ing evident errors, cannot be entirely the word of God. It will be understood that we do not mean here to reply to him. We wish only to give a specimen of his rash ness. "St. Paul says (1 Cor. v. 15,) that he had 'delivered an incestuous man to Satan.' This passage (evidently fanatical) could it be inspired! "He says to them (1 Cor. v. 3,) that 'we shall judge the angels,'-a gnostic reverie without doubt. Could such a passage have been inspired! "He goes on even to say to them that 'in consequence of unworthy communion many of them are sick, and some are dead,' (1 Cor. xi. 30). This passage could not be inspired! "He says to them again, that' all die in Adam,'-(1 Cor. xv. 22)-Jewish superstition. It is impossible that such a passage can be inspired! "And when Saint Paul assures the Thessalonians, (1 Th. iv. 15,) and when St, James repeats (Jam. v. 8,) that 'the coming of the Lord is near,' could so manifest an error be inspired !"* It is then in this manner that they dare to judge the eternal word! We do not yet know, we have said, whether these doctrines, professed in Switzerland, ten or twelve years since, were so, particularly at Zurich. But, if they there had currency, we must exculpate the magistrates of that city. It was not they who called Strauss * We have not thought it our duty to reply to such accusations. It would be to depart from our subject. The coming of the Lord is near to each one of us; from one instant to another, three breaths separate us from it. When a man dies, he is immediately transported into the day of Jesus Christ. As to the distance of that day relatively to this world, judge from 1 Thess. ii. 2, if the Apostle Paul was mistaken. † Allusion is here made to the call of Strauss to the professor into their country, to overthrow the faith of an entire people; for Strauss was already in their professoral chairs, if such doctors as this were there giving instructions. They had seen them with great scissors in their hands, cutting out of the Scriptures the errors of the holy Apostles. What difference could they perceive between such men and him whom they were calling? A little more science, a little more boldness and consistency in his principles; with a longer and sharper instrument in his more skilful hands; but scarcely more contempt in his heart for the word of God! We see but little difference between the several judges of the Sanhedrim who struck Jesus on the face, because some struck fewer blows than others; and when sixty conspirators, in Pompey's palace, overthrew Cæsar from his golden throne in the midst of the Senate; Casca, who first slightly wounded him with his sword, was not less his murderer than Cassius cleaving his head, or than the sixty conspirators shewing him their blades on every side, and piercing him with twenty-three wounds. Is then the teacher who denies the inspiration of an argument or of a doctrine of the Scriptures, less in revolt against the God of the Scriptures, than he who rejects the inspiration of an entire book? We think he is not. We conclude that, since in order to deny the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, we must enter into the road of rashness, and give, by the first strokes of the sword, the signal of all opposition to the word of God; a closer attention should be paid to this declaration of the Holy Spirit: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God." But we have yet another reflection. 4. You do not understand the divinity, the propriety, ship of theology in the university by the magistrates; which was resisted by forty thousand of the people, and resisted successfully. you the wisdom, the utility of such or such a passage of the Scriptures, and therefore you deny its inspiration. Is that an argument of any real value, we will not say in our eyes, but in yours? Who are you? "When thou goest into the house of God," feeble child of man, "keep thy foot; be swift to hear, be slow to speak, and do not offer the sacrifice of fools; for they know not what they do. God is in heaven, and thou art upon the earth." Who art thou then, to judge the oracles of God? Has not the Bible said of itself beforehand, that it would be "a stumbling-block to some, and foolishness to others;" that "the natural man should not comprehend it, that indeed he could not, and that it is only to be known by the Spirit ?"* Should not then have expected to feel some repugnance in your mind, in your heart, even in your conscience, against its first instructions? Man must come back to his own place as an infirm, ignorant and depraved creature. He can understand God only by becoming humble. Let him bend the knee in his closet; let him pray, and he will comprehend. An argument is inconsequent because you do not apprehend it! a doctrine is a prejudice, because you do not admit it! a quotation is inaccurate, because you have not discovered its true meaning! What would remain in the world, if God should leave in it only what you can explain? The Roman emperors, being able to comprehend neither the faith nor the life of our martyrs, threw them to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre, and caused them to be dragged to the Tiber. It is thus that men throw their ignorance as a vile grapple upon the word of God, and drag to the scaffold that which they could not comprehend and which they have condemned! We recollect, in writing these lines, an author, other * 1 Cor. xi. 14. 1 wise honorable, but imbued with the wisdom of his age, Might the author be permitted to refer in this matter to his own experience, he would recal with as much humiliation as gratitude, his first and his last impressions produ ced by the Epistles of St. Paul. He had already been convinced in his earliest years, that the Bible is from God; but he had not yet understood the doctrine it teaches. He wished to respect the pages of the apostle, because he had seen by other characters, that the inimitable seals of the most High God were attached to them; but a secret trouble agitated him in reading them, and turned him towards other books. St. Paul appeared to him to reason falsely; not to reach his point; to speak ambiguously and in an embarrassing manner; to make long, spiral windings around his subject; and to say the things committed to him quite otherwise than was designed by him who revealed them. In a word, he felt, in reading them, as would a tender and respectful son, by the side of a father who is declining, who has lost his memory, and who talks stammeringly. Oh! how would he conceal from others, and not admit it to himself, that his venerable father is sinking, and seems no more like himself! But as soon as Divine grace had revealed to us this doctrine of justification by faith, which is the ardent and brilliant flame of the Scriptures, then, each word became light, harmony and life; the reasonings of the apostle appeared to us as limpid as the water from the rock, his thoughts profound and practical, all his epistles the power of God to salvation to them that believe. We saw abundant proofs of divinity beaming from those very passages which had given us so long disquiet, and we could say with the joy of a discovery, and with the gratitude of a tender adoration, as we felt vibrating within us, in unison with the word of God, chords inimitable, and until then, untouch"Yes, my God, all thy Scriptures are divinely inspired!" ed: But it is insisted that there are: SECTION VI.-ERRORS IN THE NARRATIONS; CONTRADICTIONS IN THE FACTS. "We will leave, say they, if we must, all these just repugnances against the reasonings or the doctrines of the sacred writers; in admitting, that upon these points, that which is difficult to some, may be easy to others. But if now we appeal to facts, if we show that there are manifest contradictions in the narrations of the Bible, in its dates, in its references to cotemporary history, in its scriptural quotations; you may then, perhaps, reproach us for having seen them, for not being consistent with ourselves, and for going in that beyond our own posi |