In it God has so mixed light and shade, that the humble and docile find there nothing but truth and comfort, whilst the indocile and presumptuous find nothing but error and incredulity. All the difficulties immediately vanish when the mind is cured of presumption; then, according to the rule of Augustine, we pass over all we do not understand, and are edified at what we do understand." So, too, mysteries serve to beget in us a desire for heaven, where they will all be cleared up. We are here in a state of probation, but, if we are Christians, we shall be there in a state of reward; we are here as sojourners only for a time, but we shall be there for ever, where darkness will yield to light, and doubt to certainty. Now we "walk by faith," then we shall "walk by sight." "Now we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. Now, we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face; now we know in part, but then shall we know even as also we are known."

The Bible's Triumph over Scruting.

EVERY book should be judged by what it purports to be. It would be unfair to expect from it what it does not propose to give. According to this rule, a man has no right to look for instruction in natural things in the Bible, which claims to be a spiritual revelation. But, at the same time, as it professes to be an inspired document, and therefore to contain nothing but truth, it is just, we admit, to expect that any reference which it makes to natural things, will be one which may be tested by all scientific discoveries, and which will prove to be thoroughly consistent with them. Now, what have been the results of the scientific tests which have been applied to the Bible? I answer, that in all cases philosophy has proved herself the handmaid of the revelation which divulges secrets far beyond her gaze.

It is so in geology; for, to say nothing of the fact that this science is yet in its infancy, the alleged difficulty in reconciling its discoveries with the Mosaic Cosmogony is met (if it need be) by the fact that the two first verses of Genesis need not be regarded as connected with those that follow, and that whilst

these two verses describe the first creation of matter, so far as anything to the contrary is stated, a million of ages may have elapsed between the first creation and God's formation of our globe. Nor is this a new theory of interpretation framed for an unexpected emergency, but one that was maintained by the immortal Chalmers and others, long before any difficulty on the subject was supposed to exist.

It is so in astronomy; for though in darker days it was felt necessary by ecclesiastics to set themselves against the investigations of the heavenly bodies, yet neither then nor since has anything been developed in this direction, that conflicts with the testimony of Him who sits enthroned "far above all heavens," who calleth the stars by their names," and by the word of whose power "the worlds were made."

It is so in geography; for travellers who have visited the East, instead of finding anything in those countries at variance with the usages, and customs, and localities which the Bible describes, have declared that they found it, especially the New Testament, the best guide to Palestine, and that by its statements they were furnished with better directions than they derived from any other source. “As our knowledge of nature and her laws has increased," says Lieutenant Maury, in his late work on the "Physical Geography of the Sea," "so has our knowledge of many passages of the Bible been improved. The Bible called the earth the round world,' yet for ages it was the most damnable heresy

for Christian men to say the world is round; and, finally, sailors circumnavigated the globe, and proved the Bible to be right, and saved Christian men of science from the stake. And, as for the general system of atmospherical circulation, which I have been so long endeavoring to describe, the Bible tells it all in a single sentence: The wind goeth towards the South and turneth about into the North, it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again to his circuits.' Eccles. i. 6.

Equally marked is the triumph of the Bible in relation to various readings. English infidels of the last century raised a premature pæan over the discovery and publication of so many various readings. They imagined that the popular mind would be rudely and thoroughly shaken, that Christianity would be placed in imminent peril of extinction, and that the Church would be dispersed and ashamed at the sight of the tattered shreds of its Magna Charta. But the result has blasted all their hopes, and the oracles of God are found to be preserved in immaculate integrity. The storm which shakes the oak only loosens the earth around its roots, and its violence enables the tree to strike its fibres deeper into the soil.

The same thing is true in relation to antiquarian research. All its labors are but cumulative proofs of the divinity of the Bible, as ancient cities are disinterred and ancient coins discovered. The great blow that the infidel philosophers of Europe predicted

would be given to revealed religion by disclosures from Chinese literature, proved to be nothing when a Christian missionary mastered that language, and produced a lexicon containing all its words. Equally fruitless was the hope that the mysterious zodiac in Egypt would throw the world's age far beyond the date of the Mosaic chronology. I might also refer to the statement made by Sir H. Rawlinson in a lecture recently delivered under the auspices of the Directors of the Scriptural Museum, London, that "the cuneiform inscriptions, the key to deciphering which has only been discovered within the last twenty years, have brought to light a great variety of Assyrian and Babylonian historic records, running contemporaneously with Scripture narrative, and affording innumerable points of contact; and wherever such contact occurs, there is always found to be a coincidence between the two, showing incontestably the genuineness and authenticity of Scripture."

Thus is it true that the Bible has surmounted every trial. There gathers around it a dense "cloud of witnesses," from the ruins of Nineveh, and the valley of the Nile; from the slabs and bas-reliefs of Sennacherib, and the tombs and monuments of Pharaoh; from the rolls of Chaldee paraphrasts and Syrian versionists; from the cells and libraries of monastic scribes, and the dry and dusty labors of scholars and antiquarians. The scepticism of history has been silenced by the vivid re-productions of the ancient and eastern world.