CONCLUSION.

But we must conclude.

From all that we have read, it results that there are in the world only two schools, or but two religions: that which places the Bible above every thing; and that which places something above the Bible, The first was evidently that of Jesus Christ; the second was that of the rationalists of all denominations and of all ages.

The motto of the first is this; all the written word is inspired of God, even to a single iota or title; the Scriptures cannot be broken,

The device of the second is this: there are human judges of the word of God.

Instead of placing the Bible above every thing, it is on the contrary, either science or reason, or human tradition, or some new inspiration, that it places above the Bible. Thence, all the rationalists; and thence all their false religions.

They correct the word of God, or they complete it; they contradict it, or they interdict it; they teach their pupils to read it with irreverence, or they prohibit the reading of it.

The rationalists, for instance, who now profess Judaism, place above the Bible, if not their own reason, at least that of the IId. IIId. IVth. Vth. and VIth. centuries; that is the human traditions of their Targums, the Mishna and the Gemara of their two enormous Talmuds. “That is their Alcoran: they have stifled the law and the prophets beneath its enormous weight.

The rationalists who profess the religion of Rome will in their turn, place above the Bible, not their own reason, but, first, the reason of the VIIth, VIIIth, IXth, Xth, XIth, XIIth and XIIIth centuries, which they call tradition (that is, the reason of Dyonisius the Less, of Hincmar, of Radbert, of Lanfranck, of Damascenus, of Anastasius the Librarian, of Burkardt, of Ives of Chartres, of Gratian, of Isidorus the Merchant); and then, that of a priest ordinarily Italian, whom they call Pope, and whom they declare infallible in the definition of matters of faith.¹ Did the Bible require us to worship the virgin, to serve the angels, to pray for pardons, to worship images, to confess to priests, to refrain from marriage, to refuse meats, to pray in unknown tongues, to forbid the Scriptures to the people;² to have a sovereign Pontiff? And when they speak of a future Rome,³ is it otherwise (all the first Fathers of the Church are agreed on this point),⁴ than in designating it as the seat of the Man of Sin, as the centre of an immense apostacy; as a Babylon, drunk with the blood of the saints and of the witnesses of Jesus Christ, who has made all the nations drink of the wine of the fury of her fornication; as the mother of the fornicators and of the abominations of the earth?

The rationalists who profess an impure protestantism, and who reject the doctrines of the Reformation, will place above the Bible, if not the reason of Socinus and of Priestly, of Eichhorn and of Paulus, of Strauss and of Hegel, at least their own. There is a mixture, they will say, in the word of God. They try it, they correct it; and with the Bible in their hands, they will tell you; No divinity in Christ, no resurrection of the body, no Holy Spirit, no devil, no demons, no hell, no expiation in the death of Jesus Christ, no native corruption in man, no eternity of punishment, no miraculous facts (what do I say 2) no reality in Jesus Christ!

The rationalists finally, who profess mysticism (the Illuminati, the Tremblers, the Paracelcists, the Bourignonists, the Labadists, the Behmists,) will put above the sacred text of the Scriptures, their hallucinations, their internal word, their revelations, and the Christ within. They will speak with disdain of the letter, of the literal sense of the evangelical facts, of the man Jesus, or of the external Christ (as they style him), of the cross of “Golgotha, of preaching, of worship, of the sacraments. They are above these carnal aids! Hence their aversion to the doctrines of the judicial justice of God, of the reality of sin, of the divine wrath against wickedness, of grace, of election, of satisfaction, of the imputed righteousness of Christ, of future punishment.

Disciples of the Savior, hear him in his word, there is will speak to you; there is our reason, there our wisdom, there our inspiration; there our sure tradition; there is the lamp to our feet, the light of our paths, “sanctify me by thy truth, O Lord; thy word is truth!”

