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for no other; nay throws a barrier in the way of any other, if not by a prohibition to read the scriptures, at least by the discouragement which it casts on the exercise of private judgment. Now that reading of the sacred volume, which the Catholic church forbids or discountenances, the Protestant church inculcates. If the authority of the one church be employed, in preventing the use of the scriptures, the authority of the other is employed, in enjoining the use of the scriptures. The compliance of the people with this mandate may argue a sort of general faith, but not the saving faith of the Gospel. They may read their Bibles because they are bidden, or they may attend to them because they are bidden; but they do not and cannot, in the full sense of the term, believe in them because they are bidden. The whole effect of the church's authority, is to bring the minds of its people into contact with the subject-matter of Christianity; but, for the proper belief of Christianity, this subject-matter must recommend itself by its own proper evidence; it must manifest its own truth to the consciences of those who are giving earnest heed unto it, and who persevere in this earnestness till the day dawn and the daystar arise in their hearts.

10. The pupillage of a well-ordered country under the influence of an efficient church, is the same, in all the essential steps of it, with the pupillage of a well-ordered family under the control of religious parents. Neither the people of the one, nor the children of the other believe at the dictation of their superiors. This is not a possible thing-nor

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is it in the order of the human faculties; but it is quite a possible and a frequent thing, that, in compliance with this dictation, they should make diligent use of their Bibles, and so that their minds shall be in daily converse with the doctrines and informations of the sacred record. To this length then, the natural authority of parents in a family, or the acquired authority of clergymen in the church, might bring the subjects on whom they have respectively to operate whether they be the children of a household, or the population of a country at large. They may have been conducted to the habit both of going to church, and of reading their Bibles. In virtue of the moral suasion which is brought to bear upon them, their hearts may have been solemnized; and they may have been led to a serious, and respectful, or even reverential entertainment of the topics which are addressed to them. But, for the purpose of carrying their conviction, these topics must recommend themselves. They must give demonstration of their own reality; and this can be done by evidence alone at length discovered by the inquirer as the fruit of his assiduous perusals, or at length brought home to him by the Spirit in answer to his prayers.

11. Now through the whole of this process, we can perceive nothing but the right and the rational in any of its footsteps; and nothing certainly, which should prevent a most legitimate and wellgrounded conviction at the last. Unless there be a glaring evil or absurdity, either in the parental or in the ecclesiastical requisition, there might be the guilt of a moral hardihood-if, either a child

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in the one case, or an unlettered peasant in the other, shall bid reckless defiance to it. In their incipient state, it might be their incumbent obligation to read as they are bidden-which, for aught they know, might be their first footstep on that path which leads both to truth and to duty. There is real virtue in the docility, whether of men or children, to those superiors whom providence has set over them; and the obligation, instead of being neutralized by the obvious wrongness of the injunction, may in fact be increased and strengthened by the obvious rightness of it. When bidden, in particular, to read their Bibles_ this book might not only have a verity which shall be fully manifested at the last, but a verisimilitude palpable to the eye and impressing the conscience of the observer, even on the first and earliest regards which he casts upon it. It is an example of the moral light preceding the argumentative of that call on the attention that is justified by the probabilities of a subject, which comes before that demand on the belief that is only justified by the sufficient exhibition of its proofs. We again appeal to those characters of sacredness and morality and truth, which sit on the aspect of the Bible; and, with obviousness enough at least, to challenge our further examination, and most certainly to condemn our summary rejection of it. We cannot blame either the child or the peasant, if, at the outset, either shall refuse to us their faith; but both are most worthy of blame, if they refuse to us that obedience which sets them on the way that leads to faith. In short, the Christian educa

tion of a country, when conducted in the spirit, and according to the methods of Protestantism, is essentially the same process and having the same footsteps with the Christian education of a family. Both are liable to the same theoretical objection on the principles of Rousseau; and both admit of the same practical and the same philosophical vindication.

12. Now apply this to our present question. A given book in scripture may be either canonical and inspired, or it may not. If the former, then this inspiration viewed as a fact, may be ascertained historically; or viewed as a property, may be ascertained experimentally. A person unlearned may not attempt the investigation competent only to a scholar; but, depending on the authority of his church, proceeding on the integrity of the Bible which is in his hands, and told that all is inspired and all is profitable, he, in the act of devoutly reading the part of the Bible in question, makes the trial-a competent thing to every humble and conscientious inquirer. If he be the disciple of a church which admits the Book of Proverbs into its canon and it be right in so doing, he will taste the fruits of its actual inspiration in its moral and spiritual effect upon himself; and this perhaps made so distinct, as to give him the perception of its celestial origin. If he belong to a church which admits the Book of Wisdom into its canon, and it be wrong in so doing, the consequence is that in the reading of it he loses his labour; he is misled into a waste of

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See our Natural Theology.-Book I. Chap. ii. Art. 22.

attention and effort which yields him no fruit unto He may still acquiesce in the

life everlasting. telling of his church;

but he himself has no personal manifestation of it. But though what is counterfeit in his Bible may be useless or may be hurtful to him, yet what is genuine in his Bible may still have made him wise unto salvation. The one like wood, hay, and stubble, will be found to have been of no profit; the other like gold, silver, and precious stones, may have so rewarded the search and the labour after saving knowledge, that he himself may be saved.

13. These two probations, the historical and the experimental, coincide in their result; yet it is of the utmost importance that, between them, there shall be a right order of precedency. We do not say that the same individual should always attempt both; for, if he be unlearned, he is capable only of one of these methods. It is not for him to attempt first the historical, and then the experimental probation; but, for his practical guidance, it seems indispensable, that others for him should have made the historical, and then that he should try the experimental on those books which they have put into his hands. The experimental probation might verify the actually inspired books; but it never could have discovered them.

Had

there been no history and no tradition regarding the sixty-six pieces of our present collection; and if, instead of being bound up in one volume and handed down as a collection of Sacred Writings, they had lain scattered throughout the multitudinous authorship of the world-then, if left to no

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