destinies of this sacred book.

So far the Old Testament: but think not that the Providence which watched over this holy book, and confided it to the Jews (Rom. iii. 1, 2), has less protected the oracles of the New Testament, which were committed by God to his new people. To these he has not left less reason for gratitude and confidence.

Such then has been the astonishing preservation of the Greek manuscripts which have handed down the New Testament to us, that—after the sacred text has been copied and re—copied so many thousand times in Europe, Asia, or in Africa, in convents, colleges, palaces, or in presbyteries, and this almost without interruption, during the long course of one thousand five hundred years;—notwithstanding during the last three centuries (and especially during the lapse of the last hundred and thirty years) so many noble characters and ingenious minds, and so many learned lives have been devoted to labours hitherto unheard of in extent, admirable for their sagacity, and scrupulous as those of the Masorites; —after the collation of all the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, which were buried in the private, monastic, or national libraries of the East and West; after comparing them not only with all the ancient Latin, Armenian, Sahidic, Ethiopic, Arabic, Sclavonic, Persic, Coptic, Syriac, and Gothic versions of the Scriptures, but also with all the ancient Fathers of the church, who have quoted them in their innumerable writings, in Greek or in Latin;—after so much re search, what have they been able to find? Of this you can judge from the Epistle to the Romans. It is the longest and most important of the New Testament Epistles, " the golden key of the Scriptures " _ " the ocean of Christian doctrine," as it has been termed. It contains four hundred and thirty—three verses, and in these four hundred and thirty—three verses are ninety seven Greek words which are not elsewhere met with in the New Testament. And now how many—(even admitting all the corrections adopted, or only preferred, by Griesbach)—how many renderings are found which would in the slightest degree change the meaning of any sentence? Five! And what are they? We will repeat them.

The first occurs in chap. vii. 6. Instead of, " That being dead wherein," & c.—Griesbach reads, " Being dead to that wherein. " And let it be particularly remarked that in the Greek the difference merely amounts to the changing of a single letter—an o instead of an e; and that moreover the greater number of the manuscripts were so entirely in favour of the ancient text, that (since the time of Griesbach) Tittmann, in his edition of 1824, has rejected this correction; and so has Lachmann, in his edition of 1831. Scholz has however preserved it.

The second occurs in chap. xi. 6. Instead of, " And if by grace, then is it no more of works, otherwise grace is no more grace; but if it be of works, then is it no more grace, otherwise work is no more work;" Griesbach suppresses the last part of this sentence.

The third occurs in chap. xii. 11. Instead of, " Serving the Lord;"—Griesbach reads, " Serving the opportunity

Remark here, that the correction only involves the changing of two letters in one of the Greek words, and that the majority of the manuscripts do not appear to justify even this. Moreover, on this point Whitby re marks that upwards of thirty manuscripts, and all the ancient versions—that Clement of Alexandria, St. Basil, and St. Jerome—all the writings of the Greek and Latin scholiasts (St. Ambrose only excepted), followed the ancient text; and the two learned men whom we have named above (Lachmannand Tittmann) have re stored the ancient text in their respective editions of the New Testament. Scholz has done the same in his edition of 1836.

The fourth occurs in chapter vi. 16.. Instead of, "Whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness;" Griesbach reads, " Whether of sin, or of righteousness;" but he himself inserts at this place the simple sign of a bare probability. Tittmann and Lachmann, in their respective editions, have also rejected this correction; and Scholz, in following them, has done the same.

The fifth is in chap. xvi. 5. Instead of, " The first fruits of Achaia; " Griesbach reads, " The first—fruits of Asia."

We have not here shown the words which have been omitted in the first paragraph of chapter viii., because they are again found in the fourth verse.

Here then we see the admirable integrity of the Epistle to the Romans. According to Griesbach, only five unimportant corrections in the entire epistle! according to more modern critics, but two——and these the most unimportant of the five; and according to Scholz THREE.

We repeat, that we have selected the Epistle to the Romans as a specimen, only on account of its length and importance, without having examined whether it contains more or fewer variations than any other portion of the New Testament. We have however just run through Griesbach, and in the last pages of the EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS, (written at the same time, and on the same subject, as the Epistle to the Romans, we have found only the three following corrections which can be said to affect the sense, or, more properly speaking, the form of the sense:—Chap. iv. 17, " They would exclude us;" or " They would exclude you."—Chap. iv. 26, " She is the mother of us all;" or, "She is the mother of us."—Chap. v. 19, Adultery, fornication, uncleanness;" or, " Fornication, uncleanness."

These examples will, as we judge, speak more forcibly to our readers than any general assertions on our part. There are certain truths which must be seen with our own eyes; of this we have ourselves had the happy experience.

Let the value of the objection now be weighed by those who make it.

Let them, for instance, explain to us how the three or four variations which have just passed in review before us,, in the Epistle to the Romans, (and which modern critics have reduced to one or two,) can throw any doubt upon the fact of its first inspiration. With out doubt, in these three or four passages, as well as in those in other parts of the sacred books, in which the true word of the text may be contested, without doubt here (but here only), between the two different readings of the manuscripts, one is the inspired word, and the other is not: and it is necessary that, in this trivial number of instances, we should divide or suspend our confidence between two expressions; but this is the extent to which incertitude can go; here it must stop; —farther it cannot proceed.

It is calculated that, in the seven thousand nine hundred and fifty—nine verses of the New Testament, there scarcely exist ten or twelve in which corrections introduced by the new texts of Griesbach and Scholz, at the close of their laborious investigations, have any weight. These moreover do not for the most part extend beyond the difference of a single word, and sometimes even of a single letter.

Thus then all the efforts of the adversaries of inspiration, to shake our faith in this channel, have in the end only had the effect of strengthening it. They have compelled the church to follow them in their investigations, and very soon afterwards to precede them:—and what has been the result? Why that the text is found more pure than the most pious ventured to hope; and that the opponents of inspiration, and those of orthodox doctrines, (at least in Germany,) have been compelled to come to the same conclusion. After the labours of Erasmus, Stephens, and Mill, they had hoped to have derived, from among the numerous manuscripts of our libraries, readings more favourable to Socinian doctrines than those which they could gather from Beza and the Elzevirs. Several, indeed, anticipated that the differences would be so great, and such uncertainty would result, that to use their own terms) all exclusive, positive, evangelical belief would be thereby overthrown. But it has not been thus. It is now a suit terminated; the plaintiffs are cast, at their own appeal; the inquest having been held by modern criticism, all the judges—even the bench of Rationalists have unanimously pronounced that it is a lost cause, and that the objectors must go to some other quarter for arguments and grievances.

When this question of the integrity of the original text presented itself for the first time (upwards of one hundred and twenty years ago) to the learned and estimable Bengel, he was dismayed at it, and his up right and pious mind became deeply exercised. Then commenced on his part that work of sacred criticism which gave a new direction to this science in Germany. The English had preceded the Germans; but the latter soon outstripped them. At length, in 1721, after long and laborious research, Bengel, who had become satisfied and happy, thus wrote to one of his disciples: " Eat the Scripture bread in simplicity, just as you have it; and do not be disturbed, if here and there you find a grain of sand which the mill—stone may have suffered to pass. You may hereby avoid all the doubts which for a season so horribly tormented me. If the Holy Scriptures, which have been so often copied, and have so often passed through the erring hands of fallible men, were absolutely without variations, this would be so great a miracle, that faith in them would be no longer faith. I am astonished on the contrary that from all these transcriptions there has not resulted a greater number of different readings." The six come dies of Terence alone contain thirty thousand variations, and they have been copied a thousand times less frequently than the New Testament.

"The inspired writings of the Old and New Testaments," says Dr. Tregelles, " have been transmitted to us just in the same manner as other books; they have been liable to the same casualties in transcription, and the correctness of copies made has depended upon the diligence and accuracy of their transcriber. But just as a copyist might err in transcribing the letters and words of the Decalogue which God had written, so might he with respect to any other portion of Scripture. And it must not be looked at as a want of reverence for the Word of God, or a want of belief in its verbal inspiration in the fullest sense, for this fact to be fully admitted. Various readings are thus found in the copies of the Holy Scriptures, as well as in other writings. Various readings are in their origin to works in MS. what mistakes of the press are in printed books. Every one who has had any connection with the operations of printing must be conscious of the sources of various readings. If a page of a manuscript were put into the hands of a compositor, he would almost undoubtedly make some errors in setting it up in type. In some places he might read the copy wrongly, in others might omit, in others might repeat some of the words before him; and there would probably be several errors in punctuation and orthography. The page of letter—press would on these accounts require a good deal of revision, to make it actually represent the page of MS. which had been sent to the printing-office.

"If the page set up in type, instead of being corrected, were at once worked off with all its errors, and the copies so printed were put into the hands of fresh compositors, then new variations would undoubtedly arise. Some of the compositors might notice unquestionable mistakes, and try to rectify them; in doing this they would not improbably depart yet farther from the original MS., and each one, perhaps, in a different way.

"Now, if the MS. page originally used had been lost, so that it could not be applied to the revision of the incorrect copies, the only way would be to take the copies, such as they were, and by examining them among themselves, to restore if possible the original readings. To this end the page as set up by the first compositor would be the most helpful, and would undoubtedly be the nearest to the MS. It would there fore be important to trace the genealogy of these printed copies. If the MS. copy had been put into the hands of more than one compositor, the page as set up by each of these would be a separate and important wit ness; the united testimony of such pages would lead one to something like a certainty as to the original reading. This may serve to illustrate the causes and character of various readings, and the mode of critically dealing with them."

How can we avoid recognising here the powerful intervention of God in this unanimous agreement of all the religious societies of the East and of the West? Everywhere the same Scriptures. What a distance separates in their worship Christians from Jews! and, notwithstanding, enter our schools, examine our He brew Testaments, then go into their synagogues, ask of their Rabbies their sacred rolls, you will there find the same books, without the difference of a letter! What a distance separates the reformed Christians from the sectaries of Rome! Yet you will find in our respective schools the same Greek Testament, without the difference of an iota. Again, what a distance separates the Latin church from the Greek church, which also calls itself the catholic, but orthodox apostolic, daughter of Antioch, condemning the Romans as rebel and schismatic sons! and yet ask of one and the other their sacred texts, neither will you find any difference here. There are no variations to make two schools; they will bring forward the same manuscripts; priests and popes, Munich and Moscow, will give you the same testimony. We were then to have amongst us, Greeks, Romanists, and Protestants, the same sacred book of the New Testament, without the difference of a single iota.

