EXAMINATION OF THE EVASIONS.

SEVERAL systems of exceptions have been proposed. ‘Some, while they admit that the thoughts of the Scriptures have been given by God; maintain notwithstanding, that the style and the expressions are human;—others have excluded from inspiration, the purely historical books;—others again have wished to exclude certain details, which to them appear too vulgar and too unedifying to be attributed to the Holy Spirit.

Section I.—COULD INSPIRATION REGARD THE THOUGHTS, WITHOUT EXTENDING ALSO TO THE LANGUAGE?

The prophets and apostles, ‘sav some, in writing their sacred books; were inspired in thought, without doubt; but we must believe that they were then left to ‘themselves in the choice of language; the ideas were given by God, and the expression by man.

The task of. the sacred writers, resembles somewhat that of a man, to whom very highly colored: pictures are presented in quick succession; while he is bidden to describe them, just so far as his eye may have rested on them: It is thus that the Holy Spirit may have presented sacred truths to the minds of the evangelists and prophets, leaving them only the care of expressing them; and this manner of conceiving of their labor, it is added, will account satisfactorily for the diversities of style that their writings present.

We reply

1. That this theory is directly contrary to the testimony of the Scriptures. The Bible declares to us, that it has been written, “not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth.” They call themselves; “the word of God, the words of God, the voice “of God, the oracles of God, the Holy Scriptures, the Scripture of God.” A scripture or writing is composed of letters and of words, and not of invisible thoughts only: now “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God,” we are told. That which is WRITTEN, is then inspired of God (θεόπνευστος), and that which is inspired of God, is the WHOLE SCRIPTUSE, that is, all that is written (πᾶσα γραφή)

2. If this theory ‘is is anti-biblical, it is also very irrational.

The thoughts of our fellow-men clothe themselves in words. Spirits are revealed to us only in their fleshly tabernacles. You learn their character, you know their will and experiences, you even suspect their existence, and you enter into relation with them, only when they are clothed with flesh, and have received organs by which they manifest themselves to you. My most intimate friend is known to me, only by the language of his person, voice, and actions. If he had not these, in vain might he dwell beside me for twenty years; he would be to me as if he were not.

To pursue this thought; such is to us the inevitable dependence of the soul on its organs, and of ideas on words, that we not only learn the existence of the one by the language of the other; but even after hearing their voice, we perceive their true character, only just so far as we have the assurance, that the organ is a faithful interpreter of the mind, that the word is the exact image of the idea, and the proposition that of the thought. So long as a fear may be admitted, that language has not been the obedient and competent servant of the will, we’ can have no confidence that we may not be mistaken. Although we should know that God himself has breathed the purest thoughts of heaven into the soul of a writer, in order that we might have a sure revelation of them by his words; yet must he always give us the assurance that these words are well chosen, that they reflect the divine thoughts with exactness, and that they reproduce without change, all the objects deposited in the secret places of the writer’s soul. ‘ “,

Language is then the wonderful mirror that reflects to us the depths of the mind.

Suppose you were a son in affliction, and that God, to comfort you, should present you for some moments, in a glass, the ever-loved features of your mother; would it satisfy you that he caused it to approach very near to you, and in such a position that the light from the object should reach your eyes abundantly? Certainly not if the mirror has a curve, a flaw, or a stain. Uneven and faithless in its reflection, how would it console you? You would, it is true, have near you, the smiling features of a mother, her heart would seem to beat near yours, with lively emotions; her inimitable look would convey to you the ardent expression of her maternal wishes and her august. blessing; but all would be in vain; you would see only the eye of a stranger, perhaps only a hideous expression, only a deformed being and a revolting expression, Oh, my good mother, this is not then thyself! you would exclaim.

These reflections will suffice to show us, how irrational. is the ideas of receiving with exactness and certainty, the thoughts of others, while their language is inaccurate and. uncertain. Can you arrive at their idea in any other way; than by their words? And without the words of God, how are you confident that you possess the thoughts “of God?

3. This theory of a the revelation, wherein you have the inspiration of thought and not of language, is necessarily so irrational, that it cannot be sincere, and very soon deceives ‘those themselves who have received it; before they are aware of it, it leads them down much lower in their argument, than their first thesis had seemed to indicate. Listen to them. If the words are of man, say they; the thoughts are of God.

And how do they prove this to you? Alas! yet again, by attributing to this word of God, contradictions, mistakes, ignorance. Is it then to the words only that they refer; and are not these pretended errors in the thoughts, much more than in the language? So true is it that we cannot separate the one from the other, and that a revelation of the mind of God demands pee an inspiration of the word of God.

4, This theory is not only anti-biblical, irrational, and hurtful; it is also arbitrarily assumed; it is but a gratuitous hypothesis.

5.Again,—it is very useless, for it proves nothing. You find it difficult, you say, to conceive how the Holy Spirit can dictate the words of the sacred Scriptures; but can you better explain how he has suggested the thoughts? Can you, for example, more readily explain how God revealed to Moses the knowledge of all the scenes of creation, or to St. John, that of all the-scenes of the latter day; than to imagine how he dictated to them the narrative of it; whether in the Hebrew or the Greek tongue?

6. Bear with us still—The extreme inconsistency of this theory must strike every attentive mind; since even they who maintain it the most earnestly, are often compelled to admit, that the largest portion of the Scriptures require the inspiration of God, EVEN TO THEIR VERY WORDS.

Suppose that the Holy Spirit should now command you to go out on the public square, and proclaim there in Russ, or Tamul, “the. wonderful things of God;” what would be your position, if he were to inspire only the thoughts, without giving you the words? You would have before your eyes, the third heaven, and in your heart, the transports of archangels; yet must you remain mute and stupid before this multitude of men. To render your inspiration useful to them, the periods, sentences and smallest words of your discourse must all be given you. What do I say? Your own thoughts might well be dispensed with, provided you could utter, even without fully comprehend them, the thoughts of God in the words of God. Let us carry this supposition back to Jerusalem and to the persons of the Apostles. When the fishermen of Capernaum and Bethsaida, assembled in their upper chamber on the day of Pentecost, received command to descend, that they might go and publish to this people, assembled from every nation under heaven, “the wonderful things of God,” in Latin, in Parthian, Persian, Chaldaic, Coptic, Arabic; was it not needful that the words should be given them? What could they have done with the thoughts, without the words? Nothing; yet with the Pie words, they could convert the world!

At a later period, when, i in the Corinthian Church, the saints who had received miraculous powers, spake in the | midst of assembled multitudes, in strange languages, and called to their aid another faithful brother to whom the gift of interpretation had been granted, that their unknown language might be received and understood by their hearers, was it not equally necessary that the words and all the sentences should be wholly dictated to them! (1 Cor. xiv.) when all the Prophets, after having written the sacred pages, applied themselves to meditate upon them, with such respect and care, as they would have shewed to the oracles of a strange prophet; when they meditated upon them night and day; “searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them, did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow;” was it not also necessary that all the words should be given them? When Moses describes the creation of the world and the breaking up of chaos; when Solomon describes eternal wisdom, when David repeats, a thousand years in advance, the prayer of the Son of God on the cross; when Daniel gives in detail, and without a full comprehension of it himself, the future and far off destiny of the world and of the church; and when at last, St. John continues in his own prophecy, the revelations of the prophet Daniel, must not the smallest word have been given them? And in reading them, do not all interpreters acknowledge that the smallest word substituted for another; the tense of a verb chosen incorrectly, or a particle imprudently placed, might make an utter perversion of the truth?

We must then determine, that since so large a portion of the Scriptures, is of necessity inspired, even in the language; the theory of an inspiration of thoughts, and not of language, is supremely inconsistent. There are not two kinds of divine words in the Holy Scriptures; there are not two kinds of oracles of God. If‘ the holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Spirit,” all the sacred letters were divinely inspired, and that which is divinely inspired in the holy letters, is “ALL THE SCRIPTURE.”.

But these last reflections carry us back to a point, at once more simple and more important. Let us examine it carefully; for the question has been displaced. It has been said that the sacred writers were inspired of God; and it has been asked, in what degree were they so inspired? This was not however the object that should have been sought.

