of life, by disqualifying for an office of honour and trust, those who had been innocently involved in it.

The state of the case, then, is briefly this: By the original law of GOD, imposed on man at his creation, marriage was made to consist in the union of one man to one only woman. It pleased GOD, however, after the Flood, for reasons which He deemed good and sufficient, not to renew this law at once, but to reserve the renewal of it for a later period of the world's history. The liberty, thus tacitly accorded, was one of the distinctive marks of the Patriarchal and Mosaic Dispensations. When, however, in the fulness of time, "the WORD was made flesh," He restored the law to its original strictness and purity, making marriage to be what God intended it to be, and forbidding men, at the peril of their salvation, to pervert it from its original design.

And here we take our stand, fearless of all attempts to shake, by the precedents of a previous dispensation, the foundation of the New or Christian Law. For although we admit the law of marriage to be in so far of a positive nature as that our Creator may make in it such alterations as He sees to be adapted to the good of His creatures, yet, consistently with this admission, we may and do contend that no human authority, no power of the Church, no power of the State, is competent to relax or alter it in any one point in which God has made it obligatory. Our LORD and SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST has given us the last and final revelation of the will of our Maker. As we cleave to or depart from this law, we go forward in divine rectitude, or retrograde towards practical and speculative Atheism. The Law of CHRIST on this subject, as delivered in the Gospels, and attested from the beginning by His Church, has been incorporated into the code of Christian nations; so that in our own and other Christian countries a plurality of wives is no less crime than felony. Christianity, indeed, has no coercive power; it neither defines crimes (in the technical sense of the word) nor affixes their penalties; its power is limited to the conscience, over which its authority, in virtue of its divine origin, is supreme; its laws can neither be transgressed in the letter, nor evaded in their manifest

spirit and intention, except to the certain ruin of our souls: and the law of the land affixes its severe penalty in this case, making the polygamist an outcast from society, because it assumes the law of marriage, as defined by CHRIST our SAVIOUR, to be a fundamental law of GOD, the observance of which is necessary to the conservation of Christian morals, and the permitted violation of which is subversive of Christian society. The maintenance of the Law of CHRIST, as the basis of our own municipal law, is that which makes us a Christian nation. Polygamy is a fundamental violation of the Law of CHRIST, and the people who allow it thereby exclude themselves from the family of Christian nations. We cannot assimilate with such a people, nor admit them to a community of rights and privileges without unchristianizing ourselves, and divesting ourselves as a nation of the most precious benefits which our SAVIOUR has conferred on mankind. For in no one particular has our LORD conferred a greater blessing on man than by restoring to them the original law of marriage and accompanying the law with the grace which enables them to keep it. For by this law an innumerable train of barbarities and revolting incongruities, of which the history of ancient times affords but too faithful a picture, (and which are still perpetuated in Mohammedan and Heathen countries), has been arrested and prevented. It has given a death blow to some of the most odious and debasing distinctions that have ever prevailed among men. It has raised woman from the deepest humiliation, restored to her the rights with which GOD originally invested her, but of which the degeneracy of human nature had deprived her, and raised her to her present exalted social position and influence. It has spread a Divine security over the family relation, and has thus purified the spring and fountain of human existence and happiness. The law of the land does not create and cannot destroy this institution. It is God who hath made the law, it is CHRIST who hath restored it, it is His Church which perpetuates it; and the law of every Christian nation comes in merely to guard it and maintain its observance.

The Inspiration of Holy Scripture, its Nature and Proof: Eight Discourses, preached before the University of Dublin. By WILLIAM LEE, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College. London: Rivingtons, Waterloo Place. 1854. Imported and for sale by Dana & Co., 381 Broadway, New York.

The subject of this book is of the highest importance, and is beset with many and great difficulties. That the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are, in some sense or some degree, the word of God, that is, supernatural in their origin and matter, must be admitted by all who have any right to call themselves Christians. But how, and in what respects, are those writings to be held as divinely inspired? Or, in other words, what is the precise nature and degree of the inspiration we are to attach to them? Such are the main questions discussed in the work before us.

The Scriptures themselves do not undertake to set forth, in terms, any theory of inspiration. It is true, the writers of them often claim that their words are the words of God, and spoken with supernatural authority from Him; and they, at least some of them, wrought miracles in proof of this their extraordinary commission. But they nowhere declare how far, or in what respects, they were themselves coworkers with God in the process, or whether they were so at all.

