judgeth in the earth"-"the Creator, who fainteth not, neither is weary"-who "hath made all men of one blood," and fixed the bounds of their habitation-who "hateth nothing that He has made"-" a God of truth, and without iniquity," clouds and darkness round about Him, yet righteousness and judgment the habitation of His throne, while "His tender mercies are over all His works," speaking to the fathers in times past by "the mouth of His holy prophets, which have been since the world began," and above all-transcending the highest hopes of Socrates and Alcibiades -speaking to us in these last days by His Son:-he who, on these and kindred topics, contrasts the luminous explicitness of Holy Scripture with the obscure verbosity, the confused and contradictory guesses of the wisest heathen, will need no other proof that the Bible is in very deed a revelation of truths, which soaring, as of necessity they must, far above the influences of human reason and the comprehension of the human understanding, are nevertheless of the highest practical importance to every human being. Spurious imitations-Mohammedan or Mormon-may indeed pretend to the name of revelations, but to present any claim to the character is utterly beyond their power. "They that make them are like unto them"-revealers who have nothing to reveal. But to be a revelation in very deed; a revelation from God; a revelation of objective truth on subjects worthy the Divine interposition, and stamped with the "hallmark" of Divine attestation-this it is which makes the Bible as different as possible from every other book, and more than justifies the Psalmist's exclamation, "The entrance of THY WORD giveth light: IT giveth understanding to the simple."

II. Characteristic and unique as is the matter of this Divine Revelation, not less so is its mode. "This much is manifest, that the whole natural world and government of it is a scheme or system, not a fixed but a progressive one; a scheme in which the operation of various means takes up a great length of time before the ends they tend to can be attained. The change of seasons, the ripening of the fruits of the earth, the very history of a flower, is an instance of this; and so is human life. . . . Our existence is not only successive, as it must be of necessity, but one state of our life and being is appointed by God to be a preparation for another, and that to be the means of attaining to another succeeding one;

The

infancy to childhood, childhood to youth, youth
to mature age. Men are impatient, and for
precipitating things; but the Author of Nature
appears deliberate throughout His operations,
accomplishing His natural ends by slow suc-
cessive steps. And there is a plan of things
beforehand laid out, which, from the nature of
it, requires various systems of means, as well
as length of time, in order to the carrying on
its several parts into execution. Thus, in the
daily course of natural providence, God operates
in the very same manner as in the dispensation
of Christianity, making one thing subservient
to another; this to somewhat further, and
so on through a progressive series of means,
which extend both backward and forward
beyond our utmost view. Of this manner of
operation, everything we see in the course of
nature is as much an instance as any part of
the Christian dispensation." So that this
characteristic progressiveness, common alike
to Nature and to Revelation, is one of the
many incontrovertible facts which prove that
the Author of both is one and the same.
truth of God, like His unchangeable purpose,
is indeed incapable of progress; but with the
revelation of that truth (as of that purpose), it
is otherwise. "Known unto God are all His
works from the beginning;" whereas to men
they are not known at all, except as (from
time to time) they are made known. As, in
nature, the rising sun scatters the mists of the
morning, and brings into light first one promi-
nence and then another, until every hill and
valley is clothed with splendour, so, in revela-
tion, the progress is not in the truth, but in
the clearness and impressiveness with which
Scripture reveals it. The landscape even when
unseen is still unchanged. The progressive
character of successive dispensations-the
Adamic, the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, the
Gospel-is evident to all; but though less
visibly, not therefore less really, was the Gospel
in the visions of Ezekiel and the ordinances of
Leviticus, the Gospel in type and prophecy.
"Will God in very deed dwell with men upon
the earth ?" It required centuries of religious
training to enable men to contemplate the
possibility and understand the purport of the
fact. Centuries more must pass before men
were ready for the prophetic Gospel. "The
Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to
His temple""The tabernacle of God is with
men." "Before the world began "+- before

* Bp. Butler's "Analogy of Religion:" Part ii, ch. 4.
† Tit. 1, 2, πρὸ χρόνων αιωνίων.

III. Not less prominent than the progressive character of Revelation is its Unity.

Notwithstanding its many writers, the Bible has the first requisite of a great book—a single purpose; and that purpose kept in view on every page. As the mightiest oak with its myriads of leaves is unfolded from a single acorn, so the developed revelation, like its earliest germ, is not many, but one. See its unity of doctrine:-in its declaration of the unity of God; in the creation and preservation of all things by Divine Power; in a general and particular Providence; in a Divine law, with its inscrutable distinctions between right and wrong; in its account of the moral declension and corruption of mankind; in its doctrine of atonement through vicarious suffering; in the obligation and efficacy of prayer; in direct Divine influence; in human responsibility; and in the necessity of practical holi

ness.

