Those who have watched carefully the tendencies of these parties for many years must sometimes have grown despondent. The progressive school has claimed with unscientific haste the adoption, as a fundamental principle of Biblical interpretation, of the negation of the supernatural. Their argument is simply, that human experience disproves the supernatural. Man, a recent comer upon the globe, who has never kept a very accurate record of his experience, who comes forth from mystery for a few days of troubled life, and then vanishes in darkness,--he in his short stay upon earth has watched the play of its laws, which were before him and will remain after him, and has learned without any revelation that God never has changed, never will, never can change or suspend them! Who shall assure us that our experience of these laws does not differ from that of Peter and John, the Apostles? How much better to say of them with Hume, Whatever the fact, we cannot believe it, or to query with Montaigne, _Que sais-je_? Far better might we say that human experience can never overthrow faith in the supernatural, for none can ever say what has been the experience of the countless dead over whom oblivion broods. Shall a few _savans_ say, Our experience outweighs the experience of the Hebrews _plus_ one hundred generations of dead Gentiles _plus_ one universal instinct of humanity? _Credat M. Littré, non [Greek: hoi polloi], M. Guizot, vel Agassiz._ But the laws of Nature are uncha----Ah! that is the very point in dispute. Why can they not alter? Because they are invari----Tut! Well, then, b-e-c-a-u-s-e----When you find a good argument, put it into that blank. Till then, adieu.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Those who claim a plenary verbal inspiration as essential to a real revelation are, according to M. Guizot, equally remote from a truly scientific spirit. Errors in rhetoric and grammar, passages where the writers speak of astronomical and geological matters in consonance with the prevailing, but, in many cases, mistaken theories of their times, being pointed out in the Bible, these cry out, "There can be no real errors in an inspired book,"--and we are at once amazed and disgusted to hear men deny the reality of things which they can but perceive, quite as sturdily as the Port-Royalists refused to allow the presence of sundry propositions in their books, which, notwithstanding the Pope's infallible assertion, they had no recollection of thinking or writing, which they supposed they had always hated and disavowed, and which they could by no ingenuity of search discover. Sir Thomas Browne might enjoy, could he revisit the world, the privilege of seeing many who are reduced to defend their faith with Tertullian's desperate resolution,--"It is certain, because it is impossible." If ever we escape from such ineptitude, it will come about by the diffusion of a more philosophic temper, and the use of a logic that shall refuse to exclude the facts of human nature from fair treatment, that shall embrace and account for all the questions involved, and that shall decline to receive as truth errors of finite science because found in an inspired book. We welcome this volume as an example of the right spirit and tendency in these grave discussions, and shall look eagerly for the promised three succeeding ones.