to begin by assuming premises which can neither be proved nor disproved, and to decline all appeal to fact and experience at the end. But happily no one would wish to discover a theoretical perfection of this kind in religious truth. Most persons would at once acknowledge, that they needed less a Gospel consistent and coherent in itself, than one which should give a coherency to things and ideas which are in their nature disposed to separate, and should knit together, by the bonds of hope and faith and love, life and death, this world and the next, God and man, man and his brethren. For this purpose, theories such as we have mentioned are by themselves wholly insufficient. To make them bear upon the spiritual life, they require additions which seem to supersede their necessity. With all their show of completeness, it will, I believe, appear that they are, for more than one reason, inoperative.

And first, as regards the letter of Holy Scripture. Between it, and any theory about the spiritual state of its writers, there lies an important interval. Had we the most

absolute certainty that, as they wrote it, its every word and letter was unchangeable truth and perfection, it will not follow that we can say as much of it, as we read it. We have no sufficient reason to believe that we read in every case exactly what they wrote; and much reason to believe the contrary. Let us remember some of the facts, as they concern the New Testament. The close of St Mark's Gospel is, it is now generally admitted, written by another hand. There are two passages in St John's Gospel, one describing the particulars of a miracle, the other narrating a Divine act of mercy, which judicious criticism is slow to receive1. The famous passage about the three heavenly witnesses, though it still stands in the services of our Church, is now generally surrendered; and a textual uncertainty, not I believe without a very significant and precious meaning, hangs about several important texts which bear upon the Divinity of our blessed Lord'. With regard to the whole Gospel of St Matthew, it is not yet decided whether we receive it in the original,

1 Note IX.

2 Note X.

or as a translation; and those who know anything about translations are aware of the importance of the point in question. It should not be forgotten that Holy Scripture is, to the immense majority of its readers, wholly a translation, in which of course not one word occurs exactly as it was first written. It may be added, that all but thoroughly practised scholars, when they consult the Greek Testament in the original, though they read in Greek, think in English, and thus in fact translate for themselves, and are liable to all the errors of translators. Thus then stand the facts. After three centuries, at the least, of oral tradition and transcription, we see at length a text of the sacred books begin to emerge. Its general fidelity is unshaken; but we cannot doubt that here and there alterations have been made, even in important passages. We do not read exactly what the authors wrote. Some changes have been made in that veil of words, through which mind discourses with mind.

But to all this an answer at once occurs to the fair and candid thinker. We shrink

instinctively from any view which stakes great and enduring interests simply on verbal and textual criticism. Surely, it strikes us, these documents, so old and venerable, for so many centuries the care of Christendom, read prayerfully, transcribed carefully, preserved diligently, are not corrupt and untrustworthy, like salt which has lost its savour. Through three or four centuries, during which we cannot accurately trace their text, their Divine author doubtless guarded them, that they might move a long chain of centuries afterwards. Are we to think that transcribers and translators have done unintentional harm to the cause which they wished to serve, and have hidden the burning lamp of truth in their mistaken caution, or have well nigh extinguished it in their careless haste to pass it on from hand to hand? Is not the very contrary the better and the truer supposition? If we retain, and are content to retain certain passages in our Bibles, which we have reason to believe are alterations or insertions, has not this conduct its moral? We must not make it an excuse, indeed, for any unfairness

and disingenuousness. We must acknowledge on due occasion, what the facts of the case are, and freely admit that there may be similar cases, few or many, where we cannot trace them, and it may be do not suspect them. But may we not still rest in the hope that meanwhile God, while committing His truth to human and fallible means, has not ceased to care for it, that the laws of transmission which modify it do not destroy it, and the very Icloud which covers it is luminous with an undying light, because the Sun is behind it?

A most true, I believe, and a most happy hope. But in what lies its cheering virtue? Is it not in this-that while it recognises the Spirit of God as working, in an especial sense, with the first authors of Holy Writ, it recognises also the Providence of God as directing its subsequent history? It robs the distant past of nothing; but it also glorifies the present. It allows us to see a moral in doubt, and a meaning in obscurity. It bids us look, with a real though discriminating reverence, not only on the sacred Word, and on the pillar on which God has graven it, but also,