Then, again, look at its uniformly moral purpose. The Hindu Shastras dilate largely on the origin of the universe; the Koran indulges its readers with grossly sensual descriptions of the physical theory of a future life; the Talmud abounds with fables which, for lack of practical importance, are not to be sur passed, except by the Legends of Rome, or the dreams of Swedenborg; while the Bible, on the other hand, is throughout intensely moral and practical. Its cosmogony, its mythology, its metaphysics, its marvels, are all moral: it contains no ideal which is not also a reality. In its histories, biographies, prophecies, psalmody, has but one aim-to reunite the sundered ties by which the whole human family is restored to its normal recognition and enjoyment of the Fatherhood of God.

Nor does this unity of purpose suffer any diminution, even in those parts of the Bible which present the greatest apparent dissimilarity. In the Old Testament we find a religion abounding in ceremonies, and adapted only to the peculiar circumstances of one nation. In the New Testament, on the other hand, we have a system of religion which, with but few ceremonies, and those of a very simple character, admits of universal application.

And yet "the Old Testament is not contrary to the New: for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and man, being both God and man.' "* In both Testaments we find the same essential truths exhibited in perfect correspondence and agree. ment; the same views of the nature and pur. poses of God-the only views worthy of Him which have ever been given; the same views of the nature of man--views different, indeed, from all others, but which alone are found to agree with actual fact; and those very views of the nature of true happiness which, though found nowhere else, are proved by experience to be true. Between the scaffolding and the building there may, indeed, be very little resemblance, but there is a most intimate and necessary connexion. And between the Old and New Testaments it will often be found that the relation is closest even where the resemblance is least.

IV. This unity is the more remarkable on account of the variety of the materials from which it has been evolved.

་་

The Bible-Book of books-consists of about seventy pieces, none longer than many a modern pamphlet, some as short as a twopaged tract. These pieces include almost every variety of literary composition. They are the production of some forty writers; men of great diversity of character, rank, genius, acquirements; separated from each other by such intervals of time as rendered a common understanding or a general confederacy im. possible. They are like a long line of travellers passing a particular spot where each throws a stone, but where by and by, instead of a mere cairn, there rises a finished structure of most perfect symmetry, with fitting ornament," suitable for habitation and use. "In other words, the stray leaves, the irregular contributions of many centuries, the tracts and papers of thirty generations, turn out to be a Book!-a book with a beginning, middle, and end, pervaded by a single purpose, and developing an entire system of thought, consistent, harmonious, and complete."

To sum up what has been said, we repeat' that the Bible is perfectly unique, because there is no other book that can furnish any thing at all analogous. "Nec viget quidquam simile aut secundum." "There is no book, and no collection of books, so interlaced and interwoven one with another, in which one part * "Articles of Religion," Art. VII.

lends strength and light to another; and, above all, none which culminates in a Person whose place in history, as it stands in all the recorded essential features of His life, death, and resurrection, defies the assaults of hostile criticism.

"Sixty-six books in one; and between the writer of the first and the writer of the last, an interval of more than fifteen hundred years, -David outpouring his immortal Psalms when the Grecian States were instituting the Amphictyonic Council; and Isaiah his immortal prophecies when Romulus was watching for the vultures on the Palatine hill; Moses writing his primeval history

"When the Memnonium was in all its glory;'

and John depicting the Apocalyptic vision when the Temple which had been "forty and six years in building" was a heap of ashes and ruins. Among writers thus separated, collusion was impossible; and yet their various productions present us with a combination, a concord, a harmony, which is nowhere else to be found. To estimate this wonderful agreement aright, consider the subjects of which these writers

treat-subjects at once the most sublime, the most profound, the most difficult, and the most important that can be imagined. Subjects on which the greatest oracles of this world's wisdom have guessed, and blundered, and differed, and disputed, and contradicted themselves and one another, from Sanchoniathon to Swedenborg, and from Jannes to Dr. Child. Consider, too, the diversity in natural ability, in literary acquisition, in mental habitudes, presented by kings, statesmen, shepherds, scribes, herdsmen, fishermen, tax-gatherers, and tent makers. Yet such were the writers of the Bible. Add to this the multiform character of the unique Mosaic: psalms, proverbs, histories, prophecies, biographies, letters. And then remember that under all these conditions, and through all these agencies, the result is one."*

What Mind was that which planned, what Power that achieved this strangely wonderful design? The Book had many writers, but the Author-who was He? The sacred edifice has arisen by the labours of many builders, but who was the Architect ?

