with the eye; and hear-yet not by the ear; faculties enabling the soul to discriminate between spirit and spirit, evoking forms now coiled as in chrysalis web; that we may stand felicitously perfect in vital organization.

This is not romance, take an example, a cultivator of positive science, endowed with healthiest of human brains, Sir Humphry Davy. By inhalation of nitrous oxide, he was abstracted from all external things, losing perception of them. Trains of visible images, strangely linked with words, passed rapidly through his mind; so that he "existed in a world of newly-connected and newly-modified ideas." On awaking he resolved that the universe had its chief reality in the mind. If so slight a cause, till then unknown, gave exhilaration elasticity and vigour, refreshing, doubling the grandeur and might of intellectual man; what occult influences may run through all creation, establishing communication wherever beings live and think? Man already obtains favours that are marvellous; and, yet, he does but touch the infinite; can only meditate a little on evils that perplex-not disable and disarm them can but desire the exquisite and perfectly good -not possess it.

We pass now to a definite examination of Holy Scripture. The examination is useful, and capable of being conducted by ordinary minds. It aims at showing that the Infinite Spirit has entered finite nature; that the Voice, which past generations believed to be the Voice of God revealing deep mysteries, is a true Voice; that Christianity consists of a definite and positive body of truths admitting neither addition nor diminution except by Divine Authority: and that the Bible is not such a book as man would make, if he could; or could make, if he would.

The indications of unity in the Bible, despite being the work of many writers who were separated by wide intervals in time and space, render it impossible for the Book to be a work either of chance or of human contrivance.

More varied in its contents, in its writers, in its ages, than any other book; it lifts up unwearied testimony against the universal tendency to polytheism; and, as if to disprove the possibility of it being the product or evolution of human con

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sciousness, everywhere maintains a sublime elevated doctrine of monotheism. This Book, alone of all books, resisted and overcame the tendency to worship many gods; and declared, of the one God-"His is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is His; and He reigneth over all."

With the unique spiritual sublimity, is an inversion of the seeming relative importance of events. The rise and fall of empires, changes and revolutions which fill nations with terror or triumph, sure to be recorded on human page, have here little or no mention. A people obscure and despised, domestic scenes, family trials, traits of personal character, are invested with peculiar greatness as having some mysterious connection with moral government by the Supreme Ruler. The world rings with the fame of great captains, the earth shakes beneath the tread of innumerable legions, and the writers of this strange Book were not deaf; nevertheless, the Bible is silent and unconcerned, as sun and stars: only those events are regarded as great which bear on the development and issues of that spiritual empire or Kingdom of God, which, the Book asserts, is being founded and builded in the world.

While crowns and sceptres lie about as neglected things, the foundations of earthly morality are established on the fact of our intimate connection with Heaven. Human laws derive their sanction and authority from Divine Will: Will, determined by supreme rectitude, wisdom, and power, enjoining what is good, and claiming supremacy by right. This dominant idea subordinates everything to the ultimate triumph of a spiritual empire which establishes the happiness of man.

All other systems form two different spheres of dutyreligion and morality: religion, separated from its chief root, fails even to maintain the soul's consciousness of God; and morality, apart from Divinity, becomes utterly corrupt. The Bible alone co-ordinates morality with religion; and so, is not in analogy with any merely human system; nor does it accord with the hitherto universal tendency of civilization to fall into secularism and lose spirituality.

History shows that human nature, left to itself, would never

have devised the moral code of Scripture; any more than the worm that crawls could claim the attributes of an eagle that flies. Patience, humility, meekness, spiritual purity, reliance on God, forgiveness of injury, are not, in the world's estimate, constituents of heroic character, nor most worthy of applause. These chief features of Bible morality are not at all the native utterances of human nature; and some, even modern men, doubt whether they really are virtues. Refined selfishness, systematic shrewd culture and indulgence of the natural appetites, self-assertion, are the worldly graces. Nevertheless, the adaptation and comprehensiveness of Bible religion are so great, that millions declare "every mood and necessity of our moral and spiritual life are therein exhaustively expressed." The morality and doctrine propounded are so exquisitely adapted to the circumstances of the nature which it guides, sustains, and exalts; and, yet, so out of the range of all that unassisted nature would suggest; that men, emulous of good, find their hearts filled with joy in realization of the good; and no more doubt concerning the Divinity than they doubt the evidence of their senses.

