shows a noble confidence in the power of truth to shield her champion. His elevation above the ordinary prejudices of his school is very remarkable, and as we shall soon have occasion to show, is maintained by him at great sacrifices.

We know not when we have seen the simple but all important truth for which we have so long been contending, of the rightful use of reason in the interpretation of Scripture, better stated than in the following passage.

"But here I am accosted again by the stern interrogatory, What right has Reason to demand satisfaction at all on a point of doctrine addressed solely to Faith? To this I reply, that reason certainly has a rightful claim to be clearly informed as to what is the doctrine to be believed; nor can it possibly be required to forego its prerogatives in dealing with a professed revelation from heaven, containing the points to which our assent is demanded. While it is the office of reason reverently to receive all that God has clearly and incontrovertibly taught, reason must still act in determining the true sense of what He has taught. It is human reason that originates the rules of interpretation for the inspired volume, and we claim nothing more for it than its appropriate function, when it is thus called in to decide the meaning of revelation. This meaning, when really attained, must always be in harmony with its own oracles. All truth must of necessity be eternally consistent with itself. No man is required to hold views of revelation to which a sound and enlightened science or philosophy can solidly object. No intelligent believer in the Bible will yield the rationality of his faith to the skeptical assailant. He will give to no one on this score a vantage-ground on which he can laugh in his sleeve at the weakness or credulity which receives, as points of faith, dogmas at war with known facts or unimpeachable deductions. If the averments of that word which professes to have emanated from the Omniscient Spirit, clash with any positive, fixed, irrefragable truth in the universe, then the word itself must be a forgery and a lie; for God would never set one truth in contradiction to another. Panoplied by this principle, which is as firm as the perpetual hills, if, in the careful scanning of that word, the letter speaks a language contrary to clearly ascertained facts in nature and science, he will take it as a type, figure, allegory, metaphor, symbol, accommodation, anthropomorphism - anything, rather than the declaration of absolute verity. His Bible comes from the same source with the philosopher's boasted reason. God is the Infinite Reason, and it is impossible that the reception of his word can involve the denial of that lofty prerogative in man." -pp. x, xi.

This is admirable, and concedes all that we have ever claimed, and all that is necessary in our judgment to justify those changes in opinion, which have usually been attacked as the results of that proud reasoning, which refuses to believe the contradictory and the absurd out of respect to the mere letter of the Scriptures.

While we approve highly the spirit and general tenor of the Introduction in support of the proposition that the knowledge of revelation is progressive, we think it important to correct the form of this proposition. Professor Bush confounds "the Scriptures" and "revelation." All that his introduction proves to our mind is, that the understanding of the Scriptures is progressive. His arguments indeed bear on both points, but so far as they relate to revelation itself they are not satisfactory.

We do not know that it has ever been denied that geographical, archæological, philological investigations are throwing light upon the Scriptures, nor is there any jealousy in any quarter within our observation of this sort of illumination. All are ready to confess, that there is much obscurity yet hanging over portions of the sacred text, and particularly of the Old Testament, which it is both convenient and useful to clear up. Objections have indeed been made, when science has not only attempted to illuminate the dark places, but to correct inferences drawn from the plain but partial or incorrect statements of the Scriptures. Astronomy and geology have had to contend with the denunciations of the Church for teaching conclusions which Scripture seemed not to warrant. But even this folly is passing away. It is fast getting to be conceded, that "the scope of the Bible is moral, and not scientific." We cannot but wish, however, that the reason of the scientific errors in the Scriptures was allowed to be, the ignorance of the writers upon points which do not in any way affect their relations to us, instead of deliberate misstatement on the part of the Holy Spirit. Certainly, if we adopt the theory of inspiration in its ordinary form, we must have leave to wonder that the Divine Spirit, perfectly acquainted with scientific truth and with the progress which man must ultimately make in it, yet wilfully takes upon itself the total ignorance of those whom it addresses, and thus perpetuates indefinitely one form of error. Where do we learn, in the language of our

author," that the spirit of inspiration professes nothing more than to speak according to visible appearances and popular notions?" This is wholly an inference which theologians have been compelled to draw by their own theories. It is a very incredible inference to our mind.

There is another way, even more important than those already named, in which the knowledge of the Scriptures is progressive, and here we may include revelation also. And that is, in an increased apprehension of its moral truths, by reason of the gradual improvement in moral science. Christianity is educating the conscience of the world to criticise and look deeper into itself. The growing moral sense of Christendom is learning to distinguish between the important and the indifferent, the essence and the form, the absolute and the accidental in the Christianity of the world and the Church. As moral science, led by the Gospel, acquires more confidence in its own elements and principles, it rejects such views of Christianity as under an infirmer sceptre of moral reason have been allowed to pass for doctrines of the Gospel. Nothing but elevated and right moral feeling can in our day distinguish between the actual ethics of Christianity and the ethics of the Christian Church. We depend upon the general progress of moral sentiment to correct the erroneous interpretations of the Gospel. Acknowledging Christianity to be the source of all the highest moral feeling of our or any age, it is nevertheless not the Gospel, but the Church-not Christianity, but Christendom-that decrees the popular standard of morality at any given time. As experience, or the discoveries of gifted and holy minds gradually contribute nobler and purer views of Christian truth, the Gospel seems to assume a more exalted standard, when in truth moral vision had till this time been unable to see what it had no wish to conceal.