7. We have said, that our investigation refers to the book, and not to the writers. You believe that God always gave ‘them the thoughts, and not always the words; but on the other hand, the Scripture says that God gave them al-. ways the words, and not always the thoughts. While they were writing, God could inspire their thoughts with more or less life, vividness, purity, elevation; this excites my love, but does not exercise my faith. This is to me the all important fact; the Scriptures, which they have transmitted to me, without ever comprehending their meaning, at least without ever comprehending them fully; the scriptures are inspired.

St. Paul may have been under a mistake, when appearing before the council of priests, and not recognising the high priest of God, he dared to say to him: “God shall smite thee, thou whited wall.” It matters little, however, since I know that WHEN HE WRITES THE WORD OF GOD, it is Jesus Christ that speaks in him.¹

St. Peter may have been deceived in his-thoughts, when, refusing to believe that God could send him to the heathen, he remembered not, “that in every nation, those that serve God, are accepted of him.” It is possible he was in a still greater error, when in Antioch he compelled St. Paul to withstand him face to face, in the presence of all, because he was to be blamed, and walked not in the ‘faith of the Gospel.² But what matters this, I again repeat, at least in connection with my faith? It cares not to know at what time, or in what degree, Paul, John, Mark, James, were inspired in their minds, or sanctified in their hearts. What interests it, before all other considerations, is, to know that all the sacred pages were divinely inspired; that their written words were the words of God; and that in giving them to us, they spake “not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth.”³ (οὐκ έν διδακτοῖς ανθρωπὶνης σοφίας λόγοις); that it was NOT THEN THEY who spake, but the Holy Ghost;⁴ in a word, that God, hath spoken By THE MOUTH of all his Holy Prophets, since the world began.⁵

The sacred writers were SOMETIMES inspired, but the Holy Scriptures were ALWAYS inspired. The time, the extent, the degree, the interruptions of the inspiration of the men of God are not for us, objects of faith; but this is an object of faith, that the Scripture is divinely inspired, and that the whole Scripture is divinely inspired. “Not a tittle of it must pass away.”

There is doubtless an inspiration of the thoughts, and also an inspiration of the words. ‘The first makes the CHRISTIAN, the second the PROPHET.

A true Christian is inspired in his thoughts; “the Spirit reveals to him the deep things of God.⁶ Flesh and ‘blood have not revealed to him the counsels of God and the glories of Jesus Christ; it is God the Father;⁷ for the Holy Spirit guides him into all truth;⁸ and no man can say, Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost.”⁹ Every. true believer is then inspired in his thoughts, but not in his words. He is a Christian, but not a prophet. The most sacred words of Cyprian, of Augustine, of Bernard, of Luther, Calvin, Beza, Leighton, are only the words of men on truths of God; venerable, precious, powerful words they are, without doubt, and worthy of our attention, on account of the wisdom that has been given them, and the abundant expressions of the mind of God ‘which they contain; but after all, they are human words, they are sermons, not revelations. With the Prophet, it is far otherwise. He may have, or he may not have the thoughts of God in his thoughts; but so Lone As HE SPEAKS As A. PROPHET, so long will he have the WORDS OF GOD on us LIPS.

“The spirit of the Lord will speak by him, and his word will be on his tongue.”¹⁰ He will be the mouth of God; whether an intelligent or an unintelligent mouth, whether voluntary or involuntary; it matters little, if from it fall the oracles of God, and I receive from it the mind of my God clothed in the language of my God.

In a word, one may be a Christian, without having on his lips the words of God; and one can be a prophet, without having either in his heart or mind, the thoughts of God; but one cannot be a Christian, without having in his heart the thoughts of God; and one cannot be a prophet, without having on his lips the very words of God.

We shall presently establish the point, that in the language of the Bible, a prophet is a man, to whose lips God conveys for a time, those words he will have uttered on earth. Such an one prophesies only by intervals, “as the spirit gives him utterance.”¹¹ Like Saul, he might be a prophet but twice during life; or like his soldiers, but once.¹² Then might he pronounce the words of God, either, understanding or not understanding them; often even without knowing beforehand that he was to prophecy, and sometimes even without wishing it.

Daniel tells us that when he wrote his last pages, he did. not himself know what the spirit had caused him to write.¹³ When Caiaphas uttered prophetic words, “he spake not of himself.” He had the will, but neither the knowledge nor understanding of what God made him speak.¹⁴ When Balaam went three times to the summit of the rock, to curse Israel; and three times, words of blessing proceeded from his lips, in spite of himself, “because the most High had met him, and put these words in his mouth;”¹⁵ he. had the consciousness of it, but he had neither the full knowledge of the meaning of the words, nor a cordial will in uttermg them. When the armed men of Saul had sought David in Rama, and the Holy Spirit had so come upon them, that they likewise prophesied; and when Saul thrice sent others of them, who also thrice prophesied, and when the wicked Saul repaired thither himself, even. to the great well on his way to Najoth; and God (to show forth his power, and the better to manifest to us what a prophet is and what his word is); caused his Holy Spirit to come upon this unbelieving man; when he continued thus on his way, prophieayibe ied the word of God was on those profane lips, and he prophesied day and night before Samuel, “what then happened to the Son of Kish?”¹⁶—“Was Saul indeed then among the prophets?”—yes;—and Saul had also the consciousness of his state, and of the part he acted as prophet; but he had neither foreseen it nor willed it, nor probably had he a full understanding of what he uttered:

When the old prophet was seated amicably at table with the man of God, whom he had just turned from his path, by: an unbelieving and carnal good-will; and when on a sudden, by a power from above, loud and menacing words proceeded from his lips against his imprudent and guilty host;¹⁷ he prophecied with a consciousness of what he did, but he prophecied without willing it. What do I say? Did not God utter his voice in the air, before Moses and all the people on Mount Sinai? Has he not caused it to be heard on the pillow of a child, in the tabernacle of Siloh; in the ears of the three” Apostles and the two saints recalled from the invisible world, upon Mount Tabor; in the ears of John the Baptist and all the people on the banks of the Jordan? Let it then be well understood, these are the holy writings (τά ίερα γράμματα); all that is written, both the phrases and the words are divinely inspired; they are θεόπνευςτοι. We inquire then concerning the word, and not the men who have written it. Their state is comparatively unimportant in this investigation. The Spirit could associate in a greater or less degree, their individuality, their consciousness, their memories, their affections with what he made them say; and you are in no wise obliged to know any thing of this; but that which is most needful for you to know is, as St. Peter hath it, “that no PROPHETIC WRITING came by the will of man, but that holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” So at the supper of Belshazzar, they were little anxious to know what was passing in the fingers of that terrible hand projected from the wall by the side of the chandelier; while on the contrary, every thought of the guests was directed to the words that it traced on the plaistering of the wall: “Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin”; because they well knew that these words were of God; so it matters little to you, as an object of faith, to know what was passing in the mind of Mark, of Luke, of John, and of Matthew, while they were writing the scroll of. the Gospels. Rather let every look be turned to those words which they have written, because you know that these words are of God. Whether the prophet be holy as Moses, or wise as Daniel, hostile to his God as Caiaphas, ignorant of God when he speaks to men, as the prophets of Corinth, unholy as Balaam; what do I say? insensible as the hand on the wall of the palace in Babylon; without form, without body, without soul, as the open air in which was heard the voice of God on Sinai, on the banks of the Jordan, or on Tabor—little matters it, yet again we say, except in those cases when even their personality might form an essential part of their revelation. Thy thought, oh! my God; thy thought and thy words, they concern me.

Section II.—SHOULD THE HISTORICAL BOOKS BE EXCLUDED FROM THE INSPIRED PORTIONS OF THE BIBLE?