We come then once more to the conclusion, that not only was Scripture inspired at the time when God caused it to be written, but that this word, which was inspired eighteen centuries ago, is now in our possession; and that moreover, holding the sacred text in one hand, and all the readings which science has collected from hundreds of manuscripts in the other, we can exclaim with gratitude, " I now hold in my hands the eternal word of my God! "

Concerning Errors of Reasoning, or in the Doctrine of Holy Scripture.

We will leave the Various Readings, say some opposers, and admit that the sacred text may be regarded as the original language of the prophets and apostles; but in this text we are compelled to recognise the leaven of human weakness. We meet with irrelevant or inconclusive reasonings, inapt quotations, popular superstitions, prejudices, and other infirmities resulting from the ignorance of the times and condition of those who wrote. Such being the traces of infirmity which are apparent in Scripture, it is impossible, say some, for us to acknowledge an inspiration in the details of their language.

The experience of every age, and especially of later times, has sufficiently demonstrated, that before an impartial examination all these difficulties vanish; light is thrown upon what appeared obscure; and eventually inconceivable harmony and beauty, such as the human mind never had conceived, stand revealed in the Word of God, to the manifestation of which even objections are made subservient. What is an object of doubt to day, may by further study become a motive of faith to—morrow; and what is to—day a subject of perplexity, may to—morrow be converted into proof.

We do not hesitate to assert that, on hearing such objections, we feel at once two opposite emotions those of sorrow and of satisfaction: of sorrow, to see men who acknowledge the Bible to be a revelation from God, not fearing to advance against it the most serious accusations; and of satisfaction, in considering how forcibly such language on their part helps to con firm the doctrine which we are defending.

The divinity, expediency, wisdom, or utility of such and such passages of Scripture is not understood, and on this account their inspiration is denied. Is this an argument which can have any real value, we will not say in our eyes, but in your own? Who are you? Keep thy foot (feeble child of man) when thou goest into the house of God, and be more ready to hear than to offer the sacrifice of fools; for they consider not that they do evil.—God is in heaven, and thou upon earth." (Eccles. v. 1, 2.) Who are you who thus sit in judgment upon the oracles of God? Scripture has itself forewarned us, that it would be to some " a stumbling block, and to others foolishness;" that " the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God;" that " he cannot know them, because they are spiritually discerned." (1 Cor. ii. 14.) Man must take his proper position as a weak, ignorant, and depraved creature! He cannot understand God until he has humbled himself. Is an argument not well sustained because you fail to apprehend it?—is a doctrine a prejudice because you do not concur in it?—a quotation void of force because you do not understand its true sense? What would remain in our world if God had left us only what you can explain? The emperors of Rome, unable to understand either the life or the faith of the martyrs, threw them to be torn of beasts in the amphitheatre, or cast them into the Tiber. So they expose to scorn what they cannot understand, and have condemned.

Might the author here venture to state his own experience? He calls to mind with equal humiliation and gratitude his first and last impressions of the Epistles of St. Paul. In his youth he was enabled to acknowledge that the Bible was from God; but he could not then comprehend the doctrines it inculcated. He wished to respect the apostolic records, because he saw by other traits that the inimitable impress of the Most High God was upon them; but a secret perplexity agitated his mind as he perused them, and led him to consult other books. St. Paul appeared to him to reason falsely, to speak ambiguously, to avoid coming to the point by his constant circumlocution, and to speak altogether in a different way to that in which we might ourselves have expressed it. But as soon as Divine grace had revealed this doctrine of the righteousness of faith, which is the bright and effulgent glory of the Scripture, then every word became light, harmony, and life; the arguments of the apostle be came transparent,—his ideas profound and practical, all his epistles " the power of God unto salvation." He then saw abundant proofs of Divinity break forth in the very portions of Scripture which had so long perplexed him, and he could exclaim with the joy of a discovery, and with lively gratitude and praise, on finding the hitherto silent chords within vibrate in unison with the Divine word, " Yes, my God, thy Scriptures are throughout divinely inspired!"

Errors alleged to be in the Narratives, and Contradictions in the Facts.

We will begin by acknowledging that, if it were true that there are erroneous facts and contradictory narratives in the Holy Scriptures, we must renounce the defence of their plenary inspiration. But we can make no such admission. These pretended errors do not exist.

We admit that, among the numerous attacks levelled at the most minute details of the narratives in the sacred books, there are some which at first sight may occasion a little perplexity; but on a closer examination these difficulties explain themselves and vanish. Of these we shall give some examples, taking care to select them from among those which the adversaries of a plenary inspiration appear to have regarded as the most insurmountable.

It is very easy to say, generally and peremptorily,, that there are contradictions in the Bible; and it often happens that unreflecting though pious Christians, in disposed to the trouble of close examination, suffer their notions of inspiration to become relaxed, before on the one hand they have sufficiently examined the general testimony of Scripture on this point, or on the other the nature of the objections which have been opposed to it. They have thus been found seeking in their own minds, rather than in the Bible, a mitigated system of inspiration, which can be reconciled with the pretended existence of errors in the Word of God. This was in the sixteenth century the doctrine of Socinus, Castalio, and of some others; but it was at the time strenuously opposed by all pious men. One whose labours and reputation we otherwise honour, has not scrupled to say in his Lectures, that " all is not equally inspired in the Holy Bible, and that if error in the de tails of evangelical narratives were not admitted, their explanation would involve inextricable difficulties." And what examples does he give to justify such assertions? He quotes two of the passages which we shall? presently review;—the first, relative to the two blind men of Jericho; and the second, to the taxing under Cyrenius. The reader may therefore judge of the facility with which the testimony borne by the Scriptures themselves to their own entire inspiration is abandoned.

We shall now present some examples, both of the contradictions which objectors think they can oppose to us, and of the causes of the rashness with which they permit themselves to denounce as contradictory certain passages, which nevertheless only require a little reflection to be perfectly reconciled. We have already said, and we will repeat it, that being able here only to cite a small number, we have been careful to select those which our adversaries have appeared to think the most difficult.

One of the causes of this rashness, is the extreme brevity of the recitals of the sacred historians. As the narratives do not explain in what manner some of their features may be reconciled, they are precipitately denounced as contradictory! Nothing can be more irrational. Suppose a Hindoo Pundit had read three brief histories (but each of the three true) of Napoleon. The first would tell him that the taking of Paris, preceded by a great effusion of blood at the gates of the capital, compelled him to abdicate, and that an English frigate was ready forthwith to convey him to an island in the Mediterranean. A second would relate that this renowned captain was conquered by the English, who entered Paris without opposition, and conveyed him to St. Helena that General Bertrand voluntarily proceeded thither with him; and that he there breathed his last in the arms of this faithful servant. A third would record that the fallen emperor was accompanied in his exile by Generals Gourgaud, Bertrand, and Montholon. Every one of these statements would be true; and yet, " What a mass of contradictions in a few words!" would the wise man of Benares exclaim.—St. Helena in the Mediterranean! Who does not know that this isle rises like a rock in the midst of the mighty ocean?—this is contradiction the first. One of these books is a lie, and must be rejected! But further, Paris taken without a contest! and Paris taken after a bloody battle at its gates!—contradiction the second. In one account we have one general; in another three! contradiction the third."

Now let us compare the rash conclusions thus supposed with the objections which are advanced against the narratives of our evangelists.

FIRST EXAMPLE.—Mark tells us, that the woman "saw A YOUNG MAN (one) sitting on the right side, who said to them, Be not affrighted, ye seek Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified: he is risen.

And Luke narrates, that "TWO MEN stood by them, who said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen.

These two passages are objected against as irreconcilable; but with what justice?? There is a difference, doubtless; but there is neither a contradiction nor a disagreement between the two accounts. If they are both true, why is it desired that they should both be identical? It is sufficient that they are true, especially in narrations which are so admirably concise. Does it not frequently occur among ourselves, that, without failing in accuracy, we relate the same circumstance to different persons as we meet with them, in two different ways? Why should not the apostles do the same? Luke records that " two men" stood by the women; while Mark only speaks of him of the two who had rolled away the stone, who was sitting alone on the right side of the sepulchre, and who addressed them. In like manner one of the historians of the life of Bonaparte mentions three generals; while the other, without any incorrectness, only speaks of one. It is thus that Moses (Gen. xviii.), after speaking of the appearance of three men as he sat in the tent door in the plains of Mamre, immediately afterwards (verses 2, 10, 17) speaks of one only, and this as if he were alone. It is thus that at two different times, and in two different ways, I could, with entire truth, relate the same circumstances. For instance: " I met three men who pointed out to me the direct road; " or, " I met a man who put me into the right road." If there is in the passages in question a notable difference, there is not however even the semblance of a contradiction.

SECOND EXAMPLE.—Matthew says that Judas "went and hanged himself." St. Peter says that "falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out."

This also has been held up as an evident contradiction.

We well remember the analogous features of a recent suicide. To make sure of accomplishing the dreadful deed, a wretched inhabitant of Lyons adopted the two fold means of seating himself outside a window on the fourth story, and of firing a pistol into his mouth. The same narrator of this desperate act might give three different versions of it, and all three accurate ones. In the first he might have described the entire occurrence; in the second he could say that he terminated his existence by blowing out his brains; and in the third that he precipitated himself from an upper story upon the pavement, and was killed.

Such was also the voluntary punishment by which Judas " went to his own place." He strangled himself, fell headlong, and burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out. One single detail more, on the fearful circumstances of such a death, would have shown us the connection of the whole. It has not been given; but who on this account will dare to say that there is here a contradiction?

THIRD EXAMPLE.—Here let us enumerate the majority of those cases in which various numerical calculations may appear to be at variance; as, for instance, that of the talents of gold brought from Ophir to king Solomon (1 Kings ix. 28; 2 Chron. viii. 18); that of the numbering of the Israelites in the time of David (2 Sam. xxiv. 9; 1 Chron. xxi. 5); that of the children of the patriarch Jacob, transported into Egypt (Gen. xlvi. 26, 27; Deut. x. 22; Acts vii. 14), & c. One single circumstance, in addition to these rapid recitals, will at once place them in accord before us. King Solomon might in one case have reckoned the gross amount of his revenue, and in the other have deducted thirty talents there from for the expenses of the navy. The numbering of David might exhibit two results, according as it included, or was exclusive of, the ordinary military force (militia) already numbered through out the kingdom (288,000 men, with their officers of every rank, i Chron. xxvii. 1; 2 Sam. xxiii. 8). Finally, there might be sixty—six, seventy, or seventy five persons for the family of the patriarch, according as we reckon Joseph's sons, or the female members of the families, or add the wives of the eleven patriarchs. We abstain however from entering into the examination of these details; it is necessary only to point them out.

