commissioned by the inflexible doctors of Andover or Princeton-who has "stolen the thunder" of the liberal pulpit, been surprised into impulsive fellowship with heretical philanthropy, and whose popularity has grown in the ratio of his departure from the old theology and his sympathy with the new. It was not their fault. We absolve them from the sin of wilful defection. We do not see how a man can live in the present ageblessed with a sound mind and good liver, warmed by the glow of domestic love, gladdened by friends, renewed by the spirit of Christ, illumined by the lustre of letters, his mental horizon expanded by science, his spiritual sensibilities deepened by experience and retain in his blood all the virulence of that monkish theology which he imbibed during his professional training.

But still, in spite of these qualifying reflections, it remains an obvious fact that the influence of the older churches is fatally vitiated by their theology; that they can not furnish the incentives, or quicken the motives, requisite to the renovation of irreligious communities; and that before they can grapple auspiciously with the problem of the age, they must annul their covenant with antiquity, and respect the divine inspirations in this latest hour of time.

Concerning the tendencies toward infidelity, to which we alluded in the opening of our article, we hold that they have been provoked by the mischievous despotism that has restricted religious inquiry.

Consider that, while men have been encouraged to investigate all other subjects, they have been required to accept the established theories of religion as finalities. While reason and learning have been promptly and fearlessly employed to shed light on other questions, from time to time, the questions of religion have been jealously, timidly, petulantly shielded from their scrutiny. What wonder that the low suspicion of the vulgar and the aggravating curiosity of the learned should have been directed to the one peculiar subject, in the circle of reflection, from which all inquiry has been nervously waved away? In the grand apartment of nature, reason has found every door open but one. Religion has dwelt in mystery, bolted and barred from all profane intrusion. Our ecclesiasticism, like Blue Beard, has kept its Secret Chamber; and whether or not it be filled

with the dead credulities that the churches have murdered in the lapse of centuries, it is natural that those who stand without should imagine the worst.

The illiberal and timid policy of the Christian leaders has given a one-sided development to society. The secular side is vital and fresh, growing and fruitful, because it has been allowed to obey its spontaneous tendencies, and has drunk from all the springs of the world without scruple or restraint. The ecclesiastical side is faded and feeble, stunted and barren, because it has been restrained from its legitimate development, and confined to arbitrary limits. Under these unequal conditions, it is impossible that the ecclesiastical function should keep pace with the secular. It is impossible that religion, fettered and debilitated, should march abreast of science, genius, and business, all of them free, ardent and vigorous. Every step in the advancement of society must contract the authority of the churches, extend the "eclipse of faith," and augment the already preponderating power of the secular forces. Will those who have the requisite nerve and vision, inform us where the tide, which has now been swelling for three hundred years, will have landed us by the opening of the next century?

Meanwhile, with every secular interest under full canvas-crowding the ocean with enterprise-wafted by every wind that blows, the churches lie almost motionless on the bosom of the age, towing a weather-stained mediævalism, anomalous to the time, offensive to refinement and experience, and obviously rejected of God. While reason has banished the unclean harpies from science, the ghastly goblins from philosophy; while education has revealed the capacity of man, and while knowledge has placed every theme of thought in some new and startling relation - this theology remains, a theory of human life under a divine despotism, so exceptional, so preposterous, so hostile to every analogy of nature, that it could not stand for a day, if the shield of reverential association were withdrawn, and the spirit of our civilization allowed to beat upon its naked deformity. Under all the suggestions, analogies, and demonstrations that leap down to refute it, the dominant theology of the churches declares that infinite wisdom made a mistake, and was obliged to revise his own work; that Almighty power has been circumvented by a being whom he had cre

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ated; that the unchangeable Deity is angry and benignant; that the godhead is a trinity and yet a unity; that man is by nature so depraved that he can not help himself an iota from the rut of hereditary sin, and that yet if he does not help himself he shall slide into hell! Such is the insufferable monstrosity that retards the progress of Christianity, and threatens to sink the stoutest ships in the ecclesiastical fleet.

If the churches have forfeited so much influence, and loaded themselves with so unhappy an incumbrance, they ought to welcome sympathy and counsel from the humblest quarter. If they have brought suspicion upon religion, by secluding it from inquiry and criticism, they should vindicate it by throwing wide the door, and inviting the most thorough examination. If they have hindered its natural development, by imposing artificial restrictions upon its professors, every spiritual fetter should be broken, and the spirit of God bear the assurance of liberty to every soul. If they have wronged it with a verbal reverence, while crucifying it by a secret distrust, let them fearlessly subject it to the ordeal that refines all truth, and confide in its power to face any antagonist that walks the arena.