We admit, it is said, that inspiration may have reached even to the choice of expressions, wherever this miraculous work was necessary; to state doctrines, for instance, to declare a history of the past more ancient than the birth of the mountains, or to announce a future which none but God can know. But should we go so far as to maintain that cotemporary men had need of the Holy Spirit, for stating facts of which they themselves had been witnesses, or which they had heard others relate; to tell us, for example, of the humble marriage of Ruth in the village of Bethlehem, or the emotions of Esther in the palace of Shushan, or the catalogue of the Kings of Israel and of Judah, their reigns, their lives, their deaths, their genealogies? Luke, for example, who from ‘Troas, had accompanied the Apostle to Jerusalem, to Caesarea, to the island of Malta, and even to Rome; had he not recollections enough to tell us how Paul was seized in the portico of the temple, how his nephew warned him in the fortress, of the conspiracy of forty Jews; how the captain led the lad to the Tribune, and how the Tribune taking him by the hand, led him aside and asked him what he knew. Did he then need for facts so simple, and so-familiar to him, a continual intervention of power from above? We think not; and we maintain, that it is not necessary, nor even beat on to believe, that all the historical passages of the New Testament are inspired.

To such objections, our first answer is always very simple; “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God;“ “thou hast known, Timothy, the holy books; but, all these holy books are given: by the breath of God.”¹⁸ We have not heard the Holy Spirit make a single exception any where to these declarations; and we do not acknowledge in any man, nor in any angel, the right of hazarding one.

But still further. If it were permitted to put one book of God before another; if we must select in the firmament of the Scriptures, the more glorious constellations and stars of the first magnitude, we should certainly give the preference to the historical books. In fact:

1. It is to the historical books, that the most brilliant and the most respectful testimony is rendered by the prophets in the Old Testament, and by the apostles in the New. Which book of the Old Testament is holier than the Pentateuch; and what is grander in the New, than the four Gospels! Is it not of the historical books alone that it is written; “the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimonies of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple; they are pure, more to be desired than gold; the words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in the furnace, seven times refined? Happy then is he, who takes pleasure in them and meditates therein night and day.”¹⁹

2. Remark, too, with what respect our Lord himself quotes them; and how, in quoting them, he is pleased to show that divine decrees lie couched in their minutest details, and sometimes even in the employment of a single word.

3. The histories of the Bible have not been given, merely to transmit to future ages the memory of events already past; they are presented to the Church of all ages, to exhibit to her the character of God by facts; they are there like a mirror of Providence and of Grace; they are destined to reveal to her the thoughts of God, the designs of God, the invisible things of God, his heaven, his glory, his angels, and those mysteries which “the angels desire to look into.”²⁰ But all that requires the most entire Theopneusty.

4. But still farther: the historical Scriptures are given to reveal to us the deep things of man. It has been said of the word of God, that “it is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and of the spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” That is true of the written word, as of the personal Word of God, because the one is the language of the other; but it is emphatically true of the historical word. Do you not see that this word, in its narrations, is a two-edged sword, and that it searches the conscience? And just as it describes to you that which took place on our globe in the days of chaos, when the Holy Spirit moved on the face of the deep; so it still tells you the things which pass in the depths of the human heart, the mysteries of the invisible world, and the secret interference of the angels of God in the affairs of men; it reveals to you secret motives, hidden faults, and human thoughts, which, without it, had not been known until that last day, in whose light every thing shall be revealed. Is it thus that men relate events?

5. But this is not all. See again how, even without the knowledge of the authors themselves, the Bible histories are full of the future. While relating to us past events, ‘they are types for us who should live in the latter times.”²¹ They relate, it is true, national or domestic scenes; but, whilst they are relating, Jesus Christ is there incessantly and prophetically portrayed in all his manifestations and in all his characters. See the history of Adam, of Noah, of Abraham, of Isaac, of Joseph, of Moses, of the immolated Lamb, of the deliverance from Egypt, of the column of fire, of the manna; of the Rock, which was Christ, (1 Cor. x. 4.) of the goat Azazel, of all the sacrifices, of Joshua, of David, of Solomon, of Jonah, of Zerubbabel. The entire history must be adduced, to render justice to this truth. Read again, in order to appreciate it, the pages of St. Paul upon Hagar, Sarah, Aaron, or Melchisedec.

A little reflection will excite our admiration at the constant presence and power of inspiration in every part of these Scriptures; and it will convince us that if there are any pages of the Bible which needed to be inspired in every line and every word, they are those of the historical books. They preach, they reveal, they teach, they legislate, they prophesy.

Do not, then, compare them to other histories; they have altogether another end, totally another rank:

This plenary inspiration was indispensable to them, that they might state, without any error, facts beyond the range of human knowledge. They needed it, in describing the creation of the universe, the breaking up of chaos, the birth of light, the establishing of mountains, the ministration of angels, the secret counsels of God, the thoughts of the human heart and its unknown faults. They needed it when they prefigured Christ by a thousand types, unperceived by the writer himself; they needed it for exhibiting thus, even in their narrations of the past, the characteristic features of the Messiah, his sufferings, his death, and the glories which were to follow. They needed it to speak suitably of the events which were known to them; to suppress some, to present others, to distinguish them, to judge them; and thus to show, in them, the mind of God.-They needed it to describe with accuracy, and in the precise measure, of this mind of God, and of the Church’s future necessity, the national or domestic scenes, which were to convey in themselves the types of redemption, to prefigure the latter days, and to possess a great significancy, thousands of years after their occurrence. They needed it for the degree of their communicativeness, for that of their reserve, for the discreet employment of their expressions, and for that admirable circumspection which they have been enabled uniformly to observe.

6. Probably their divine brevity has not been sufficiently remarked nor admired. If you would appreciate the Scriptures in this respect, compare them with the biographies written by men, or with the codes of doctrines which they give us, when they are uninspired. See, for example, the modern Jewish or the Latin Church. Whilst the former have identified their two Talmuds with the Scriptures, by ascribing to them the same divine authority; the one of which, (that of Jerusalem,) makes a large folio volume; and the other, (that of Babylon,) which is the most popular, and which all their teachers are required to study, is a work of twelve folio volumes;²² and whilst the Romish Church, in her Council of Trent, has declared that “she receives with the same affection and reverence as she gives the Scriptures, her traditions concerning faith and practice;” that is to say, the immense repository of her synodical acts, of her decretals, of her bulls, of her canons, and of the writings of the holy Fathers;²³—See what the Holy Spirit has done in the Bible; ate admire there the celestial wisdom of its inimitable brevity.

Who of us could have been, for three years and a half, the constant witness, the intimate friend, of such a man as Jesus Christ; and could have put, in sixteen or twenty short chapters, or in eight hundred lines, the history of all that life, of his birth, of his youth, of his miracles, of his ministry, of his preachings, of his sufferings, of his death, of his resurrection, and of his ascension into the heavens? Who of us could have recounted so much goodness, without a reflection; so many sublime thoughts, without an emphasis; so many sufferings, without complaints; so much injustice, without bitterness; so many innocent infirmities of the master, or so many culpable infirmities of the disciples, without the least concealment; so much ingratitude in their base abandonment of him, so much resistance, so much hardness of heart, without an apology and without a comment? Is it thus that men relate events or describe character?

Who of us, again, could have distinguished that which must be cursorily presented, from that which must be related in detail? Who of us, for instance, would have thought that the whole creation of the world must be told in one chapter of thirty-one verses; then the trial, the fall and condemnation of our race in another chapter of twenty-four verses; whilst so many chapters and pages must be devoted to the construction of the Tabernacle and its furniture, because in it was contained for future ages, a continual and typical picture of Jesus Christ and his redemption? Who of us, for the same reason, would have employed the fifth part of Genesis in relating the history of only one of Jacob’s twelve sons, whilst two chapters would have appeared to him sufficient to make nearly seventeen hundred years, from the fall of Adam to the deluge? Who of us, after having shared for ten years in the labors of St. Paul, his dangers, his imprisonments, his preachings and his prophetic gifts, could have related twenty-two years of such a life, without saying one word of himself, and without showing to other men, except by the mere change of the personal pronoun, (Acts xvi. 10,) that from Troas to Jerusalem and Caesarea, and that from Jerusalem and Caesarea, even to Malta and to Rome, he had been his suffering companion, faithful and indefatigable? To discover who this was, we must learn from Paul, who, in his last prison wrote to Timothy; “in my first defence, no man stood by me, all forsook me; Luke alone was with me.” (2 Tim. iv. 16, 11,) Holy and celestial reserve; humble and noble silence! The Divine Spirit alone could have taught him!