FOURTH EXAMPLE.—Matthew, in the twenty seventh chapter of his Gospel (verses 9 and 10) quotes, as from Jeremiah, words which are not recorded in the book of that prophet. "Then (he writes) was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they received the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value," &c.

This has been denounced as an evident error!" these words being met with only in the book of Zechariah (xi. 13).

We will not reply, with St. Augustine, that several Greek manuscripts have only the words, " Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by the prophet;" let us therefore follow those only which do contain the name of Jeremiah. It is true that, even in the present day, among the Greek manuscripts of our public libraries, there are two which do not record the name of this prophet;—and that among the most ancient versions, the Syriac and Persic also, it is not recorded. This solution however does not appear to us in harmony with the ordinary rules of sacred criticism; and St. Augustine himself ingenuously admits that he is not satisfied with it, because, even in his time, the majority of the Latin and Greek copies contained in this sentence the name of Jeremiah.

Some learned men consequently presume that this name might easily by error have crept into the text; and that the transcribers, having remarked in the margin these letters, Ζου (which are used as an abridgment of the name of Zechariah), may inadvertently have made it Ἰου, and thus run it into the text, thinking they read the name of Jeremiah. But neither are we satisfied with this explanation, because it only rests upon an hypothesis gratuitously opposed to the manuscripts themselves, and because it opens the door to rash conclusions. Let us respect the integrity of manuscripts.

I prefer therefore the explanation of Whitby, which is this: we know by St. Jerome, he observes, that there existed in his day an apocryphal book of the prophet Jeremiah, in which the words quoted by St. Matthew are found, letter for letter. It is also known that the Second Book of Maccabees (ii. 1—9) records many of the actions and words of Jeremiah, which are taken from another book, and not from his canonical prophecies. Why then should not the words quoted by the evangelist have really been pronounced by Jeremiah? and might they not have lived in the memory of the church down to the time of Zechariah, who would then him self give them an inspired place in holy writ? as is the case in the apocryphal words of Enoch, quoted in the Epistle of Jude (verses 14, 15); or the apocryphal words of Jesus Christ, quoted by St. Paul in the book of the Acts. (Acts xx. 35.) What confirms this sup position is, that the words cited by St. Matthew are only in part found in Zechariah. Moreover it is known that this prophet loved to record the words of Jeremiah. (See Zech. i. 4; Jer. xviii. 11; Zech. iii. 8; and Jer. xxiii. 5.)

FIFTH EXAMPLE.—There have recently been made, and particularly in Germany, many difficulties on the quadruple recital which is given us of the resurrection of the Lord.

For brevity sake, we will treat of them all at the same time, taking care to designate objections and the answers by corresponding letters.

A. According to St. Luke (it is said) the Galileans, when they returned from the sepulchre, would have prepared their spices before the sabbath, (Luke xxiii. 56,) while according to St. Mark, (xvi. 1, 2,) they would only have bought them the Saturday evening, after the expiration of this sacred rest.

B. If you read St. Matthew, these women would be Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, while there would be also Salome, according to Mark, (xvi. 1,) and even according to Luke, (xxiv. 10,) there would also be found there John and others with them.

C. According to Mark, (xvi. 2,) they went to the sepulchre " at the rising of the sun; " according to John, (xxi. 1,) it was " yet dark."

D. If (according to Matthew alone) the Jews had put a guard on the sepulchre, we can hardly understand that the women would venture to visit and think of opening it.

E. In Matthew (xxvii. 5) and Mark (xvi. 5), the women saw only one angel at the sepulchre; in Luke (xxiv. 5) they saw two.

F. According to Matthew (xxviii. 8) and Luke (xxiv. 9, 10), " the women come out of the sepulchre with fear and great joy; " they run to relate to the disciples what they had seen: while according to Mark (xvi. 8), they fled, " they trembled and were amazed; neither said they anything to any man, for they were afraid."

G. If, according to the first and the third Gospel, the women informed the disciples of what had passed, (Matt. xxviii. 8; Luke xxiv. 9,) according to the fourth, they would only have told it to Simon Peter and John.

H. According to the first three Gospels, Mary Magdalene came to the sepulchre, saw there angels, who informed her of the resurrection of Jesus; while St. John says (xx. 2) she only said to the disciples, " They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, " and said nothing of the resurrection, nor even of the angels. "We know not where they have laid him," she adds.

I. According to Luke (xxiv. 12,) it would appear that Peter, on hearing this report, ran alone to the sepulchre: according to John, there was with Peter " the other disciple whom Jesus loved." (xx. 2.)

K. If you only read the first three evangelists, several women appear to have been witnesses of the apparition of the angels, and of the resurrection of Jesus; while if you read St. John, it will appear that Mary Magdalene was alone honoured with these revelations.

L. According to Luke (xxiv, 23, 24,) and even ac cording to John (xx. 2,) Mary and the women returning from the sepulchre came to announce to the disciples only the removal of the body of Jesus, and the appearing of the angels; they had not then seen the Lord himself; while according to Matthew (xxviii. 9) Jesus would have appeared to them as they were on the way.

Here are then, it has been said to us, eleven contra dictions, which do not, it is true, fundamentally affect the narrative, and which ought not in any way to disturb our faith, but which irresistibly rise in testimony against an entire Inspiration.

This objection, we confess, had appeared to us too ill founded, and already too often solved, to find a place in the first edition of this work. However, it has been brought forward again to us, and we have thought it well to reply to it.

The day of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, for the disciples, began with the first dawn of the morning (John xx. 1), and was prolonged till midnight (Luke xxiv. 29, 33, 36). The sepulchre where their Master had been laid was not distant from their dwelling, since they place it to—day even within the enclosure of modern Jerusalem. The disciples and the women could have gone there often, and in various ways, during the course of this incomparable Sunday. But as each one of the four evangelists seems to have pre scribed to himself in the narration of this event a wonderful brevity, it is quite natural that at first sight their recitals present on the innumerable incidents of the day an apparent confusion. Each one must speak the truth and nothing but the truth, but no one has given the whole; and, because of this conciseness, you may not be able to perceive at once their perfect agreement. They relate each one on his part—following a special point of view, and without embarrassing himself with an agreement which they knew to be in the reality of the facts. What more did they want? One spoke above all of Mary Magdalene, because it was to her that Jesus deigned to grant his first appearing;—the other of Peter, because Jesus showed himself to him not withstanding his crime, and because he was called to one of the first ranks in the Church of God; two others of the wonderful meeting at Emmaus, because this manifestation was the most tender and significant; finally, three others of his appearing to the Eleven, because these were to be the foundations and pillars of the Church. Besides this, you may see in their narratives many features which will sufficiently indicate that in relating some scenes, they designedly abstain from mentioning others, the remembrance of which is not the less dear to them, but which they must be silent on, in order that their Gospels should be divinely brief. We will give some examples.

1. You will find St. Paul recalling to the Corinthians (1 Cor. xv. 5) that Jesus " was seen first of Cephas, and afterwards of the Twelve." Nevertheless neither of the four evangelists relates to us this appearance of Jesus to Simon Peter. It is certainly well that we read later in Luke (xxiv. 34) this word in passing, "The Lord has appeared to Simon;" without this word, which is found incidentally in a dialogue of the Eleven and Cleopas, the adversaries of Inspiration would not have failed to say, that Paul was deceived on this fact, and that he had not carefully read his Gospels, since there is not a word said of this appearing in their quadruple relation of the resurrection.

2. It is thus again that St. Luke, who (ver. 12) only speaks of Peter, is careful nevertheless to relate its being said (ver. 24) by the disciples of Emmaus, " Some of us went to the sepulchre."

3. It is thus again that St. Mark, who mentions neither the appearing of Jesus to the women, nor that to Simon Peter, is careful to insert in his narrative (chap. xvi. ver. 9) one little word which explains to us other manifestations of which he will not speak. " Jesus," he says, " appeared first (first!) to Mary Magdalene."

4. Finally, it is thus that St. John, who only speaks of Mary Magdalene, points out to us by a single pronoun that she was not however alone. " They have taken away the Lord," she says, " and we know not where they have laid him." Thus, then, to establish contra diction between the several parts of the quadruple narration, they must be shown irreconcilable with all the suppositions which we are obliged to make on the unknown connection of the events of the day. But who can do this? On the contrary, it is easy to figure to oneself the order of the facts to be such that all the features of the recitals will agree. So far is the problem from being impossible to solve, that many have undertaken to do this, and by different ways. It was only necessary for them to make various suppositions, but all perfectly admissible, on the number and order of the visits of Mary, the disciples, and the women, to the tomb.

Such hypotheses, it will be said, do not necessarily remove the contradiction—they only show there may not have been any. And what do we require more? The adversaries of Inspiration, in their turn, only suppose contrary hypotheses.

We shall now, then, instead of replying to each of the eleven objections given above, merely show the course of the events, such as we may conceive it to be, according to the whole of the four narratives. (The same letters which distinguished the different objections will be here placed before the corresponding paragraphs which serve to explain them.)

A. Jesus having died on the cross, on Friday evening, at the ninth hour of the day, the sabbath, which commenced three hours after, was of a double solemnity (sabbath of the week, and sabbath of the Passover). When the even was come (Matt. xxvii. 46–61; Mark xv. 34–47), Joseph of Arimathea went to ask of Pilate the body of the victim; he obtained it, and, accompanied by Nicodemus, who had brought to the sepulchre myrrh and aloes (John xix. 39), having bought a grave cloth, he took down the body of Jesus from the cross, wrapped it with the spices and in the linen clothes (Mark xv. 46; Matt. xxvii. 59); and then, finally, the time being short, he hastened to lay it in a sepulchre near to Golgotha. We will conceive then that these holy women (who had contemplated from a distance these sorrowful scenes, until the moment they had shut, with a large stone, the entrance of the tomb) had only a little time left to return home, and to prepare there the perfumes they had for their use. The sabbath was about to commence, and whatever might be in their eyes the sanctity of their occupations, they ceased from them as soon as the sun had disappeared. Nothing could disturb them from the rest and silence of this day. (Luke xxiii. 56.) But as soon as it was ended (that is to say, at six o'clock on Saturday evening), they hastened to buy the spices, to complete the pious preparations which they had only been able to begin. This funeral work required a very considerable quantity of myrrh, aloes, and other substances; and no doubt, the evening before, they had not perceived from such a distance that Nicodemus had already placed in the sepulchre a hundred pounds of perfumes.