As to the Old Testament, every intellect, except the Jewish, is more or less at war with it now. In a sense, it may and does honour the Jews; but, so far from glorifying that nation, it constitutes, if false, one long libel; telling them that they are a "perverse and stiff-necked generation," refusing alike warning and reformation till they become a “hissing and a by-word among the nations;" nevertheless, as Pascal says, "they preserve it at the expense of their life." Not in Barbarian, nor Jewish, nor Greek, nor Roman nature, do we discover elements out of which the Bible Religion could have been spontaneously evolved as a growth of national genius and culture; or as an ideally conceived deliberate fiction; or as an aggregation of myth and legend. What we do discover is a plain statement that human nature, far from being able of itself to erect a kingdom of immortal glory, is ever going down to mouldering rubbish, to utter and perpetual desolation, forgetting to take God into account at all; but

1 "Cependant, ce livre qui les déshonore en tant de façons, ils le conserve aux dépens de leur vie."-Pensées, Tom ii. p. 189.

that God by patient endurance, by merciful forgiveness of sin, by propounding a holy law to work beautiful humility and desire after holiness, prepares men for a reign of righteousness. We hear as it were a sound, not from halls of philosophy, not from prince's palace, not from intrigues of statesmen: the sound as of ocean on distant shore, and a sweet strange melody of men and angels concerning issues of an invisible spiritual empire.

As to Christianity, so far from that being a natural growth of Jewish nature, it has roused, for nineteen hundred years, the undying animosity of the nation. The Messiah though, as Christians think, plainly prophecied of, shocked all their prejudices, and so evoked their fierce indignation that they crucified Him. It is not possible that the Jews should be able or willing to paint such a portrait. Man cannot transcend manhood; cannot, of himself, antedate and realise beforehand the ultimate perfection. Christ, both in personal character and in the essence of His teaching, is perfection: clearly beyond the plane of unaided human nature—a phenomenon to be expected, if evolution be true, in the future millennium, not one who has already fixed the admiring gaze of mankind for near two thousand years.

Taking Scripture as a whole, so far from being an outgrowth of human reason and philosophy, it is well nigh for ever in opposition to the wisdom of the world. Moreover, the antiquity of the writings places them at an earlier age than any in which such an evolution was possible. If the writings are not ancient and genuine, but modern and forgeries, how and when were they palmed on the nation as true? It must have been so cleverly done, that not a murmur of complaint has come down to us; not only so, the conception of such a Messiah as Christ was a revolution of the Jews' deepest principles. The spontaneous and natural projection from the Jewish mind of a Messiah, whose humble origin and condition, character teaching and ignominious death, have ever made Him an object of hatred to the race, is incredible and impossible. The only allegiance, moreover, which this Messiah accepts is a voluntary one, founded on the love of truth, the practice of piety, the exhibition of

holiness; yet, He claims universal empire; and predicts His own supreme rule over heart and mind and will throughout the world. In connection with, and a means of winning, such wide domain, is an intense spirit of proselytism: the Gospel must be proclaimed "to all nations under heaven," and preached "to every creature:" nevertheless, no sword must smite, no violence compel, no persecution hurt opponents; every victory must be gained by truth, graced by purity and illumined by love. The rights of conscience are held sacred, and the principle of toleration is consecrated. Such a system, to the Jews, a paradox; to the Gentiles, contemptible; and to the natural tendencies of our race, contrary; could neither originate nor continue unless by superhuman illumination and power. The genius of man, the wisdom of man, the civilisation of man, whenever departing from this Faith-whether for esoteric mysteries, or rationalistic interpretations have overshadowed and blighted doctrine and morality. Investigation confirms the affirmation-"the Bible is not such a book as man would make, if he could; or could make, if he would."

There are certain other peculiarities in Holy Scripture, of a remarkable and practical character, in which men, for the most part, go astray. The Via Intelligentiæ, the way of understanding is-" He that doeth the will of God shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." This one simple rule is the surest method of advancing in the knowledge of Divine Truth; and, indeed, the only effectual way of learning things of a sacred and practical nature; it leads to, and keeps in the right path ignorant men, like the Apostles, though worldly-wise men find the path hard to find and harder to keep. The soul, possessing this rectifying instrument of obedience, soon detects where a fallacy lies; and, as by a touch, discovers between the living and the dead.

A second peculiarity is, that while an unspiritual man works that he may justify himself and win merit; Scripture requires that utter abnegation of self which leads a man to rely wholly on God for power whether to think or do-then, from this death of self, the believer goes forth, in the power of new life, to obtain higher life.