But we do not conceive that this is the kind of progress for which Professor Bush is looking. This progress is owing to the fact, that Christianity is a perfect standard of moral truth, while it is addressed to imperfect and progressive moral beings. It could not, in the nature of things, be otherwise than progressive. But the progress of the knowledge of revelation which our author expects, is evidently the bursting of new light out of the prophecies and the dark and knotty passages of the Scripture. His view of revela

1845.] Progressive Knowledge of Revelation.

mer.

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tion is that of a perfect system of spiritual truth, of which the different parts lie coiled up, as it were, in the sacred text, and we are to be prepared to see new members gradually discovering themselves in the most unexpected quarters, and clearly evincing their connection with the whole. He looks at the Scriptures as the natural philosopher looks at the heavens, knowing that as yet a small portion only of the universe has been explored or sounded. He evidently regards the Bible as a sort of spiritual universe, into which we are to look with the same sort of philosophical wonder, and with the same spirit of enterprise, in which the astronomer raises his telescope or the geologist swings his hamWe rejoice in his emancipation from bondage. But we must soberly protest against such views of the Bible. We are among those who fall under our author's implied censure, who "no more look for any farther grand and momentous disclosures (from the Scriptures) than we do for the discovery of a third continent of equal dimensions with the Eastern or Western.” We are not aware that any such momentous discoveries have been made since Christianity was first revealed. There has been no progress whatever in the great and fundamental disclosures of the Gospel. A great many erroneous notions have since been attributed to the Gospel, and the progress of the Christian world has been more evinced in late years in getting rid of errors which had been ingeniously appended to Christianity, than in attaining anything beyond the primitive light of our religion. When we wander beyond the palpable, unquestionable and early-received revelations of Christianity, the few simple, weighty facts which it revealed in a supernatural way, we get into the region of theological fancy and scholastic ingenuity. The progress Christendom has made has been in the understanding, not of that which is supernatural, but of that which is natural in the Gospel,—not in respect of its revelation of facts or doctrines, but in respect of its spirit and precepts. We have made greater progress too in the way of rejection than of assumption,-in throwing aside technical superstitions or frivolous dogmas, than in laying hold upon new, vital and specific facts or doctrines. The only progressive knowledge of revelation is in a growing appreciation of the spirit of the Gospel. The theology of Christianity advances by going back. When we set

humbly at Jesus's feet as the early disciples did, we find ourselves in no scholastic, enterprising or curious frame of mind. Philology and Jewish antiquities do not occur to our thoughts. We have no need of them. We catch the simple Gospel from Jesus's lips. We see it in his miraculous attestation of his origin, we see it in his resurrection from the dead, we behold it in his works of love and mercy, we breathe it in the holy, heavenly temper of his life and conversation. Then it is that doctrinal controversies become petty, and various readings and curious interpretations and ingenious theories grow trifling. We feel a kind of scorn of theological systems. We are ready to deny that there is any Gospel scheme such as the plainest mind may not, and did not, at once receive. We are amazed at the creeds and formulas of Christendom. We regard with unfeigned astonishment the gigantic structure which now popularly passes for the Gospel, and we are ready, in the vexation of our spirit, to cast our whole theological library into the Valley of Hinnom.

Our

We fear that our anxiety to withstand or correct prevailing errors in the theological world, brought to our mind by the work before us, may prevent us from doing justice to its various excellencies. While there are notable examples of all the faults of the Orthodox school of Biblical criticism, there are striking and numerous illustrations of all that is wisest and best in the most liberal school. There are indeed glorious inconsistencies in the work. There is scarce a page which is not redeemed by a fresh, frank and generous thought. We could select passages of as forcible, enlightened and liberal sentiment as are to be found in any standard work of Unitarian theology or literature. wonder is, that so much freedom of investigation could be satisfied with such results, that such an insight into the ordinary vices of Scriptural interpretation should not have been followed by a complete emancipation from them. It is clear to us, that Professor Bush has in his mind still a system of theology which he has not derived from the study of the Scriptures, but which he has been unconsciously seeking to discover and defend all his exegetical life. He says, "there are doubtless great fundamental and paramount facts in revelation, which lie open on its very face and beyond which we cannot possibly anticipate any higher or ulterior