every diligent and humble student. Every age leaves the difficulties lessened. We transmit to others those which we cannot surmount, as the preceding ages left us many which we have been enabled to elucidate. The same impress of majesty and yet simplicity, of clearness and yet mysteriousness, of main and great features, prominent and intelligible, and deep obscurities in the detail, appear in the book of nature and the book of Christianity.

6. I observe, therefore, lastly, that THE GREAT SCOPE AND ANALOGY OF TRUTH will either solve all material difficulties, or render them, in a practical view, so useful, as to produce perhaps better effects than if they were all explicitly solved. The main scope of the Bible is not civil history, poetry, philosophy, human science, critical niceties, beauties of style, artificial systems of theology; but the salvation of the soul of man, by faith in Christ Jesus. Every part of the Revelation tends to humble and abase the sinner, to honour and exalt the Saviour, and to promote holiness. A distinct conception of this main scope, will assist in forming a judgment as to the drift of passages where minor difficulties occur.

And there are many compendious and brilliant summaries of doctrine, which shine like the polar star, to direct and guide our course. In human compositions the spirit of a book is allowed to be every thing. "I Know," says the reader, "the author's mind; I see his scope; I perceive his main points. There are some things which I cannot so well understand; but I sink them in the mass of those which I do." Now if this is true as to human writings, how much more is it applicable to a book which is divinely-inspired

7 "The scope or purpose of the Spirit of God is not to express matters of nature in the Scriptures, otherwise than in passage, and for application to man's capacity, and to matters moral and divine. And it is a true rule, Auctoris aliud agentis parva auctoritas.""-Lord Bacon.

for one simple purpose, to guide me from earth to heaven, to reveal my fall and recovery, to teach me my duty and my happiness, to discover to me myself and my Saviour!

But this leads us to consider how all the preceding remarks should be amplified by—

III. THE RULES WHICH THE PARTICULAR CHARACTER OF THE INSPIRATION BELONGING TO THE BIBLE, SUGGESTS.

For there are various ways in which corrupt nature is likely to fail in the application of the general rules directly springing from faith, as well as from the particular details of them suggested by common sense and the ordinary laws of language. These dangers may probably lie on the side of drawing down the whole import of Revelation to a human level; forgetting the weight which the last and finishing portion of Revelation may claim; explaining away capital doctrines and duties among the temporary and local topics of different dispensations; weakening the grand distinction between what is real and vital, and what is only nominal in Christianity; omitting to take in the place and use and proportion and effects of each truth, with the truth itself; forcing the simple meaning of Scripture either to express or exclude mysteries according to our own turn of mind; and attempting too much to reduce into system what perhaps God has never intended we should be able to effect.

Now to guard against these evils, which spring from our fallen nature, let us ever keep in mind the peculiar character of inspiration which the Bible possesses. And, therefore, let the matter of Revelation suggest, in these respects, our rules of interpretation.

1. Let us RISE то THE SUBLIMITY OF THE SCRIPTURAL MYSTERIES, and not bring down these mysteries to our petty conceptions. The things of Scripture are new, grand, stupendous, inconceivable.

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When we first discover them in the Holy Scriptures by a true faith, we are lost in the contemplation of the greatness of the ever-blessed God, in the majesty of his works, in the orders of his providence, in the incarnation of his only-begotten Son, in the sacrifice of redemption, in the operations of the Holy Spirit. But when we afterwards become involved in the human rules of interpretation, we are in danger of sinking in our estimate of truth. "We are to use reason in religion every where," says my Lord Bacon, only the mind must be enlarged to the greatness of the mystery, and not the mystery contracted to the narrowness of the mind." The words of Scripture are plain, the language generally perspicuous; we think we seize the interpretation because no difficulties occur. But we must continually rise to the elevation, the vastness, the glory of the divine theme. We must not insensibly lower the Revelation, but aim at enlightening and expanding our minds to the amplitude of the discoveries. We must conceive of them according to their transcendent grandeur, and long for the future world to unfold them to us more adequately. This is to act indeed as faith demands. This is to act as we, worms of the earth, are called to do in studying a Revelation from the eternal and infinite God.

