various interpretations; and every word and every sentence must be modified and explained according to the subject which is discussed according to the purposes, feelings, circumstances, and principles of the writer, and according to the genius and idioms of the language which he uses. These are acknowledged principles in the interpretation of human writings; and a man whose words we should explain without reference to these principles, would reproach us justly with a criminal want of candour, and an intention of obscuring or distorting his meaning.

"Were the Bible written in a language and style of its own, did it consist of words which admit but a single sense, and of sentences wholly detached from each other, there would be no place for the principles now laid down. We could not reason about it as about other writings. But such a book would be of little worth; and, perhaps, of all books, the Scriptures correspond least to this description.

"The word of God bears the stamp of the same hand which we see in his works. It has infinite connexions and dependencies. Every proposition is linked with others, and is to be compared with others, that its full and precise import may be understood. Nothing stands alone. The New Testament is built on the Old. The christian dispensation is a continuation of the Jewish, the completion of a vast scheme of providence, requiring great extent of view in the reader. Still more, the Bible treats of subjects on which we receive ideas from other sources besides itself; such subjects as the nature, passions, relations, and duties of man; and it expects us to restrain and modify its language by the known truths which observation and experience furnish on these topics.

"We profess not to know a book which demands a more frequent exercise of reason than the Bible. In addition to the remarks now made on its infinite connexions, we may observe that its style nowhere affects the precision of science or the accuracy of definition. Its language is singularly glowing, bold, and figurative, demanding more frequent departures from the literal sense than that of our own age and country, and consequently demands more continual exercise of judgment. We find, too, that the different portions of this book, instead of being confined to general truths, refer perpetually to the times when they were written, to states of society, to modes of thinking, to controversies in the Church, to feelings and usuages which have passed away, and without the knowledge of which we are constantly in danger of extending to all times and places what was of

temporary and local application. We find, too, that some of these books are strongly marked by the genius and character of their respective writers, that the Holy Spirit did not so guide the Apostles as to suspend the peculiarities of their minds, and that a knowledge of their feelings, and of the influences under which they were placed, is one of the preparations for understanding their writings. With these views of the Bible, we feel it our bounden duty to exercise our reason upon it perpetually, to compare, to infer, to look beyond the letter to the spirit, to seek, in the nature of the subject and the aim of the writer, his true meaning; and, in general, to make use of what is known, for explaining what is difficult, and for discovering new truths.

"Need I descend to particulars to prove that the Scriptures demand the exercise of reason? Take, for example, the style in which they generally speak of God, and observe how habitually they apply to him human passions and organs. Recollect the declarations of Christ, that he came not to send peace, but a sword; that unless we eat his flesh, and drink his blood, we have no life in us; that we must hate father and mother; pluck out the right eye; and a vast number of passages equally bold and unlimited. Recollect the unqualified manner in which it is said of Christians that they possess all things, know all things, and can do all things. Recollect the verbal contradiction between Paul and James, and the apparent clashing of some parts of Paul's writings, with the general doctrines and end of Christianity. I might extend the enumeration indefinitely, and who does not see that we must limit all these passages by the known attributes of God, of Jesus Christ, and of human nature, and by the circumstances under which they were written, so as to give the language a quite different import from what it would require, had it been applied to different beings, or used in different connexions? Enough has been said to show in what sense we make use of reason in interpreting Scripture. From a variety of possible interpretations, we select that which accords with the nature of the subject, and the state of the writer, with the connexion of the passage, with the general strain of Scripture, with the known character and will of God, and with the obvious and acknowledged laws of nature. other words, we believe that God never contradicts, in one part of Scripture, what he teaches in another, and never contradicts, in revelation, what he teaches in his works and providence; and we therefore distrust every interpretation which, after deliberate attention, seems repugnant to any

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established truth. We reason about the Bible precisely as civilians do about the constitution under which we live ; who, you know, are accustomed to limit one provision of that venerable instrument by others, and to fix the precise import of its parts by inquiring into its general spirit, into the intentions of its authors, and into the prevalent feelings, impressions, and circumstances of the time when it was framed. Without these principles of interpretation, we frankly acknowledge that we cannot defend the divine authority of the Scriptures. Deny us this latitude, and we must abandon this book to its enemies." pp. 3-6.

To a great part of these principles I give my cheerful and most cordial assent. They are the principles which I apply to the explanation of the Scriptures from day to day, in my private studies and in my public labours. They are the principles by which I am led to embrace the opinions that I have espoused, and by which, so far as I am able, I expect to defend these opinions, whenever called in duty to do it.

While I thus give my cordial approbation to most of the above extract from your sermon, will you indulge me in expressing a wish that the rank and value of the Old Testament, in the Christian's library, had been described in somewhat different terms? I do most fully accord with the idea that the Gospel, or the New Testament, is more perfect than the Mosaic Law, or than the Old Testament. On what other ground can the assertions of Paul, in 2 Corinthians iii., in Hebrews viii., and in other places, be believed or justified? The gospel gives a clearer view than the Jewish Scriptures of our duty and of our destiny-of the objects of our hopes and fears-of the character of God, and the

way of salvation. I agree fully, that whatever in the Old Testament respects the Jews, simply as Jews-e. g. their ritual, their food, their dress, their civil polity, their government—in a word, whatever from its nature was national and local,is not binding upon us under the Christian dispen

sation.

I am well satisfied, too, that the character of God and the duty of men were, in many respects, less clearly revealed under the ancient dispensation than they now are. "The law was given by Moses; but " no man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten, who dwelleth in the bosom of the Father, he hath revealed him,”—i.e. it was reserved for Christ to make a full display of the divine character; no man, no prophet who preceded him, ever had such knowledge of God as enabled him to do it. I am aware that many Christians do not seem to understand this passage; and, with well-meaning but mistaken views, undertake to deduce the character and designs of God as fully and as clearly from the Old Testament as from the New.

I must believe, too, that the duties of Christians are, in most respects, more fully and definitely taught in the gospel than in the Old Testament; and I cannot approve of that method of reasoning which deduces our duties principally from texts in the Old Testament that sometimes are less clear, when the New Testament presents the same subjects in such characters of light that he who runneth may read.

But when you say, "Jesus Christ is the only master of Christians; and whatever he taught, either during his personal ministry or by his inspired Apostles, we regard as of divine authority, and profess to make the rule of our lives," does not this naturally imply that we are absolved from obligation to receive the Old Testament in any sense as our guide; and that what it teaches, we are not bound "to make the rule of our lives?" I do not feel certain that it was your design to affirm this; but the words in their connexion seem naturally to bear this import. To such a view I should object, that those parts of the Old Testament which express the will of God, in reference to the great points of duty that must, from the nature of moral beings, be for ever the same under every dispensation, may be and ought to be regarded as unrepealed. It is a very sound maxim, in the interpretation of divine as well as human laws,— manente ratione, manet ipsa lex-a law is unrepealed, while the reason of that law continues. Express repeal only can exempt a law from the application of this maxim. And when our Saviour says, "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or tittle shall in nowise pass from the law till all be fulfilled," he seems to me plainly to have declared the immutability of the ancient moral law, in the sense already explained.

What shall we say, moreover, of the devotional parts of the Old Testament, (the Book of Psalms, for instance,) or of those numerous prophetical parts which are sermons on the duties and obligations of