Let our reason then employ all her strength, in the sight of God, first to recognise that the Scriptures are from him, and then to study them. Let her bow more intensely every day, over their divine oracles, to correct herself by them, not to correct them by her; to seek there the meaning of God, not to put upon them her own; to present herself before their holy word as a respectful servant, attentive, tender, docile, and not as a noisy and foolish sybil. Let her daily prayer, during the darkness which surrounds her, be constantly that of that child of the tabernacle: “Speak, speak, Lord; thy servant heareth!”—“The law of the Lord is perfect; the words of the Lord are pure words; it is silver purified in the furnace, and seven times refined.”⁵

And on the other hand, let us seek the Holy Spirit; let us be baptized with the Spirit, “let us be anointed of the Holy One;” it is the Spirit alone who will guide us into all the truth of the Scriptures, who will shed abroad by them the love of God in our hearts, and who will witness with our spirits that we are the sons of God, by applying its promises to us, and giving us from them the—pledge of the promised inheritance and the earnest of his adoption. In vain, without this Spirit, should we carry—this Scripture in our hands for eighteen hundred years, as do still the Jews; we should not there comprehend the things of the Spirit of God; “they would be to us folly; because the natural man receiveth them not, nor indeed can, for they are spiritually discerned.”—But at the same time, in distinguishing always the spirit from the letter, let us take care never to separate them. Let it be always before the word, in the word, and by the word, that we seek this divine Spirit. It is by this word he acts; by it he enlightens and affects the heart; by it he casts down, and by it raises up. His constant work is to make our soul comprehend it, to apply it to our soul, to make our soul love it.

The Bible is then. of God in all its parts.

It will doubtless occur, that we shall still meet many passages there, whose use and whose beauty are concealed from us; but the light of the last day will in an instant make their splendors flash out. And as it happens in the long concealed depths of those crystaline caverns into which torches are carried; the rising of the day of Jesus Christ, inundating all things, in its glory, will penetrate all the Scriptures with its light, and there revealing to us on every side, diamonds never before perceived, will make them blaze resplendent with a thousand fires. Then the beauty, the wisdom, the proportion, and the harmony of all their revelations will be manifest;. and this view shall fill the chosen of God with enraptured admiration, with tenderness incessantly renewed, and with a joy that cannot mislead.

The history of the past should make us already anticipate that of the future; and we can judge by facts already accomplished, of the splendor of the light which is to be poured for us upon the Scriptures, at the second coming: of Christ.,

See already what vivid light was shed upon all parts of the Old “Testament at the first appearing of the Son of God; and conjecture from this single fact, what must be the splendor of the two Testaments, at his second coming. Then the plan of God will be completed; then our Lord and our King, more glorious than the sons of men, shall be revealed from heaven, riding prosperously because of truth, justice and meekness; then his light shall fill the hearts of his redeemed; and the imposing grandeur of the work of redemption will be manifested in all its glory to the view of the children of God.. See already how many chapters of the Scriptures, in the age of Jeremiah, or later, in the long reign of the Maccabees, and during the existence of the second temple, from Malachi even to John the Baptist; see, we say, how many chapters of the Scriptures, which now shine to us in heavenly splendor, must then have appeared insignificant, and dull to the eyes of the rationalists of the ancient synagogue. How puerile, vulgar, unmeaning, useless must they have found many of those verses and chapters, which now nourish our faith, which fill us with admiration for the majestic unity of the Scriptures, which cause our tears to flow, and which have already led so many weary and heavy-laden souls to the feet of Jesus Christ! What did they use to say of the 53d chapter of Isaiah? Without doubt, with the Ethiopean servant of Queen Candace: “How shall I understand, unless some one guide me? Of whom speaks the prophet; of himself or of some other?” What could be the use of that history of Melchizedeck? Why those long details about the “Tabernacle, the garments of Aaron, clean and unclean beasts, worship and sacrifices? What could these words mean: thou shalt not break its legs ¢ What meaning could there be in the xxii, lxix, and many other Psalms: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? they have “aoteed my hands and my feet!” Why (they must have thought,) does David occupy us so long, in his songs, with the ordinary details of his adventurous life? When too, did they divide his garments and cast lots upon his vesture? What do these words mean: “All they shake their heads at me, he trusted in the Lord, say they; let him deliver him, since he takes pleasure in him Y? What then is that vinegar, and what means that gall: “In my thirst, they gave me vinegar; they gave me gall for my drink?’ What mean these exaggerated and inexplicable words: “I have not hid my face from shame and spitting. They smote me upon the cheek; they have ploughed my back?” And what did the prophet mean: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive?” Who again is this “King, lowly and sitting on an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass? Zion behold thy God; he himself shall come and deliver you.” What then is this burial: “He made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death?”