All then even here is in perfect accord; and it is by these touching details that Luke and Mark have desired to exhibit, each on his part, the humble respect of these holy women for the law of the seventh day: the one (Luke xxiii. 56) by showing us with what submission they ceased from the most sacred cares—the other (Mark xvi. 1) with what scrupulosity they only took it up again at the hour that work was permitted.

B. Now as they went out to go to the sepulchre: John names only Mary Magdalene, because Jesus Christ had chosen her to be the first witness of the greatest of miracles, and she was the principal actor in his narration. He is careful however to make her say, "We know not where they have laid him." (chap. xx. ver. 2.) In general the evangelists seem solicitous to accumulate witnesses. And if this appearance with which the holy women were favoured had not been the first, it is probable the sacred writers would not have made mention of it. This is what we may conclude from analogy, from the manner in which Paul proceeds (1 Cor. xv. 5—8), who only speaks of the apostles, and makes no mention of the women. His complete silence explains to us sufficiently the partial silence of the evangelists.

C. It was yet dark (John xx. 1) when the women left their dwelling, laden with their spices, to go to the sepulchre; but the sun had risen when they arrived there. (Mark xvi. 2.) We know that in these meridional latitudes the twilights of the evening and morning are very short.

D. They asked on the way, how they should roll away the enormous stone with which the sepulchral cavern was closed. (Mark xvi. 3.) During the rest and silence of the sabbath, how could they have known that guards had been placed there? (Matt. xxvii. 66.)

E. There had been, however, an earthquake. (Matt. xxviii. 2.) An angel, brilliant as the light, and clothed with a resplendent robe, had descended from heaven, and had rolled away the stone; the keepers shook, be came as dead men, and afterwards fled. But what was the astonishment of the women when, arrived at the tomb, they found it open and empty! Only a young man, clothed in a white robe, was seated in the sepulchre at the right side. (Mark xvi. 5.) Two men then presented themselves to them in dazzling raiment (Luke xxiv. 4); they were angels (Mark and Matthew only mention him who had rolled away the stone, and had spoken to them).

F. Now, these holy women, going out quickly from the sepulchre, fled; overcome at the same time with both terror and joy (Matt. xxviii. 8; Mark xvi. 8), they took care, in returning to the city, to say nothing to any one of what had happened. Did they fear the wrath of the Sanhedrim? or at least, did they desire only to share their emotions among their brethren? Notwithstanding the early hour, they must have met a great number of Jews at the approaches and in the public places of this immense city, where, during the feasts, they did not reckon less than three millions of inhabitants.

G. Arrived where the eleven and other disciples were, the women relate to them all that they had seen. (Matt. xxviii. 8; Luke xxiv. 9—11.) But their words seem to them only as a tale; then Mary Magdalene, addressing herself more particularly to Peter and John, assured them that at least, if their Master was not risen, they must have taken him away. (John xx. 2.)

H. According to the narrative of St. John, Mary must necessarily have said more on it to these two disciples than this evangelist relates to us directly; for he adds that they ran together to the sepulchre, and when John saw the arrangement of the clothes, he believed. But ah! this language of Mary, " They have taken away the Lord, and I know not where they have laid him," was it not too natural? The transient apparition of angels had not produced so strong a conviction as that her faith was unshaken by the cold and incredulous reception of the apostles. She saw them treat as a fiction her celestial vision; nothing then remained to her but the material and common part of the fact. At least, she says, the sepulchre is open, and the body is no longer there!

I. Meanwhile, on hearing these words, and while Cleopas was gone to Emmaus, Peter rising (St. Luke tells us, xxiv. 12) ran to the tomb; but he did not go alone (ver. 24), and John tells us that he was accompanied by the other disciple whom Jesus loved. (John xx. 2, 3.) John the younger, arrived first; he did not enter in, but, stooping down, saw the linen clothes lying, and the napkin for the head, wrapped up in a place by itself (John xx. 7.) Peter following, had courage to enter, and was astonished at what had occurred. (Luke xxiv. 12.) John entered in his turn and believed. Then they returned home. (John xx. 10; Luke xxiv. 12.) There is nothing again in all this which is not in accordance.

K. Now, Mary Magdalene, who had followed them, having returned to the sepulchre, remained alone at the place in tears, and full of sorrow at not having found the body of her Master. She stooped down to look into the tomb, and it was then that once more she saw two angels clothed in white; they were sitting, the one at the head, the other at the foot, where the body of the Lord had lain. (John xx. 11–13.) Soon after Mary turning round saw Jesus himself. " Go," said he to her, " to my brethren, and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God." Mary hastened to go to announce to the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had said these things (John xx. 18), but they believed her not. (Mark xvi. 10, 11.)

It is thus that, as St. Mark says, Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene. All this recital is natural and harmonious; the historians agree in a way we can easily perceive; only they each relate some one of the great facts of this memorable day, without thinking himself called on to relate all.

L. The two disciples (Luke xxiv. 21—24), on their departure from Jerusalem for Emmaus, had only known of the events of the day, the first report of the women and the two disciples, the opening of the sepulchre, the taking away the Lord, and the apparition of angels; but they had not been informed of the last intelligence, the appearance of Jesus to Simon Peter, and the second report of Mary (John xx. 18; Mark xvi. 10); never the less this had occurred later. At the example of Mary Magdalene, who had returned a second time to the sepulchre, after relating to the disciples her first discoveries, the other women had gone again there while Mary returned to the disciples; they found the tomb empty, and returning to assure their brethren that the body of Jesus was no longer there, Jesus himself had deigned to appear to them, living and full of sympathy. They had worshipped him, and he had said to them, " Fear not; go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there they shall see me." (Matt. xxviii. 8—10.)

ANOTHER SOURCE OF ASH CONCLUSIONS. Certain reigns, as those of Nebuchadnezzar,, Jehoiakim, and Tiberius, have had two commencements; and the dates assigned to them are held to be irreconcilable! The first, previously to ascending the throne, reigned three years with his father; the second reigned ten years with his father; and the third was associated with Augustus in the government, from the 28th of August in the second year of the Christian era, but never the less did not succeed Augustus until the 19th of August in the year 14.

Some examples.—See 2 Kings xxiv. 8; and 2 Chron. xxxvi. 9. See also Daniel i. 1; ii. 1; Jer. xxv. 1; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 5—7; and Luke iii. 1.

ANOTHER SOURCE OF RASH CONCLUSIONS.—The design of the Holy Ghost in one Gospel, is not often the same as in another where the same fact is narrated (see p. 100); and yet cavillers are looking for a similarity in wording and detail; and they make any difference a pretext for declaring them at variance, and for exhibiting them as in direct opposition.

Example.—The Holy Ghost, in the genealogy of Jesus Christ, recorded in St. Matthew (chap. i. 1—17), designs to show the Jews that, according to the full requirement of their law, he is the Son and Heir of all the kings of Judah, by a legal descent; while in Luke iii. 23–38, the same Holy Ghost designs to show the Gentiles that Jesus Christ is the son of David by a natural descent. And because, with these two distinct objects, one gives us his genealogy according to the law, through Solomon, the son of David, and through Jacob, the father of Joseph, who was the husband of Mary and the other his genealogy according to nature, through Nathan, another son of David, and through Heli, the father of Mary—it has been most unwarrantably thought possible to place them in opposition to each other.

ANOTHER SOURCE OF RASH CONCLUSIONS.—A text badly translated produces a meaning opposed to reason and history; and forthwith the sacred writer is accused of the grossest error! They do not give them selves the trouble to see whether, by the simplicity of a literal translation, this passage, when better rendered, may not be divested of every difficulty.

FIRST EXAMPLE.—St. Luke, we are told, as soon as he has spoken of the taxing (ii. 1), the ordinance for which was published by Augustus Cæsar at the time of the birth of Jesus, adds these words (ver. 2), " And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria." Hence it would follow, that St. Luke would here be found in notorious contradiction with contemporaneous history; because, at the birth of Jesus Christ, Judea was governed by Herod, and Syria was either under the government of Saturninus, or rather (from the fifth year before the Christian era) that of Quintilius Varus, who succeeded him, and under whose administration Herod the Great died. The Cyrenius (Publius Sulpitius Quirinius) under whom the second numbering took place, was not sent into the East until eleven or twelve years,, at least,, after the birth of Jesus Christ. The historian Josephus (Ant. Jud. xvii. 15; xviii. 3) tells us, in express terms, that this numbering was made in the year 37 after the defeat of Antony; and the Saviour was born, at the latest, the 26th year after this great event. It is therefore asserted that St. Luke is eleven years in error, and that he has confounded these two periods and the two numberings!¹

But let us come to the passage itself. There is nothing more simple than its translation: it is a parenthesis. According to the accent and breathing which is upon the first word (αυτη), it becomes either a demonstrative pronoun, or a pronominal adjective; and with this alternative, the sentence ought, in the first case, to be translated literally by " this first taxing,' and in the second case, by " even the first same taxing."

There is therefore nothing that is not perfectly natural and quite accurate in the account given by St. Luke. After having, in the first verse, spoken of a decree of Augustus, which began to be executed in the reign of Herod, he warns us, (in a parenthesis, ver. 2,) that what was then done must not be confounded with the too celebrated numbering (Acts vv. 37), of which all Judea yet retained so tragical a remembrance.—"Even the first same taxing took place," says he, " whilst Cyrenius was governor of Syria." This is the simple and literal translation of the Greek. Others however trans late, " This taxing was made before that Cyrenius," &c.

SECOND EXAMPLE.—St. Matthew (chap. iv. 5), immediately after the first temptation, says, the devil THEN took Jesus into the holy city; and at the end of the second temptation, adds, by way of beginning the account of the third, " AGAIN, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, " &c.

St. Luke, on the contrary (chap. iv. 5),immediately after the first temptation, says, that the devil AFTER WARDS took him to a high mountain; and when the second temptation closes, adds, as a commencement of the account of the third, " and he brought him to Jerusalem, " &c.

Thus we find the two evangelists in manifest disagreement respecting the order of the three temptations. One of the two must necessarily be mistaken in placing the last before the second. So stands the objection.

We shall see, however, that this difficulty at once disappears, when we betake ourselves to a more faithful translation of the original text. We might here cite a goodly number of other passages (especially in the Epistles) which the translators have rendered obscure, by not sufficiently discriminating the conjunctions and adverbs καὶ, δὲ, γὰρ, οὖν, τότε, & c.

