7. Of the Scriptures it may be remarked, as a still farther source of difficulty, that they relate to changes in the physical as well as the moral world. They record the creation and the deluge, and they anticipate the destruction of the whole material Universe, and more especially of that globe which we inherit as the sons of Adam, referring it apparently to the operation of fire. They speak also with confidence of the dissolution of man's fleshly tabernacle; not, however, as an eternal reduction of it to its primary and unthinking elements, but merely as a preparatory step to its resurrection in a more glorious and permanent form. To compare then the present appearances of nature with these accounts, and observe how they confirm or confute each other, together with the extent and darkness of the subjects themselves, must necessarily open a wide field for science to exercise her powers in the solution of the questions which arise; and must very often also compel her to acknowledge how ineffectual are her best efforts to give any satisfactory answer to her inquiries.

8. The last source of difficulty to which I shall allude, is the fact that the Scriptures are not confined to the limits of earth, and the concerns of its inhabitants as the matter of their statements; but wing their way to the remotest

regions of space, and pass through all the ranks of spiritual and intellectual being, through Angels and Archangels up to God. The ministrations of these holy spirits that are about the throne of the Eternal; the fall, and fate, and evil workings of that miserable company, whose leader is Satan, whose end is destruction and whose pride is their god; the malice and the snares of that Prince of the Power of the Air, who is at once both the tempter and the accuser of the brethren; the operations of the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, in the conversion and sanctification of the soul; the great mysteries of the creation and redemption of man, of the creation of man in the image of God by that Word, which in the beginning was with God and was God; and the restoration of man, by the same Word, when he had emptied himself of his glory and made himself of no reputation, and dwelt and suffered among us in the form of a servant; the state of the soul in its separation from the body, and the re-appearance of both before the Judgement Seat of Christ; the joys of Heaven and the terrors of Hell,-all these form a part of the revelations of the Almighty, and must needs stimulate the curiosity of the believer, without affording a hope of its full gratification. For if the Bible be sometimes not intelligible, even when it speaks to us of earthly things, how can we be

astonished when we find it speaking of heavenly things which we are at a loss to understand? "Secret things belong unto the Lord our God"," and, except so far as they are essential to our salvation either as the principles or motives of practice, we have no right to demand an entire and unclouded knowledge of their nature and properties. The secret things of the Lord our God are what even the powerful and penetrating energies and intelligence of the Holy Angels desire to look into; and, therefore, though it be not unrighteous in us to indulge a similar desire, yet with the weak and limited capacity of a mere mortal being, clogged with infirmities and chained to matter and the world, it would be presumptuous indeed to entertain a hope of our curiosity being gratified beyond the bounds of a strict and palpable necessity.

9. Add, finally, to all this amazing multitude, and variety, and length, and breadth, and height, and depth of the contents of Holy Writ, the narrow space in which it comprehends so much, and the extreme brevity with which it treats of all; and the catalogue of the causes in which its difficulties arise, will have been satisfactorily closed. For where much that is partially incomprehensible and awfully abstruse, is expressed in a few short

a Deut. xxix. 29.

sentences, and conveyed under images deduced only from the imperfect analogy which subsists between things common and visible, and things invisible and unknown, there cannot but be frequent omissions of those intermediate links in the great train of theological reasoning, which could alone have facilitated our perception of the strength and fitness, and continuity of the whole. Even were it possible for us to apprehend the fulness of the divine mysteries in their complete extent, still the limited pages of a single volume would be too short to allow of so vast a range of information being impressed, without obscurity, upon the slowness and weakness of a mere mortal mind.

I urge not these observations as having the merit of novelty, or as exhausting a subject so copious and large. I would be considered rather as having arranged, than invented, and as having made a selection of the principal, rather than a specification of the whole of those causes to which Theologians have traced, in the Scriptures, the origin of "things hard to be understood." Imperfect however as the statement may in reality be, it will still be found sufficient to answer the purpose it was intended to serve, and to shew that, if we consider the Bible only as the work of man, both its contents and its origin are such as to render the existence of its difficulties

B

an unavoidable and unobjectionable consequence. For these difficulties spring not from any want of character or capacity in the Authors, but from the subjects upon which they treat, the languages in which they wrote, and the circumstances under which they composed. Whether the obscurities be of a philosophical, philological, or historical kind; whether they belong to the doctrines, the precepts, or the prophecies of the Scriptures, it is the reader's, and not the writer's, ignorance which creates and continues them. The sacred penmen wrote as all ordinary men in the same situation would and must have written, and it is only by reason of a change in the state and aspect of the world which no human power or foresight could prevent, and from the operation of causes whose influence no human composition could escape, that darkness and ambiguity have in so many instances supervened. To the Authors of the Bible, therefore, in their situation as men, and to the Bible itself, if it be regarded only as the composition of men, the frequent occurrence of such a variety of "things hard to be understood," cannot be considered as any serious or solid objection. Every other similar work would inevitably have been affected in a similar manner, and if revelation appears to have been operated upon in a greater degree, it is because its antiquity is higher, its languages more intricate, its matter