gelist? We lean our whole weight upon men who are fallible. Must a record be totally infallible before it can be trusted at all? Navigators trust ship, cargo, and the lives of all on board, to calculations based on tables of logarithms, knowing that there was never a set computed, without machinery, that had not some errors in it. The supposition, that to admit that there are immaterial and incidental mistakes in the Sacred Writ would break the confidence of men in it, is contradicted by the uniform experience of life, and by the whole procedure of society.

On the contrary, the shifts and ingenuities to which critics are obliged to resort either blunts the sense of truth, or disgusts men with the special pleading of critics, and tends powerfully to general unbelief.

The theory of Inspiration must be founded upon the claims which the Scriptures themselves make. "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." (2 Tim. iii. 16, 17.)

Under this declaration, no more can be claimed for the doctrine of Inspiration than that there shall have been such an influence exerted upon the formation of the record that it shall be the truth respecting God, and no falsity; that it shall so expound the duty of man under God's moral government, as to secure, in all who will, a true holiness; that it shall contain no errors which can affect the essential truths taught, or which shall cloud the reason or sully the moral sense.

But it is not right or prudent to infer, from the Biblical statement of inspiration, that it makes provision for the very words and sentences; that it shall raise the inspired penmen above the possibility of literary inaccuracy, or minor and immaterial mistakes. It is enough if the Bible be a sure and sufficient guide to spiritual morality and to rational piety. To erect for it a claim to absolute literary infallibility, or to infallibility in things not directly pertaining to faith, is to weaken its real authority, and to turn it aside from its avowed purpose. The theory of verbal inspiration brings a strain upon the Word of God which it cannot bear. If rigorously pressed, it tends powerfully to bigotry on the one side and to infidelity on the other.

The inspiration of holy men is to be construed as we do the doctrine of an overruling and special Providence; of the divine supervision and guidance of the Church; of the faithfulness of God in answering prayer. The truth of these doctrines is not inconsistent with the existence of a thousand evils, mischiefs, and mistakes, and with the occurrence of wanderings long and almost fatal. Yet, the general supervision of a Divine Providence is rational. We might expect that there would be an analogy between God's care and education of the race, and His care of the Bible in its formation.

Around the central certainty of saving truth are wrapped the swaddling-clothes of human language. Neither the condition of the human understanding, nor the nature of human speech, which is the vehicle of thought, admits of more than a fragmentary and partial presentation of truth. "For we know in part, and we prophesy in part." (1 Cor. xiii. 9.) Still less are we then to expect that there will be perfection in this vehicle. And incidental errors, which do not reach the substance of truth and duty, which touch only contingent and external elements, are not to be regarded as inconsistent with the fact that the Scriptures were inspired of God. Nor will our reverence for the Scriptures be impaired if, in such cases, it be frankly said, Here is an insoluble difficulty. Such a course is far less dangerous to the moral sense than that pernicious ingenuity which, assuming that there can be no literal errors in Scripture, resorts to subtle arts of criticism, improbabilities of statement, and violence of construction, such as, if made use of in the intercourse of men in daily life, would break up society and destroy all faith of man in man.

We dwell at length upon this topic now, that we may not be obliged to recur to it when, as will be the case, other instances arise in which there is no solution of unimportant, though real, literary difficulties.

There are a multitude of minute and, on the whole, as respects the substance of truth, not important questions and topics, which, like a fastened door, refuse to be opened by any key which learning has brought to them. It is better to let them stand closed than, like impatient mastiffs, after long barking in vain, to lie whining at the door, unable to enter and unwilling to go away.

CHAPTER V.

THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS.

HE long silence is ended. The seclusion is over, with all

THE

its wondrous inward experience, of which no record has been made, and which must therefore be left to a reverent imagination. Jesus has now reached the age which custom has established among his people for the entrance of a priest upon his public duty.

But, first, another voice is to be heard. Before the ministry of Love begins, there is to be one more great prophet of the Law, who, with stern and severe fidelity, shall stir the conscience, and, as it were, open the furrows in which the seeds of the new life are to be sown.

Every nation has its men of genius. The direction which their genius takes will be determined largely by the peculiar education which arises from the position and history of the nation; but it will also depend upon the innate tendencies of the race-stock.

The original tribal organizations of Israel were moulded by the laws and institutions of Moses into a commonwealth of peculiar characteristics. Each tribe scrupulously preserved its autonomy, and in its own province had a local independence; while the whole were grouped and confederated around the Tabernacle, and afterwards about its outgrowth, the Temple. On the one side, the nation approximated to a democracy; on the other, to a monarchy. But the throne, independent of the people, was not independent of an aristocracy. The priestly class combined in itself, as in Egypt, the civil and sacerdotal functions. The Hebrew government was a theocratic democracy. A fierce and turbulent people had great power over the government. The ruling class was, as in Egypt it had been, the priestly class. The laws which regulated personal rights, prop