It is well known that St. Luke, in writing his Gospel, has not bound himself to observe the order of time; and that his plan of record was rather to group events and instruction after the order of things. Both these biographical methods have their respective advantages. Among the profane writers, for instance, Nepos has followed the former, and Suetonius the latter plan. It is therefore imperative that the translators of St. Luke should carefully observe his language, and not supply it with adverbs of time, order, and place, which he did not himself intend to employ, and which give so incongruous a change to his meaning. In the passage before us, we have only to restore the Greek conjunctions, and the contradiction presented in the two French versions will immediately disappear.

St. Matthew, who invariably follows the chronological order of facts, is very careful in his use of adverbs as he proceeds in his account of the temptation: τότε, τότε, πάλιν, τότε, τότε, then, then, again, then, then. But St. Luke, on the contrary,—who does not propose to follow the same course, and who has no other intention than that of communicating to us the three attacks which the holy humanity of the Son of God was to sustain,—St. Luke, we say, carefully abstains from employing any adverb, either of order or time, and con tents himself with ten times connecting the facts of his narrative by the copulative and (καὶ,), which our translators have so improperly rendered by the adverbs " then" and "afterwards." It is only by tracing the distinct character (says another) of each of the four Gospels, that we can get a view of the Lord Jesus Christ in all his ways. We may see him in his Jewish descent, more especially in St. Matthew (chap. i. 1 18); or more abroad among men in St. Luke (chap. iv. traces his genealogy to Adam); as the solitary Son of God in St. John; —or as the social Son of man, the servant of sinners, in St. Mark (this last Gospel not tracing his genealogy or birth, but at once presenting his ministry from the baptism of John): but all this is only variety, and not incongruity. The history of any individual may present the same features. One biographer may present him in his domestic, another in his public, life; and to suit their different designs, they will not only at times take different facts, but different circumstances in the same facts; and both these things we see in the Gospels. And how much more easily may we discern and admit this, when He who was such an one as the Lord Jesus,—God and Man in one per son, and not a mere individual of the human family, is the theme and object of the history! In the Chronicles, also, we get David and Solomon in a different light from that in which we see them in Samuel and Kings. The Chronicles present him in a typical and not in an historical way. Many circumstances are omitted which an historian must have noticed, and which therefore we get in the Books of Samuel and Kings; but which it was not needful to notice as far as David and Solomon were types of Messiah.

The contradiction therefore does not belong to the sacred text.

 ANOTHER SOURCE OF RASH CONCLUSIONS.—It is not sufficiently borne in mind, that there are words and acts which are more than once repeated in the course of the Saviour's ministry; so that it is utterly unjustifiable to view that as a contradiction, in certain narratives of the two evangelists, where there is merely an incomplete resemblance, but in which, nevertheless, the reader may imagine identical facts are recorded.

EXAMPLES.—We have, in the double miracle of the multiplication of the loaves, a striking example of the facility with which one may be led into error by this means. Twice Jesus Christ, being moved with com passion towards the people, fed the hungry multitude in the desert. The circumstances of both these miracles have numerous and striking relations between them. If it had happened that two of the evangelists had narrated the first, and two others the second, how eagerly would cavillers have exhibited the identity of the two facts, and the contradiction of their details! "What! (it would be said,) in one case, five thousand men fed with five loaves; in the other, four thousand men fed with seven loaves! In the one case, twelve baskets (κόφινους) used to gather up the fragments; in the other seven, but of a different construction (στυρίδας). What opposite statements!" Happily, while Luke and John have only mentioned the first miracle, Matthew and Mark, who relate the second, have also recorded the other. Had this not been so, what a shout would have been raised in the adversaries' host!

This observation may be applied to various features in the New Testament; for instance, to the Lord's Prayer, which was given at least twice to the disciples during our Lord's ministry. See Matt. vi. 9; Luke xi. 2. See also Matt. xii. 39; xvi. 1—4; Luke viii. 21; xi. 27; and Matt. xii. 49. Luke ix. 1; x. 1; and Matt. x. 1.

We would propose one more example. It does not appear, upon a close examination, that the sermon generally called the " Sermon on the Mount" (Matt. v. vi. vii.), and that recorded by St. Luke, in the last part of his sixth chapter, were delivered on the same occasion. (See Whitby on Matt. v. 5.) In fact Luke omits many sentences recorded by Matthew (for ex ample, Matt. v. 13–39; chapter vi.; and vii. 6—16), and he alone adds some others (chap. v. 24—26). Secondly, Matthew informs us (chap. viii. 3) that the sermon which he records preceded the healing of the leper; and Luke (chap. v. 12) that his followed it. And thirdly, Luke places Matthew among the number of those whom Jesus had already called to the apostle ship, and who descended with him from the mountain previously to the delivery of his sermon: while Matthew himself conveys that the sermon in question preceded, by a long interval, his calling. Fourthly, and lastly, one of the sermons was delivered on the mountain, while Jesus, who was seated, had his disciples round him; the other, on the contrary, was delivered in the plain, and under other circumstances. We dwell upon this remark for the benefit of those who may have heard the doctrine of Inspiration questioned, on the strength of the assumed contradiction in the sentence where Matthew records (chap. v. 40), "" If any man take away thy coat (χιτῶνα), Ι let him also have thy cloak" (ἱμάτιον); and where, according to St. Luke, it is said (chap. vi. 29), " Him that taketh away thy cloak>, forbid not to take thy coat also." Our answer to this is, that this diversity can no longer form a ground of objection, because the two sentences were spoken at different periods of time.

But we may add,——because the remark may also apply to several other objections of the same nature,—that, even if it were true that the two sentences in question might be quoted as the same fragment of the same sermon, the difference between them would not cause us the slightest astonishment. We believe that the Holy Ghost, when quoting himself, is not restricted to the use of the same terms, provided that he preserves the same sense. When a man of accurate mind repeats or quotes his own writings, he does not in any wise feel compelled to preserve the identity of the phrase thus far. And we judge, in the case before us, that the mind of our Lord is equally expressed in these two sentences of Luke and Matthew.

ANOTHER SOURCE OF RASH CONCLUSIONS.—The import of certain features in a narrative is not comprehended, and the conclusion is eagerly come to that the author is in fault.

FIRST EXAMPLE.—Jesus, in St. Matthew (xxiii. 35, 36), denounces the Jews on account of their treatment of his saints, and threatens them with the most terrible judgments of God; " that (he remarks) upon this race (or generation, γενεά) may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel, unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar." There is certainly here (we are told) a grievous inadvertence; not, doubtless, on the part of Jesus Christ, but on the part of the evangelist who reports his words, and whose memory must have failed. We know, from the Second Book of Chronicles, (xxiv. 21,) that this Zacharias, who was stoned by the Jews in the holy place, was the son, not of Barachias, but of 104 OBJECTIONS. Jehoiada. This is therefore an evident error. It does not affect doctrine, and cannot, in the slightest degree, be a ground of disquietude to our faith; but it suffices to show that the Inspiration could not have descended, as has been pretended, to the choice of expressions, or into the indifferent details of inspired narrations.

The answer is simple. We wish it were as easy to render it as short as it seems to us conclusive: we will give it at once, briefly. There is no reference here to the Zacharias of whom you speak; the evangelist has not therefore erred in not naming him, since he had him not in his mind. In fact, do you not see the in compatibility of such a supposition with the thought of Jesus Christ? What has he in view?—to recall the long catalogue of homicides of which an account would be exacted from the race of the Jews. And while he takes up their first murder before the flood, at the very portal of paradise, to make them responsible for it, would you desire that he should be content to refer, for the last, to a crime committed more than eight centuries before he spoke? Hecommences at the son of Adam, and would you imagine that he could conclude with the son of Jehoiada, and thus hold the Jews innocent of the blood shed during 873 years, the most shameful period of their history? Would it not have been more rational to commence, rather than to end, with this Jehoiada? Were not the Jews far more responsible for their homicides, committed in their last nine centuries, than they could be for blood which was shed before the deluge? Had they not, for instance, pursued and killed, with fearful fury, the prophet Urijah? (Jer. xxvi. 23.) " Which of the prophets (demands Stephen) have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which predicted the coming of the Just One." (Acts vii. 52.) There is therefore no reference to the son of Jehoiada in the passage of St. Matthew. Our answer might terminate here; but it will doubtfully be asked, Who then was the Zacharias of whom Jesus Christ spake? If we did not know this, it would not be a difficulty, and we might satisfy ourselves by replying It was a righteous man whom the Jews slew, not only in the court of the temple as the son of Jehoiada, but " between the temple and the altar; " and this righteous man was the son of Barachias! The point, nevertheless, may be carried farther; for history enumerates to us two or three others of the same name, sons of Barachias (Βαραχίου οι· Βαρόοχου), about whom the opinions of learned men are divided.

The first was " a man of understanding in the visions of God," as he is represented in the Second Book of Chronicles (chap. xxvi. 5), and who, it is believed, is the person spoken of by Isaiah in his eighth chapter. (Hieron. in Isaiam, viii. 2; in the Septuagint, Ζαχαρίαν υἱὸν Βαραχίας.) However, he lived too short a time after the son of Jehoiada, for our objections against the one not to have equal weight against the other.

The second is the prophet Zechariah, son of Berechiah, and grandson of Iddo (Zech. i. 1), who came from Babylon with Zerubbabel, 325 years after the days of Jehoiada, and whose writings form the last book but one of the Old Testament. Scripture, it is true, has not recorded to us his martyrdom, any more than that of the other prophets, who were almost all persecuted and put to death.

The temple and the altar had just been rebuilt by his instrumentality, as by that of the prophet Haggai (Ezra vi. 14); and Zacharias, as it appears, was killed s between the temple and this altar." We read in the Targum, or the Chaldee Paraphrase of Jonathan Ben Uzziel, who, it is believed, was contemporary with Jesus Christ (Prolegom. of Walton, 12), the following passage, which proves to us that such was already, previously to the time of our Saviour, the tradition of the Jews concerning this prophet, who was indifferently called the son of Iddo and son of Barachias (Zech. i. 1; Ezra v. 1—vi. 14). The Paraphrast (Lam. ii. 20) introduces the "House of Judgment," answering to that lament of Jeremiah, " The priest and the prophet, have they not been slain in the temple of the Lord?" " Was it well of you to kill a prophet, as you did Zacharias, the son of Iddo, in the house of the sanctuary of the Eternal, because he endeavoured to reclaim you from your evil ways?" (Whitby on Matthew, xxii. 35.) It may therefore be seen that Jesus Christ might re mind the Jews of the sacrilegious murder of this prophet, the son of Barachias, son of Iddo, with which the prophecy of the Old Testament was to close.