Where would you find, among all the inspired historians, a man who could have written like St. Luke, the Acts of the Apostles; who could have related in thirty pages, the ecclesiastical history of thirty of the most brilliant years of Christianity, from the ascension of the Son of Man above the clouds of heaven, to the imprisonment of St. Paul in the capital of the Roman world?-Incomparable history; at once short and grand! What do we not find there? Preachings to the Jews, to the Greeks, before the tribunals, before the Areopagus, and before the Sanhedrim, in public places and before a pro-consul, before synagogues and before kings; admirable descriptions of the primitive church; miraculous and dramatic scenes in its bosom; interventions of angels to deliver, to warn and to punish; controversies and divisions in Christian assemblies; new institutions in the church; the history of her first council and its synodical epistle; commentaries on the Scriptures; accounts of heresies; judgments of God, solemn and terrible; apparitions of the Lord, by the way, in the temple and in the prison; detailed conversions, often miraculous, and singularly varied; that of Æneas, that of the Eunuch, that of the captain Cornelius, that. of the Roman jailor, that of the pro-consul, that of Lydia, that of Apollos, that of a numerous people at Jerusalem; without speaking of those that were merely commenced, as in the emotions of King Agrippa, in the troubles of Festus, in the professions of Simon of Samaria, in the anguish of Pilate’s wife, in the terrors of Felix, in the kindness of the captain Julius; missionary journeys, diverse solutions of cases of conscience; permanent divisions upon external things, between Christians of different classes; mutual prejudices, disputes between brethren and between apostles; bursts of passion; explanations, and at the same time, triumph of the spirit of charity over obstacles; communications from one military officer to another, from pro-cousul to pro-consul; resurrections; revelations made to the church to hasten the calling of the Gentiles; collections for the poor of one church by those of another; prophesies; national scenes; punishments inflicted or prepared; arraignments before Jewish tribunals or Roman municipal authorities, before governors and kings; Christian meetings from house to house; their emotions, their prayers, their charity, their doubts; a persecuting king smitten by an angel and consumed of worms, at the very moment when, to repeat the gratification he had given the people by the murder of one apostle, that of another was now prepared by his orders; persecutions in every form, by synagogues, by princes, by municipal officers, by Jews or by mobs; deliverances of godly men, now by a child, now by an angel, now by a Roman tribune, now by a sea-captain, by Pagan magistrates, or by idolatrous soldiers; tempests and shipwrecks, which by the accuracy of their nautical details (we have witnessed it,) still charm the seamen of our day. And all that, in thirty pages, or twenty-eight. short chapters. Admirable brevity! Did not this conciseness require the Holy Spirit of God, this choice of details, this style, so pious, so varied, so brief, so richly significant, which employs so few. words, while it teaches so many things? Fullness, conciseness, clearness, simplicity, elevation, practical richness; behold the book of ecclesiastical history which the people of God needed!

It is true; yet we repeat, it is not thus that men write history.

Could you find upon the earth, a man capable of relating the assassination of his mother, with the calmness, the sobriety, the self-possession, the apparent want of passion, which distinguish that four-fold history of the Evangelists relating the punishment of that Jesus, whom they loved more than any mother is loved, more than life is loved; of that Jesus whom they adored; of that Jesus whom they had seen prostrate in Gethsemane; then betrayed, forsaken, led to Jerusalem with his hands bound, and finally nailed naked upon the cross, while the sun-withdrew his light, while the earth was rent, and while he who was raising the dead, was himself reduced to the state of the dead! Was it not necessary that each line, each word of such a history, should be written under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that a suitable selection might be made amidst a world and an age of reminiscences?

7. This entire guidance was also necessary for that prophetic reserve which the sacred historians have been able to exercise in so many respects, and for that prudence altogether divine, which manifests itself not only in their teachings, but in their silence; not only in the terms which they employ, but in those which they avoid.

See them, for example, when they speak of the mother of Jesus. What divine foresight, what prophetic wisdom, both in their narrations and in their expressions! How easy it was in their ardent adorations of the son, to have expressed themselves concerning the mother, in terms too respectful! Would not one single word, which might so easily have escaped in the imprudence of their first emotions, have forever authorized that idolatry of future ages towards Mary, and the crime of that worship which is now rendered her? But that word they have never uttered. But have they not merely gone so far as to call her the mother of God? No, not even that; although. be was to them Emmanuel, the Man-God, the Word who was in the beginning with God, who was God, and who was made flesh. Hear them; what will they say of her, after the death and resurrection of the Savior? One single sentence; and then perpetual silence! “All those continued in prayer with the women, and with the mother of Jesus and with his brethren. (Hi omnes erant perseverantes in oratione cum mulierbus, et Mariâ matre Jesu et fratribus ejus.”) They mention her there, neither the first nor the last; she appears there, as the mother of Jesus, among the brothers of Jesus and the Gallilean women. And what will they say of her before the death of Christ 2 Remark it, for it is not thus that men relate. Among all the words which Jesus may have said to his mother from the opening of his mission, they have selected but three to report to us. This is the first: “Woman,” (when she interfered with his ministry just commenced, and asked him to perform a miracle), “woman, (woman!) what have I to do with thee 1” (John ii. 14,) When afterwards a woman in the crowd, exclaimed in her enthusiasm, “Happy the womb that bare thee!” “Say rather, said he, happy is he who heareth the word of God, and keepeth it.” (Luke xi. 27). That is the second. Now hear the third; his mother and brethren were shaken in their faith; they had been heard to say; he is beside himself, (dicebant enim: quoniam in furorem versus est); and one came and said: “Thy mother and thy brothers are without, desiring to speak with thee.” “Who is my mother?” replied he: and stretching his hand towards his disciples said, “Behold my mother. Every woman’. who shall do the will of my Father in heaven, the same is my mother. Ecce mater mea.” And when; finally, he saw her from his cross, he no more called her mother; but he bequeathed her to the disciple whom he loved, saying: ‘ Woman, behold thy son; John, behold thy mother; and from that hour, that disciple received her to his house,” not to adore her, but to protect her, as a feeble and suffering being whose soul a sword had pierced.

Is it then thus, we again ask, that men write history; and must it not be that the prophetic Spirit was the sole narrator of all these facts?

We should love to quote other examples; they present themselves in a throng before our eyes at this moment, and it is a sacrifice to us to withhold them; for the more closely these historical books are studied, the more the prophetic wisdom of the Spirit of God which has dictated them, there reveals itself in the details at first the most unperceived. We should love to signalize among others,. the altogether prophetic wisdom with which the Holy Spirit often, when he relates an important fact more than once, takes care to vary his expressions, in order to prevent false interpretations which might be given to his words, and to condemn beforehand, the errors which in after times might be attributed to them. We would cite, for example, the remarkable and unanticipated manner in ‘which the tenth precept of the decalogue is repeated in Deuteronomy (Deut. v. 21, Exod. xx. 17, Luke viii. 25), with a remarkable transposition of its first terms; the Holy Spirit wishing thus to confound prophetically the artifice by which the teachers of the church of Rome should see fit, fifteen centuries afterwards, to divide this commandment into two, thus to conceal their nefarious abduction of the second commandment: ‘thou shalt not make unto thee any images. . . thou shalt not bow down to them nor serve them.” We should love to show again the varied expressions by which the Holy Spirit has showed to us the divine institution of the Lord’s Supper, and has often paraphrased it, in order to make us the better understand what Christ intended by it, and to condemn in advance, the carnal sense which men should afterwards give to the words: “THIS IS my blood, this cup 1s the new COVENANT in my blood;” and he has also said: “this cup is the COMMUNION or COMMUNICATION of the blood of the New Testament.” We could wish to point out the prophetic wisdom, by which, in order to confound those who should pretend in future times, that Judas did not take part in the last supper (and that he went out before it, or did not come in until after it), Holy Spirit has taken care to inform us by Mark and the Matthew (Matt. xxvi. 21, 26, Mark, xiv. 19, 23,) that Jesus announced the treason of Judas, Judas being present; and by Luke, that he announced it after the ‘communion, Judas being present. (Luke xxii. 19, 23). We should love to show among all the writers of the New Testament, the constant sobriety of their words, when the relation of pastors to their churches is spoken of; and that admirable prudence with which they have always abstained from applying, even in one single instance, to the ministers of the Christian church, the name of priest; and have merely appropriated to them the title of elders, which was given to the laity of Israel, to distinguish them always from the sacerdotal race (that represented Jesus Christ, and that was to-cease when the true and only priest should have appeared). We should love too, to point out that prudence with which they avoid leading a soul to any other pastor, or any other director (καθηγητης), (Matt. xxiii. 8, 10,) than Jesus Christ; and with which, in recommending deference to their spiritual guides, they have taken care to name them always in the plural, in order never to authorize from the Scripture this idea so natural to the pastor and to the flock, that every soul must have its pastor among men. What precaution, what reserve in the narrations, in order never to give too much to man, and to recount the great things which “God had done by the apostles,” (Acts xiv. 27, Rom. xv. 18, 1 Cor. iii. 6), so that each one should be abased before God, and all the glory be ascribed to him, and that every servant of the Lord might learn to say with the last prophet of the Old Testament and the first of the New: “he must increase but I must decrease.”

