be found to sacrifice a substantial scholar-like character for matters far less important. Unprofitable visiting, attendance on unnecessary committee meetings, and a voluntary taking on themselves matters better attended to by laymen, will be found more often the cause of the study being neglected. We must add to these, the growing practice of light and miscellaneous reading, as a sad canker-worm at the root of biblical knowledge. The newspaper, especially when it mixes with politics the vexed questions of the Church; the new novel; the reviews and magazines, good in themselves, yet highly pernicious when read in excess; make another serious deduction from the precious hours which should be given to higher objects. Let those hours be counted every week, and we think it will at once appear to the deeply interested calculator, that if he had only the will, the means are not wanting for making him that highest of all characters, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. We purposely leave out of account less innocent pursuits which devour up golden hours as the ill-favoured and lean-fleshed kine consumed the well-favoured and fat ones by the river of Egypt; partly because we believe such recklessness is comparatively rare, and partly because we have generally found that on such mental spendthrifts advice is thrown away.

We think, therefore, we indulge no wild fancies nor unreasonable desires, when we wish that the Clergy as a whole should be Biblical scholars, if not all to the extent demanded by Michaelis, yet in various degrees approximating to, and aiming at the highest standard. We would have them able to read the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures devotionally, so as to employ the English version only in public, or in the family, and for the purpose of assisting in the study of the originals. This high attainment could be gained by young men, if adequately trained to it, and what is of more importance, if they were expected to possess it. When once acquired, this practice would soon render versions unsatisfactory, and would lead to a daily increase of skill, and draw along with it the study of the whole range of Sacred Literature, for the purpose of explaining difficulties, and illustrating the text. We shall devote the remainder of this paper to an exhibition of the immense advantages such a status would possess; and to a few suggestions as to the best modes of securing its general attainment.

We will first mention the great pleasure derived from Biblical science and literature-a pleasure unalloyed by any drawbacks, because it arises from the performance of duty, independent to a great degree on external circumstances, and admitting of constant addition and increase. No honour that could be conferred on a

clergyman could be so valuable as the formation of a taste for these studies; and if there were no higher object contemplated by them, he deserves to be called benevolent who endeavours to impart it. By a law which gives us a high conception of the consummate union of skill and kindness in the divine arrangements, man's duties are almost always the sources of his pleasures. This is true of the woodman who wields the axe in the forest, who finds in the very labour of his cailing, when not abused by becoming excessive, a present satisfaction, to say nothing of the consequent sweetening of his humble meals, and the undisturbed completeness of his repose. The same is true, in a higher sense, of intellectual labours when duty calls to them, for all mental exertion has not that pious and hallowing sanction. A reading man may be wrought up to high excitement by a tale skilfully contrived by the hand of genius, and yet, on after reflection, may feel that he has really gained nothing by the long expenditure of time which he has incurred. But what unpleasant reflections can ever follow the hours dedicated to the study of the divine oracles?

In many departments of science, important and highly interesting investigations have to be carried on in vili corpore, on subjects themselves useless, and even disgusting; but in the case before us the very things to be studied have an attractiveness which cannot be easily overrated, being no less than the mental productions of holy men of old, who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Voices proceeding from ancient oracles; songs uttered by men who were rapt up to the third heaven in their extatic meditations; the precious sayings of HIM who spake as never man spake, and the exposition and development of His doctrines and precepts by His inspired followers: these form the substance of the Bible, to which we invite a close and life-long devotedness on the part of its professed interpreters. Then, apart from the subject-matter, how fair are the regions of thought which surround this central point of attraction, and invite the student to go forth like the bee, and to return laden with exotic sweets and choice unguents to enrich and honour this depository of heaven's own treasures! But this illustration fails in the most important point, for the bee is probably an unconscious instrument working by instinct, and seeing no beauty in the landscape through which she flies, or in the field and grove whence she collects her honey, while the student of God's Word is an intellectual excursionist, all whose powers are employed as he gathers materials to illustrate and explain it. History, chronology, the customs of the men of the East, the animals and natural productions the Bible speaks of, the discoveries of archæology, are a few of the minor topics to which Biblical science leads, to say nothing now of the more sublime

meditations on God's ways and man's nature to which it constantly gives rise. There is a pleasure of no ordinary kind in the learned philology connected with the mere letter of the Bible, but this is enhanced by the vast variety of subsidiary contributions which may be brought from every quarter to illustrate it.

