the In-kia, also call the same being Hoangtien, or lofty heavens; and thus glide over into something more physical. The Shuking has also the doctrine of tutelar genii. The Yking, on the contrary, is wholly in the strain of metaphysical pantheism. Hence Johannes von Müller strikingly says12: "Man entered the world with few but pure and satisfying ideas; and I think I see these inborn ideas shining forth here and there. But, made for labour, he lost himself in subtle speculation; of which the oldest fruit is the Yking."-Especially does the truth in question appear to be established by Parseeism. ServanAkerene, or illimitable time, which here stands above Ormuzd and Ahriman, is only a pantheistic primeval being, like the Chronos of the Greeks. How came this being now at the head of all things? Certainly only in later times, for the purpose of giving a substratum to those two persons. It therefore proceeded only from the speculation of after times, striving for unity. Many sects of the Persians have never received it.13

TO BE CONTINUED.

*The Chinese now use the word Tien to denote the supreme Being, A long and severe dispute was carried on at Rome in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, whether the Jesuit missionaries, always so ready to be content with barely baptizing the idolatry of a heathen people, should be allowed in continuing to call Jehovah by so ambiguous a term and one so fitted to cherish heathen views. The pope finally decided in their favour, on condition of their annexing to it the word Tchu. This removed the ambiguity; for Tien Tchu means Lord of the heavens. See Mosheim, Vol. V. p. 27. and Vol. VI. p. 3. First American ediTRANSLATOR.

tion.

11 Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, T. XXXVIII. p. 272 sq.

12 Johannes v. Mullers Werke, B. XVI. p. 41.

13 See Hyde de Relig. veterum Persarum. Isfraini, De diversis Sectis, Cod. MS. Arab. bibl. reg. Berol.

ART. IV. ARE THE SAME PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION TO BE APPLIED TO THE SCRIPTURES AS TO OTHER BOCKS?

By M. Stuart, Prof. Sac. Lit. in Theol. Sem. Andover.

A question this of deeper interest to religion and sacred literature, than most persons would be apt at first to suppose. In fact, the fundamental principles of scriptural theology are inseparably connected with the subject of this inquiry; for what is such theology, except the result of that which the Scriptures have taught? And how do we find what the Scriptures have taught, except by applying to them some rules or principles of interpretation? If these rules are well grounded, the results which flow from the application of them will be correct, provided they are skilfully and truly applied; but if the principles by which we interpret the Scriptures are destitute of any solid foundation, and are the product of imagination, of conjecture, or of caprice, then of course the results which will follow from the application of them, will be unworthy of our confidence.

All this is too plain to need any confirmation. This also, from the nature of the case, renders it a matter of great importance to know, whether the principles by which we interpret the sacred books are well grounded, and will abide the test of a thorough scrutiny.

Nearly all the treatises on hermeneutics, which have been written since the days of Ernesti, have laid it down as a maxim which cannot be controverted, that the Bible is to be interpreted in the same manner, i. e. by the same principles, as all other books. Writers are not wanting, previously to the period in which Ernesti lived, who have maintained the same thing; but we may also find some, who have assailed the position before us, and laboured to shew that it is nothing less than a species of profaneness to treat the sacred books as we do the classic authors, with respect to their interpretation. Is this allegation well grounded? Is there any good reason to object to the principle of interpretation now in question?

In order to answer these inquiries, let us direct our attention, in the first place, to the nature and source of what are now called principles or laws of interpretation. Whence did they originate? Are they the artificial production of high-wrought skill, of laboured research, of profound and extensive learning? Did they spring from the subtilties of nice distinctions, from the phi

losophical and metaphysical efforts of the schools? Are they the product of exalted and dazzling genius, sparks of celestial fire which none but a favoured few could emit? No; nothing of all this. The principles of interpretation, as to their substantial and essential eleinents, are no invention of man, no product of his effort and learned skill; nay, they can scarcely be said with truth to have been discovered by him. They are coeval with our nature. They were known to the antediluvians. They were practised upon in the garden of Eden, by the progenitors of our race. Ever since man was created, and endowed with the powers of speech, and made a communicative, social being, he has had occasion to practise upon the principles of interpretation, and has actually done so. From the first moment that one human being addressed another by the use of language, down to the present hour, the essential laws of interpretation became, and have continued to be, a practical matter. The person addressed has always been an interpreter, in every instance where he has heard and understood what was addressed to him.

All the human race, therefore, are, and ever have been, interpreters. It is a law of their rational, intelligent, communicative nature. Just as truly as one human being was formed so as to address another in language, just so truly that other was formed to interpret and to understand what is said.