We repeat, that it is almost doing violence to ourselves, to have the Bible before us, and quote no more of it.

From all these features reunited, we must then conclude, that if all Scripture is divinely inspired; the historical books exhibit this divine intervention more strongly than all the others; they show the necessity of it more clearly; they attest that for such pages, it was indispensable that the invisible and powerful hand of the Holy Spirit be placed upon that of the sacred writer, and that he guide it from the first line even to the last; more than men was required, more than learned men, more than holy men, more than minds enlightened and superintended, more than angels, more than archangels; God must do it.:

We will say then with Origen: ‘The sacred volumes breathe the plenitude of the Spirit; and there is nothing, either in the prophets, in the law, in the gospels, or in the apostles, which does not come from the plenitude of the majesty of God;”²⁴ And with St. Ambrose: “utrumque poculum bibe veteris et Novi Testamenti, quia ex utroque-Christum bibis. Bibe Christum, ut bibas sanguinem quo redemptus es; bibe Christum, ut bibas sermones ejus.—Bibitur Scriptura sacra, et devoratur Scriptura divina, cum in venas mentis ac vires animi succus verbi descendit eterni.”²⁵

But what then, it has sometimes been said; must we ‘believe that the letter of the Pagan Lysias, or the harangue of Gamaliel the Jew, or the discourses of Job’s severe friends were inspired words?—Surely, no; no more than those of Cain. or Lamech—of Rabshakeh or Satan. But the sacred writers were as really led by God to transmit them to us, as to report to us the song of Mary in the hill-country, or that of the seraphim in the year of king Uzziah’s death, or that of the celestial army at Bethlehem. The Holy Spirit is not always the author of the words which he relates; but he is always their historian..

But there is still another evasion, which is adopted in order to separate one part of the scriptures from the Theopneusty. If it is not the most serious objection, it is at least one of those the most frequently repeated..

Section III.—WOULD THE APPARENT INSIGNIFICANCE OF CERTAIN DETAILS OF THE BIBLE, JUSTIFY US IN SEPARATING THEM FROM THE INSPIRED PORTION.

Does it comport with the dignity of inspiration to accompany the thought of the Apostle Paul, even into those vulgar details into which we see him descend in some of his letters? Would the Holy Spirit condescend to dictate to him those public salutations which terminate his epistles;—or those hygienic counsels to Timothy concerning his stomach and his often infirmities;—or those commissions with which he charges him, with regard to his parchments and a certain cloak which he had left at the house of Carpus at Troas, when he was leaving Asia?

The reader will suffer us to beseech him to be cautious of this objection, when, holding the Bible in his hands, he happens not to recognize on the first perusal, the signs of God’s hand in such or such a passage of the word. Let those imprudent hands not cast one verse of it out of the temple of the Scriptures. They hold an eternal book, all of whose authors have said with St. Paul: “And I think that I too have the Spirit of the Lord!” If then, he does not yet see any thing divine in such or such a passage, the fault is in him, and not in the passage. Let him rather say with Jacob: “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not!”²⁶ This book can sustain the light of science; for it will bear that of the last day. The heavens and the earth shall pass; but none of its words shall fail, not even to the least letter. God declares to every one that heareth the words of this prophecy; that if any one shall take away from the words of this book, God will take away his part from the book of life.²⁷

Let us examine more closely the alleged passages. St. Paul from the depths of his prison, sends for his cloak. He has left it at the house of Carpus, in Troas, and he entreats Timothy to hasten before winter, and not forget to bring it to him. This domestic detail, so many thousand times objected against the inspiration of the Scriptures, from the days of the Anomians of whom St. Jerome speaks:²⁸ this detail seems to you too trivial for an apostolic book, or at least too insignificant and too foreign from all practical utility, for the dignity of inspiration. Unhappy, however, is he who does not perceive its pathetic grandeur.

Jesus Christ also, on the day of his death, spoke of his cloak and of his vesture. Would you have this passage taken away from the inspired volume? It was after a night of fatigue and anguish. They had led him about the streets of Jerusalem for seven successive hours, by the light of torches, from street to street, from tribunal to tribunal, buffeting him, covering him with a veil, striking his head with staves. The morrow’s sun was not yet risen, before they had bound his hands with cords, to lead him again from the high priest’s house to Pilate’s Pretorium. There, lacerated with rods, bathed in his own blood, then delivered for the last punishment, to ferocious ‘ soldiers, he had seen his garments all stripped off, that they might clothe him in a scarlet robe, whilst they bowed the knee before him, placed the reed in his hands, and spit upon his face. ‘Then, before laying his cross upon his bruised frame, they had replaced his garments upon his wounds, to lead him to Calvary; but, when they were about to proceed to the execution, they took them away for the third time; and it is then that, stripped of every thing, first his cloak, then his coat, then of even his under dress, he must die naked upon the malefactor’s gibbet, in the view of an immense multitude. Was there ever seen under heaven, a man, who has not found these details, touching, sublime, inimitable? And was one ever seen, who, from the account of this death, thought of retrenching as useless or too vulgar, the history of these garments which they divided among them,—or of this cloak for which they cast lots? Has not infidelity itself said in speaking of it; that the majesty of the Scriptures astonished it, that their simplicity spoke to its heart; that the death of Socrates was that of a sage, but Jesus Christ’s, that of a God!²⁹—and if the divine inspiration was reserved for a mere portion of the holy books, would it not be for these very details? Would it not be for the history, of that love, which, after having lived upon the earth poorer than the birds of the air and the foxes of the field, was willing to die still poorer, deprived of all, even to its cloak and its under-garments, and fastened naked to the malefactor’s gibbet with the arms extended and nailed to the wood? Ah! be not solicitous for the Holy Spirit; he has not derogated from his own majesty; and so far from thinking that he was stooping too low, in announcing these facts to the world, he had hastened to recount them to it; and that too, a thousand years in advance. At the period of the Trojan war he already was singing them upon the harp of David: “They have pierced my hands and my feet,” said he, “they look and stare upon me, they part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.” (Psalm, xxii. 18, 19. John, xix. 23, 24.)

