of Himself; they also admit, because an idea of Him is extant, that such a Revelation must at some time and in some manner have taken place. But when and how this has been done are made a serious question. We think that the answer to it is provided in the Bible— the best and highest answer which the human mind can have. But rationalists do not see it there with that evidence which they desire, simply because they hold that the Bible must be judged of as they would judge of any other ancient book; and, because they have concluded that the Bible contains many evidences of fallibility, they regard it only as of doubtful authority in such a matter. They do not speak broadly out against the Bible as a whole, but they impugn certain parts of it in such a way as to shew that they have but little faith in it as a collection of Divine documents containing a revelation of the will and wisdom of God. Those among them who are professing Churchmen esteem it as a Book which may contain some of the germs of the highest truths concerning the spiritual life of humanity; but, as critical philosophers, who have set up reason to judge of its character and contents, they take exception to some of its teachings, urge doubts about the accuracy of many of its narratives, and feel that it has but a faint power in the formation of their intellectual conclusions. With the histories of the miracles they have special difficulties: they object to such phenomena-that they remove what they are intended to teach beyond the sphere of the human understanding, and, therefore, out of the reach and recognition of that which is capable of determining their truth. And they think they have reached firm footing when they assert that the supernatural involved in them excludes the free activity of man's intellectual nature, which never could have been designed by any revelation given by the wise and merciful Creator of all things. They also say of certain doctrines, which have been long accepted as among the essentials of the Christian faith, that they are mere inferences from debateable texts by no means logically drawn; and that, supposing them to be the actual teachings of the Scriptures, that would afford sufficient ground to call in question their Divine authority. To the argument that those doctrines and miraculous phenomena are not contrary to reason but above it, they reply that anything claiming the assent of the human mind which cannot enter into the understanding cannot become an entity of thought, and, consequently, that to affirm or deny the truth of such a thing would be to act against reason. The Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus, so circumstantially related by the Evangelists, and the declarations of His divinity so frequently pro

claimed by Himself, are among their special difficulties. These phenomena are so unique in the history of the world—they are so contrary to the common experience of mankind, and make such extraordinary demands upon human credibility, that, when reason handles the narratives in which they are recorded, they must, in their estimation, be regarded as exaggerations of the historians, or be interpreted as myths. In the one case, Jesus is contemplated simply as a man of elevated character, who undertook to purify religion from the falsehoods by which it had been corrupted, and who was put to death by the enemies of the reformation which He attempted; and, in the other case, that the histories of His coming into the world and departure out of it can be nothing more than narratives of the imagination of friends, who, in their ardour to exalt His character, proclaimed His supernatural existence. Rationalists see nothing of God in the "man Christ Jesus," nor do they see any meaning in His Scriptures beyond that which is conspicuous in the letter. The doctrine that men must receive unconditionally the mysterious teachings which the Church has drawn from a disputed revelation is felt by them to be a strain which reasonable creatures never could have been called upon to endure by Him who has made them in His wisdom and preserved them in His mercy.

Such is the position of the advanced rationalists in the professing Church, considered apart from their ecclesiastical relations. The sincerity of their doubts and difficulties is no proof that they are well founded or just. Their chief impediment consists in not so seeing the Scriptures that their Divine authority might commend itself to the apprehension of reason. So long as they think of the Word from no higher platform than that of its letter, and judge of its character by the same kind of criticism as that by which they would ascertain the value of any other remarkable book, they never can arrive at any just conclusion respecting its authority and teaching. Whatever may be their professed connection with the Church, it is quite clear that they are floundering on the borders of scepticism; nor is there any remedy for their embarrassments but that which is provided in the great truth which teaches that the Word contains a spiritual sense.

It does not appear to have occurred to them that the very circumstance of the Bible professing to have God for its author removes it out of the catalogue of ordinary books, and claims for it a "spirit and life" which no other can possess. If it be the Word of God, it must be coincident with His works. No student of nature expects to find upon the surface of any of its objects all that belongs to it: there are

The surface may

numerous things beneath and out of ordinary sight which enter into the proof that the Hand which made them is Divine. be closely imitated, but the viscera which lie beneath, together with their connection and uses in the economy of life, are wonders which no human artist can achieve; and surely it is reasonable to conclude that something similar must distinguish the Divine Word on the supposition that it is a work of God. If God is its author, we may be sure that it is a marvellous production, the letter of which can only be the visible exponent of some more interior wisdom. This we hold to be the character of the Bible, and think that it is capable of the clearest proof. We, therefore, venture to commend it to the attention of rationalists. They will find in it an aspect of thought which they have overlooked, and see in it the means for a reasonable explanation of many of those difficulties which beset their inquiries and hinder their belief. To acknowledge that the Word has a spiritual sense within the letter, and to know the law by which that sense is to be extracted, is to bring into the Church a light and a power not previously enjoyed by it. They in the Church who think without these protections are in danger of thinking themselves out of it; whereas they who accept them will find that the more they think the more they will be within its intellectual pale.

