When some, who have been enslaved under the letter, are suddenly set free by forces from without, they may use their liberty for the indulgence of the flesh. This is a temporary and really rare abuse. But when the vigour of the spirit from within breaks the chains of the letter, the same good sense of every nation which has ensured praise to virtue and reprobation of vice -that sound sentiment which attests that God dwells in man and rules in the universe-surely raises a community into a purer atmosphere, and teaches them that love out of a pure heart is the best state for us all. Hereby not only shall all sects of Christianity be reconciled, but hereby shall Jew and Christian be knit into one body; hereby shall all the earth learn that, as we have all one Father, we all are brethren and sisters. In a wider and deeper sense, perhaps, than the noble-hearted Paul meant, there will be neither Greek nor Jew, Barbarian or Scythian, distinguished among mankind, who are created to be one heavenly family. Yet the unity can only be through truth, and truth cannot be attained without research and free criticism. Keen intellects are as essential as pure hearts; incredulous and unsparing exposure of folly is indispensable for the triumph of wisdom. In proportion as in the heart God's Spirit rules and the intellect is cultivated, each man consciously needs mental freedom and feels bound to strive after truth. Under mere freedom, I dare not say that morality will necessarily advance: for, good or bad national institutions are a prime factor of good or bad national morals. But false religion has generally coalesced with unjust institutions, and free thought in religion is an aid even to a better political state. When to free thought is joined the aspiration after nobler moral attainment as that for which God has ordained us, the higher life is begun within us which will sooner or later culminate in sound religion,-in a diviner life, a life with God, a life in which love to man subdues our selfishness, a state of soul which delights in truth and goodness, which avoids sin as degrading and generally unjust, which rejoices in God as the ever-present source of all that is lovely, wise and true.

There are those who call themselves philosophers, and deride the faith in a righteous and wise God, because their material science does not reveal Him. Of course it does not. The soul of man is not revealed to the surgeon by the dissecting knife; do we therefore suppose that we are mere organized structures without an active and organizing mind? There is yet another class who profess to esteem religion, yet are pleased to deride

every religion but their own. Let us not retaliate their scorn; but, as those who are strong, let us bear the infirmities of the weak, and acknowledge all that is sound and good in their religion, even when they glorify its weaker or baser parts. If God is on our side, what can man do to us? If we dwell in love, we dwell in God,—and we know that we are His. Fearlessly, deliberately, let us consecrate ourselves to the fulfilment of his will, which consists in the pursuit of all that is virtuous and lovely. Those who give themselves to God thereby become his saints. Millenniums back in the far East, and continuously ever since, myriads of men and women in diverse stages of knowledge have so lived to Him. Let us follow in the long train, and hand down to those who come after us the sacred torch of love out of a pure heart vowed to the service of a holy God.

INCREASED STUDY OF THE BIBLE.

WIS

[1877.]

ISE men never can be contented with their existing state. They are always keenly aware of error and defect in themselves and in things around them, precisely because they are aspiring to be better; and this often leads to discouragement. On this account, if it can be justly said that, whatever our defects, we are on the whole improving, it is valuable to treat this topic, and soberly review in contrast what is now, and what was, say, half a century ago, in order to sustain hope and brace us for exertion. Since I can remember more than half a century ago, it occurs to me to offer some remarks on the religious change of England in the 19th century. I do not mean the change in the general population, which might be too large a topic, but in students of religion. The phenomenon which here most strikes me is the remarkable fact that the Bible is now really studied. In my boyhood I almost doubt whether any genuine students of the Bible existed among the vast majority of Christians-those called orthodox. I leave others, who, having been reared as Unitarians, know from within the theological literature of Dr. Priestley and his contemporaries, to throw light on the nature of their study. I might give my own youthful estimate of Dr. Lant Carpenter, a pupil in the school of Priestley, but I prefer to be silent, and confine my remarks to the Trinitarian majority. The Evangelicals read most parts of the Bible, old and new, with vast diligence. Its very words so rested in their memory, were so blended with their sentiment, that nearly every secretary of a society who wrote a report or a circular, every missionary who wrote a letter home, interlarded the sentences with Biblical phraseology. I can say of myself that I knew large portions of the Bible by heart, not by trying to learn them, but by very frequent reading, and devout dwelling upon them; but I was not then a student of them, and this I apprehend to have been the prevalent state even of the most active-minded of the Evangelicals. The Bible served two functions on the one hand, it gave food for religious life, to kindle sentiment and strengthen moral purpose; on the other, it was an arsenal of weapons for confuting