"Christian Certainty," p. 370.

66

HEN I was a boy, between eleven and twelve years of age, for one yearand one year only--I was at school, at a village in Somersetshire. The oldest usher in the school on one occasion told me the following story :

"Some years ago there was a thief among us a systematic, inexorable depredator of books and slate pencils, stationery and toys, cakes and keepsakes. Who he was, nobody knew, excepting always himself and His eye who takes His own time and means to bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the secrets of the heart.' At first the missing things were too slight and valueless to make much stir about-odds and ends of schooldesk property, which were readily replaced, and therefore less annoying. Now and then, however, the boys began to lose their knives

and silver pencil-cases. The thefts at length grew too serious not to be referred to the head master. He instituted a rigid search through desk and box, clothes and bed-chambers, and even the bed of every boy in the establishment, but with no result beyond turning out the collections of queer and unaccountable articles of material, quality, and manufacture, which constitute the time-out-of-mind accumulations of a boys' boarding school. Entangled nets of rusty fish-hooks, the flesh of little fishes sticking to them, and savouring strongly of stale fish; odd shapes of stars, fruit, vegetables; schoolfellows' faces cut out in book-covers, in old exercises, in slate, wood, raw potatoes, and turnips; mouldy morsels of plum cakes and ginger-bread, saved for consumption on the sly, forgotten till too dry and hard to be eaten; scraps of letters from home, rude

caricatures of masters and teachers, heaps of marbles and spin-tops, with here and there bits of India-rubber, old gloves, and twineends mingled among them, like seaweed on a beach; knifeblades without handles, and handles without blades; innumerable leaves of every branch of elemental literature and science scattered about, as if by some kind of school autumn, when their ripe owners had been shaken from the tree of knowledge, and been separated to their callings in life; wornout sticks and whips beyond count, suggestive of a negro plantation in the neighbourhood, where the torture-stock had been used up. Nay, the inventory would emulate the catalogue of the British Museum, if every article were specified. So I dismiss the rest summarily, as presenting something of everything, and nothing without sign of mutilation, rough usage, obsoletion, or decay. The only things perfect and unblemished were the boys' best suits of clothes, which were never trusted to their custody, except for the Sundays and holidays, when the school turned out in full parade. Every boy found something he never knew he had lost, until it was recovered; but not a single loser of any of the late missing articles (the special objects of the search) found one of them. Whoever was the delinquent, he had completed the indictment which charges the prisoner that he did steal, take, and carry away;' but whither he had carried them, or who was the guilty deporter, still remained a myth.

"The mystery was almost as annoying as the loss. If they had known the thief, they might have hoped they knew the worst of his thefts; but it was clear he was a cunning, as well as unscrupulous knave, and there was no knowing what he might take off next, if he were not discovered and compelled to take off himself. The whole school was uneasy, suspicious, and sensible of a general misgiving and estrangement. There was a general distrust of one another. As we did not know who was the depredator, no one was sure of any one else, that he was not the depredator. Doubt engendered illiberal construction. Particular boys began to be whispered against, watched, misrepresented, and avoided. They, in their turn, conscious of their innocence, and misinterpreting their treatment, suspected those who grew shy of them, as indicating convictions of guilt, which made them ashamed, or afraid of more intimate relations with their victims. The school was becoming so seriously

disorganized, that the master, all other means of detection having failed, offered a reward for the discovery of the dishonest one among us. That failed also; and after an interval he offered a free pardon to the trangressor, on condition of a full confession and restitution before the current week expired. Still no boy accused himself, though it was known the thief was there, because his depredations continued at intervals, only increasing in boldness in proportion to their impunity. Delphin editions of classics were now added to the booty; then small sums of the boys' pocket money; and finally the French master's silver watch. This was intolerable.