It is not, however, to be understood, that by acknowledging the spiritual sense of the Word, we shall get rid of the miraculous phenomena recorded in the letter. That would be a great mistake: they will still remain and require acceptance and belief, but they will be arrayed in another light, and point to another glory. God has provided that they should stand out in the letter of His revelation, as a means for keeping alive some idea of the supernatural in the minds of sensual men. If the letter had contained nothing above the ordinary level of human experience, how could we have obtained any information respecting spiritual life? But the records of miracles strike the imagination, and lift it up into the pathway of spiritual thought. They are among the means for conserving faith in spiritual things among natural men; and the truth of their occurrence is proved by the testimony of witnesses, the credibility of whom it would be unreasonable to doubt. But the acknowledgement of the spiritual sense of the Divine Word takes a man into the region of spiritual thought. It furnishes him with new information concerning a higher life, and not only provides new materials for reasoning with, but the development of a new rational faculty with which to reason, a view of great importance in connection

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with this subject. It is not required that reason should at any time relinquish its functions: true religion will court its sanctions and penetration: no man, no body of men, have a right to shut up the intellect of himself and others by dogmatic utterances under the plea that they are for faith and not for reason: that is certainly no part of Bible teaching. God has said therein "come let us reason together," and it is the duty of every one to be able "to give a reason for the hope that is in him." Still it must be admitted that reasonings imply obscurity we try by them to get at the knowledge of something about which we are not certain; we reason to satisfy our reason: and yet our best efforts are not always satisfactory, because our materials are either too few, or too imperfectly conceived. The power to reason has been given in a lower plane of the mind to supply, in some measure, the power of perception which belongs to the higher, and so aid us in the recovery of those spiritual knowledges which were lost in the process of the fall. But the circumstance that a man reasons is no proof that he is rational: he is rational only so far as he perceives truths in the materials with which he reasons; without this his reasonings will be fallacious. The natural man reasons from the state of his information about natural things; and the spiritual man reasons from the state of his information about spiritual things; but, unless their information about those things is true, it is plain that their reasonings must be false. Thus man is rational according to the quantity and quality of the truths which he knows, consequently truth is the foundation of all genuine rationalism. Take away truth from a man and he ceases to be a rational being: without truth he becomes a liar, how then can he be rational? Moreover, the natural man by his reasonings, be they ever so well founded in truth, cannot, from the very nature of his materials, ever become by them acquainted with spiritual things. He may by his science illustrate spiritual truth when it is revealed, but it cannot lead him to anything higher than itself. The outer cannot penetrate the inner; the circumference cannot conduct us to the centre. That which is of the earth is earthy. If a knowledge of the world could have taught us anything about heaven, that kingdom would not now have been so dark a spot in human thought as many find it to be.

Those who attempt to reason about spiritual things, merely from the information which they possess about natural things, cannot fail to be embarrassed respecting everything that is supernatural. Hence the Word, even in its letter, is not a level narrative of worldly events, national expectations, or didactic teachings. The supernatural, in the

way of vision, miracles, and descriptions of the spiritual world, frequently breaks through the letter, calling the attention of the natural man to the fact of another and higher condition of existence. If it were not so the natural man would be left without any instruction upon the subject of spiritual life. All our knowledge of the supernatural is the result of revelation. But besides those open intimations in the letter of the Word respecting spiritual things, that letter, from first to last, is so constructed that it might represent them, and be the vehicle for suggesting them to human thought. The quality of the reasonings which the natural man exercises on the letter is altogether different from that which the spiritual man will exercise upon it. The former will see obscurities and blemishes in the letter, because he thinks only from the plane of nature; but the latter will bring to it a superior lumen, and see the letter to be the requisite symbol of some phase belonging to regenerate existence, because he thinks of it from the plane of spiritual life. As men, by the love of holiness, come into a perception of the spiritual truth veiled by the letter of the Word, they will also come into the possession of a new rational principle, before which the former will recede as a husk from its kernel. This is the principle by which the Word can be intelligently approached, and its divinity defended. To this new rational principle the Word will be a light, to the former it will be obscurity; the one looks at it from a spiritual plane of thought, the other from a natural; and if the Church would intelligently enjoy the true significance of the WORD, her people must aim at the development of this new rational principle by a careful attention to the duties of the regenerate life. Jesus said, "If any man will do His will he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." Life is necessary to light.

I conclude this essay with a valued extract.

Swedenborg says, "There appertain to every man who is regenerated two rational principles, one before regeneration, the other after regeneration. The first, which is before regeneration, is procured by the exercise of the senses, by reflections on things in civil and moral life, by the sciences, and by reasonings grounded therein, and directed thereby, and also by knowledges of things spiritual derived from the doctrine of faith or from the Word; but those things at that time enter no further into man than a little above the ideas of the corporeal memory, which ideas are respectively material; whatsoever therefore he thinks at that time is grounded in such things, or semblances of such things, formed comparatively or analogically, in order that they