But it is the same Spirit who would show us St. Paul writing to Timothy, and requesting him to bring his cloak. Hear him; he too is stripped of every thing. In his youth, he was already eminent, a favorite of princes, admired of all; but now he has left every thing for Christ. It is now thirty years and more, that he has been poor, in labors more than the others, in wounds, more than they, in prison oftener; five times he had received of the Jews forty stripes save one; thrice was he beaten with rods; once he was stoned; thrice he has suffered shipwreck; often in journeyings; in perils upon the sea, in perils in the city, in perils in the desert; in watchings oft, in hunger and in thirst, in cold and nakedness (we quote his own words). Hear him now; behold him advanced in age; he is in his last prison; he is at Rome; he is expecting his sentence of death; he has fought the good fight; he has finished his course, he has kept the faith; but he is cold, winter is coming on, and he is poorly clad! Buried in a dungeon of the Mamertine prisons, he is so much despised, that all the very Christians of Rome are ashamed of him, and that at his first appearing, no man was willing to befriend him. Yet, he had received, ten years before, while a prisoner at Rome, and loaded with chains, at least some money from the Philippians; who, knowing his sufferings, united together in their indigence, to send him some succor. But now, behold him forsaken; no one but St. Luke is with him; all have abandoned him; winter is approaching. He would need a cloak; he has left his own, two hundred leagues off, at the house of Carpus in Troas; and no one in the cold prisons-of Rome would lend him one. Has he not then left every thing, with joy, for Christ; has he not esteemed all the glory of this world as dross that he might win Christ; and does he not suffer all things cheerfully for the elect’s sake? (Phil. iii. 8. 2 Tim. ii. 10.) We were ourselves at Rome, last year, in a hotel, on a rainy day, in the beginning of November. Chilled by the piercing dampness of the cold evening air, we had a vivid conception of the holy apostle in the subterranean dungeons of the capitol, dictating the last of his letters, regretting the absence of his cloak, and entreating Timothy to bring it to him before the winter!

Who would then take from the inspired Epistles so striking and pathetic a feature? Does not the Holy Spirit carry you to the prison of Paul, to astonish you with this tender self-renunciation and this sublime poverty; just too, as he shewed you with your own eyes, his charity, sometime before, when he made him write in his letter to the Philippians: “I weep in writing to you, because there are many among you, who mind earthly things, whose end is destruction?” Do you not seem to see him in his prison, loaded with chains, while he is writing, and tears are falling upon his parchment? And does it not seem to you that you behold that poor body, to-day miserably clothed, suffering and benumbed; to-morrow beheaded and dragged to the Tiber, in expectation of the day ' when the earth shall give up her dead, and the sea the dead which are in it; and when Christ shall transform our vile bodies, to make them like unto his own glorious body? And if these details are beautiful, think you they are not also useful? And if they are already useful to him who reads them as a simple historical truth, what will they not. become to him who believes in their Theopneusty, and who says to himself: oh my soul, these words are written by Paul; but it is thy God who addresses them to thee 1 Who can tell the force and consolation, which, by their very familiarity and naturalness, they have for eighteen centuries, conveyed into dungeons and huts! Who can count the poor and the martyrs, to whom such passages have given encouragement, example and joy? We just now remember, in Switzerland, the pastor Juvet, to whom a coverlet was refused, twenty years ago, in the prisons of the Canton de Vaud. Were member that Jerome of Prague, shut up for three hundred and forty days in the dungeons of Constance, at the bottom of a dark and loathsome tower, and going out only to appear before his murderers. Nor have we forgotten the holy Bishop Hooper, quitting his dark and dismal dungeon, with wretched clothes and a borrowed cloak, to go to the scaffold, supported upon a staff, and bowed by the sciatica. Venerable brethren, happy martyrs; doubtless you then remembered your brother Paul, shut up in the prison of Rome, suffering from cold and nakedness, asking for his cloak! Ah! unfortunate he, who does not see the sublime humanity, the tender grandeur, the fore-seeing and divine sympathy, the depth and the charm of such a mode of teaching! But still more unfortunate perhaps he, who declares it human, because he does not comprehend it. We would here quote the beautiful remarks of the respectable Haldane on this verse of St. Paul. “This passage, if you consider the place it occupies in this Epistle, and in the solemn farewells of Paul to his disciples, presents this Apostle to our view, in the situation most calculated to affect us. He has just been before the Emperor; he is about to finish his days by martyrdom; his departure is at hand, the crown of righteousness is reserved for him; Gekni him on the “conti: of two worlds; in this calito he is» about to leave, ready to be beheaded, as a malefactor, by the orders of Nero; in that which he is going to enter, crowned as a just man by the Lord of lords; in this, abandoned of men; in that, welcomed by angels; in this, needing a poor cloak to cover him; in that, covered with the righteousness of the saints; clothed upon with his heavenly tabernacle of light and joy; so that mortality is swallowed up of life.”

Ah, rather than object to such a passage, thereby to deprive the Scriptures of their infallibility, we should there recognize that wisdom of God, which, so often by one single touch, has given us instructions, for which, without that, many pages would have been necessary.-We should adore that tender condescension, which, stooping even to our weakness, is pleased, not only to reveal to us the highest thoughts of heaven in the simplest language of earth, but also to offer them to us under forms so living, so dramatic, so penetrating, often compressing them in order to render them more intelligible: within the narrow space of a single verse.

It is then thus that St. Paul, by these words thrown. at hazard even into the last commission of a familiar letter, casts for us a rapid flood of light over his ministry, and discovers to us by a word, the entire life of an Apostle; as a single flash of lightning in the evening, illuminates in an instant, all the tops of our Alps; and as persons sometimes show you all their soul by a single look.

How. many striking examples of this could we quote. They present themselves in crowds; but we are obliged to restrain ourselves; and we should in fact rather confine ourselves to the very passages which the objector selects.

Yet we must say before going any farther; we almost blush to defend the word of God under this form; and we feel, for this species of apology, a kind of conscientious disgust. Is it entirely proper; and can we give ourselves to it without irreverence? Care must be taken at all times, as to the manner of defending the things of God; lest we imitate the imprudence of Uzzah, who reached out his hand to hold up the ark of God, because the oxen had slipped. The wrath of God, we are told, burned against his indiscretion (2 Sam. vi. 6, 7). If it is well understood on both sides, that a word is in the canon of the oracles of God, why defend it as-worthy of him, by human reasons? You might, without doubt, defend it against unbelievers; but with men who recognize the divinity of the Scriptures, is it not to wrong this word; is it not to take a false position, and touch the ark as Uzzah did? If this word should present itself to our eyes as a root out of a dry ground; were it without any charm; were there neither form nor comeliness, nor any thing in it to make it desirable; still ought you to venerate it and expect every thing for it, from him who has given it. Is it not then to fail of your duty to him; to attempt when he speaks, to prove by argument, the respect. which is his due? Should I not be ashamed, when my Savior and my God has been showed me, rising from supper, taking a basin, girding himself with a napkin, and coming to wash the feet of his disciples; should I not be ashamed to set myself to proving, that, in spite of all that, he is still the Christ! Ah; I would rather adore him more than ever! But it is so; the majesty of the Scriptures will stoop even to us. Do you see it there rising from the table, laying aside its robe, putting on the dress of a servant, and kneeling before sinners to wash their feet? “If I do not wash thee, thou hast no part with me.” Is it not then, in this very humiliation that it reveals itself with the greatest charm, as the voice of the humiliated Word? Could we mistake it, and could we rank ourselves for an instant by the side of those who do not know it?

It seems to us, that there is no arrogance comparable to that of a man, who, recognising the Bible as a book of God, pretends after all, to assay it with his hand; to separate the pure from its impure, the inspired from the uninspired, God from man. It is to overthrow all the foundations of faith; it is to make it no more a belief in God, but a belief in man. It ought then to be enough for us that a chapter or a word makes part of the Scriptures, to induce us to believe it-divinely good; for God has pronounced upon it, as upon the creation: “I have seen every thing that I have made, and behold, all is good.” We will never then say, I find this word admirable, therefore it is of God; and still less, I do not see its” utility, therefore it is of man. God preserve us from it! But we will say, it is in the Scriptures; then it is from God. It is from God; then it is useful, it is wise, it. is admirable; if I do not see it such yet, the fault is in me alone.

We regard as utterly misapplied, this protection which the wisdom of man would extend to that of God; we hold as an outrage, this gross stamp with which it pretends to legalize the Holy Scriptures, and this absurd signature with which it dares to authorize their passages.

