*

In like man

the Jewish temple and tabernacle. ner, when, on the face of creation, we see an extended desert, unpeopled either by the animal or the vegetable tribes-we will not discredit the Bible, as being the workmanship and the whole workmanship of God, because of its many intervening spaces, that present us with nought but a barren nomenclature, and have neither narrative nor doctrine to enliven them. All we should require is evidence, that the Bible as a whole is the production of God; and after that, we would ever propose to dissever Him from certain parts of that Bible, because of their fancied unimportance in the eyes of man. He is no more to be detached from what might appear to us the insignificancies of the record, than detached from what we might also esteem to be the insignificancies of nature; and if there should occur a meagre chronicle, or some humble incident in the one-we must not forget that in the other, there is many a naked rock not beneath His creative power, many a reptile not beneath His creative skill. We are really no judges of what might be deemed worthy of a God to make, or worthy of a God to reveal. There are inexplicable mysteries both in His world and in His word; and, in as far as we are puzzled to account for the apparent uselessness or mean

The nomenclature of scripture is however not barren. It has proved a guide to discovery respecting the history and state of nations; and there is no calculating on the uses, in the way of further discovery and evidence, which its catalogues of names may yet subserve. See the identity of the Ishmaelites and Arabians, demonstrated by the Rev. Charles Forster in his work on Mahommedanism.

ness of certain parts in either, the mysteries are completely analogous. After the evidence in fact, whether of God being the author of nature or the revealer of scripture-we hold all objections grounded on the littleness of the products in the one, or the littleness of the informations in the other, to be irrelevant and presumptuous. In the actual state of the proofs for the Bible being entirely the product of His wisdom, we are as little disposed to regard a single verse as the manufacture of man, because of its unimportance-as to believe that the lowly weed is the offspring of some inferior power, because it wants the loveliness or the grandeur of higher objects in creation.

26. The arguments for inspiration have been charged with the vice of reasoning in a circle. For example, and as one of these arguments, the apostles themselves tell us that they were inspired. To this effect they quote the promise of our Lord, who assured them that He would send the Spirit -one of whose functions it should be to bring all things to their remembrance. Their statement of the promise, deriving all its authority from the fidelity of their remembrance, is to us the proof of their inspiration; but the inspiration was given to secure the accuracy of their remembrance. that our trusting to their remembrance, when they tell us of their inspiration, is very like a petitio principii-because, when confiding in the apostolic statement, we seem to take for granted the inspiration which that statement is brought to prove. But the real soundness and consecutiveness of the argument may, we think, be manifested by the

So

following illustration.-Suppose I were told by another a hundred different things, all of which it was of importance I should distinctly remember, perhaps for the purpose of giving forth a publication about them-there would certainly be some hazard of my recollection not serving me in so many instances; but suppose further a collection of written notices on the whole subject, placed in some depository that should be open to me when I stood in need of refreshing my memory; and I were told that I should find all requisite aid for the penning of my history there. Though, without this expedient, there was the utmost danger, or rather the utmost certainty, that I would not recollect with unfailing accuracy the hundred things wherewith I had been charged, there would be, along with this, the undoubted security, that I would not forget the one thing of a general reference to the depository, whenever I stood in need of having all the varied informations I ever received, distinctly and in all their minuteness recalled to me. There might be a dead certainty of my being correct in one act of the memory, however impossible that I could be correct in a hundred acts; and that, not merely, because it is easier to remember one thing than a hundred, but because the very great and general importance of this one thing, comprehensive in fact of all the rest, could not fail to find such a lodgment for itself in my recollection, as would give me the moral certainty at all times, that my superior had referred me to the depository, and that in that depository I should find all the aid and information

requisite to qualify me for the undertaking he had put into my hands.

27. Now the parallel is just as close and convincing as possible. The varied incidents of our Saviour's life and sayings as recorded in the four evangelists, all the apostles together could not have borne in their memory alone; but the one promise of a monitor who should bring all these things to their remembrance, not one of them would forget. That the information they wanted was all lodged in the upper depository of heaven, and that it might be fetched down thence by believing prayer in all needful supplies for the various branches of the apostolic office, they could not fail both to recollect and to proceed upon. The several hundred things in all their minuteness, they could not by any possibility have actually remembered of themselves; but as to the one thing, the all important one thing, there was just as little possibility of any one of them being mistaken. have thus as good evidence of the inspiration of the apostles, as we have of any one memorable and palpable fact recorded in any of the four evangelists. The suggestions of the Spirit too, when bringing things to their remembrance, would, in most instances, be accompanied by a consciousness and an act of concurrence on the part of their own natural memory, that each suggestion was a correct one; and hence a daily and growing confidence in the fidelity of that monitor, whose office it was to guide them unto all truth

* See our Natural Theology, Book IV., Chap. i., Art. 3.

We

28. There is a certain reigning character throughout all the doctrine and all the morality of scripture, wherewith this tenet of a partial or modified inspiration is totally and irreconcileably at variance. Whatever principle it announces, it announces in that absolute and uncompromising way, which admits of no indulgence for the least shade or degree of its opposite. Of this, innumerable instances might be given. "He that sinneth in one point is guilty of all," so as to bring upon him the full weight of an outraged law by one iota of deviation. "He that is unfaithful in the least is unfaithful also in much"-thus disclaiming all toleration for what may be deemed by us to be the slighter iniquities of human conduct. The accursed thing of Achan brought down, in judgment from heaven, discomfiture and dismay on the thousands of Israel. The eating of one solitary because forbidden apple, put forth a world and its outcast species from beyond the pale of God's unfallen creation. "One jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled;" and it would come all the nearer to our argument, if law were taken in the bibliographical sense of it, as expressing a portion, or even at times the whole of the scripture. "Whosoever breaketh the least of these commandments shall not enter into heaven." This rigid, this resolute assertion of a principle, to be upheld in all its entireness, and not deviated from by a single hairbreadth, is one great characteristic of the Bible. The whole epistle to the Galatians is founded upon There was one solitary rite to which the

it