The certainty of result, and consequently the dogmatic authority conferred by Biblical science, may be mentioned as a second advantage possessed by those who cultivate it. An empirical practitioner of medicine, who knows nothing of the nature of his simples, but merely compounds them according to some recipes handed to him probably by an older quack, appears to us, mutatis mutandis, in the position of a clergyman whose whole theology, passive and active, is derived from the English version and its commentators. On the other hand, the careful physician, educated for many years in all the departments of science associated with his calling, and knowing both the properties of his drugs and their relation to the complicated human structure they are to work upon, reminds us of the divine who strives to know all that is discoverable in the sacred science committed to his trust. The physician's predecessors and contemporaries may be as wise or even wiser than himself, and on that account it might be thought that he could not do better than take their prescriptions and blindly follow their practice. But what self-respect could such a man feel, or what moral certainty could he have in his experiments? In the human frame it is often important to know whether a portion of it should be excised or allowed to remain; and he is a mere charlatan who ventures either to use the knife or to withhold it without being able to give a reason for his procedure. But is not the clergyman often called upon to exercise a similar judgment on portions of the Word of God? Take, for instance, the once disputed passage concerning the heavenly witnesses (1 John v. 7). As a proof text this must often come under his notice: he knows its genuineness is questioned, and how is he therefore to judge respecting it? He may determine to retain it, because Bishop Burgess thought it genuine; or, if his mental character is less conservative, he may strike it out of the record on the authority of Griesbach or Tischendorf. But we ask what right has he to do one or the other on the faith of other men's judgments and opinions? His only safe course is to do what Bishop Burgess and Griesbach did: to judge for himself, after studying and weighing all attainable evidence. Then he may indeed be wrong after all, but he has at least done what he could, and cannot be charged with ignorant presumption.

This is only one instance out of a thousand disputed readings, which, although they leave all vital truth intact, even if they require to be pruned away, are all of them important, and cannot be lightly

treated without an inexcusable trifling with divine truth. If a man is really unable to examine the arguments on both sides, he should modestly and reverently abstain as much as possible from using such texts, and not allow himself to be swayed by the opinions of others, because they belong to his party, or take the same general views of theological matters as he does. Hence the doubt and uncertainty which a proper measure of Biblical training would tend

to remove.

Freedom from the gross errors and foolish theories, in relation to the Scriptures, which prevail more or less in every age, is a third advantage possessed by the Biblical scholar. We do not mean to say that every one who can read the Hebrew and Greek originals must on that account be a sober critic, and superior to weakness of judgment and prejudices. We could not entertain such an opinion without blinding our eyes to facts around us, which refute such a general position; but it is quite clear that the direct tendency of sound Biblical science is to guard the mind against waywardness of thinking in theology, and to prevent it from being tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. Many Christian sects in all ages have owed their existence entirely to false interpretation, and to the same source must be attributed many of the vagaries of public bodies and of individuals at the present day. Could half the nonsense now prevalent on the subject of prophecy be entertained, if a correct exegesis were employed? Or could Apocalyptic literature contain so much wild and crude speculation, if its perpetrators were better schooled in the art of interpreting Scripture ?

How long did ignorance, under the garb of a pious zeal for the integrity of the Scriptures, oppose itself to geological science, and enact again, in the nineteenth century, the scenes between the Pope and Galileo in the sixteenth? We even now meet occasionally a grave divine who looks solemn and shakes his head and shuts his eyes, with a truly vade Satana air, when geology is mentioned; and at once suspects you are steeped to the eyes in German neology, if you refuse to sacrifice the certainties of inductive science to the à priori conclusions of himself and his grandfathers. It is very grievous, and yet very true, that persons can now be found who will tell you that the animal and vegetable productions imbedded in the strata of the earth were lodged there by the deluge in the days of Noah; or, if driven from that position, will affirm that God created the fossils when he made the rocks (the ravenous creatures with the prey in their stomachs and all), to try the faith of his obedient children in these last ages of the world, tempted and tried as they are by the plausible schemes of science, falsely so called!

Need we stay to point out the impossibility of such ideas as these being entertained for a moment by men who give themselves to an enlarged study of Biblical theology? How often is it the case that those who authoritatively warn their hearers against what they are pleased to call the errors of the times, are themselves inextricably entangled in the meshes of their own delusions, and incur, in a less immoral sense certainly, but not less surely, the condemnation of St. Peter, while they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption!

A fourth advantage is the production of true liberality of spirit, which necessarily is fostered by a personal acquaintance with the real difficulties attending the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. If men think that all there revealed is as clear as daylight, it follows of course that they will treat as blind all who cannot see as they do. This is the true source of bigotry and intolerance. Men confound infallibility of Holy Scripture, when what it really means is discovered, with their own subjective belief of what is infallible; or, in other words, they transfer what confessedly resides in the documents to their own interpretation of them. Then, acting on this mental hallucination, they put themselves in the place of the Almighty, and proceed to inflict upon those who differ from them some of the penalties justly threatened by God upon those who wilfully misconstrue and disobey his commandments. This deplorable state of mind, which transfers naturally mild and gentle tempers into cruelty and sometimes savageness, is fostered by placing traditional interpretation of the Bible in the place of that which is evolved by the study of it. What has been the conceived meaning of certain texts must always be the meaning. To doubt this is heterodoxy; and this is a crime which one possessed with zeal for the Lord of Hosts will punish in dark ages with fire and sword, and in more enlightened ones with frowns and rejection from religious communion.

But how do these evil spirits, generated in the murky cells of ignorant dogmatism, flee away before the calm and conscientious and industrious study of the letter of the Holy Scriptures! The student, in his early career, allows them to brood over him, and perhaps imagines them to be angels of light;' but one by one their true character is discovered, and finding no hospitable reception, they depart to find a more congenial home. While every fresh year given to the delightful task of finding out the meaning of God's law, developes more and more of its exceeding breadth and fulness, it also discovers the existence of difficulties where once all was thought to be easy. Perhaps geology had before been suspected as an enemy of the truth, and its disciples as dangerous companions; but a careful study of Genesis discovers that there is