but its exposition and paraphrase-Yea. In such minds the words of our Lord and the declarations of St. Paul can awaken no other sense. To those on the other hand, who find the doctrine senseless and self-confuting, and who take up the Bible as they do other books, and apply to it the same rules of interpretation-Nay.

And lastly, he who, like myself, recognizes in neither of the two the state of his own mind-who cannot rest in the former, and feels, or fears, a presumptuous spirit in the negative dogmatism of the latter-he has his answer to seek. But so far I dare hazard a reply to the question-In what other sense can the words be interpreted?-beseeching you, however, to take what I am about to offer but as an attempt to delineate an arc of oscillationthat the eulogy of St. Paul is in no wise contravened by the opinion to which I incline, who fully believe the Old Testament collectively, both in the composition and its preservation, a great and precious gift of Providence; who find in it all that the Apostle describes, and who more than believe that all which the Apostle spoke of was divine inspiration, and a blessing intended for as many as are in communion with the Spirit thrö all ages. And I freely confess that my whole heart would turn away with an angry impatience from the cold and captious mortal who, the moment I had been pouring out the love and gladness of my soul— while book after book, Law, and Truth, and Example, Oracle and lovely Hymn, and choral Song of ten thousand thousands, and accepted Prayers of Saints and Prophets, sent back, as it were, from Heaven, like doves, to be let loose again with a new freight of spiritual joys and griefs and necessities, were passing across my memory-at the first pause of my voice, and whilst my countenance was still speaking-should ask me, whether I was thinking of the Book of Esther, or meant particularly to include the first six chapters of Daniel, or verses 6-20 of the 109th Psalm, or the last verse of the 137th Psalm! Would any conclusion of this sort be drawn in any other analogous case? In the course of my Lectures on Dramatic Poetry, I in half a score instances referred my auditors to the precious volume before me-Shaksperc―and spoke enthusiastically, both in general and with detail of particular beauties, of the plays of Shakspere as all in their kinds, and in relation to the purposes of the writer, excellent. Would it have been fair, or according to the common usage and understanding of inen, to have inferred an intention on my part to decide the question respecting Titus Andronicus, or the larger portion of the three parts of Henry VI? Would not every genial mind understand by Shakspere, that unity or total impression comprizing, and resulting from, the thousandfold several and particular emotions of delight, admiration, gratitude, excited by his works? But if it be answered-'Aye! but we must not interpret St. Paul as we may and should interpret any other honest and intelligent writer or speaker’— then, I say, this is the very petitio principii of which I complain.

Still less do the words of our Lord (John v. 39) apply against my view.. Have I not declared-do I not begin by declaring-that whatever is referred by the sacred Penman to a direct communication from God, and wherever it is recorded that the Subject of the history had asserted himself to have received this or that command, this or that information or assurance, from a superhuman Intelligence, or where the writer in his own person, and in the character of an historian, relates that the Word of the Lord came unto priest, prophet, chieftain, or other individual-have I not declared that I receive the same with full belief, and admit its inappealable authority?

Analogies, if well chosen, are the windows of argument, which let light in. Coleridge again recurs to the aid of analogy, and is most apt in his selection :

*

Suppose a Life of Sir Thomas More by his son-in-law, or a Life of Lord Bacon by his chaplain; that a part of the records of the Court of Chancery belonging to these periods were lost; that in Roper's or in Rawley's biographical work there were preserved a series of dicta

