is conveyed off, as it were, into the lifeless reservoirs of human contrivance, instead of flowing fresh from the living sources of the divine mind. Harsh and unnatural interpretations are imposed; arguments are violated, or misstated; figures and parables are pushed into minute and far-fetched novelties. Systems of theology are framed according to the taste and habits of the student, and not after the native simplicity of the divine word. A few passages are taken out of their connexion, and forced to an unnatural sense, and then the scriptures compelled to bend to that exposition. The various statements and arguments of the holy scriptures, instead of being diligently examined and compared, as so many phenomena, from which inferences are to be drawn with the care of the inductive philosophy-are hastily put together, reduced to a few rigid and unbending propositions, and are made the first principles of all subsequent advances. By these means the doctrine of the inspiration is overstrained and misapplied. The human part is forgotten. Men pass over and obliterate all the finer traits, all the hidden and gentle whispers of truth, all the less obvious, and yet natural and affecting impressions of character; all what Lord Bacon calls the "first flowings of the scriptures.

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We want," says that great author, “short,

sound, and judicious notes and observations on scripture, without running into common-places, pursuing controversies, or reducing those notes to artificial method; but leaving them quite loose and native. For certainly, as those wines which flow from the first treading of the grape, are sweeter and better than those forced out by the press, which gives them the roughness of the husk and the stone, so are those doctrines best and sweetest which flow from a gentle crush of the scriptures, and are not wrung into controversies and common-places."

III. Such a pliant yielding to the human impression of the language of scripture, connected with the firmest faith in all the parts of it, as infallibly inspired, is the main lesson to be derived from the doctrine we have been considering. Indeed, THE SPONTANEOUS DICTATE OF THE HUMBLE AND TEACHABLE MIND, when it once understands these illustrations of the plan on which the divine inspiration proceeds, is to submit at once to the divine wisdom. The first dictate of a penitent's heart, when he receives a revelation from God, is to bow implicitly to the discovery, both as to the matter and the means of it. The same temper of docility, on which we have all along insisted, will at once conduct him through the labyrinth

which human pride and unbelief have contrived to throw around the doctrine of inspiration. Neither of the classes of error to which I have adverted, will occur to him. The whole question will be settled the moment he apprehends the nature of the case. If God has given a revelation of his will, and has consigned all the parts of that revelation to books, by the hands of apostles endowed with miraculous qualifications, those books are the infallible word of God himself. They can contain no mixture whatever of mistake or error. If God has further been pleased to permit the sacred writers to exercise their own faculties; to employ all their natural and acquired knowledge; and to leave throughout an impression of human feeling in their way of delivering this revelation, then their books are to be interpreted and understood according to the ordinary rules of common life that awe only being preserved and that caution used in the application of those rules, which the solemnity of the occasion requires. Thus truth meets the mind, entire and simple in its own harmony and force. The human form of the writing lessens not the divine impress of the inspiration. Every part of the Bible is the unerring standard of religion. The main gift of God to man is this infallibly inspired rule. Its entire strength and inconceivable

dignity remain. The whole scripture is divine. It resembles not the mystic image seen by the Babylonish monarch, the feet of which were partly of iron and partly of miry clay; and which, smitten at length, fell prostrate and helpless but it stands erect and secure, its materials are all of heavenly origin; it rests in every part on the immediate support and power of God; and defies unshaken the violent assaults, and more secret aggressions of its foes.

But we have lingered too long on this particular question. It has drawn us off insensibly from the grandeur of the Christian evidences. It ought never to have been raised. Inspiration is involved in every part of the argument we have already considered, and will appear yet more distinctly in those branches of the internal evidences, to which we shall soon call your attention. But the question having been once agitated, it required to be thoroughly examined. It is the grand means of evasion in a literary period like the present. Men will allow every thing except the inspiration; because, from every thing else they can escape, and frame a Christianity to their own taste. Inspirationa full, unerring inspiration of every part of scripture-brings an obligation which no sophistry can elude; it leaves every part of truth

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in all its mighty energy; it makes its demands direct upon the conscience: whilst the human mould into which it is cast, augments the guilt of unbelief and disobedience, because it renders the misunderstanding of the revelation impossible, except where the mind is dishonest to itself.

Let us now rapidly REVIEW THE COURSE OVER

WHICH WE HAVE PASSED IN THE PRESENT VOLUME, AND CONCLUDE THE CONSIDERATION OF THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCES of the Christian faith.

It will be recollected, that our design has been to enable the Christian, and especially the young Christian, to give an answer to every man that asketh him a reason of the hope that is in him, with meekness and fear. With this view, we have endeavoured to combine the historical with the internal evidences, to give him such information as to the external proofs of Christianity, as may prepare him for those which spring from the intrinsic excellency of the gospel, and its holy effects on his heart and life. We have accordingly, not treated the argument abstractedly and formally, but as a matter of immediate interest and feeling. We have appealed continually to the conscience, and have enforced each topic with such practical addresses, as