of business, or to the mere mechanics and mathematics. of science. The elements which enter into this single question of inspiration are subject to the laws of two worlds. Both poles look towards an infinitude; one on the side of immortal man, and the other on the side of the Eternal God.

Then, again, in their use as well as their nature, it is all the better that moral problems, such as the one under consideration, do not, like the forty-fifth proposition, annihilate choice, and extort assent. That cannot be the greatest of questions which can be settled in this world. The Supreme Intelligence has not with his revelations sought to override the soul's birthright of freedom, but has tenderly respected the fearful play of the human will, as a privilege incalculably dear and valuable. Inspiration does not become demonstration or infallibility. But the Church of Rome, for example, misunderstands human nature as much as she transcends her own sacred office, when she padlocks the mouth of discussion, and excommunicates all who do not bow in compliance with her own assumed exemption from error. She, a mortal Church, undertakes to do that which the Eternal One himself forbore to do out of his regard to man's moral freedom. But by inflicting a mortal wound upon reason, she has sentenced not man alone, but herself, to irrationality. She decrees that science, literature, and theology shall not move in this moving universe, and the retribution is sure as doom, that she herself shall be tied to the dead past, and die with it. Other bodies of Christians have sought to establish the same eternity for their fragmentary ism, and to shut the doors on all progress. But not in such wise has the wisdom from above been given to the family of man. The Infinite does not descend in fire from heaven to consume with his brightness the finite. The truths of inspiration are not refrigerators and silencers, but awakeners, of the intellect and the heart. Nothing is fixed, nothing final; ends become means, conclusions premises, to lead on and up to higher ends and nobler results, to God, to immortality, to the eternity of eternities. Hence, though above man so high, the Inspired One respects him, and teaches him to respect himself: "I speak as to wise men, judge ye what I say; why even of yourselves judge ye not

what is right?" The Scriptures are so wonderfully given, as to be an unfailing fount of wisdom, and yet they do not play the tyrant over the nature they were commissioned to redeem. Thus the Infinite gives, thus the finite receives in kind, wisdom, truth, love without end. Virtue under this system is no chain, but a deliverance from all chains, perfect freedom, perfect joy. While every Christian must say with the deepest humility, "By the grace of God I am what I am"; he will equally recognize that other hemisphere of truth, "Ask and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find." For the Most High has delegated to his child the awful trust to some extent of self-creation, with its tremendous risks and its superlative happiness.

We would not dogmatize then on the subject of inspiration, or say that our theory is the only one consistent with the best influence of the Scriptures upon the inner and outer life, for we do not believe that the Great God has narrowed to such confines the flowing streams of his spirit. Before whom doth not his light arise? Nevertheless, while we would not dogmatize, we are entirely and earnestly persuaded that wrong notions of the nature, extent, and method of divine aid blight with a killing mildew many of the fair blossoms of Gospel promise. For the exact fact, reality, truth, is always a million times better than any error, however moderate, or seemingly innocent. The distance between error and truth cannot be measured by any arithmetic of ours. Terrible evils in the long range of the future may be coiled up in the serpent eggs of some insignificant falsities of to-day. Good Christians do verily grow towards perfection under every variety of spiritual cultivation; but then the proposition stands for ever that the best method is the best, and that it is to be sought with the whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, as we love our Maker.

But one of the most common and fatal sources of error in regard to inspiration, as to all spiritual matters, is the inclination to run to extremes in opinion, and in no country more than America has this tendency been accelerated by the surrounding forces of society. It is an age of haste. We precipitate ourselves with the momentum of gravitation on whatever we undertake, and

apply our minds to moral and political subjects as fiercely as our axes to the ancient forests. Americans like

strong doctrines and strong laws. The medium, which Horace pronounced most safe, is too tame for their exasperated genius. The law of extras and ultras is in the ascendant. Hence, remarkable results follow. They whet the five points of Calvin to their utmost sharpness, or break them off altogether. They raise the revival system to a white heat, and glory in putting their converts through quick. One distinguished divine declares Christianity to be a failure, and another alleviates the irrational dogma of original sin by the supposition of a preëxistent state. Hell has been stormed and carried by assault by one denomination, and the Devil himself unceremoniously reduced to a nonentity. Extreme individualism is crumbling up already broken sects into still smaller fragments, as if division were the only fundamental rule. Fanaticism knows no stop until it invents a new style of Mahometanism, and plants a new Mecca for the faithful in the valley of Utah. Rationalism drives on full tilt until it lands on the cloud banks of Pantheism. "That bourne whence no traveller returns" is now visited twenty times of an evening, and a railroad is not more thronged with comers and goers. The truth is, our young blood boils too hotly in the veins to give us the grace of strong, serene life. We are eager, rush headlong, go the whole, do not discriminate, and prefer smart, brilliant paradoxes to sound, moderate truths that are not startling. Nowhere on the planet does the moral pendulum oscillate with a wider sweep from side to side, because nowhere else are the faculties of the whole man mustered, as here, to the conflicts of politics, morals, science, and theology. These extravaganzas are more hopeful than harmful, for they show that the dead and buried souls of men have heard "the trump of resurrection"; and though they stagger awhile in their grave-clothes, as did Lazarus at the broken tomb, they shall soon hear a commanding voice of the Master, "Loose them; let them go."

