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Faith is taught to grasp independently of the inherent difficulties or impossibilities against which Reason from the first protests, so Christianity loses its hold on the several classes of our countrymen. One class, the multitudes of our population, without knowing why, cast away the intimate and effective principles of a religion which is falsely represented as contrary to common sense, that is, contrary to reason in the masses. other class, the men of educated and logical rather than religious minds, throw away all Church communion with a system that makes Christianity contradict science and history, and sometimes even sets the Bible in opposition against morality and religion; and so the Church loses its younger Newman, its Theodore Parker, and countless others, of worth perhaps as great, but names less known. A third class, the educated minds in which logic and piety are both strong, enamoured of its childhood's idea of Inspiration and logically following out that idea or else dreading to cast away, or rather to lose, that childhood's notion of Faith as opposed to Reason, leave the more humane and manly brotherhoods of Christianity, and seek a hiding place, from dread selfcontradiction and manifest inconsistency, in that emasculated portion of the Church, where the popular doctrine of Inspiration is secured by being intrenched in the enormous additional ideas of infallible guardianship and infallible interpretation for the Bible; and thus the elder Newman, Ward, Maskell, Wilberforce, and, more than all, Manning, are now-now in this nineteenth century--buried alive in an effete mediavalism.

Three such classes are thus lost to living, thoughtful Church communion. Two other classes remain. There are a few—it seems a very few, but no man can tell how many-who have, in manhood, cast off childhood's dream of Inspiration, and are revelling in the holy joy of a useful, believing life, not according to the letter which killeth, but according to the spirit which giveth life. These men have got away from theories of Inspiration, and the logical consequences of such theories. They are busy-joyfully, thankfully busyin the work of hallowing themselves in Christ, and striving to hallow others by that blessed name. In the meanwhile, until some unexpected observation or reflection draw forth their latent scepticism, it is well for them; but they have not mastered the subject of Inspiration. They have only, as appears by the absence of all clear teaching and writing on this topic, abandoned its investigation as alarming and to all appearance hopeless.

The other class, the orthodox commonplace men of stifled doubts or unsuspecting credulity, hold stoutly by their infant teaching. In some things they have become the man; but they have not wholly put away childish things. They are still combating with windmills. They contend against the supposition of Reason's supremacy over Faith, while they assert the right of private judgment which cannot be maintained without the acknowledgment of that very supremacy. They assert that God has, by Inspiration, freed Scripture from all error; and then, the next moment, they cannot fail to see the

appearances of error in the Bible, and so they engage themselves in fencing with the Bible's words. Thus a large party of Churchmen have their energies chilled by the inhuman conflict between Reason and Faith; and, from their lists, ever and again, some weary soul is fain to leave "word-fighting," and go to the unbelief which is Deism, or to the credulity which is Roman Catholicism. On all sides it will be found that every party question-and their name is legion-resolves itself into the inquiry, Where is Infallibility? or, which is the same thing, Where is childhood's notion of Inspiration? We believe that if any man can answer this question, his mind is likely to receive, to sustain, and to build upon the one foundation. We believe that, if any man cannot clearly and intelligibly answer this question, his faith, however orthodox it may be, is in peril every moment; for let him, at any time, discover one of the many flaws in his theory of Inspiration, and all his system is only too likely to fall in ruins with the giving way of this his theological groundwork.

SECTION 4.-The General Danger to Faith of such Confusion, a Motive for the undertaking of this Essay in the Interest of Christian Belief.

UNDER this conviction, and believing, in all humility, that we see our way clearly to the answer of this allimportant question, we have laid down our opinions and their reasons in the following pages.

In the course of our investigation some few of the well-known difficulties and discrepancies of Scripture must be exposed. They will in no case be intentionally treated with any thing but the most reverential spirit. The existence of such difficulties is, in no sense, chargeable on us or on any modern writer. Their exposure is neither so full nor so detailed in this volume as in many a work on the Christian evidences. And, indeed, the discrepancies referred to in our pages are, for the most part, so obvious that they can hardly have failed to strike any intelligent youth who has read the Bible twice through, and is ordinarily acquainted with religion. On these considerations we shall hardly be accused, with any justice, of making a display of Biblical difficulties.

SECTION 5.-The Author's Experience of Benefit from the Views about to be Propounded.

THE views and opinions we are about to advance and vindicate are often summarily condemned as "infidelity." As a demurrer against this condemnation, and as an encouragement to those who may be already perplexed by a partial or superficial examination of the doctrine of Inspiration, the writer takes this opportunity of avowing that he himself has, in times past, tried to hold and to uphold the theory which is commonly known as that of verbal inspiration. He has tried this, and various modifications of this. He at one time believed-in

common with the majority of his contemporaries-that to abandon the infallibility of Scripture was the same as abandoning its inspiration; and that such an abandonment was inconsistent with the vows of a clergyman, if not with the faith of a Christian. Under this conviction he clung, like a drowning man, to the high doctrine of Inspiration: but ever and again he was tortured by the consciousness that his creed and his knowledge were out of harmony. For years he has been examining and reflecting on this subject of Inspiration. At last-many months since-circumstances induced him to commit his thoughts and the result of his reading to paper; and then it was that he discovered the clue by which, for himself at all events, this mystery was to be unravelled. The following pages are a result of that discovery, and the author has thus no hesitation in avowing, that he has been obliged to think out for himself the course of thought unfolded in this book-that, in the process of his reading and reflecting, he has sometimes been on the point of abandoning the Christian faith and his clerical position--but that now, having passed through this fiery ordeal, whose dread trials none should despise that have not known them, his Christian belief and his professional and conscientious tranquillity are perfectly undisturbed.

Thus, let any man faithfully, candidly, patiently go through this inquiry concerning Inspiration, and the writer is sanguine in the hope that faith, instead of being overthrown, will be restored and confirmed; inasmuch as those props of it which were irreconcilable with Reason, will have been got rid of, and Faith and