How strange and unworthy of the Lord must all these words, and so many similar ones, have appeared to the presumptuous scribes of those remote-days!’ What human weakness, they must have said, what individuality, what oceasionality! (to lend these ancient men the language of our times.) They doubtless taught then in the academies, learned systems and long deviations upon the situation and circumstances of the prophets while writing such details; and found in their words nothing but the vulgar impression of the merely personal circumstances which had effected them.

But what were you then doing, true disciples of the word of life? What were you doing, Hezekiah, Daniel, Josiah, Nehemiah, Ezra, our brethren in the same hope and in the same faith; and you too, holy women who trusted in God, and who looked for the consolation of Israel? Ah! you bowed reverently over all these depths, as do still the angels of light, and desiring to fathom to the bottom; you waited! Yes, they waited! They knew that, in the passage most insignificant in their eyes, there might be, as a Father of the Church has said: “mountains of doctrine.” Wherefore, as St. Peter says, “searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ, which was in the prophets, did signify when it testified beforehand, the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow,” they did not doubt that, thereafter, when time and events should have passed their hand over this sympathetic ink, there would start out from them, astounding pages, all stamped with divinity, and all full of the gospel! The day was to come, after the first appearing of the Messiah, when the least in the kingdom of God should be greater than the greatest of the prophets; and that day has come. But we know too, ourselves, that the day is yet to come, after his second appearing, when the least of the redeemed shall be greater in knowledge than were the Augustines, the Calvins, the Edwards, the Pascals, the Leightons; for then the ears of the children shall hear, and their eyes shall see things, which even the apostles “desired to see, and saw not; to hear, and, heard not.” What then the doctors, the prophets, and the saints did with the passages to them yet obscure, and now luminoustous, we will do to those passages which are obscure to us, but which shall quickly become luminous to the heirs of life, when all the prophecies shall be accomplished, and Jesus Christ shall appear in the clouds, in the last Epiphany of his glorious coming.

With what glory, as soon as they were comprehended, have we seen shine forth, so many passages, so many psalms, so many prophecies, so many types, so many descriptions, whose profound beauty had not before been perceived! What evangelical truth has come forth from them! what appeals to the conscience! what an unfolding of redeeming love! Let us then wait in regard to analogous passages, even more glorious, for that day when our Master shall again come down from Heaven; for, says St. Irenaeus, “there are difficulties in the Scriptures, which, by the grace of God, we can now resolve, but there are others which we abandon to him, not only for this age, but for the next, in order that God may perpetually be teaching, and that perpetually, man may thus be learning of God, the things which pertain to God.”⁶

If the lights of grace have dimned those of nature, how in their turn will the lights of glory throw paleness on those of grace! How many stars of the first magnitude, still invisible, will be enkindled at the approach of that great day, in the firmament of the Scriptures? And when, finally, it shall be fully revealed to the redeemed world without a veil, what harmonies, what celestial tints, what new glories, what unanticipated splendors, manifested to the heirs of eternal life!

Then, we shall see the meaning of so many prophecies, of so many facts, and of so many instructions, whose divinity as yet, is revealed only by detached features, but whose evangelical beauty will shine on every side.. Then we shall know all the meaning of those parables, already—so imposing, of the Fig-tree, of the Master returning from a far country, of the Bride and Bridegroom, of the Net drawn on the shore of eternity, of Lazarus, of the Invited, of the Talents, of the Husbandman, of the Virgins, of the Marriage-Feast. “Then we shall know all the glory of words like these; “The Lord said to my Lord, sit thou on my right hand, until I make thy foes thy footstool.” “Thy people, Lord, shall be a willing people, in the day when thou shalt gather thine army with holy pomp.” “The dew of thy youth shall be from the womb of the morning.” “He shall tread upon kings in his wrath. He shall destroy the head over a great country.” “He shall drink of the water-brook by the way; therefore shall he lift up the head on high!”

Then too, shall thou manifest thyself to our view in all thy glory, O, Jesus Christ, Savior, consoler, friend of the miserable, our Lord and our God! thou that hast tasted death, but who art He that liveth forever and ever! Then all the science of Heaven will be thyself! Thou wast always all the science of the Holy Spirit, who descended from Heaven. Thou wast all that of the Scriptures; for “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”⁷ Thou art already all the life of the saints; “their life eternal is, to know thee!’ O, thanks to God for his unspeakable gift!