If then we here proceed to prove the divine wisdom of certain passages which some have dared to pronounce human, it is not to found their divinity upon the judgments of man’s better informed wisdom, nor preposterously to make them respected, merely on account of the beauty which is there revealed. Our respect has preceded; it was founded upon the fact that the passage is written in the oracles of God. From that time, before having seen, we have believed. We then. intend to refute the objection, merely by presenting some examples of its rashness. Let us hear yet two or three passages to which some have pretended to refuse the honors of inspiration, because, on a superficial examination, they have thought them to be without spiritual bearing. We can here quote only a very small number. A sentence may be pronounced useless or vulgar in four words; but to show that the objection is founded in misapprehension, pages would be requisite.

One of the passages which we have frequently placed in the front, when they would justify a distinction between that which is inspired and that which is uninspired in the word of God, is the recommendation of St. Paul to Timothy, on account of his bad digestion, and the maladies under which this young disciple was suffering: “drink no more water, but a little wine, for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.” (1Tim. v. 23.)

At the same time, if you examine this passage more closely, what an admirable and living revelation will you find, of the greatness of the Apostolic vocation and of the amiableness of the Christian character. Remark first, that it was pronounced as in the temple of God; for, immediately before, you have these solemn words: “I charge thee before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, that thou observe these things without preferring one before another, doing nothing by partiality. Lay hands suddenly on no man; neither be partakers of other men’s sins: keep thyself pure. Drink no more only water.” We see that it is in the presence of their common Master and of the holy angels, that St. Paul would speak to his disciple. Entering then into the same temple, to understand him, and placing ourselves at the same height, in arraigning ourselves as he did, “before the Lord Jesus and his holy-angels”; then we shall quickly recognize how many beauties these passages reveal in the” ministry of the Apostles, and in the ways of the Lord towards his own. The celebrated Chrysostom had well understood it, when preaching upon these very words, he observed with so much feeling, how little the most ardent and the most useful servants of God ought to be surprised, if it ever happens that the Lord sees proper to try them, as Timothy was tried, by infirmities in their lungs or in their head, or in their stomach; if he puts some thorn in their flesh, and if he thus buffets them by some angel of Satan, in order to increase on the one hand their sympathy, their meekness, their tenderness of heart, their cordial affections, their tender compassions; and on the other, their patience, self-renunciation, self-denial, and above all, their spirit of prayer. Reperuse seriously, and as in the light of the last day, this beautiful passage of the Apostle; and immediately in the narrow space of this single verse, you shall admire the many precious instructions the Holy Spirit would here give us, besides those which the pious bishop of Constantinople has remarked. How many words and almost chapters would have been necessary to say so much under another form! You will again learn there, for example, the sobriety of this young and ardent Timothy: he had wished, like St. Paul, to “keep his body under’’; he drank only water—he abstained entirely from wine. You will there see in the third place, with what tender and paternal delicacy the Apostle reproved him, either for his imprudence, or for an austerity which he carried too far. You will there see again, with what wisdom the Lord authorizes and invites by these words, the men of God to take the necessary care of their health, at the same time however, that he has thought best to diminish it by sickness. You will there see, in the fifth place, with what prophetic foresight this word placed in the mouth of an apostle, condemns in advance, the human traditions which, in future days were to forbid to the faithful, the use of wine as an impurity. ion will there see, in the sixth place, with what tender solicitude, what sympathy, what paternal vigilance, the Apostle Paul, in the midst of his high functions, and despite the “care of all the churches from Jerusalem to Illyrium, and of those from Illyrium even to Spain,’ which came upon him, was still not undmindful of the personal circumstances of his beloved disciple, of his health, of the infirmities of his stomach, of his frequent maladies and of his imprudent habits of daily regimen. You will there learn again, an historical fact which will cast for you a useful light upon the nature of the miraculous gifts. In spite of the interest of St. Paul for the ailments of his disciple, it was not possible for him to restore ‘Timothy, even for him who had so often healed the sick, and even raised the dead; because the apostles, (and we learn it too by this verse, as by the sickness of Epaphroditus³⁰) had not received the continual gift of miraculous power, any more than that of theopneusty; and that this virtue must be renewed to them for every special occasion.

But if all these lessons of the apostle are important, and if we receive them all thus in one single verse, and in the manner most calculated to affect us; oh! how beautiful they become, and how penetrating they are, for a simple and Christian heart, as soon as it is assured that this is not merely the word of a good man; that it is not even that of an apostle merely; but that it is the voice of its God, who will teach it in so affecting a manner, sobriety, fraternal affection, tender interest for the health of others, the usefulness of afflictions and of infirmities for the most zealous servants of God; and who, to give us all these precious lessons, deigns to address us by the mouth of a simple creature! For, the Lord is good; he has placed his tender compassions above all his works; the heavens are his throne, and the earth is his footstool; he counts the stars; he heals the broken-hearted, and he treasures our tears in his phials.

The salutations of St. Paul at the close of his epistles, are often objected to, which are, they say, only the ordinary compliments that we all employ in closing a letter. There is nothing unworthy of an apostle, it has been admitted; nor is there any thing there inspired. The Holy Spirit has let the pen of Paul run on there, in order that he might give free course to his personal affections, as we ourselves should allow a secretary to terminate alone, by the usual compliments, a letter, whose first pages we had dictated to him. Consult, for instance the last chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. Is it not sufficiently evident that the apostle there abandons himself during sixteen verses, to the entirely personal reminiscences of his friendship? Had this dry nomenclature of all these persons need of the Holy Spirit? The Apostle points out eighteen of them by name, without counting all those who were to be saluted collectively in the house of Aquilas, in that of Narcissus, as in that of Aristobulus. These verses do not require inspiration; and it would at the most, have been sufficient, in order to have them written, that the Holy Spirit should have exercised that ‘superintendence, under which they wrote when left to their personality.

We fear not to avow it; we take pleasure in recollecting here those sixteen verses so often objected to; for they are, on the contrary, of the number of those passages, the divine wisdom of which commends itself; and if you look closely at them, you will immediately admire with us, the fecundity, the condescension, and the elevation of this mode of instruction; you will there find under the most practical and natural form, a living picture of a primitive church. You will there discover with lively interest, the relations of the members to one another; and you will there see to what height even the most ignorant and the most feeble members were raised in its bosom.

Hear first with what. tender interest, the Apostle recommends to the charity of the Church in Rome, that humble woman who, was making, as it appears, a journey from Corinth into Italy, for her temporal affairs. She was a beloved sister, who had given herself to the service of the saints, and who had not feared to open her house to a great number of the faithful, and to Paul himself, notwithstanding the perils of this hospitality. She was the servant of the Church of Cenchrea. It was necessary then that the brethren who were at Rome, should welcome her in the Lord, and that they should administer to her wants. See again, the example which the apostle furnishes us, in a few words, of that Christian urbanity which should characterize all the mutual relations. of the children of God. Admire how, while he passes so rapidly in review, the brethren and the sisters of the Church of Rome, he can spread, even over this nomenclature that is called arid, the sweet unction of his charity. He has. some words of encouragement and tender esteem for each one of them, he there recalls the generous hospitality of Phebe, the dangers of death which Aquilas and his wife had braved for him; the honor of Epinetus as having been the first of the Achaians converted to Christ; the great labors of Mary, of Andronica and of Junias, who had even preceded him in the faith; his christian love for Amplias; the evangelical works of Urbanus, the tried fidelity of Apelles; the multiplied labors of Tryphena acd Tryphosa in the Lord, and those of the beloved Persis. What an appeal again to the conscience of every serious reader, is this rapid catalogue! See then, ought he to say to himself, the character of the faithful whom he wished to be saluted in the Church of Rome! And if the same apostle was writing a letter to the Church, in which I myself occupy a place, what would he say of me? Would my name be found there? Could he there add, that I receive as Phebe, the saints into my house; that I hold, as Aquila and Priscilla, christian meetings under my happy roof? that I have, as Mary, taken much pains for the ministers of the Lord; that I have suffered for Jesus Christ, as Andronica and Junias; that I am a man approved in Christ, as Apelles; that I am elect in our Lord, as Rufus; that I am, as Urbanus, his companion in work; that I labor in our Lord, as Tryphena and Tryphosa; and that I even labor much, as the beloved Persis?

