this dress, however, they paved the way to purer abstractions; they sharpened the attention, awoke a passion for reflecting, and enriched the language with forms significant of pure thought.

5.

Among these thinkers, Plato is the man worthy of the highest admiration. In order to impute to the Divine principle, as little as possible the origin of evil and of imperfections, he separated it from matter, and made Goodness its fundamental character. Goodness (to agathon,) produced from itself the Understanding, the highest Reason, (nous, logos;) this arranged the wild powers of matter, as far as they were susceptible of arrangement, according to the essential being of things themselves, to eternal Ideas and Forms. The pure and the impure, the fixed and the transient, the substance and the appearance were mingled together; they became the Soul of the World, to which he ascribed the quickening and sustaining of all forms; they became inferior Deities, (Demons) to whose agency he referred the formation of the visible creation.

All this he tells in dialogues, as the dialogue furnished materials, piece by piece, now in this and now in that dress of language; so that it would be a desperate undertaking to seek in him one and the same diction throughout, as if he had written a system, a dogmatical treatise. He chose, and he was obliged to clothe his investigations in the varied forms of conversation, and to adopt in part, and reject in part the reigning Mythology of his land. Without regard to the time, place and circumstances, to the persons speaking, and to the particular purpose of the dress assumed, Plato must remain to the reader a perplexing guide, as he must necessarily be in these after times, when we hear his Socrates speaking not in Athens, but under other skies and surrounded by other objects, from our different point of view, confusing all things together.

6.

When the conquest of Alexander had spread the Greek language through Africa and Asia, even to India, so that it became the common language of the collective world, it was Plato's fate also to undergo this intermixture. In Asia and Egypt there arose Greeks, who, far from Athens and from the age of Pericles, read Plato in their own way, and explained and modified his ideas after their own mode of thinking. He received an Asiatic-Egyptian colouring: the modest countenance with the wings of Psyche, which they commonly ascribe to him, became a sun-like face, decked with a crown of dazzling rays.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

J. S. D.

VOL. VIII.-9

THE COMPLETION.-HERDER.

Amos visited one day his friend Bildad, and lo! he found him with his gray head supported on both hands, and weeping bitterly.

Then said Amos to his friend: Why weepest thou?

But Bildad pointed with his hand to a bed which stood in the chamber, and on the bed lay the corpse of a youth, the only son of Bildad, who had been carried off by a contagion. Seest thou, said Bildad, there lies my hope, a prey to corruption.

Thy hope! answered Amos with sorrow; but will not my friend's faith assuage and conquer his anguish?

Then answered Bildad, and said: Ah! my faith is weak and exhausted, since my love and hope have been disappointed so sadly. Have I not with careful hand trained and fostered the excellent talents of the boy? And now, when they were every day approaching their perfection, *

*

*
*

*

A torrent of tears interrupted the Father's discourse. But Amos was for some time silent. Then he said to Bildad: It grieves and distresses thee that thou couldst not complete thy work. And how, Bildad, shall not that Eternal Love, which gave the youth his soul and powers, complete what it has begun!

C. T. B.

SHEPHERD'S SUNDAY SONG.-UHLAND.

'Tis the Lord's day indeed!

On the broad meadow all alone,

I hear one morning-bell's deep tone

Die far o'er hill and mead.

In prayer I bend the knee;

O sweet devotion! bliss profound!
Methinks unseen ones throng around,

And kneel in prayer with me.

Silence o'er hill and mead!

The skies so solemn, still and bright, Heaven seems just opening to the sight, "Tis the Lord's day indeed!

C. T. B.

WHAT

THE BIBLE:

IT IS, AND WHAT IT IS NOT.

BY REV. JAMES MARTINEAU.

(CONTINUED FROM THE LAST NUMBER.)

But though the divine perfection and authority of Christ may thus be made manifest to our moral and spiritual nature, what is called the plenary inspiration of the whole Bible is by no means a thing equally self-evident. By the term plenary inspiration is denoted the doctrine, That every idea which a just interpretation may discover in the Scriptures, is infallibly true, and that even every word employed in its expression is dictated by the unerring spirit of God; so that every statement, from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelations, must be implicitly received, "as though from the lips of the Almighty himself." We are first assured that whoever denies this, shall have his name cancelled from the Book of life; and then we are called upon to come forward, and say plainly whether we believe it. The invitation sounds terrible enough. Nevertheless, having a faith in God, which takes the awe out of Church thunders, I say distinctly, this doctrine we do not believe; and ere I have done, I hope to show that no man who can weigh evidence, ought to believe it.

