infirmities in conduct and sentiment, and if they composed the scriptures with this erroneous spirit and temper, it may, with respect to precepts and doctrine, contain that which ought not to be admitted. Then where are we to find Christianity? How must we be secure that we have attained the truth? We are left, then, to the exercise of our reasoning faculties; not to ascertain whether the scriptures be true, but what in them is true; that is, we are left without any revelation at all, and are in just the same circumstances, as far as this point is concerned, as if no revelation had been given. The uncertainty would lead some to reject one part and some Our Lord certainly did know that the New Testament should be the standard of Christian faith, and though it is very easy to suppose error may creep in by reason of the mistakes and infirmities of men, and occasion controversies and discussions, it seems strange to conceive that the standard should be defective that the judgment to which we defer should occasion the giving a false decision by these means error must be perpetuated. Controversies there are, and have been, among Christians, and ever will be, from the nature of man's mind; but that the New Testament should contain error, seems to me to be an extraordinary and fatal delusion. How are we to come to any agree-another, and some would reject it altoment? Or to what standard and test are we to refer Christianity, if the New Testament itself may be in any case mistaken? Who is to determine which are the truths they will receive and will reject, if we do not bring the whole to this testimony and cannot depend upon it in every case? How are we to compel any person in point of equity to accede to it? Christianity in this case will be as various as the particular complexions of men, and alter with every man's character and circumstances. If the New Testament be not inspired, however, it seems impossible to suppose that there should not be very great and important mistakes, for the apostles erred as well as other persons; they seemed to be subject to all the delusions and mistakes that men in their circumstances might be supposed to be; and if they wrote the New Testament just in the same spirit and temper as they would have done as mere ordinary men, it must, considering the great mysteries of godliness it treats of and the truths it deve-little importance in the Christian system, lops, contain, in all probability, great errors; so that it could not be depended upon with any critical exactness if you exclude the idea of Divine inspiration. The apostles appear to be liable to great gether. Besides this, when we consider what special things were the objects of inspiration, we may have reason to conclude that the essentials, and the peculiar ordinances of Christianity might properly be included under them. The apostle says he received some things by an immediate revelation from Christ. "I delivered unto you," says he, “that which I received, how the Lord in the same night in which he was betrayed took bread." But of what little importance are particular circumstances attending the Lord's supper compared to the truths of Christianity! He tells us by immediate revelation, that the dead in Christ will rise first, and then "Behold," he says, "I show you a mystery," that is, a thing not known but by immediate revelation, "we shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed. Those that shall be alive shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air; they shall likewise be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye." These particulars are of very taken in themselves; but they appear to have made a part of that great mass of revelation which the apostle Paul received. Surely the truths respecting the nature of acceptance with God; respect ing the condition of mankind, whether he, "shall prophesy, and your young fallen creatures or in primeval innocence, men shall see visions, and your old men are of more importance than those pecu- shall dream dreams." If the New Testaliar mysteries? and how shall we ment is allowed to stand upon the same imagine that that revelation which com- footing of inspiration with any part of the municated the one excluded the other? Old, that dispensation which had the most Besides, we are expressly told that the of the Spirit appeared for a very valuChristian dispensation was to be dis- able and important purpose-that of tinguished by a remarkable effusion of teaching Christianity to all ages. But the Holy Spirit-much greater than the how does it consist with the superior Jewish prophets received; so that our effusions of the Holy Ghost, when Isaiah Lord declares that John the Baptist was speaks of the light of the moon being as greater than the greatest of the prophets, the light of the sun, and the light of the because he belonged, as a harbinger, to sun sevenfold as the light of seven days, a dispensation where the Spirit was if there is so much darkness upon communicated in a larger measure. The Christianity that we cannot tell whether apostle Peter, when speaking on the day what are regarded as its essential docof Pentecost, applied the prophecy of trines were the dictates of inspiration or Joel to the time of Christianity: the mere opinions of men liable to mis"Your sons and your daughters," says take on those very points? INSPIRATION IN CONFLICT WITH RECENT FORMS OF PHILOSOPHY AND SCEPTICISM. UNDER this title a lecture has just been published which had been delivered at the opening of the United Presbyterian Divinity Hall, by John Eadie, LL.D., Professor of Biblical Literature to the United Presbyterian Church. Some of the observations it contains might be read advantageously in connexion with those of Mr. Hall in the foregoing article. Against some notions