According to the old doctrine or theory of inspiration, all the words and phrases of Scripture, and even the grammatical order and arrangement of them, every thing, in short, that goes to make up the composition, was dictated immediately and solely by the Holy Spirit. This implies, that the human authors of the Bible were but the passive instruments through whom the mind of God translated itself into the language of men; their own individualities of thought and character having nothing to do with the workmanship, nor any influence upon it. So that, if their natural powers may be said to have acted at all in the matter, it is clear that this action was not according to their natural laws; that is, the men were in no proper sense coworkers in the process. In strictness of speech, then, it cannot be said that they acted, but only that they were acted upon; or, which comes to the same thing, they were not the agents, but merely the conductors of Revelation.

This theory has the advantage of being definite, intelligible, and clear. Moreover, it precludes all inquiries as to how far, or in what respects, the Bible is inspired: the inspiration is simply absolute, admits of no degrees; and thus is secured, beyond doubt or question, the doctrine of Scriptural Infallibility. It must be confessed, too, that the moral ends, which are served by this theory, plead strongly in its favour; that is, unless there be some other theory, actual or possible, that will serve those ends equally well.

Still the question must needs arise, whether this theory will stand a close examination of the subject-matter to which it refers. Now, on comparing the several books of Scripture one with another, we find that they have, in fact, certain marked peculiarities, which it is not easy to account for but by referring them to the genius and temper, the mental aptitudes, habits, associations, and characteristics, of their respective authors. If such be the true account of these things, then it is clear that the writers of the Bible were, in the strictest sense, agents and coworkers in the process: their natural faculties acted in the matter according to their natural laws: their specialities of thought and character were transfused into the result; so that the Scriptures are to be regarded as the joint product of their minds and of the Power that moved them. Nay, more; their individualities of mind, instead of being suppressed or suspended in the process, as the old theory implies, were rather excited into greater vigour and activity by the revealing or inspiring Power; so that the men became more truly themselves as the hand of God was upon them.

Taking these facts into view, or rather this account of them, can the old theory be accepted as a legitimate conclusion from the premises? nay, can it be made to cohere with them? and, if not, can it be expected to stand? Was it, then, framed with a special view to those moral ends which it seemed likely to serve? and did it derive its chief strength and support from that consideration? Is it, in short, but the offspring of that old scholastic method of science, which begun by drawing up such conclusions as were judged to be right and good, and then assumed the premises to be in accordance therewith?

Be this as it may, it is evident enough, that this view of

the case opens up, in all their perplexity and intricacy, the questions as to how far, and in what sense, the Scriptures are inspired. And along with these comes up the question of questions, namely, whether, on any theory consistent with this account of the facts, the forenamed moral ends can be reached; that is, whether the practical infallibility of the Scriptures can be maintained. That our author takes this view of the case, and this account of the facts, is implied in what we have already spoken of as the main points discussed in his book.

And these questions, with all their difficulties, have got to be met and grappled with. There is no use in denying or disguising this; and, for our part, we are glad to see the subject moved by one who, from his public character and position, is in some fair likelihood of moving it in a right spirit. It is-we cannot wink away the fact-it is high time the matter were thoroughly overhauled and sifted within the Church. To take for granted some general doctrine of inspiration, and there let the question rest, will no longer do. The Church might indeed act wisely in leaving the subject alone, if it were left alone out of the Church; but such is not, and will not be, the case already whole classes of men, who call, and perhaps think, themselves Christians, are agitating it to the bottom, and, whether they so intend or not, are threatening to pull our house upon our heads. Is it wise, then, to wrap ourselves up securely in the belief that our foundations are inexpugnable, insomuch that they who attempt to shake them will but shatter their own powers against them, and thus be defeated by their very strength and hardihood of onset? Such an idea must not be entertained. If that be indeed true which we believe, we must find the talents, the learning, and diligence, to make that truth appear, and to establish and confirm it in the understanding and reason of mankind.

To be sure, in a subject that strikes so deep as Christianity into the roots of things, objections are more easily raised than answered the most superficial mind may at any time start doubts which it will take the profoundest intelligence of man a great while to allay; because what the former says is readily understood, since he speaks down to the level of vulgar thought;