IN CONNECTION WITH THESE SOURCES OF RASH CONCLUSIONS,—there is a rule which has not been sufficiently kept in view, and we will set it before our readers in the words of Peter Martyr:

" Although some passages may appear obscure, as respects chronology, we must be very careful of at tempting to reconcile them by imputing faults to the inspired book. On this account, if it sometimes happen that we cannot clearly make out the number of years, we should simply confess our ignorance, and consider that the Scriptures express themselves with so much conciseness, that it is not always possible for us to discover at what period such or such a computation should be commenced. It often occurs that, in the history of the kings of Judah and of Israel, the respective number of their years is not easily reconciled; but these difficulties are explained and adjusted in various ways:—1. The same year commenced by one of the two, and ended by the other, is attributed to both. 2. The sons often reigned with their fathers, during a few years, which are imputed sometimes to the one and sometimes to the other.—3. There were often in terregnums, which Scripture sometimes annexes to the reign of the predecessor, and sometimes to the successor.—4. Finally, it sometimes happens that certain years in which oppressive and profane princes have reigned, are looked upon as void, and therefore are not reckoned." We conceive that the examples which we have al ready cited will suffice, and that we need not multiply their number. What we have said fairly indicates the weight which is due, generally, to the difficulties which are advanced; for we have been careful to review those of them which have been characterised as the most serious. Warned by these examples and by many others, let us learn, when henceforth we meet with any difficulty of the same nature, to think as did, six teen hundred years ago, Julius Africanus, the friend of Origen, and as have done all the men of God who have lived before and after him: " However it may be —(said he, in reference to the two genealogies of Jesus Christ which he had reconciled)—however it may be, assuredly the Gospel, in all and every part, speaks truly!" (Euseb. Eccles. Hist. book i. ch. vii.)

Errors contrary to the Philosophy of Nature.

It must be admitted (we are sometimes told) that though the apparent or real contradictions which are traced in the dates, quotations, and narratives of Scripture, are susceptible of removal by the resources of an explanatory review, more or less searching and laborious, yet that there are others which cannot be reconciled. These are, all those expressions in which the sacred writers present themselves in manifest opposition to the now better known laws of nature. Nevertheless (add they), if this argument is conclusive against the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, it in no respect compromises the Divinity of their doctrines, any more than the truth of the important religious facts which they record for us. In inspiring his apostles and prophets, God's design was not to make us learned men, but saints. He could, therefore, without danger, leave the sacred writers to speak with ignorance of the phenomena of the material world; their prejudices on such matters were innocent but unquestionable. Do you not often find them expressing themselves as though the earth were immovable, and the sun in motion? " His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it." (Psa. xix. 6.) The moon and stars are equally in motion. The sun, at the command of Joshua, stood still over Gibeon in the midst of the heavens, and the moon over the valley of Ajalon. (Josh. x. 12.) The earth is " founded upon the seas" (Psalm xxiv. 5); " standing out of the water and in the water" (2 Peter iii. 5): God has " laid its foundations, that it should not be removed for ever." (Psalm civ. 5.) Can you admit that this is really the language of the Creator of heaven and earth speaking to his creature?

We proceed to reply to this objection, which we rejoice to meet with on our way, because its examination can have no other issue than the glory of the Scriptures.

We would fully admit that, if any physical errors could be proved to exist in sacred writ, it would not be a book from God; but we will demonstrate that it contains no such errors; and we venture to defy our adversaries to cite one from the entire Bible. We will even go much farther, and show, on the contrary, how large a store of science is latent in the very simplicity of its language.

Let us then examine this reproach. We will, in the first place, ask those who give it utterance, whether they desire that the Bible should speak as did Sir Isaac Newton? Would they forget that if God were to ex press himself about the scenes of nature,—I will not say according to their appearance in his sight, but ac cording to what they may appear to the learned of future generations,—the great Newton himself would then have comprehended nothing?. Moreover, the language even of those most advanced in science is now, and ever will be, after all, but the language of appearances. Is it desirable that the Bible should speak to us concerning the scenes of nature in a manner different to that in which we speak to each other in our social or domestic relations?—otherwise even than two of the most enlightened men would converse? When Sir John Herschel gave directions to his servants that they should call him exactly at midnight to observe the pas sage of some star in its lunar meridian, would he feel himself obliged to speak to them of the earth, of its rotation, and of the moment when it shall have return ed to the nadir in the course of its revolution? Surely not: and had you heard him converse, even in the Observatory at Greenwich, with the learned Airy, you would have found that even in the sanctuary of science the habitual language of these astronomers is still in close resemblance to that of the Scriptures. With them the stars rise, the equinoxes recede, the planets revolve, accelerate, stop, and retrograde in their courses. Would you then wish that Moses had spoken to all generations of men a more scientific language than that of La Place or Arago?

But there is far more than this. We would here bring into view two striking facts, which burn with vivid lustre as soon as they are examined, and which at once discover in the Scriptures the pen of the Omnipotent God. Here, as everywhere else, the objections when closely examined become arguments, and turn upon those who originate them, to the triumph of truth.

These two facts are analogous to what may be ob served in the language of a learned astronomer conversing with his children of tender years, and pointing out to them with his finger the heavens and the earth. If you follow him in this intercourse, in which his tenderness stooping to their level presents to their opening intelligence images and words which they can under stand, you will soon be struck with his respect for truth in two ways:—First, he will never tell them anything but what is true; and secondly, there will be in his language very manifest indications that he knows more than he wishes to impart to them. He would undoubtedly not pretend to instruct them in science; but on the one hand, nothing in his communications would contradict its principles; and, on the other, much of what he said would show that what he was silent about he yet thoroughly understood. At a later period of time, when his children having attained to manhood would reconsider his instruction, not only would they find it exempt from all error, but they would moreover recognise that by its wise adaptation to their capacity it was already in pre—established harmony with science, and that its germ had been presented to their unconsciousness. In proportion as their own mental powers unfolded, they would with admiration discover under the reserve and simplicity of his language much concealed wisdom, learned and accurate observations, turns of phrase and expressions which harmonised with facts to them at the time unknown, but with which he had himself long been familiar.

Well, such is also the double character which every attentive reader may discern in the language of the Scriptures. They speak in poetry, but with precision, the true language of appearances. We there hear a Father who addresses himself to the youngest of his children; but in such a manner that the eldest of them can never find a single sentence contrary to the true condition of the things which he has created; and in such a manner also, that he frequently and unconstrainedly, as it were, suffers expressions to escape him which shall show them that what they have learned of his works during four thousand years, he knew before them and better than they. Thus it is that, in the Bible, Eternal Wisdom addresses itself to its children. In proportion as they advance to riper years, they find the Scripture suited to their age, adapted to their mental development, appearing to grow with their growth, and always exhibiting to them the two facts which we have dwelt upon,—on the one hand, the absence of all error; and on the other, indirect but incontestable indications of a science which has preceded all that man ever possessed.

First fact.—There is no physical error in the Word of God.

If there were, as we have already said, the Bible could not be from God. " God is not man, that he should lie;" nor a son of man, that he should be mistaken. He must undoubtedly stoop even to our weak ness, to be understood by us; but without however in any degree participating in it. His language always testifies of his condescension, but never of his ignorance.

This remark is more important than it appears to be before it has been reflected on. It becomes very forcible on a close examination.

Examine all the false theologies of both the ancients and moderns; read in Homer or Hesiod the religious code of the Greeks; examine that of Buddhists, Brahmins, or Mahommedans, and you will there find not only revolting systems as respects the Divinity, but the grossest errors relative to the natural world. Their theology would doubtless shock; but their natural philosophy and astronomy also, always associated with their religion, involve notions the most absurd.

Read further the philosophy of Grecian and Roman antiquity. What sentences do you not find there! one of which would alone suffice to compromise all our doctrines of Inspiration, if it were met with in any book of the sacred Scripture. Read Mahomet's Koran, creating the mountains " to prevent the earth from moving, and to hold it as by anchors and cables!" What do I say?—read even the descriptions of Buffon, or some of the sarcasms of Voltaire, on the subject of a deluge,or on the fossil animals of the primitive world. We will go much farther: read moreover we will not say the absurd reasonings of heathens—of Lucretius, Pliny, and Plutarch, against the theory of the antipodes, but of the Fathers themselves of the Christian Church. Hear the theological indignation of St. Augustine, who declares it to be opposed to the Scriptures; and the scientific eloquence of Lactantius, who believes it to be contrary to sound sense: he exclaims, "Is there any one so ignorant as to believe that there are men having legs above their heads; trees having fruit hanging upwards; and hail, rain, and snow falling from below upwards?" They answer (he adds) by affirming that the earth is a globe. " One knows not what to say of such men, who, once astray, plunge headlong in their folly, and defend one absurdity by another! "

Hear yet the legate Boniface accusing Virgilius to the pope as a heretic; hear Pope Zachary treating this unfortunate bishop as " a malignant. ". " If it be proved (he writes) that Virgilius maintains that there are other men under this earth, assemble a council, condemn him, depose him from the priesthood, and expel him from the church!" Hear, at a later period, all the higher order of the clergy in Spain, and especially the grave and authoritative council of Salamanca, in its indignation against the geographical system by which Columbus sought a new world." Hear at the period of the birth of Newton the renowned Galileo,——who says Kepler) scaled the highest walls of the universe, and who justified, by his genius as well as by his telescope, the forgotten and condemned system of Copernicus: behold him groaning at the age of eighty in the dungeons of Rome, for having discovered the earth's motion, after having been compelled ten years previously (the 28th of June, 1633) to pronounce the following words before their Eminences, at the palace of the Holy Office: " I, Galileo, in the seventieth year of my life, on my knees before your Eminences, having before my eyes and touching with my own hands the Holy Scriptures, abjure, curse, and abhor the error of the earth's motion!!!

What might not have been justly said against the Scriptures, if they had spoken of the phenomena of nature, as all the ancient sages have spoken of them? if they had resolved everything to four elements, as was done for so long a period?