It will be, of course, impossible to dissociate our conceptions of religion from our views of the inspiration and authority of the Bible. With reference to this fundamental question, it seems to us that we are as yet little beyond the epoch of chaos. With a good deal of surviving reverence for the verbal forms of Scripture, we have no clear and satisfactory clue to its interpretation as a whole. The crude and chimerical notions on the subject prevalent among the uneducated, are not so depressing as the scholastic vagaries propagated by commentators, who have rested their methods on the petitio principii, and labored in the service of some contracted sect. It is of the first importance to decide what part of the accepted faith of our time, associated with the Bible, is drawn from and warranted by the claims and teachings of the Bible itself; and what part is to be referred to claims asserted for the Bible by human theories about its source, authority, and contents." We need hardly say that the discriminating wisdom essential to this decision, is mournfully rare among biblical writers, and can be found only where scholarship is wedded to spiritual insight,

and where both are employed in the interests of truth, in the guidance of the Holy Spirit, without regard to denominational prepossessions.

The rich erudition, fine philosophical perception, and deep spiritual sensibilities apparent in Benjamin Jowett's Essay, indicate that such qualifications as we have named are possible. Seldom do we light upon words, contributed to this confused theme, so clear, pertinent, and auspicious as these: "The office of the interpreter is, not to add another (interpretation to the Bible,) but to recover the original one; the meaning, that is, of the words as they first struck on the ears or flashed before the eyes of those who heard and read them. He has to transfer himself to another age; to imagine that he is a disciple of Christ or Paul; to disengage himself from all that follows. The history of Christendom is nothing to him; but only the scene at Galilee or Jerusalem, the handful of believers who gathered themselves together at Ephesus, or Corinth, or Rome. His eye is fixed on the form of one like the Son of Man, or of the prophet who was girded with a garment of camel's hair, or of the apostle who had a thorn in the flesh. The greatness of the Roman Empire is nothing to him; it is an inner, not an outer, world that he is striving to restore. All the afterthoughts of theology are nothing to him: they are not the true lights which light him in difficult places. His concern is with a book, in which, as in other ancient writings, are some things of which we are ignorant; which defect of our knowledge can not, however, be supplied by the conjectures of fathers or divines. The simple words of that book he tries to preserve absolutely pure from the refinements or distinctions of later times. He acknowledges that they are fragmentary; and would suspect himself, if out of fragments he were able to create a well-rounded system or a continuous history. The greater part of his learning is a knowledge of the text itself; he has no delight in the voluminous literature which has overgrown it. He has no theory of interpretation; a few rules guarding against common errors are enough for him. His object is to read Scripture, like any other book, with a real interest, and not merely a conventional one. He wants to be able to open his eyes, and see or imagine things as they truly are. Nothing would be more likely to restore a natural feeling on this subject than

a history of the interpretation of Scripture. It would take us back to the beginning; it would present in one view the causes which have darkened the meaning of words in the course of ages; it would clear away the remains of dogmas, systems, controversies, which are incrusted upon them. It would show us the 'erring fancy' of interpreters assuming sometimes to have the spirit of God himself, yet unable to pass beyond the limits of their own age, and with a judgment often biased by party.'

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Having learned to distinguish the actual contents of the Bible from the multifarious contributions of tradition, we shall be enabled to see what portion of the old theology rests upon the authority of Scripture, and what has been imported from other quarters. Much will have been gained, when we shall have reached this stage, but not every thing. The contents of the Bible must then be re-examined from the present stand-point of the more advanced human societies. Such a scheme of inspiration must be applied to the book as shall reconcile it with the hand-writing of God on the manifold leaves of nature, as read by the science accepted among educated men; and with the spiritual experience of eighteen hundred years of Christian growth, as indicated in all the mental phenomena of modern times.

Are there friends of the Bible who dread the results of such a trial? We are not of that class. Are there those who would shelter the book under idolatrous sanctity, and render it an object of suspicion and sarcasm, under plea of preserving its reputation? We have stronger faith in its essential veracity than they, and we cherish it with a wiser regard, for we believe that it will bear to be confronted with criticism, and we are willing to trust it to its own strength. We fear nothing but the injudicious championship of its shallower friends, who appear to have experienced so little of its divine power, and to have gained so little assurance of its moral supremacy, as to regard their petulant special pleading as essential to its preservation. Considering how much of this disastrous advocacy the Bible has survived, we would cheerfully subject it to the salutary criticism which is provided by broad culture and genuine human sensibilities. We have long been ashamed of the querulous temper, and

10 Recent Inquiries in Theology, pp. 371, 372.