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it brings us' face to face with the infinity of the divine life. In the Bible the wind of heaven pays scant heed to our anticipa tions or our prejudices; it “bloweth where it listeth.” It >breathes not only in the divine charities of the gospels, not only in the lyrical sallies of the epistles, not only in the great announcements scattered here and there in the Holy Scriptures of the magnificence, or the compassion, or the benevolence of God; but also in the stern language of the prophets, 'in the warnings and lessons of the historical books, in the revelations of divine justice and of human responsibility which abound in either Tes tament. “Where it listeth.” Not only where our sense of literary beauty is stim ulated, as in St. Paul’s picture of charity, by lines- which have taken paptive the imagination of the world, not only where feeling and conscience echo the verdict of ^authority and the promptings of reverence, but also where this is not the case; where neither precept nor example stimulates us, and we are left face to face with historical or ethical material, which appears to us to inspire no spiritual enthusiasm, or which is highly suggestive of critical difficulty. Let us be patient ; we shall understand, if we will only wait, how these features of the Bible top are integral parts of a living whole; here, as elsewhere, the Spirit breathes ; in the genealogies of the Chron icles as in the last discourse in St. John, though with an admitted difference of manner and degree. He “bloweth where He listeth.” The apostle’s words respect ing the Old Testament are true of the New: “All Scripture is given by inspira tion of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in -righteousness.” And, “Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.” “But thou hearest the sound thereof, and canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth.” The majesty of Scripture is recognized by man, wherever there is, I will
in the hands *of her children. The self- assertion, the scepticism, and the fastidious ness of our day would meet like the men of the second Roman triumvirate on that island in the Reno, and would draw up their lists of prescription. One would con demn the poetry of Scripture as too in- • exact; another its history as too largely -secular; another its. metaphysics as too vtranscendental, or as hostile to some fanci ful ideal o f .“simplicity,” or as likely to quench, a purely moral enthusiasm. ' The archaic history of the Pentateuch,. or the sterner side of the ethics of the psalter, or the supernaturalism of the histories of Elij ah or o f Daniel, or the so-called pes simism of Ecclesiastes, or the alleged secu larism, of Esther, or the literal import of the 'Song of Solomon, would be in turn condemned. Nor could the apostles hope to escape : St. John would be too mystical in this estimate; St. James too legal in that; ■ St. Paul too dialectical, or too metaphysi cal, or too easily capable of an antinomian interpretation; St. Peter too undecided, as if balancing between St. Paul and St. James. Our new Bible would probably be uniform, narrow, symmetrical; it would be entirely, made up of. poetry, or of history, or of formal propositions, or of philosophi cal speculation, or of lists of moral maxims; it would be modeled afffer the type of some current writer on English history, or some popular poet or metaphysician, or some' sentimentalist who abjures history and philosQphy alike on principle, or some com poser of well-intentioned religious tracts for general circulation. The inspirations of heaven would be taken in hand, and instead of a wind blowing where it listeth, we should have a wind, no doubt, of some kind, rustling 'earnestly enough along some very narrow crevices or channels, in obedience to the directions of some one form of human prejudice, or passion, or fear, or hope. The Bible>is like nature in its immense, its exhaustless variety; like nature, it re flects all the higher moods of the human soul, because it does much more; because
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