To apply these remarks to the matter before us; we are satisfied, from the best inquiry and observation we can make, that a large number of persons of education and intelligence are out-and-out rationalists. The

exaggerated statement of a writer in a late number of that very able religious newspaper, the New York Independent, is that four fifths of the young men of our country, who have so many lectures written for their special behoof, are sceptically inclined. We would qualify this by saying, that we are not hastily to infer that these times are more irreligious than others, for religion may be manifested now in new forms. But for all that, disbelief in some quarters has become a fashion; while, on the other hand, the Evangelical churches, as they exclusively term themselves, are insisting in their books and tracts, with even stronger emphasis, on the extreme views of a verbal and plenary inspiration, as if alarmed at the daring invasions of human reason. But a split must come erelong even among them, and already the charges of heresy are hurled as ready missiles from the lofty battlements of more than one of their seats of learning at some peccant man or school. But it is a peculiarity of evil, that it cannot be overcome by evil; only good is a champion equal to that encounter. We would modestly propose to act as mediators between the extreme right and the extreme left, and with our Unitarian views point out what we regard as a more excellent way. We would show the rationalist, that the highest act of human reason is to discern and receive the lessons of the Divine Reason, and that his theory makes revelation an even greater wonder than it was before with the doctrine of miracles. We have not credulity enough to believe in his view, as he says he has not enough to believe in ours. On the other side, we would show the advocates of a verbal dictation, that, so far as the supposed advantages of such a process are concerned, a miracle would still be necessary in every case to guard each mind from error in perusing the book thus written; for the difficulties of language, translation, various education and spirituality, still intervene, and shatter their perfect white light of truth into the sevenfold dyes of the rainbow. The subject must be insured against error, as well as the object rendered immaculate, else their case is not made

But the discrepancies of testimony confirm the honesty of the witnesses, the varieties of intellectual and moral power charm us as in a work of genius, and the age-long language and world-wide character of the

book set it heaven-high above the range of suspicion that it was the work of a clique or the project of a conspiracy. This theory confounds all simplicity, and destroys all progress. It makes the Old Testament as good as the New, and sets the Gospels on the same level with the Epistle of Jude or the Book of Revelation.

But such is the craving for excitement, the appetite for bold, extreme views, that the moderate man is charged with want of moral courage. Because a man does not startle the world with turning Romanist on one side, or Pantheist on the other, it is gravely suggested that he is deficient in independence. Strong, piquant statements fascinate the world, though the truth may be crucified between them. The main aspect of religious controversies is, that both parties are so wide of the mark, that you care little who succeeds. It is the potsherds of the earth, grinding one against another; — let them grind. How faintly do we as yet see that the truth, the truth, winnow it clean as we can from the chaff of corruptions, is all important, and infinitely valuable, and worthy of a world more of pains, studies, and sacrifices than we make, to secure it without spot or blemish.

Another error and evil in the consideration of this question of Biblical inspiration and authority is, that all its contents have been merged in one volume, the writers all squared by the same standard, the characters all required to be morally perfect, the same Procrustean rule applied as the test to the Song of Solomon and the Sermon on the Mount. No moral perspective has been observed, and no moral imagination has been exercised, in recreating and reconceiving the diversified life of the ancient world. The Scriptures we hold to be inspired, a speciality in literature, an authority in faith, "the law of the spirit of life," a book which man, or men, could not have composed, collected, and commissioned-one paramount key-note sounding from beginning to end-unless the writers had enjoyed an illumination superior to what Virgil received in writing his poems, Xenophon his histories, or Shakespeare his plays. But then the inspiration is not one in quantity or one in quality throughout. It has rises and falls, lights and shadows, expansions and contractions, of the divine element. So it is in the works of creation; why