2. We must give to the LAST AND FINISHING Portion of REVELATION THAT WEIGHT WHICH IT MAY JUSTLY CLAIM. For as it has pleased God to make the discoveries of his grace gradual, from the first dawn of promise to the full effulgence of the gospel day, we must follow the augmenting light, and expound all the preceding instructions in the tone and glory of the consummating development. This is more important, as our Lord expressly promised the Holy Spirit to guide the apostles into the fulness of that truth which they were not able to bear, and which he did not discover, during his abode upon earth. Not that we are to undervalue the preceding portions

of the sacred records, or to omit giving a proportionate importance to all its instructions; but we are to bestow the largest share of attention on the evangelical economy, and more especially on the apostolical epistles, because they contain the last and most explicit declarations of the divine will. To confine our regards to the Psalms, the Sermon on the mount, the Gospels, is not faith but self-will. To stop at the standard of the Mosaic or prophetical discoveries, is to depreciate the apostolical. To linger about the foot of the mountain of inspiration, instead of ascending to its summit and taking the commanding views and the widened prospects which there stretch around, is neither honourable to God nor advantageous to the interest of truth. It is to lose ALL. It is to sink down to natural reason and a darker dispensation and preparatory truth when God calls us to the accomplishing and perfect revelation of his will. Our rules, therefore, of interpretation will be misapplied, or rather will be insufficient, if we bring down the gospel dispensation to the previous imperfect and introductory ones, instead of elevating all the preceding portions of the Bible by that which closes and illustrates the whole. And human nature so strongly tends to deterioration, to low views of truth, to self-reliance, that the stronger guard is necessary in our study of the Scriptures, to watch the divine tract, and rise with the rising light of inspiration.

3. It follows that we must not ALLOW WHAT IS TEMPORARY, LOCAL, AND EXTRAORDINARY, TO HIDE THE LUSTRE OF WHAT IS PERMANENT AND

BINDING. For the Bible was not written for one age merely, or one country, or one portion of the church; but for all times, all places, all circumstances. The Bible is not merely the inheritance of Europe in the eighteenth century, but was the guide of Asia and Africa in many preceding ages; and is to be the teacher of the whole world in some future time. The

Bible contains the Patriarchal and Mosaical covenants, which have passed away; as well as the evangelical, which remains. The Bible gives the temporary events of the first establishment of the gospel, and the extraordinary powers exercised by Moses and the prophets, and by Christ and his apostles; as well as the permanent and ordinary doctrines and promises which are to illuminate and sustain the church in all times.

There is, therefore, an obvious distinction to be made between temporary, local, and extraordinary matters, and those which are of undeviating and paramount obligation. Human nature loves ceremonies, pomp, external appearance. Human nature soon forgets the infinite grace and power of the Christian redemption, and loses herself amidst the figures and adumbrations of the law, the enactments of the Jewish polity, the directions and rules laid down for the early churches. Human nature is especially in danger of merging the sanctifying and permanent influence of the Holy Ghost, in the temporary and extraordinary power of miraculous operations. The interpreter of Scripture must modify and elevate his views by this important consideration. Much, no doubt, is local and peculiar in the Bible, which, under the Christian dispensation, is either not binding at all, or not binding to the extent that it was under the law. The prophets have much local matter. The divine mission of our Lord has much peculiar to his office. The extraor dinary powers of the apostles, and the wonderful gifts of the Spirit, which ceased after the days of the first Christians, make a considerable difference in the mode of the doctrines delivered, in the confirmation of religion, and in the evidences of grace and faith.

Yet, in the midst of all this, there is a grand, exalted, permanent doctrine, an explication of the divine will designed for all times: manifestations of God's purposes of salvation in Christ Jesus, which remain