Could the celebrated traveler who first brought to us from Constantinople, the only horse-chesnut which had yet seen our Western world, and who planted it, it is said, in the court-yard of his house; could he have told what he held in the palm of his hand, and what was. to spring from it? “The infinite in the finite! innumerable forests, in a humble fruit, and under its insignificant shell.; trees by thousands, decorating with their majestic foliage and their clustered blossoms our gardens and our fields; covering with their thick shade the squares, the terraces and the avenues of our cities; our people celebrating their national festivals beneath their outspread branches; our western kings, in our capitals reviewing their armies beneath their large bowers; our children playing at their feet, and the sparrow of our houses seeking his food in their branches; whilst each one of these trees will itself produce, from year to year, millions of fruits exactly similar to that from which it sprang, and bearing likewise, each one in its bosom, the dormant germ of thousands of forests, to thousands of generations!

Thus the Christian traveler, arriving from the militant church, at his celestial country, and the city of his God, the house of his father, with one of the thousand passages of the Holy Bible in his hands, knows that he bears thither the infinite in the finite, a germ of God, the developments and the glory of which he can already, without

doubt, faintly perceive, but the whole of whose grandeur he cannot yet tell. It is, perhaps, the least of all seeds; but he knows that from it is to spring a great tree, an eternal tree, under the branches of which the heavenly inhabitants will recline. In many of these passages of his Savior, he has perhaps not yet seen even the germ, under their rude shell; but he knows too, that, once admitted into the Jerusalem above, under the beams of the Sun of Righteousness, he shall see radiate, in these words of the eternal wisdom, by that light of which the Lamb is the glorious torch, splendors hitherto latent, and still covered by their first envelope. Then, in an ineffable tenderness of gratitude and bliss, he shall discover agreements, harmonies, glories, of which he had here below, only suspicions, or at least, a respectful expectation. Prepared before the foundation of the world in the eternal counsels of God, and deposited as germs in his Word of Life, they shall burst forth under that new heaven, and for that new earth, wherein righteousness shall dwell.

All the written word is then inspired of God. “Open thou mine eyes, O Lord, that I may see wondrous things out of thy law!” 

1) It is the doctrine of the ultramontanes, maintained both by popes, (Pascal, Pius, Leo, Pelagius, BonIf ace, Gregory), and by councils: Bellarmin, Duval and Arsdekin assure us that it is the sentiment of all the theologians of any distinction. Hæc doctrina communis est inter omnes notæ theologos. (Arsdekin, Theol., vol. I, p. 118. Antwerp, 1682.)

2) Prohibemus etiam, ne libros Veteris Testamenti aut Novi laici permittantur habere; nisiforte psalterium, vel breviarium pro divinis officis, aut horas beate Maric, aliquis ex devotione habere velit. Sed ne premissos libros habeant in vulgari translatos, aretissimé inhibemus. (The XIVth canon of the Council of Toulouse, under pope Gregory IX. in 1229. Concilia Labbei. t. ii., part 1, Paris, 1671.)

3) 2 Thess. ii. 1 to 12.—Rev. xiii. 1 to 8; xviii. 1 to 24.

4) St. Jerome, Exhortation to Marcella, to induce her to emigrate from Rome to Bethlehem: “Read John’s Revelation, and observe what is said of the woman in scarlet, &c.: . . . the seven hills, and of coming out from Babylon, &c.” Tertullian; “Sic et Babylon apud Johannem nostrum romane urbis figura est, &c.” (Adv, Judeos. Parisiis, 1675).—St. Chrysostom (Hom. 4; in 2 epis, ad. “Thessal., c. 2); “That which hindered (in his time, he says) the manifestation of the Man of Sin, was the Roman Empire”? Τουτ' ἔστιν ὴ ἁρχὴ Ρὼμαῖκῆ. Ὄπαν ἃρθη ἑκ μέσον, τότε ἐκεῖνος ἡξει.

5) Is. xii. 6.

6) Irenaeus adv. hæreb., lib. ii, c. 47. Ινα ὁ Θέας δεδασκῃ, ἄνθρωπος ἀὲ διὰ παντὸς μανθάνῃ παρὰ θεοῦ.

7) Rev. xix. 10.