"Another and more rigid search was instituted; and this time not only through the school, but through the kitchen, the servants' dormitories, and through every room in the house, and about the premises, even to the sheds and stables. The master privately set on foot inquiries by the police, after any of the missing articles that might be met with in the houses of the village, at the pawnbrokers, or the second-hand shops, and dealers in marine stores, but without effect. The mystery was dark and impenetrable as ever; growing darker, like the night, the older it grew. A secret watch was kept over the schoolhouse after hours; and the name of every boy seen to go in or come out of the school, was reported to the master. These boys were every one of them closely examined as to what was their business in the school at such hours; who they saw there; what they did; how long they stayed; and what they brought away with them; and their answers, carefully compared with the statements returned by the secret watchers, being found generally to correspond, the attempt at detecting in that shape was foiled. Masters, teachers, servants, and watchers, and the boys at large, were at their wit's end. Some of the younger ones, prompted by a remark of Mr. Palmer, the usher, began to ascribe the missing articles to supernatural agency, and they were afraid to walk alone after dark, for fear of meeting the schoolroom ghost. 'It had taken so many things,' they said, 'who knows if it mightn't take a fancy to a small boy, and spirit him off as secretly and irresistibly as the Delphin Virgil, or the French master's watch, which it had ticked off, in spite of the watch's ticking, telling nobody the hour when it was abstracted?'

"Another expedient was tried. The master announced that he should confine the whole

school to the playground, with no more walks out beyond bounds, and no more half-holidays, until the thief was discovered. He conjured all the boys to co-operate with him in the effort at the detection, for their own sakes, for their honour more than for the holidays, and made an affecting appeal to the unknown thief, if he had a spark of honour-even of that honour which is said to be among thieves, only he doubted it,-to come forward and relieve his schoolfellows from the embarrassment into which the individual youth had involved them. 'Boys,' said the worthy preceptor, in a serious tone of entreaty, 'boys, I request your help in this disgraceful matter, as a personal favour to your master. in any way won your affection, or deserved in any humble degree your consideration, I ask you to let it be proved on this painful occasion.'

If I have

"There was a dead silence, at length broken by murmurs of generous emotion among the boys, who forgot the forfeiture of the holidays, in their sympathy with their master, whose words were delivered in a tone of soft and gentle entreaty, like a man who threw himself on their candour, and felt he could trust them. "Boys like to be trusted. Confidence is pleasing at any stage of life; but in the untried and unhacknied feelings of boyhood, it usually works an unreserved response. The boys looked at one another, as if each would say, 'There is no resisting that' Even the thief must give it up now;' and the look passed round the school, like a general mutual inspection. Every boy felt he could afford to bear it, because the master trusted him; and every boy looked at every other boy, as if of course the other boy thought so too. All looked, but none spoke. Whoever was the thief, he bore the scrutiny without quailing: and the school broke up in moody disappointment, that an appeal had failed which every one felt ought to have succeeded.

"During the following month, there was no fresh theft. The boys had borne their cap: tivity 'in bounds' without a complaint, or even a petition to be released; and the master could hold out no longer. He yearned over their patient magnanimity, and removed the suspension of their holidays.

"The next day his own gold spectacles were missing, and after a search through the schooldesk, on which he had accidentally left them (to the best of his recollection), it was ascertained that they had followed the fate of the French master's watch. This loss was kept

secret for a week from the boys, and the masters discussed among themselves the propriety of subjecting the whole school and premises to the inspection of a detective from Bristol. Another theft of a money-letter, containing a remittance from the parent of one of the boys, and which was proved to have been delivered into the box on the school premises by the postman, determined this step, and the detective shortly made his appearance. Neither his person nor his business were known to any one except the masters. The incarnate eye of the law was on the premises night and day, unknown to any one who might be the object of its vigilance. The detective loitered about a week in the neighbourhood, searching as he best could in every direction for any tidings of one of the missing articles, of which a list had been furnished him, but without avail. The only thing discovered was the master's spectacles, which were found hanging on a branch of an old tree near the school-house, with one of the glasses broken out. Who had hung them there, none could tell.

"The detective did his best, gave it up for hopeless, and returned to Bristol. The only effect of his services had been to increase the general uncomfortableness, by his repeated assertion that more than one hand was engaged in the business-that the thefts were too numerous, and some of them of such a quality, as could not be managed without two or more accomplices.

6

66

"Then there was more than one thief, if the detective was right-and nobody doubted his dictum; but, if so, who were the accomplices? That's just what I want to know,' quoth Detective; but I'll stake the vally o' the lot stole, there's more nor one on 'em in it, and it aint boys' job neither.'

"This last insinuation for a time implicated the ushers, the servants, and even one or two grown-up daughters of the master's family. The only soul absolutely and universally exempted from the miserable suspicion was the venerable master himself. After the visit of the detective, as if the thief, though not discovered, was effectually alarmed, the thefts ceased. More than a month passed, the story was growing old, losing its excitement, no fresh trespass occurring to revive its painful interest. It seemed to be universally forgotten, except by the master, whom it had evidently wounded to the quick. It had taken hold of the good man's solicitude to an extent which disturbed his rest, impaired his appetite, affected his