and judgments attributed to these illustrious Chancellors, many and important specimens of their table discourses, with large extracts from works written by them, and from some that are no longer extant. Let it be supposed, too, that there are no grounds, internal or external, to doubt either the moral, intellectual, or circumstantial competence of the biographers. Suppose, moreover, that wherever the opportunity existed of collating their documents and quotations with the records and works still preserved, the former were found substantially correct and faithful, the few differences in no wise altering or disturbing the spirit and purpose of the paragraphs in which they were found, and that of what was not collatable, and to which no test ab extra could be applied, the far larger part bore witness in itself of the same spirit and origin: and that, not only by its characteristic features, but by its surpassing excellence, it rendered the chances of its having had any other author than the giant-mind to whom the biographer ascribes it, small indeed! Now, from the nature and objects of my pursuits, I have, we will suppose, frequent occasion to refer to one or other of these works; for example, to Dicta et Facta Francisci de Verulam. At one time I might refer to the work in some such words as-Remember what Francis of Verulam said or judged;' or— 'If you believe not me, yet believe Lord Bacon.' At another time I might take the running title of the volume, and at another, the name of the biographer ;- Turn to your Rawley! He will set you right;' or- There you will find a depth, which no research will ever exhaust:' or whatever other strong expression my sense of Bacon's greatness, and of the intrinsic worth and the value of the proofs and specimens of that greatness, contained and preserved in that volume, would excite and justify. But let my expressions be as vivid and unqualified as the most sanguine temperament ever inspired, would any man of sense conclude from them that I meant-and meant to make others believe-that not only each and all of these anecdotes, adages, extracts, incidents, had been dictated, word by word, by Lord Bacon; and that all Rawley's own observations and inferences, all the connectives and disjunctives, all the recollections of time, place, and circumstance, together with the order and succession of the narrative, were in like manner dictated and revised by the spirit of the deceased Chancellor? The answer will be-must be-No man in his senses ! 'No man in his senses—in this instance; but in that of the Bible it is quite otherwise; for (I take it as an admitted point that) it—is quite otherwise!'

If the doctrine be less decisively Scriptural in its application to the New Testament or the Christian Canon, the temptation to doubt it is likewise less. So at least we are led to infer ; since in point of fact it is the apparent or imagined contrast, the diversity of spirit which sundry individuals have believed themselves to find in the Old Testament and in the Gospel, that has given occasion to the doubt; and, in the heart of thousands who yield a faith of acquiescence to the contrary, and find rest in their humility-supplies fuel to a fearful wish that it were permitted to make a distinction.

The question, Why should I not believe the Scriptures thröout, dictated, in word and thought, by an Infallible Intelligence ?'-he admits to be a fair one. So it is; for tho, heaven wots, we have had ample experience of the delusions palmed upon us by churches and priests, yet, in the case of all general traditions, there will be found some ground of fact or truth, and this, however small, furnishes a presumption, to some extent, in favor of the existing creed, which demands from the Doubter, positive evidence to overturn, or limit it. Eagerly and earnestly, therefore, does Coleridge proceed to adduce his reasons for rejecting the dogma which converts Moses and the Prophets, Christ and the Apostles, into the mere organs of a Divine Ventriloquist! and all the human Portraitures and individual Characterizing, which so beautifully mark the Scriptures, into a Divine Comedy—a sham and not a reality!

For every reason that makes me prize and revere these Scriptures-prize them, love them, revere them, beyond all other books! Why should I not? Because the doctrine in question petrifies at once the whole body of Holy Writ, with all its harmonies and symmetrical gradations the flexile and the rigid-the supporting hard and the clothing soft--the blood which is the life-the intelligencing nerves, and the rudely woven, but soft and springy, cellular substance, in which all are embedded and lightly bound together. This breathing organism, this glorious panharmonicon, which I had seen stand on its feet as a man, and with a man's voice given to it, the Doctrine in question turns at once into a colossal Memnon's head, a hollow passage for a voice, a voice that mocks the voices of many men, and speaks in their names, and yet is but one voice and the same; and no man uttered it, and never in a human heart was it conceived! Why should I not ?-Because the Doctrine evacuates of all sense and efficacy the sure and constant tradition, that all the several books bound up together in our precious family Bibles, were composed in different and widely distant ages, under the greatest diversity of circumstances, and degrees of light and information, and yet that the composers, whether as uttering, or as recording what was uttered and what was done, were all actuated by a pure and Holy Spirit, one and the same (for is there any spirit pure and holy, and yet not proceeding from God-and yet not proceeding in and with the Holy Spirit ?)—one Spirit, working diversely [i.e. in various ways], now awakening strength, and now glorifying itself in weakness, now giving power and direction to knowlege, and now taking away the sting from error! Ere the summer and the months of ripening had arrived for the heart of the race; while the whole sap of the tree was crude, and each and every fruit lived in the harsh and bitter principle; even then this spirit withdrew its chosen ministers from the false and guilt-making centre of Self. It converted the wrath into a form and an organ of love, and on the passing storm-cloud imprest the fair rainbow of promise to all generations. Put the lust of self in the forkt lightning, and would it not be a Spirit of Moloch? But God maketh the lightnings his ministers, fire and hail, vapors and stormy winds fulfilling his word.

Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord; curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof— sang Deborah. Was it that she called to mind any personal wrongs-rapine or insult— that she or the house of Lapidoth had received from Jabin or Sisera? No; she had dwelt under her palm tree in the depth of the mountain. But she was a mother in Israel; and with a mother's heart, and with the vehemency of a mother's and a patriot's love, she had shot the light of love from her eyes, and poured the blessings of love from her lips, on the people that had jeoparded their lives unto the death against the oppressors; and the bitterness, awakened and borne aloft by the same love, she precipitated in curses on the selfish and coward recreants who came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty. As long as I have the image of Deborah before my eyes, and while 1 throw myself back into the age, country, circumstances, of this Hebrew Bonduca, in the not yet tamed chaos of the spiritual creation-as long as I contemplate the impassioned, high-souled, heroic woman in all the prominence and individuality of will and character-I feel as if I were among the first ferments of the great affections--the proplastic waves of the microcosmic chaos, swelling up against-and yet towards-the outspread wings of the Dove that lies brooding on the troubled waters. So long all is well-all replete with instruction and example. In the fierce and inordinate, I am made to know and be grateful for the clearer and purer radiance which shines on a Christian's paths, neither blunted by the preparatory veil, nor crimsoned in its struggle thrö the all-enwrapping mist of the world's ignorance; whilst in the self-oblivion of these heroes of the Old Testament-their elevation above all low and individual interests-above all, in the entire and vehement devotion of their total being to the service of their divine Master-I find a lesson of humility, a ground of humiliation, and a shaming, yet rousing, example of faith and fealty. But let me once be persuaded

that all these heart-awakening utterances of human hearts-of men of like faculties and passions with myself, mourning, rejoicing, suffering, triumphing—are but as a Divina Commedia of a SUPERHUMAN (O bear with me if I say) VENTRILOQUIST-that the royal Harper, to whom I have so often submitted myself as a many-stringed instrument for his fire-tipt fingers to traverse, while every several nerve of emotion, passion, thought, that thrills the flesh-and-blood of our common humanity, responded to the touch--that this sweet Psalmist of Israel was himself as mere an instrument as his harp, an automaton poet, mourner, and supplicant; ALL IS GONE-ALL SYMPATHY, AT LEAST, AND ALL EXAMPLE. I listen in

awe and fear, but likewise in perplexity and confusion of spirit.

Yet one other instance, and let this be the crucial test of the Doctrine. Say that the Book of Job thröout was dictated by an infallible Intelligence. Then reperuse the book, and still, as you proceed, try to apply the tenet: try if you can even attach any sense or semblance of meaning to the speeches which you are reading. What! were the hollow truisms, the unsufficing half-truths, the false assumptions and malignant insinuations of the supercilious bigots who corruptly defended the truth: were the impressive facts, the piercing outcries, the pathetic appeals, and the close and powerful reasoning with which the poor sufferer-smarting at once from his wounds, and from the oil of vitriol which the Orthodox liars for God were dropping into them-impatiently, but uprightly and holily, controverted this truth, while in will and in spirit he clung to it; were both dictated by an infallible In. telligence? Alas! if I may judge from the manner in which both indiscriminately are recited, quoted, appealed to, preacht upon, by the routiniers of desk and pulpit, I cannot doubt that they think so―or rather, without thinking, take for granted that so they are to think; the more readily, perhaps, because the so-thinking supersedes the necessity of all afterthought.

Yes! the Scriptures bear the deep stamp of individual humanity-the records of men 'moved' indeed 'by the Holy Ghost,' but still human, giving tokens of human thought, human passion, and human infirmity. This cannot be all a mockery, all seeming: there is sincerity in the Scriptures-whatever Satan may impelthe orthodox liars for God' to affirm.

Letter IV is pregnant with the wisest instruction. We shall quote liberally from it :

You reply to the conclusion of my Letter: 'Let nothings count for nothing, and the dead bury the dead. Who but such ever understood the Tenet in this sense?'