religious error, called heresy, and for establishing a sound creed. But of that school very few imagined that learning and systematic criticism were needed for the right interpretation of the text. That every part, at least of the New Testament, was harmonious with every other part, was taken for granted; so was the "Canon," which admitted a limited and definite number of books as inspired and infallible; and in order to reconcile one writer with another, any amount of violence in interpretation was thought legitimate. The High Church always accused the Low Church of wanting erudition; but whenever the High Church took up the problem of interpretation, they presently dropped the study of the text for study of the creeds and of the articles, study of ancient commentators, or study of the Greek Fathers. Dr. Lloyd, Professor of Theology, became Bishop of Oxford about fifty years ago, and would probably have introduced into that University the cautious and sound principles of Biblical interpretation, such as we apply to all other ancient writings; but he died suddenly, and thereby left the field open to the predominance of two young men, from whose active labours the doctrines then called Puseyism arose and spread. But this school superseded study of the Bible by study of the Greek Fathers and of the Councils. Puseyism has long since culminated into Ritualism; nor can one claim any the more that study of the Bible has in that branch been cultivated. Nevertheless, one High Church Bishop, Marsh of Peterborough, an avowed and bitter enemy of those whom he called Calvinists, first introduced a fertile germ, by his translation of certain works of the German Theologian, Michaelis. Dr. Pusey himself, in his earliest utterances, spoke up boldly for the piety, as well as the learning of the Germans; but very soon after, dread of the results which might come to the Church, when, through the entrance of Dissenters into Parliament the Church could no longer trust the State, led to a rush of the clergy, and especially of the clerical youth, into Puseyism, which undertook to found the superiority of Church over Dissent on a higher pretension than Parliamentary support.

For twelve years at least Puseyism swelled onward; yet it could not forbid a simultaneous study of German learning, out of which came what is now called the Broad Church, from Bishop Thirlwall to Dean Stanley. The Unitarians were not left behind; and when Independents, Baptists and Wesleyans had all established learned colleges for their young ministers, the Bible began to be studied far more fundamentally, far more freely; indeed numbers

of young theologians, who cannot quite be called unorthodox, deeply feel that without freedom the study cannot be fundamental. The Evangelical ministers inside the Church are not reared in theological seminaries, and escape theological learning in the Universities. Perhaps this is the reason why they are able to go on in their old groove by the simple process of confining their readings to the books of their own school, with perhaps a few of the more learned divines of past centuries. Nevertheless, even among them a severe check has been given to the delusive practice of quoting passages out of their contexts; and even Scotland is nurturing the resolve to buy the Truth as a pearl worth any price. Devout persons who are too busy for fundamental study, of whom I speak with respect and sympathy, will for a while shudder with distress, as hens over their ducklings that venture into the pond, at the boldness of the new students. But study of the Bible upon sound principles is begun over too wide an area and in too many schools to be arrested; and the result must certainly be an entire overthrow of what are called the Evangelical Doctrines, or the doctrines of the Reformation. A faith is now rising, which as I unhesitatingly believe, will unite all piety under foreign creeds, with all reasonable Christianity. I observe another remarkable change ever on the increase. In my youthful manhood, while I thought myself orthodox, it was a sore grief to me that piety was judged of by a man's creed, as at least the cardinal matter, and his actual religious character and sentiment was accounted quite secondary. Hence I warmly sympathized with an incipient nucleus of a Society, which did not then intend to become a sect, but aimed to promote the communion of saints among those of different churches. That little germ has, alas ! produced a peculiarly narrow-minded sect, known as the Plymouth Brethren, with whom the Creed and submission to ecclesiastical rule is the prima facie mark of saintship. In nearly every other church a most remarkable progress has been made in discerning that men must not be judged by an intellectual creed, but by the moral elements of character. It is becoming an axiom that God's judgment upon men can only be by the latter; insomuch that an avowed Atheist, J. Stuart Mill, has been appreciated with unexpected gentleness and discrimination by Christians of almost every class. But especially the sect which the orthodox most abhorred, the dreaded or despised sect of Unitarians, has enlarged both its mind and its heart; and, more signally than any other Christian body, proclaims that to have the spirit which we