I venture to advance a step farther, and to aver that all men are, and ever have been, in reality, good and true interpreters of each other's language. Has any part of our race, in full possession of the human faculties, ever failed to understand what others said to them, and to understand it truly? or to make themselves understood by others, when they have in their communications kept within the circle of their own knowledge? Surely none. Interpretation, then, in its basis or fundamental principles, is a native art, if I may so speak. It is coeval with the power of uttering words. It is of course a universal art; it is common to all nations, barbarous as well as civilized.

One cannot commit a more palpable error in relation to this subject, than to suppose that the art of interpretation is one which is like the art of chemistry, or of botany, or of astronomy, or any of the like things, viz. that it is in itself wholly dependent on acquired skill for the discovery and developement of its principles. Acquired skill has indeed helped to an orderly exhibition and arrangement of its principles; but this is all. The materials were all in existence before skill attempted to develope them.

Possibly it may excite surprise in the minds of some, to be told that, after all, hermeneutics is no science that depends on learning and skill, but is one with which all the race of man is practically more or less acquainted. Yet this is true. But so far is it from diminishing the real value of the science, that it adds exceedingly to its weight and importance. That it is connate with us, shews that it is a part of our rational and communicative nature. That it is so, shews also that it is not, in its fundamental parts, a thing of uncertainty, of conjecture, of imagination, or of mere philosophical nicety. If it were a far-fetched science, dependent on high acquisitions and the skilful application of them, then it would be comparatively a useless science; for, in such a case, only a favoured few of the human race would be competent to understand and acquire it; still fewer could be satisfactorily assured of its stable and certain nature. An interpreter well skilled in his art, will glory in it, that it is an art which has its foundation in the laws of our intellectual and rational nature, and is coeval and connate with this nature. He finds the best assurance of its certainty in this. It is only a quack (if I may so speak) in this business, that will ever boast of any thing in it which is secret, or obscure, or incomprehensible to common minds.

All which has ever led to any such conclusion, is, that very few men, and those only learned ones, become critics by profession. But the secret of this is merely, that professed critics are, almost always, professed interpreters of books in foreign languages, not in their own mother-tongue. Then again, if they are interpreters of their own vernacular language, it is of such exhibitions of it as present recondite and unusual words. Now in order to interpret a foreign language, or in order to explain the unusual words of one's own vernacular tongue, a good degree of learning becomes requisite. This is not, however, because the rules of interpretation, when applied either to foreign languages, or to unusual words or phrases in one's own language, are different from the rules which all men every day apply to the common language employed by them in conversation. Learning is necessary to know the meaning of foreign words, or of strange vernacular words, on the same ground, and no other, as it was necessary for us to learn originally the meaning of the circle of words which we usually employ in speaking or writing. The same acquaintance with foreign words that we have with our every-day ones, would of course make them equal

ly intelligible, and equally supersede any studied art of hermeneutics, in order to interpret them.

When a man takes up a book, which contains a regular system of hermeneutics all arranged and exhibited to the eye, and filled with references to choice and rare volumes, he is ready to conclude, that it contains something almost as remote from the common capacity and apprehension of men as Newton's Principia. But this is a great mistake. The form of the treatise in question, it is true, may be altogether a matter of art. The quotations and references may imply a very widely extended circle of reading and knowledge. But after all, the principles themselves are obvious and natural ones; at least if they are not so, they are worth but little or nothing. The illustration and confirmation of them may indeed be drawn from a multitude of sources widely scattered and some of them very recondite, and a great display of learning may be made here; but still the same thing is true, in this case as in many other departments of learning and taste. Nature first teaches rules; art arranges, illustrates, and records them. This is the simple. truth as to hermeneutics. Systems have digested and exhibited what the rational nature of man has taught,—of man who was made to speak and to interpret language.

I may illustrate and confirm this by a reference, for example, to epic or lyric poetry. Men did not first invent rules by the aid of learned art, and then construct epic and lyric poems by the aid of these rules. Nature prescribed these rules to a Homer, a Pindar, and to others. They followed nature; and therefore wrote with skill and power. That they have become models for all succeeding epic and lyric writers, can be accounted for only from the fact, that they followed the promptings of nature in their respective kinds of composition; and others cannot swerve essentially from their course without swerving from nature; and then of course they will offend against what we may truly call the common sense of mankind.

It is the same in hermeneutics. Many a man has, indeed, laid down rules in this science, which were a departure from the principles taught us by our reasonable nature; and where he has had personal influence, he has obtained disciples and imBut his popularity has been short-lived, or at least he has sooner or later been taken to task for departing from nature, and has been refuted, in the view of sober and unprejudiced men, in regard to such principles as violate the common rules of interpretation which men daily practise.