But now open the Bible, examine the fifty sacred authors therein, from the admirable Moses—who wrote in the wilderness four hundred years before the siege of Troy—to the fisherman son of Zebedee, who wrote fifteen hundred years later in Ephesus and Patmos, under the reign of Domitian;—open the Bible, and see if you can find anything similar there. You cannot. None of those mistakes which the science of every century detects in the books of preceding generations none of those absurdities which modern astronomy brings to light in the writings of the ancients, in their sacred codes, in their philosophy, and even in the most attractive pages of the Fathers of the church,—not one of these errors can be found in our sacred books; no thing there will contradict anything that the investigations of the learned world during so many centuries have been able to disclose respecting the condition of our globe, or that of the heavens. Carefully go through our Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, in search of such faults, and as you carry on the investigation, remember that it is a book which treats of everything,—which describes nature, which recounts its wonders, which recites its creation, which tells us of the formation of the heavens, of the light, of the waters, of the air, of mountains, of animals, and of plants;—that it is a book which acquaints us with the first revolutions of the world, and which foretels also its last;—that it is a book which describes them with circumstantial details, invests them with sublime poetry, and chants them in fervent melodies;—that it is a book replete with eastern imagery, full of majesty, variety, and boldness;—that it is a book which treats of the earth and things visible, and at the same time of the celestial world and things invisible;—that it is a book in which nearly fifty writers of every degree of cultivation, of every order, of every condition, and separated from one another by fifteen hundred years, have been engaged;—that—at it is a book written variously in the centre of Asia, in the sands of Arabia, in the deserts of Judea, in the porches of the Jewish temple, or in the rustic schools of the prophets of Bethel and Jericho; in the magnificent palaces of Babylon, and on the idolatrous banks of the Chebar; and afterwards in the centre of western civilisation, in the midst of the Jews and their ignorant conceits, among polytheism and its idols, and as it were in the bosom of pantheism and its foolish philosophy;—that it is a book whose first writer was during forty years the pupil of those magicians of Egypt, who regarded the sun, planets, and elements as endowed with intelligence, reacting on the elements, and governing the world by continual effluvia;—that it is a book whose first pages preceded by more than NINE HUNDRED YEARS the most ancient philosophers of Greece and Asia, Thales, Pythagoras, Zaleucus, Xenophon, and Confucius;—that it is a book which carries its records into the scenes of the invisible world, the hierarchy of angels, the latest periods of futurity and the glorious consummation of all things. Well, search in its 50 authors, search in its 66 books, search in its 1189 chapters, and its 31,173 verses; search for a single one of the thousand errors with which every ancient and modern author abounds, when they speak of heaven or of the earth, of their revolutions or their elements, —and you will fail to find it.

Its language is unconstrained and without reserve; it speaks of everything, and in every form of words; it is the prototype, it is the inimitable model; it has inspired all that poetry has produced in its most elevated character. Ask Milton, Racine, or Young and Klopstock; they will tell you that its Divine strains are by far the most harmonious, commanding, and sublime; it rides upon a cherub, and walks upon the wings of the wind! And yet this book never does violence to facts, nor to the principles of sound natural philosophy. Never in one single sentence will you find it in opposition to the just ideas which science has given us regarding the form of our globe, its magnitude and its geology; or respecting the void and vast expanse; or the inert and obedient materiality of all the stars; or the planets, their masses, courses, dimensions, and influences; or the suns which people the depths of space, their number, nature, and immensity. In like manner, in speaking of the invisible world, and on the new, unknown, and difficult subject of angels, this book will not exhibit even one of its authors who, in the course of the 1560 years which have been occupied in producing it, has varied in the character of love, humility, fervour, and purity, which belongs to these mysterious beings.

There is therefore no physical error whatever in the Scriptures; and this transcendent fact, which becomes more admirable in proportion as it is made the subject of closer investigation, is a striking proof of the inspiration which dictated them, even in the choice of their least expressions.

But we present the Second fact.

Not only has the Bible not admitted a false sentence or expression, but it has even often suffered words to escape which enable us to recognise, without the possibility of misapprehension, the omniscience of the Almighty. His great purpose without doubt was to reveal to us the eternal glories of the invisible world, not the barren secrets of that which is about to perish. Nevertheless it often happens that an attentive ear discovers in his language science which it is not his object to teach, but of which He cannot be ignorant whose knowledge is an unfathomable abyss. Not only does the Bible never tell us anything false, even incidentally, but you will often discover words which betray the voice of the Creator of the world. Continually you will recognise a wisdom, a foreknowledge, and an exactness which former ages could not question, but which only the discoveries of the telescope, mathematics, and science have enabled the moderns to appreciate; so that its language bears in these features the indelible characters of the fullest inspiration. The wise and choice selection of its expressions——the nature of certain accounts, whose perfect propriety and Divine accordance with the facts were not revealed until three thousand years afterwards,—the reserve of its language, sometimes its very boldness, and its un usual character for the times in which it was written, all these signs bespeak the Wise One, the Ancient of Days, who undoubtedly addresses children, but who speaks like the father of the family, and who well knows all his household.

When the Scriptures speak of the form of our earth, they term it a GLOBE. (Isa. xl. 22; Job xxvi. 10; Prov. viii. 27.) When they speak of the position of the globe in the midst of the universe, it is SUSPENDED UPON NOTHING. (Job xxvi. 7.) When they speak of its age, not only do they put its creation, as well as that of the heavens, AT THE BEGINNING, that is to say before ages which they cannot or desire not to number; but they are careful to place before the arranging of chaos and the creation of man that of angels, archangels, principalities, and powers, their trial, the fall and ruin of some, and the preservation and glory of others.²—When afterwards they speak of the origin of our continents, and the later creation of plants, animals, and men, they then give to this new world and to our proud race so recent an existence, that in every age and among all nations, and even in our modern schools, there have been those who have daringly rebelled against it; but nevertheless an age to which the learned and the vulgar have been compelled alike to yield, since the labours of De Luc, Cuvier, and Buckland have so fully demonstrated that the state of the earth's surface, as well as the monuments of history and of science, incontestably authenticate it. When they speak of the heavens, they employ to designate and define them the most sublime and philosophical expressions which the Greeks in the Septuagint, the Latins in the Vulgate, and all the Fathers of the church in their sermons, have pretended to improve, but which they have distorted because they appeared to them op posed to the science of their times. The heavens in the Bible are the expanse, expansum (Gen. i. 6; Psa. xix. 1); it is the void, the ether or boundless space, and not the firmamentum of St. Jerome; nor the stereoma of the Alexandrian interpreters; nor the firm, solid, crystalline and incorruptible eighth heaven, of Aristotle and all the ancients. And although this remarkable Hebrew term occurs seventeen times in the Old Testament, and although the LXX. uniformly renders it by stereoma (firmament), the New Testament Scripture has never once used it in the sense employed by the Greek interpreters.³ When they speak of light, it is presented as an element independent of the sun, and as anterior by three distinct periods to that in which this glorious luminary was lighted (Gen. i. 4, 14): anticipating thus the systems of moderns, which lead us to suppose with the great Newton, that the universe contains an ether perfectly subtle, highly elastic, existing everywhere, whose con tractions and dilations produce not only the varied phenomena of light, but those even of gravitation.—When they speak of the creation of plants, they exhibit them vegetating, increasing, and bearing seed be fore the appearance of the sun, and under conditions of light, heat, and moisture, which differ much from those which sustain vegetation in the present day (Gen. i. 12); and it is thus that they reveal many thousand years since an order of things which fossil botany has in later times established as incontestable, the necessity of which is attested by the gigantic vegetable remains which have recently been discovered in Canada and Baffin's Bay.—When the Scriptures speak of air, whose gravity was unknown before Galileo, they tells us that God giveth to the air its WEIGHT, and to the seas their just measure.—When they speak of our atmosphere, and of " the waters which are above," an importance is assigned to them which modern science alone could establish; since, according to its calculations, the force which nature annually employs in the formation of clouds is equal to a work which the whole human race could not accomplish in less than two hundred thousand years.————And when they separate the waters which are beneath from those which are above, it is by an expanse, and not by a solid sphere, as both Greek and Latin translators have sought to show.—When they speak of the mountains, they discriminate two classes of facts; they speak of them as created, and as rising, and as melting like wax; they speak of the sinking of the valleys; in a word, they speak of them as a geological poet would speak in our day: "The mountains ascend, O Lord! and the valleys descend to the place which thou hast appointed for them. "When⁴—_ they speak of the human race, of every tribe, colour, and language, they give them one sole origin; and although the philosophy of every age has determinedly revolted against this truth, moderns have at length been constrained to acknowledge it. When they speak of the internal state of our globe, they declare two great facts of which learned men were long ignorant, but which have been rendered incontestable by their late discoveries,—one relative to its solid crust, and the other to the abyss of water which it encloses.—When they speak of its solid covering, they inform us that if its surface yields us bread, yet, beneath, the earth is ON FIRE;⁵ that moreover it it is reserved for the fire," and that at the last day " the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up." (2 Pet. iii. 10.)—And when they speak of the waters which our globe contains, they render the sole explanation, at least in this relation, of the immense over-flowings under which (upon the evidence of scientific men themselves) it has at various periods been long and completely submerged.—And while these men tell us of the little depth of the sea, and affirm that an uprising of only two hundred yards, or half as high again as the tower of Strasburg, would suffice to dissipate the Baltic, the North Sea, and St. George's Channel; and that if Mont Blanc, or at least Chimborazo, were thrown into the Pacific Ocean, it would be lofty enough to constitute an island; while La Place has felt justified in concluding from the height of the tides that the mean depth of the ocean does not exceed a thousand yards (the height of Hecla), and while they would demonstrate to us the absolute insufficiency of the seas for the vast submersions which our globe has undergone, the Scriptures tell us " the earth has been drawn out of the water, and that it subsists among the waters" (2 Pet. iii. 5), and that its solid crust encloses a GREAT ABYSS, whose fountains were broken up at the time of the deluge (Gen. vii. 11), as at that of chaos, and the innumerable ages. which preceded it.—When they speak of the Flood, they suppose inundations and disorder such as infidels of former times have ever considered too mighty for belief; and yet in the present day geologists rather feel them to be insufficient to ac count for all the devastation they find in examining the earth.—When they recount the circumstances and the progress of this immense submersion, they reveal facts which the science of moderns has not yet universally adopted, but which it cannot contradict, any more than it can other facts,——an internal fire, which, by increasing the temperature of the mighty waters, would on the one hand cause an excessive evaporation and impetuous rains, as if the barriers of heaven were removed; and on the other, an irresistible rarefaction, which not only raised the waters from their retreat, broke up the fountains of the GREAT DEEP, and swelled the overwhelming waves to the level of the highest mountains, but which caused immense deposits of chalk, under the double action of excessive heat and of a pressure equal to 8000 atmospheres! When they describe the state of our globe anterior to its being called into form, they attribute to it internal heat and fire, and cover it entirely with water in its state of liquidity: When they narrate the creation of birds and fishes, they give them a common origin; and it is known that modern naturalists have proved that between these two classes of animals there exist very intimate relations; not indeed appearing outwardly to the eye, but which their anatomy has disclosed, and even to the microscopic form of the globules of their blood. When they arrest the course of the sun that is to say the earth's rotation), in the days of Joshua the son of Nun, they are careful to stay the moon also, in the same proportion and by the same cause,——a precaution which, as Chaubard shows, no astronomer ignorant of our diurnal motion could have imagined, since, after all that has been said, this miracle involves nothing more than the prolongation of the day. (Josh. x. 12.)—When they tell of the Lord's arrival as lightning, " in the twinkling of an eye," at the last day, they bear an additional testimony to the earth's rotation and to the existence of the antipodes; because at that solemn interval it will be the day for one part of the world's inhabitants, and night for the other. (Luke xvii. 31, 34; Matt. xxiv.)—When they describe the bygone and future riches of the land of Canaan, to which a marvellous power of vegetation is promised in the last days, it is termed rich, not only in fountains, but in " subterranean waters" (Deut. viii. 7); and they seem to anticipate the idea of draining, by which the moderns have learned to fertilise a barren country.—When they speak of the languages of men, they give them a primitive unity, which seems to be contradicted by a cursory view of the varied speech of nations, but which a deeper examination confirms. When they narrate the deliverance of Noah, they give to the rainbow dimensions which at the first aspect we find too limited, which we should have multiplied a hundredfold had we been charged with the recital, but which mature study of the fact has established as sufficient.—When they speak of the number of the stars, instead of supposing a thousand (1022), like the catalogue of Hipparchus; or exactly 1026, like that of Ptolemy; while in the two hemispheres together the most experienced vision cannot discover more than 5000; while previously to the invention of the telescope the eye could not count more than a thousand under the most favourable circumstances;—the Scriptures declare that they are INNUMERABLE. (Gen. xv. 5.) They compare them, as Herschel has done, to the sand of the sea; they tell us that God has scattered them with his hand like dust throughout the immensity of space, and yet that " he calleth them all by their names.—When they speak of space, hear with what profound wisdom and sublimity it is pourtrayed; how careful in its noble poetry, how wise in its sublimity! " The heavens declare the glory of God, and the EXPANSE showeth his handy-work. There is no speech nor language, never the less their voice is heard. "—When they speak of the relations which the stars bear to this sublunary world, instead of supposing them animated, as did the ancients; instead of even attributing to the many influence upon human affairs;—as was so long persisted in by the Christian states of France and Italy, even to the period of the Reformation, they tell us that they are inert matter, luminous indeed, but arranged and dependent; the heavens, even the heaven of heavens, proceed with order, with the oneness and unity of an army which advances to the conflict. "" Lift up your eyes on high, and behold, who hath created all these things? He who bringeth out their host by order, and who calleth them all by their names; not one faileth. Why then sayest thou, O Jacob, My way is hid from the Lord, and my God sustains not my right?" (Isa. xl. 26, 27.) —When they describe the heavens, they carefully discriminate a threefold character:—in the first place, the heaven of the birds, of tempests, of the powers of the air, and of wicked spirits; then the heaven of the starry host; and lastly, the third heaven, the heaven of heavens. But when they speak of the God of all this, how exalted yet how gentle is their language! " Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters." (Psa. lxxvii. 19.) " Behold, the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee." (1 Kings viii. 27.) " Within what bounds will you confine Him? " " To what will ye liken God?" (Isa. xl. 18.) " He has set his glory above the heavens, and he humbleth himself even to behold the things that are in heaven." " If you would take the wings of the morning, and fly with the rapidity of light, whither would you go far from his face, or flee from his presence?" (Psalm cxxxix. 7.) And when they have thus dwelt upon these visible glories, they tell us further, " Lo; these are but parts of his ways; how little the portion that is known of him!" (Job xxvi. 14.) And finally, having as it were exhausted language in recounting all his greatness as Creator, they add, " He telleth the number of the stars, yet he healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds" (Psalm cxlvii. 3); " admirable in counsel, and wonderful in means, yet he puts our tears into his bottle" (Psalm lvi. 8); " a sparrow falleth not to the ground without his permission, and the very hairs of our head are all numbered." (Matt. x. 29, 30.)."" This eternal God (O righteous man!) is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms." (Deut. xxxiii.27.) " O Lord, how manifold are thy works!" (Psa. civ. 24;) " but thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name!"