I

It is clear that, by no interior marks, can a book prove this sort of inspiration to belong to itself. Accordingly, the advocates for it are obliged to quit the intrinsic evidence, of which I have hitherto spoken, and to seek external and foreign testimony on behalf of the Biblical writings, and of the New Testament in the first instance. The course of the reasoning is thus adverted to by Bishop Marsh: "The arguments which are used," he says, "for divine inspiration, are all founded on the previous supposition that the Bible is true; for we appeal to the contents of the Bible in proof of inspiration. Consequently, these arguments can have no force till the authenticity and credibility of the Bible have been already established."

*Lectures on the Criticism and Interpretation of the Bible. Preliminary Lecture II, p. 35.

"Suppose," observes the same author, "that a professor of Divinity begins his course of lectures with the doctrine of divine inspiration; this doctrine, however true in itself, or however certain the arguments by which it may be established, cannot possibly, in that stage of his enquiry, be proved to the satisfaction of his audience; because he has not yet established other truths, from which this must be deduced. For whether he appeals to the promises of Christ to his Apostles, or to the declarations of the Apostles themselves, he must take for granted that these promises and declarations were really made; i. e. he must take for granted the authenticity of the writings in which these promises and declarations are recorded. But how is it possible that conviction should be the consequence of postulating, instead of proving, a fact of such importance?" "If (as is too often the case in theological works) we undertake to prove a proposition by the aid of another which is hereafter to be proved, the inevitable consequence is, that the proposition in question becomes a link in the chain by which we establish that very proposition, which at first was taken for granted. Thus we prove premises from inferences, as well as inferences from premises; or, in other words, we prove-nothing."*

In perfect consistency with these remarks, it may be stated that we must

(1st.) Ascertain that the books under examination are selfconsistent, and that they contain nothing at variance with the character of God impressed upon his works.

(2ndly.) Enquire whether the writings are really the productions of the authors whose names they bear; or, in other words, determine their authenticity.

(3dly.) Whether the writers were in circumstances to know what they relate, and were persons of character and veracity. (4thly.) Whether we have the works in an unmutilated state, and as they came from the pens of the authors.

If all these researches should have an issue favourable to the writings, it has been conceived, for reasons which I think very inconclusive, that the following inferences may be drawn:

(1.) That the whole contents of the Bible have divine authority, because they truly report the fulfilment of prophecy, and the performance of miracles; and all the doctrines and lessons of a person who works miracles must have divine authority.

(2.) That the writers were so inspired, that their writings are, in all respects, infallibly correct; for, among the facts *Preliminary Lecture, I. pp. 4, 5.

narrated, (and which we admit to be true) is this one; that the Holy Ghost was promised to the Apostles, and actually descended on the disciples assembled on the day of Pentecost, and was so extensively communicated through them to the early church, that no New Testament writer could be without it. So that these books are as strictly the Word of God, as if all their statements proceeded at once and immediately, from the lips of the Almighty himself.

As "the Word of God" is a beautiful Scriptural phrase, which I must refuse to give up to this most unscriptural idea, I shall replace it, when I wish to speak of verbal inspiration, by the more appropriate expression, the Words of God. I discern in the Bible the Word of God, but by no means the Words of God.

For the sake of brevity, I may be allowed to compress this elaborate system of external evidence into two successive divisions; and taking up the first Gospel as an example, I should say, we have to enquire respecting it,

(1.) Whether we have the words of St. Matthew. And if this be determined in the affirmative,

(2.) Whether we have the words of God.

(1.) Our first attempt then must be, to establish the origin of these books from Apostles or Apostolic men-which is the sole ground for affirming their infallibility. The method by which their origin must be ascertained is admitted to be similar to that which would be employed in the case of any work not sacred. It is an enquiry altogether historical or antiquarian; a process of literary identification. We must collect, and dispose along an ascending chronological line, the various writers who have quoted and mentioned the New Testament writings; call each, in turn, into the court of criticism, to speak to the identity of the work he cites, with that which we possess; and if the series of witnesses be complete-if, in following into antiquity the steps of their attestation, we find ourselves in contact with the Apostolic age, and near the seats of Apostolic labours, we justly conclude that we have the genuine and original productions. By the help of this foreign testimony, almost all the books of the New Testament may be traced perhaps to the middle of the second century; the remaining fifty or sixty years to the death of St. John, and eighty or ninety to that of the Apostle of the Gentiles, must be filled up by arguments, showing that this chasm is too small for the possibilities of forgery and mistake to take effect. The results of this process are not fit matter for detailed criticism here; I will simply state, in general, that they yield a prepon