enjoined) or that such a precise conversation will be held between the Saviour and mankind at the Day of Judgement, as described in the passages alluded to;-equally figurative therefore may we consider the language that ensues, regarding the precise nature of a future state; from which we can only with certainty gather (in connection with other parts of Scripture, and conformably to Reason) that happiness awaits the good, and misery the wicked, in proportion to their respective merits and crimes: And that perfect justice, tempered with perfect mercy, will pass the final sentence on each.*

The passage last quoted (Matt. xxv. ver. 31 to the end) affords one of the numerous instances of the general as well as figurative language of the Gospel. I mean in the grounds there stated of future reward and punishment, which would seem confined (and in their extreme degrees) to the practice or mere neglect of a single virtue, contrary both to reason and to the obvious tenour of the New Testament; which therefore require us, upon the principles of sober Criticism, to qualify the letter of the doctrine here, by inferring that the virtue in question will indeed have great, but certainly not exclusive weight, in the final judgement. This plain principle of interpretation, honestly applied, would bring our polemic Controversialists much nearer to each other, and, 1 doubt not, much nearer to the Truth, than they are often

found.

The rules here laid down are, I am aware, liable to abuse; but so are all rules, even those of the Gospel itself: an upright attentive rea- · der, however, will not, I trust, be materially misled by them.

You will be struck with the details of dæmoniacal possession, and of its miraculous cure. As stories of this kind are now-a-days found to be mere frauds, a natural suspicion of deception arises in the mind as to every case of the kind; but I confess, that some of the cases related in the New Testament are so circumstantial, that the difficulty to me is smaller in supposing that (in order, probably, to display in a more striking and visible manner the power of Christ, and the object of his mission) evil spirits were permitted in those days to operate even externally on mankind, than in resolving the whole of the cases of this description, recorded in the Gospel, to a mistaken, though popular opi nion: especially as this belief was not peculiar to the Jews, but general among the most civilized of the Greeks and Romans, as well as among the barbarous nations; nor do I know how else than by supposing occasional dæmoniacal agen

cy, some of the particulars related of the Delphic and other oracles, by respectable profane authors, can be satisfactorily accounted for. At the same time common distempers might, I think, be more frequently attributed to the agency of evil spirits than the fact justified; and that the Apostles themselves might possibly sometimes fall into this error in common with the people at large. The cure was equally valid and miraculous, whether they mistook the cause of the disease or not.

This last remark brings me to a very interesting topic; the degree of supernatural inspiration with which the Apostles were endued. That they were so endued, in a certain degree, appears both from the promises of CHRIST to them, and from their own explicit declarations; and that they should be so with regard to the pe culiar doctrines and duties of Christianity was material to securing the promulgation of these unadulterated by the prejudices, ignorance, and mistakes, to which the Apostles were as men (most of them, too, men of very limited acquirements) naturally subject, in common with their fellow-creatures. But that their in

spiration was limited to the essential doctrines and duties of Christianity, appears to me both very probable in itself, and to have been the actual case in fact; and for these reasons : - First, it was plainly no part of our Saviour's mission, to correct men's opinions, or to inform their minds on any subject except that of religion and morals; and consequently, his Apostles were probably left as uninstructed on other points as he found them: for example, they no doubt laboured, throughout their lives, under the same mistaken popular ideas that prevailed in their age and country, regarding the order of the Universe-of the globe we inhabit- of the causes and cure of maladies-and of every subsequent acquisition and improvement in science. In every other particular than religion, Christi anity left mankind to the natural progress of human intellect and human experience; and even in religion, it appears, I think clearly, that in conveying its doctrines the Apostles were left to their natural capacities, acquirements, and language; whence the variety evident in the style of the different writers, and the inelegance and want of method and perspicuity observable

in the writings of such of them in particular, whose stations in life were the most humble; as St. John and St. Mark, and even St. Matthew.

Secondly; To prove that their inspiration was not only confined to the immediate objects of their mission, but that it was of a degree to inform and remind them, even in regard to these, only so far as was necessary to preclude them from material error, in imparting the facts and doctrines of Christianity; we may observe that not only do the different Evangelists relate the same circumstances and discourses in different terms; and some of them omit parts of these, communicated by others; but their recollection (on a few occasions) actually fails one or other of them, in the minuter parts of some of the facts recorded by them. And these little variations (so conformable to our experience of the testimony of disinterested men, relating a variety of circumstances which had passed many years before) is, as has been observed, a strong proof of the absence of collusion or fraud in the general testimony, which does accord in every essential point. On this