effect which all men can see and in which all good men rejoice.

Such being the manner in which we find, for centuries past and in our own day, that the Bible has been either itself producing manifold and great advantages to man, as is confessed among the Missionaries, or else has been the cherished and revered companion, guide and comforter of those who have, with wondrous wisdom, conducted mighty revolutions, through their feverish and abnormal stages, to legitimate and most blessed conclusions, what wise or thoughtful student will spurn the Bible? nay, what thinking man will not take up this Book of Books with a respect and a preparedness to assent to its maxims and conform himself to its suggestions which he yields to no other book until at least he has studied its pages and closely examined for himself its wisdom or its folly?

ON THESE GROUNDS SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY IS MAINTAINABLE.

THIS is the way in which we are prepared to claim from all wise and earnest men a reverence for the as yet unopened Bible. To this extent we assert the authority of Holy Writ independently of any examination of what, or how mysterious, or how natural, may be the contents of the sacred volume. Let a clear-minded and conscientious man open the Bible with these and only these sentiments of veneration for biblical authority, and he will not be amazed and horrified into scepticism and incredulity if he find that, in this spiritual mine, the

veins of precious ore, however rich and however numerous, lie imbedded in a preponderance of common earth, are for the most part hidden by a deep covering of worthless, though perhaps curious and interesting, strata, and generally must be dug for with assiduity.

IF INFALLIBILITY BE CLAIMED, AUTHORITY IS INSECURE. BUT reverse the position. Tell the serious, strongminded student that the book he has been taught by history to revere, is, not only a good and holy book containing the word of God to man, but is the infallible word of God in which there is no error, the word of God, only so spoken through man's instrumentality as the musician's thrilling tones are produced by the agency of an organ. Tell man so when he is just about, for the first time in his life, earnestly, with the thirst of curiosity and the reverence of admiration, to open and read the pages of his Bible-Tell him so of the book written by the Spirit's dictation and of its consequent freedom from all admixture of human error, and we do not say that you will at first do more than intensify his awe and augo ant his solemn veneration of the mysterious volume. But he presently opens the book and in its first page he learns, or is confirmed in, the glorious, heart-affecting truth that matter had a beginning and that the spiritual Self-existent, whom we call God, was its and our sovereign creator. Our student is charmed, as Longinus and every man of judgment has been, with the religion-inspiring record of the creative word

"Light be and Light was." The declared beneficence of the God who saw the good which was in all his work and who blessed every thing that He had made, sounds as a noble truth in the student's ear, a truth which sets him on much humbling self-examination and on much solemn reflection. Thus far our student can appreciate the singular honour that the wise and great have so often and so conspicuously given to the Bible: but, alas! you have told him that the Holy Book is infallible; and, before he passes from its first page, he is led to believe that the heavens and the earth and all the host of them were made in six days, whereas the indelible testimonies of matter, sense and reason combine to assure him that, this earth, with all the various populations that have in its younger days dwelt on it and perished in its ruins, is countless millions of years old instead of being less than 6000 years of age as the received scriptural chronology would represent it. Then, moreover, our student finds that, according to the account in Genesis, there was light and there were the alternations of day and night, and the processes of vegetation were carried on, before that fourth day whose special product was the sun and moon and stars. Here and at the close of each day's earnest study of the Bible our student finds himself amazed to understand how an infallible book can contradict the notable truths of science, or how it can sometimes even contradict itself.

He reflects and strives to extricate himself from the mazes of obscurity in which his devotion is being

numbed no less than his intellect is puzzled. But even the power of reflection cannot solve the mystery of an infallible book with errors in it. In this state of mind multitudes of men are habituated until they become dead to all practical sense of religion and spirituality.

TOO PROBABLE COURSE OF A STUDENT MISLED BY ERRORS IN A SUPPOSED INFALLIBLE BOOK.

UNDER some circumstances the troubled student may ask advice from his clergyman. In which case too many pastors will tell him, as the ultimate result of their own reading and experience and belief, that God's word (by which they mean the whole Bible) must be true though all science and every man should be a liar: and thus our inquirer is left with the two opposing statements only more vigorously contradicting one another since the clergyman was consulted. On the one side are ranged the senses and intellectual faculties God has given us, the world God has made, and the lessons these senses and faculties learn from the world so made this is scientific truth. On the other side are the statements of a Book, which, without proving their assertion, men declare to be infallible and therefore authoritative. What a combat is this which must be fought in the mind of every man of ordinary seriousness and intelligence! If in our student the religious ideas are much stronger than the intellectual powers, superstition will prevail, and he will believe the Bible's infallibility in spite of evidence and in spite of mis

66

givings which, with reference to Papal or Ecclesiastical infallibility, the pen of Archbishop Whately has thus depicted:" But this freedom from all uneasy doubt,— "a desire for which leads to that craving for infallibility "I have been speaking of,—this, after all, is not always "attained by such a procedure. A lurking suspicion “will often remain,—which a man vainly endeavours to "stifle, that the foundation is not sound. The super"structure indeed may be complete. Once granted "that the church, sect, party, or leader, we have taken as our guide, is perfectly infallible, and there is an end "of all doubts and cares respecting particular points. "But an uneasy doubt will sometimes haunt a man,— "in spite of his efforts to repress it, and however "strenuously he may deny, even to himself, its ex"istence,—whether the infallibility claimed, which is "the basis of the whole fabric, be really well established. "A suspicion will occasionally cross the mind, however 66 strenuously repelled, Is there not a lie in my right hand? "And the reluctance often shown to examine the "foundation, and ascertain whether it is really sound, "is an indication, not of full confidence in its firmness, "but of a lurking suspicion that it will not bear ex"amining." Search after Infallibility. p. 315. 3rd Edition. If, however, the mind of our student is logical rather than reverential in its tendencies and habits, unbelief of biblical infallibility will take hold of him and he will probably regard himself, and, as far as he is really known, will be regarded by others, as an unbeliever even of Christ's maxims and hopes. Thus, we