In what sense, then, I rejoin, do others understand it? If, with exception of the passages already excepted, the Tenet in this sense be inapplicable to the Scripture, destructive of its noblest purposes, and contradictory to its own express declarations—again and again I ask:What am I to substitute? What other sense is conceivable that does not destroy the doctrine which it professes to interpret-that does not convert it into its own negative? I must still avow my belief that, however flittingly and unsteadily, as thrö a mist, it is the Doctrine which the generality of our popular divines receive as orthodox, and this the sense which they attach to the words.

For on what other ground can I account for the whimsical subintelligiturs of our numerous harmonists-for the curiously inferred facts, the inventive circumstantial detail, the complemental and supplemental history which, in the utter silence of all historians and absence of all historical documents, they bring to light by mere force of logic? And all to do away with some half-score apparent discrepancies in the chronicles and memoirs of the Old and New Testaments-discrepances so analogous to what is found in all other narratives of the same story by several narrators, so analogous to what is found in all other known and

trusted histories by cotemporary historians, when they are collated with each other (nay, not seldom when either historian is compared with himself), as to form in the eyes of all competent judges a characteristic mark of the genuineness, independency, and (if I may apply the word to a book) the veraciousness of each several document; a mark, the absence of which would warrant a suspicion of collusion, invention, or at best of servile transcription—discrepancies so trifling in circumstance and import, that, altho in some instances it is highly probable, and in all instances perhaps possible, that they are only apparent and reconcilable, no wise man would care a straw whether they were real or apparent, reconciled or left in harmless and friendly variance. What, I ask, could have induced learned and intelligent divines to adopt or sanction subterfuges, which, neutralizing the ordinary criteria of full or defective evidence in historical documents, would, taken as a general rule, render all collation and cross-examination of written records ineffective, and obliterate the main character by which authentic histories are distinguisht from those traditional tales which each successive reporter enlarges and fashions to his own fancy and purpose, and every different edition of which more or less contradicts the other? What, I say, could have tempted grave and pious man thus to disturb the foundation of the Temple, in order to repair a petty breach or rat-hole in the wall, or fasten a loose stone or two in the outer court, if not an assumed necessity arising out of the peculiar character of Bible history?

The substance of the syllogism by which their procedure was justified to their own minds, can be no other than this. That, without which two assertions-both of which must be alike true and correct-would contradict each other, and consequently be, one or both, false or incorrect, must itself be true. But every word and syllable existing in the original text of the Canonical Books, from the Cherethi and Phelethi of David,b to the name in the copy of a family register, the site of a town, or the course of a river, were dictated to the sacred amanuensis by an infallible Intelligence! Here there can be neither more nor less. Important or unimportant gives no ground of difference; and the number of the writers as little. The Secretaries may have been many--the Historian was one and the same, and he infallible. This is the minor of the syllogism; and if it could be proved, the conclusion would be at least plausible; and there would be but one objection to the procedure, namely, its uselessFor if it have been proved already, what need of proving it over again, and by means—the removal, namely, of apparent contradictions-which the infallible Author did not think good to employ? But if it have not been proved, what becomes of the argument which derives its whole force and legitimacy from the assumption?

ness.

In fact, it is clear that the harmonists and their admirers, held and understood the Doctrine literally. And must not that divine likewise have so understood it, who, in answer to a question concerning the transcendent blessedness of Jael, and the righteousness of the act in which she inhospitably, treacherously, perfidiously murdered in sleep, the confiding sleep, closed the controversy by observing that he wanted no better morality than that of the Bible, and no other proof of an action's being praiseworthy than that the Bible had declared it worthy to be praised; an observation, as applied in this instance, so slanderous to the morality and moral spirit of the Bible as to be inexplicable, except as a consequence of the Doctrine in dispute? But let a man be once fully persuaded that there is no difference between the two positions-The Bible contains the religion revealed by God,' and 'Whatever is contained in the Bible, is religion, and was revealed by God;' and that whatever can be said of the Bible, collectively taken, may and must be said of each and every sentence of the Bible, taken for and by itself; and I no longer wonder at these paradoxes. I only object to the inconsistency of those who profess the same belief, and yet affect to look down with a contemptuous or compassionate smile on John Wesley for rejecting the Copernican system as incompatible therewith; or who exclaim Wonderful!' when they hear that Sir Matthew

b 2 Sam. xx. 23; 1 Chron. xviii. 17.