And now in the midst of all these marvels, " where shall we find wisdom,—and where is the place of under standing? The abyss saith, It is not in me; and the sea answers, It is not with me. God alone understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof; for he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven. When he gave to the air its weight, and to the waters their just measure; when he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder; then did he see wisdom, and explored its depths; then he said unto man, To fear the Lord, that is thy wisdom; and to depart from evil, that is under standing." (Job xxviii.)

Such then is the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures: and it is thus we find only the reflection of heavenly radiance, where some have thought to discover a stain. If with a calm and reverential hand you draw aside the veil which appears sometimes to shroud these truths from your view, you will discover a majestic splendour; for the Scriptures descend, like Moses from the holy mount, bearing to us the tables of testimony. Where you have dreaded obscurity, there you find light; where there has been raised an objection, God converts it into a witness; where there has been a doubt, there rests an assurance.

We conclude therefore, in regard to this seventh objection, that the difficulties still become the proofs; and that on this point, as on all others, we must in every page throughout the Bible recognise the utterance of God.

But now let us hear a final objection.

The Avowals of St. Paul.

We are sometimes told, it would be superfluous to attempt to dispute respecting the fact of a partial or occasional inspiration of the Scriptures, since the apostle Paul himself has cut short the question. Has he not, in fact, been careful to distinguish what he gave by inspiration from what he wrote in his own name, as a simple believer? And do we not perceive in his First Epistle to the Corinthians that he three times clearly expresses this distinction, on the occasion of several questions which had been addressed to him on the subject of marriage?

In the first place, in the twenty—fifth verse of the seventh chapter, he says, " Now, concerning virgins, I have no COMMANDMENT FROM THE LORD; yet I express A JUDGMENT, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful."

Again, in the tenth verse of the same chapter, he writes, " And unto the married I command, YET NOT I, BUT THE LORD; let not the wife depart from her husband, and let not the husband put away his wife."

And finally in the twelfth verse, where he adds, " But to the rest speak I, NOT THE LORD: if any brother hath a wife that believeth not, let him not put her away," & c.

They see clearly in these three sentences that there are in the apostle's epistles some passages which are from Paul himself, and other passages which are from God; that is to say, some passages which are inspired, and others which are not.

The answer is easy.

As soon as these objections are looked into more closely, it will be found that it is not possible to employ them against the doctrine of a plenary inspiration.

Far from setting limits to the Divine character of the apostolic words, these verses on the contrary employ a language which the most entire and most supreme inspiration could alone justify. St. Paul could not have thus spoken otherwise than by placing his epistles, as St. Peter has done, (2 Pet. iii. 16,) I was going to say, UPON A LEVEL with the rest of the Holy Scriptures;" but we must say, ABOVE them; inasmuch as he gives utterance in them to a more recent and more obligatory expression of the Lord's will. Of this we shall proceed to judge.

What does the apostle of Jesus Christ do in the seventh chapter?—He there treats of three cases of conscience. With regard to one of these, God says he has neither commanded anything, nor forbidden any thing. " He who marries his virgin sins not. I am not herein charged with any command; but in my character of apostle, it is an advice only which I give you on the part of the Lord;" and he is careful to add, at verse 40, " and I think also that I have the Spirit of God." The Lord in this matter, says the apostle, leaves you free; he does not cast a snare in your way, and if you do not think fit to follow the general counsel which is given you, you do not thereby violate any commandment: you do not sin. Only he who marries does well; but he who marries not does better.

With regard to the second case, on the contrary, be careful; because THERE IS A COMMANDMENT FROM THE LORD. The Lord has already pronounced his will (Matt. v. 31, 32; Mal. ii. 14, 15), and I have nothing further to add to it. It is therefore NOT I the apostle of Jesus Christ, IT IS THE LORD HIMSELF who has already made known his will: " To those among Christians who are married, I command, yet not I, but the Lord, that the wife separate not herself from her husband, and that the husband put not away his wife." (1 Cor. vii. 10, 11.)

But with regard to the third case, I mean respecting brethren who are married to unbelieving wives, you had a commandment from the Lord in the Old Testament; I now revoke it, and " I think also that I have the Spirit of the Lord." I abolish the ancient order, and I am charged to replace it by a contrary rule.

We have heard some persons oppose to us further (as an avowal of the intermission or imperfection of his inspiration), those words of St. Paul, in which, writing to the Corinthians (Second Epist. xii.) about his visions and revelation in the third heaven, he adds, "Whether in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell; God knoweth." Can it be supposed (we have heard it asked) that the Holy Spirit should be ignorant how this miracle was accomplished? Such a verse must therefore be long to Paul, and cannot be from God.

We answer, that if the Holy Spirit knew it well, Paul did not; and the Holy Spirit willed that he should himself inform us of his ignorance. Is it forgotten that God, in order to reveal himself to us, has never ceased to employ in the Scriptures the personality of the sacred writers; and that it is under this form that he has al most constantly willed to instruct his church? When David, speaking by the Spirit, exclaims in the Psalms that he knows his transgressions; that his sin is ever before him; and that he was shapen in iniquity; it is not certainly the Holy Spirit who speaks of knowing his own transgressions, and has his own sins before his eyes; but it is the Holy Spirit who for our advantage has put these words of repentance into the heart and upon the lips of the humbled prophet. And it is also in an analogous sense that he has caused St. Paul to say, "Whether in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell; God knoweth."

We have not, however, done with objections. There are three others, to which we have given the name of evasions; because, instead of resting like the former upon any argument or fact, they partake more of the nature of systems, by which some have sought to separate portions of the Scriptures, as unaffected by Divine Inspiration. We proceed therefore to examine them.

1) One solution of this is,—that the "enrolment" was in A. D. 1, and the taxing itself ten years later.

2) Nehem. ix. 6. Col. i. 16. Dan. vii. 10, compare with Jude i. 6. Gen. iii. 1, 13, 15. Rev. xx. 2; xii. 9, 12. Gen. iii. 24. John viii. 44. 2 Pet. ii. 4, 9, 10. John xii. 3.

3) The New Testament Scripture has employed it once, but to designate something very different to the heavens. Col. ii. 5.

4) Psa. civ. 6–9 (marginal reading). Gen. ii. 14; viii. 4. Psa. xc.2. Prov. viii. 25. Psa. xcvii. 5; cxliv. 5. Zech. iv. 4, 8. Ezek. xlvii.

5) Job xxvii., literally rendered.