on the contrary, impresses a divine beauty on the sacred page, and powerfully proves to us its theopneusty.

Yes, we have said it; it is God who there speaks to us; but it is also man; it is man, but it is also God. Admir able word of my God! It has been made human in its way, like the eternal Word! Yes, God has caused it thus to stoop even to us, full of grace and truth, like our words, in every thing but error and sin. Admirable word, divine word; but full of humanity, amiable word of my God! Yes, it must, in order to be understood by us, place itself on mortal lips, recite human things; and to charm us, must put on the features of our thoughts and all the tones of our voice, because God knows well of what we are made. But we have recognized it as the word of the Lord, powerful, efficacious, sharper than any two-edged sword; and the most simple among us, have been able to say in hearing it, like Cleopas and his friend: "did not our hearts burn within us while he talked with us?"

With what a powerful charm the Scriptures, by this abundance of humanity, and by all this personality which clothes their divinity, remind us that the Lord of our souls, whose teaching voice they are, himself bears a hu man heart upon the throne of God, although seated in the highest places, where the angels can serve and adore him! By this too, they present to us, not only this double character of variety and unity which at once so embellishes and distinguishes all the other works of God, as creator of the heavens and the earth, but also that union of familiarity and authority, of sympathy and grandeur, of practical detail and mysterious majesty, of humanity and divinity, which we recognize in all the dispensations of the same God, as redeemer and shepherd of his Church.

It is then thus that the Father of mercies, in speaking in his prophets, has had not only to employ their manner as well as their voice, and their style as well as their pen,

but also often to enlist in it all their faculties of thought and feeling. Sometimes in order to show us his divine sympathy, he has thought proper to associate their personal reminiscences, their own experiences and their pious emotions with the words which he was dictating to them. Sometimes, in order to remind us of his sovereign interference, he has preferred to dispense with this unessential concurrence of their memories, their affections and their understandings.

Such ought the word of God to be.

Like Emmanuel, full of grace and truth; at the same time in the bosom of God and in the heart of man; powerful and sympathetic, celestial and of the earth, sublime and humiliated, imposing and familiar, God and man! It does not then resemble the God of the rationalists. After having, like the disciples of Epicurus, removed the Deity very far from man and into the third heaven, they have wished the Bible to put him there too. "Philosophy," said the too celebrated Strauss of Louisburg, "employs the language of the gods; whilst religion employs the language of men." Yes, doubtless, it does; it assumes no other; it leaves to philosophers and the gods of this world, their empyrium and their language.

Studied under this aspect, and considered by this character, the word of God shows itself without a parallel; it has unequalled attractions; it offers to the men of every age, place and condition, beauties always new, a charm which does not grow old, which ever satisfies and never satiates. In direct contrast with human books, it not only pleases you, it increases in beauty, extent and elevation of meaning, in proportion as you read it more assiduously. It seems that the book, the more you study and re-study it, grows and expands, and that an invisible and benevolent Being comes daily to sew in it some new leaves! This is the reason why the souls of the learned and the unlearned,

who have long been nourished by it, equally hang upon it, just as those once did on the lips of Christ, who are mentioned by Luke. (Chap. xix. 48.)* They all find it incomparable; sometimes powerful as the noise of mighty waters, sometimes amiable and sweet as the voice of the bride to her bridegroom; but always "perfect, always restoring the soul, and making wise the simple."

To what book, in this respect, would you compare it ? Would you place by its side, the discourses of Plato or of Seneca, of Aristotle, or St. Simon, or Rousseau ? Have you read the books of Mohammed? Listen to him for one hour. Under the pressure of his piercing and monotonous voice, your ears will tingle. From the first page to the last, it is always the cry of the same trumpet, always the cornet of Medina sounding from the top of a minaret or of a war-camel; always a sybilline oracle, sharp and hard, in a continued strain of commandment and threat; whether he ordains virtue or commands mur. der; always one and the same voice, sharp and roaring, without compassion, without familiarity, without tears, without soul, without sympathy.

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If after reading other books, you feel religious wants, the Bible; hear it. They are sometimes indeed the songs of angels, but of angels come down among the sons of Adam.

They are the organs of the Most High; but they come to charm the heart of man and to move his concience; in the cabin of the shepherd, as in the palace; in the garrets of the poor, as in the tents of the desert.

The Bible, in fact, instructs all conditions; it brings on the stage, the humble and the great; it reveals to them equally the love of God, and exposes in them the same miseries. It addresses children; and they are often children who there show us the way to heaven, and the greatness of the Lord. It addresses herdsmen; and they are * ὁ λαός ἅπας ἐξεκρέματο.

often herdsmen who there speak and reveal to us the character of God. It speaks to kings and to scribes; and they are often kings and scribes who there teach us the miseries of man, humility, confession and prayer. Domestic scenes, avowals of the conscience, secret effusions of prayer, travels, proverbs, revelations of the depths of the heart, the holy career of a child of God, weaknesses unveiled, falls, revivings, intimate experiences, parables, familiar letters, theological treatises, sacred commentaries on some ancient Scripture, national chronicles, military pageants, political censuses, descriptions of God, portraits of angels, celestial visions, practical counsels, rules of life, solutions of cases of conscience, judgments of the Lord, sacred songs, predictions of the future, accounts of the days which preceded our creation, sublime odes, inimitable poetry. All this is found in turn; and all this is there exposed to our view, in a variety full of charm, and in a whole, whose majesty is captivating as that of a temple.

It is thus the Bible must from its first page to its last, associate with its majestic unity, the indefinable charm of an instruction, human, familiar, sympathising, personal, and with a drama of forty centuries. "There are," it is said in the Bible of Desmarets, "shallows, where a lamb may wade, and deep waters, where an elephant may swim."

But mark at the same time, the peculiar unity, and the numberless and profound harmonies in this immense variety! Under all these forms it is always the same truth; always man lost, and God the Savior; always the first Adam with his race leaving Eden and losing life, and the second Adam with his people reëntering Paradise, and finding again the tree of life; always the same appeal in a thousand tones: "Oh heart of man, return to thy God; for thy God pardons. Thou art in the abyss ; come up from it.; a Savior has descended into it-he gives holiness and life!"

"Can a book at once so sublime and so simple, be the work of man?" inquired a too celebrated philosopher of the last century; and every page has answered; no, impossible; for, every where, through so many ages, and whichever of the sacred writers holds the pen, king or shepherd, scribe or fisherman, priest or publican, every where you recognize that the same author, at an interval of a thousand years, and that the same eternal Spirit has conceived and dictated every thing; every where, in Babylon as at Horeb, in Jerusalem as in Athens, in Rome as in Patmos, you find described the same God, the same world, the same men, the same angels, the same future, the same heaven. Every where, whether it be a historian or a poet who speaks to you, whether on the plains of the desert in the age of Pharaoh, or in the dungeon of the capitol, in the age of the Cæsars,-every where, In the world, the same ruin; in man, the same condemna tion and impotence; in the angels, the same elevation, innocence and charity; in heaven, the same purity and happiness, the same meeting together of truth and mercy, the same embrace of righteousness and peace; the same designs of a God who blots out iniquity, transgression and sin, and who will yet by no means clear the guilty.

We conclude then that the abundance of humanity which is found in the Scriptures, far from compromising their Theopneusty, is but another indication of their divinity.

SECTION II.-THE TRANSLATIONS.

We come to the second objection.-You are sure, we are sometimes told, that the inspiration of the Scriptures extends even to the words of the original text; but of what use is this verbal exactness of the holy word since after all, the greater part of Christians must use only the more or less inaccurate versions? The rivilege of such