on the subject of inspiration which are gaining currency, it is important that our younger friends should be put on their guard. The following may be taken as hints deserving of attention. The enmity of the older infidelity has sunk into the sleep of exhaustion. The deism of the last century wore a cold and withered aspect. Its touch was rough and frosty. It had no sympathies. Its sorcery was coarse-unre lieved by the glitter of sophism or the witchery of song; and its dark and malignant scowl chilled the very orgies into which its disciples had been initiated. It tore hope and love from man with a rude and unpitying snatch, and "grinned horribly a ghastly smile," if its victims at any time trembled under the sudden consciousness of the robbery and cruelty which had been practised upon them. It covered the heaven with a pall of darkness, whose frown was reflected in ominous gloom on the earth. So it could not prevail. It gave nothing in exchange for what it took away. It left man an outcast without shelter, and an orphan without a home. It gave no aim to life but a sensual pleasure, and sought no relief from death but a dreary annihilation. We are not afraid of the grosser forms of unbelief bringing havoc and ruin into the midst of the people. Their doctrine of inspiration, that whatever very hideousness is repulsive. The is precious and solacing in it, is obscurfantastic disbelief of Christianity, urgeded or lost. We apprehend an attack of by such men as Fourier, St. Simon, this nature on our popular Christianity. Owen, and even the Abbe Lamennais, is Not only in the transatlantic producrejected and loathed by the moral in- tions of Emerson and Parker, but also stincts of our nature. Their commun- in the writings of Newman, Sterling, ism owes its spread to maddened and even Morell, there is much of the passions and political desperation, and same effort to overthrow the authority had its birth in a visionary and quixotic of scripture, by robbing it of all which attempt to remedy the disorders of it claims as peculiar to itself and its society by the summary act of over- origin. It then ceases to be an authoriturning it, and erecting a new fabric tative exposition of God's will to us. a second Babel-whose wretched exist- No longer is it the tree of life, whose ence, when tried in miniature, has al- shade refreshes and whose leaves heal; ways been so brief, as scarce to warrant it is only a rare exotic, where all is the name of an experiment, and whose bloom and life. promise of good is only as the momentary verdure of the gourd, "which came up in a night, and perished in a night." Seduction from Christianity, to be successful, must present a fairer and more attractive appearance; and in such alluring guise it has at length come among us. Its insinuations are pregnant with menace and danger; its pretensions are coincident with the claims of the loftiest ideal philosophy; and it sometimes arrogates the charms of a poetical pantheism. There is nothing rude or vulgar about it. It does not seek to brand the bible as a forgery, but only to modify or explain away its claims. It allows the inspired books much in literary glory and aesthetic brightness, but denies them a monopoly of such qualities. It brings scripture down to the level of common treatises; for it speaks of "Minos and Moses as equally inspired to make laws;" David and Pindar "to write poetry;" and affirms that Newton and Isaiah, Leib-impugners of proper inspiration sit nitz and Paul, &c., have in them "various forms of the one spirit from God most high." Such inspiration is limited to no sect, age, or nation, for it is wide as the world, and common as God." The danger of such opinions is obvious. Our youth are taught to admire, but not to believe the scriptures, for their greatness is only accidental, and they owe not their immediate origin to God, but have only in a stronger degree what is common to them with every product of exalted intellect. The consistent result of such a creed is, that the bible shares the same veneration with Shakspere, and as much homage is yielded to Carlyle as to Paul. Jesus may be an object of wonder and applause as an incarnation of goodness and sympathy, while his deity and mediation are wholly lost sight of, and his blood has only the nobleness of a martyrdom, not the expiatory merit of an atonement. In such a crisis, we cannot expect that the "Answers" and "Apologies" of a former age will suffice. Defences of the genuineness, authenticity, and integrity of the sacred books will not meet the difficulty. The easy under such arguments; for, though they may sneer at them, they are disposed in some degree to yield them a vague assent. They use your language, and you might imagine they agreed with you, till they are pressed to a defi This new theory so generalizes the Inition. The new infidelity drinks wine out of the temple vessels, but not in the temple courts. Its brilliant ideas are exalted into "a revelation,"—its poets are "prophets,"-its admiration of nature is offered as its "worship," the shrine where it presents such homage is its "sanctuary,"-and the ardour and excitement of its advocates are dignified by the name of "inspiration." It is not to a figurative or secondary use of such words we object; but to the serious and literal employment of them under the belief that identical phenomena are described that the writers of scripture, even in the message they conveyed, had nothing different from "millions of hearts stout as theirs, as full of God." When we speak of a revelation, we mean that there has been an actual communication from God to the mind of the prophet. He has something to say which God has told him. It matters not how God gave him the oracle-by voice, vision, or dream; or, to use the favourite diction of