But see above all, what a lesson for Christian women, is contained in these admirable verses. In the simple familiarity of the salutations which terminate this letter, how he shows them the elevation of their calling! What an important part is there assigned them in the church, and what a place in heaven! Without having yet seen the city of Rome, Paul mentions there, by their own name, and as his companions in labor, as many as nine or ten women. ‘There is first, besides Phebe, that admirable Priscilla, that happy wife of the happy Aquila, who had even exposed herself to punishment for the apostle, and to whom all the churches of the Gentiles were grateful. ‘Then came a woman named Mary, who had, says he, labored much for the apostles; there was Tryphena and Tryphosa, who labored still in the Lord; there was Persis, who was particularly dear to him, and who had labored much in the Lord; there was Julia, there was the sister of Marcus; there was perhaps Olympia;³¹ there was finally the venerable mother of Rufus. And observe, in passing, with what respect he names this woman, and with what delicacy he salutes her by the endearing name of mother. Is not that the christian politeness which he recommended to these same Romans in the 12th chapter of this letter: “Salute Rufus, elect in the Lord, writes he, and his mother who IS ALSO MINE!”—What a touching model too do these same verses propose to husbands and wives, in the persons of Aquila and Priscilla!—You see them here in Rome; you may have seen them, five years before, driven from Italy by the Emperor Claudius, arriving at Corinth, and receiving the apostle Paul into their house; then, eighteen months afterwards, departing with him for Asia, and living at Ephesus, where they had already a church in their house,³² and where they welcomed with so much success, the young and brilliant Apollos, who, notwithstanding his talents, found himself happy in placing himself in the school of their christian conversation and charity. Now that Claudius had just died and given place to Nero, you see them, scarcely returned to Rome, already consecrating their new dwelling to the church of God. It is at their house they assemble; and you here learn again, as in passing, that these two had not hesitated to expose together their lives for that of St. Paul.

But, besides all these-lessons which, in these sixteen little verses, are offered to our consciences, you may likewise learn from them, two facts. of great importance in the history of the Church. And first you see there, with the simplest and fullest evidence, that at that day, no one in Rome thought of such a thing as the episcopacy, nor popeship, nor primacy, nor even of the presence of Peter. Do you not. recognize a prophetic foresight in the care which the Holy Spirit has taken to introduce into this epistle to the Romans, that which he has done for no other of the fourteen letters of St. Paul, and to terminate it thus by a long catalogue of the women and the men most esteemed at that time in all the Church of Rome? Behold then the Apostle of the Gentiles, who, twenty years after his conversion, in writing to them, salutes at least twenty-eight of their number by their names, and many others besides, by collective designations, and who says not one word-to them of the Prince of the Apostles, as he is called, of the vicar of Jesus Christ, of his superior, the chief of the universal Church, of the founder of the Romish Church! St. Peter was the Apostle of the Circumcision, and not of the Gentiles:³³ his place was in Jerusalem; it is there we must look for him, and it is there St. Paul had always found him. In his first journey, three years after his conversion, Paul visits him there, and remains fifteen days in his house.³⁴ In his second journey, for the first council, he meets him there again. In his third journey, in the year 44, at the epoch of the death of Herod Agrippa, St. Peter is still living at Jerusalem.³⁵ In his fourth journey, seventeen years after his conversion,³⁶ St. Paul again finds him there, in the capacity, mark it well, of Apostle, not to the Gentiles, but to the Circumcision. And when at last he is on his way for his fifth and final journey, he writes to the Romans and to the Galatians; and then, that-all the Church might fully understand that Peter is not at Rome, and that he has never been there, Paul shall take pains to salute by their names, all of the most distinguished Christians of Rome, even of the women. What bishop is there of our day, in the Latin sect, who would dare to write a letter in sixteen chapters to the Church of Rome, without uttering a word in it, either of St. Peter, or of him whom they call the Vicar of Jesus Christ?³⁷

But there is another historical fact, still more interesting, to the knowledge of which, these sixteen verses which have been called useless, lead us by the most striking features. See, in the very details of these short salutations, by what humble instruments, and yet with what expansion, the gospel had in so short a time, established itself in the mighty Rome. No apostle had put his foot there,³⁸ and yet see what had been already the progress of the word of God, through the labors of merely travelers, artisans, merchants, women, slaves and freed men who happened to be at Rome! Already had Jesus Christ disciples there, even in the palaces of the Jewish princes who resided near the imperial court, and even among the pagans who served nearest the person of Nero. St. Paul requests that among other Christians, they would salute from him, first, “‘ those of the household of Aristobulus,” and secondly, “those of the household of Narcissus, who were in the Lord.” Now, the first of these great personages was the brother of Agrippa the great, and of the impure Herodias; the second was the powerful favorite of the emperor Claudius. Agrippina did not cause his death, until the close of the year 54.

Ah! let every one who calls himself a Christian, renounce for ever, those rash systems, in which man lifts himself against the words of the Scriptures, to dispute their propriety; in which he dares to take away from God’s Bible such a passage, such a sentence, to make of it (as least a8 to that passage or that sentence), a human Bible; and in which he makes himself responsible likewise’ for all the rashness of the boldest scholars, who imitate in respect to a whole book; his treatment of a single verse. What idea has he of the sacred writers, when he imagines them capable of the gross folly of mingling their own oracles with the oracles of the Almighty? We recollect an insane man, a pensioner of our hospitals, whose hand-writing was still so good, that a minister of Geneva employed him to transcribe his sermons. Conceive of the confusion of the minister, when in receiving his manuscripts, he found that this unfortunate man had imagined he could enrich every page by adding his own thoughts. Yet the distance between a lunatic. and a minister, be he holy as Daniel, and sublime as Isaiah, is Jess than between Daniel or Isaiah and Eternal Wisdom!

Arrived then, thus far, we would, before proceeding any farther, recommend to our readers, to observe in using sacred criticism, three precautions, the importance and necessity of which, the doctrine of inspiration should make them feel.

1) 2 Cor. xiii, 3. 1 Cor. vii 17.

2) Gal. ii, 14,

3) 1 Cor. ii, 13.

4) Mark xiii, 2.

5) Acts iii, 21, Luke i, 70.

6) 1 Cor. ii, 10.

7) Matt. xvi, 17.

8) John xvi, 13.

9) 1 Cor. xii, 3.

10) 2 Sam. xxiii, 1,2.

11) Acts ii; 4.

12) 1 Sam. x. 19.

13) Dan, xii, 8, 9,

14) John xi, 51.

15) Num. xiii, 16,

16) 1 Sam. xix, 23, 24.

17) 1 Kings, xiii., 21.

18) 2 Tim. iii. 14, 16.

19) Psalm cxix. 96-126.

20) 1 Pet. i. 12.

21) 1 Cor. x. 6-11.

22) The last edition of Amsterdam. Maimonides has made a learned extract from it “in his Yad Hachazaka. See Prideaux? Hist. of the Jews. Amsterdam, vol. ii. page 130.

23) Council of Trent, session 4, first and second decrees, published, Ap. 28th, 1546.—Bellarmine de verbo Dei. lib. 4, cap. 3, 5, 6.—Coton. lib. ii. cap. 24, 34, 35.—Baile, traité I. Du Petron against Silenus,

24) Homil. II. in Jerm. cap. I.

25) Ambrose in Psalm I. Enarratio.

26) Gen. viii. 16.

27) Rev. xxi, 18, 19.

28) See Proemium in Epit. ad Philem.

29) J. J. Rousseau.

30) Philip ii, 27.

31) This may be a woman’s name, but more probably it is a man’s.

32) 1 Cor. xi, 9.

33) Gal. ii. 7,8, 9.

34) Gal. i. 8.

35) Acts, xii. 1, 3.

36) Gal i. 7.

37) See on this subject, the excellent dissertation of the Rev. Mr, Bost; “Du pouvoir de St. Pierre dans l’Eglise,” Geneva, 1833.

38) Rom. i. 11, 13, 14, 15; xv. 20.