modern philosophy, by elevating his "intuitional consciousness." The mode is of no moment, as it may transcend our comprehension. Yet questions about the mode are sometimes so conducted as to impugn or overlay the reality of the fact. The power of intuition is often unduly magnified at the expense of other and lower faculties which excite and uphold it. The logical consciousness has its own necessary functions, and its formalisms underlie the intuitional power, and give penetration and extent to its glance. In like manner, our circle of natural vision, with its clearness and compass, is not wholly owing to the organ itself, but is dependent also on its elevated position in the animal frame. The real intuitional power in the viewing of divine truth is faith, which is "the proper seeing faculty of the soul in relation to Christ;" but faith presupposes an external revela tion-" it cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." The intuition can only recognize the truth whicn God has made palpable to it. The mind's eye does not create the objects of its perception. Those truths of God's being and government, which exist independently of man's moral condition, and which have not been brought to light in relation to it, have been always apprehensible, for they rest on the unchanging essence of God. But Christianity is more than a republication of the law of nature, and the truths of which it is composed owe their existence to the will of God, and can be known only through God's own revelation of his eternal purpose. He must place them before us, and give them visibility. Intuition might see his goodness, for it is an essential attribute, but it could not behold his mercy till he unveiled it, or till he published his resolution to bring it into exercise. Again, things that are to be are not within the natural ken of intuition; and the mere elevation of this power could never enable a man to descry or foretell future events. The truths which form the theme of revelation are an unexpected disclosure, and interest man as a fallen creature. Science and genius only unfold laws which have been in operation since matter and mind had being, but the bible publishes truths which belong to an economy more recent in development than creation, and the organization of which depended solely on the good pleasure of Jehovah. The scripture contains statements, the veracity of which depended on the mere good-will of the Almighty ruler, for he might have punished sin, rather than have forgiven it. Had the salvation of men been a work naturally evolved out of previous operations, the world might have been able to anticipate it. But redemption is an administrative novelty, for who could imagine that an absolute threatening should either be suspended or set aside? No promise of mercy lay folded up in the stipulations and penalty of the first covenant. As, therefore, his purpose of mercy was formed in the secrecy of his bosom (for "who hath known the mind of the Lord, or, being his counsellor, hath taught him ?") so it required a special revelation from himself to make it known to those whom it was intended to benefit. Only the sun's light can make the sun visible. The bible professes to contain such a revelation to a fallen and benighted world. It holds up its claim in simple and unmistakeable language, and declares itself to be the word or oracle of God in such a special and definite sense, that no other literary production can rightfully arrogate so awful a title. It reveals an order of truth found in no other book-truth communicated from him who is truth-truth, pure in form and perfect in adaptation—clothed, at the same time, in love and power to win and regulate the hearts of its disciples. FLEEING TO GOD FROM THE PESTILENCE. In a day like the present, when the hand of a devouring pestilence presses so heavily upon the people, it may be safely presumed that there is much serious thought among those who are ordinarily far from seriousness. There are fears unuttered; there is deep anxiety which, while the wicked would not acknowledge it, they are compelled to feel; there is a sense of unfitness to meet and grapple with so dire a foe as cholera; and still there is a determination to hold up against these unpleasant apprehensions, so long as there is any hope, and then it may be, when the crisis approaches, flee to Him whom in prosperity they reject. Nothing like the near approach of death, in any form, so serves to show how dreadfully the wicked trample on the divine forbearance, and how deliberately they turn back from their apparent seriousness to their former courses, when the cause of their fear is removed. The following extract from Vincent's book, entitled," God's Terrible Voice in the City," illustrates these remarks. Mr. Thomas Vincent was one of the nonconformist ministers who remained in London during the great plague of 1665, while the ministry of the established church sought refuge in the country. of the pulpit, God's arrows, Now there is "Ministers," says he, "all preaching; and every sermon was unto them as if it were their last. Old Time seemed to stand at the head of the pulpit, with its great scythe, saying, with hoarse voice, 'Work while it is called to-day; at night I will mow thee down.' Grim Death seems to stand at the side saying, 'Do thou shoot and I will shoot mine.' such a vast concourse of people in the churches where these ministers are to be found, that they cannot many times come near the pulpit doors for the press, but are forced to climb over the pews to them; and such a face is now seen in the assemblies as seldom was seen in London. Such eager looks, such open ears, such greedy attention, as if every word would be eaten which dropped from the mouths of the ministers. If you ever saw a drowning man |