be a divine book to those who make only an infernal use of it, or the word of God to those who only find their inspiration in it to do the work of devils. Also, as we find the instinct everywhere to take only what suits us and leave all the rest, must we not say the man then, after all, is greater than the book, no matter who may say the book is greater than the man, this being divine, as they hold, while we are only human.

Is it not fair to ask the defenders of the book which I also love and reverence, whether we may not use our reason when we read it as we use it when we read any book of a great and vital moment; and as we use our instinct, to take only what suits us really and truly, and to leave the rest because, as Butler well says, "Reason is the only faculty we have to judge concerning any thing, even revelation itself," and Locke: "He that takes away reason to make way for revelation, puts out the light of both." And as the truth is forever growing larger and clearer, as we claim, on all sides, in science, in philosophy, in history and life, so that many things once accepted as pure truth are now quite incredible, have we not the right to claim that this law of progress should touch the Bible as it touches all things beside, and the truth we shall draw from its inexhaustible pages. Moreover, as we read by the ever-growing light of our time and the fair light of reason also, may it not grow clear to us that this great old book is not something sealed and settled and then locked up in the dogma of a plenary inspiration, once for all, which is something the book itself never claims? If I have read it to any purpose I am compelled to believe that the book itself makes on this side and loses on that, while it still remains The Bible-just as in my mother land and within the lines of authentic history, there were towns standing where you can now sail in pretty deep waters, and a way for ships on the sea where there is good land now covered with thorpes and farms; yet, it is still old England.

The Apostles, for instance, evidently believed in the almost instant return of their great and dear friend to the earth, when the dead in Christ should rise first, and those who were alive and remained would meet the Lord in the air; but we see now they were utterly mistaken, and the expectation has sunk out of sight, save as a periodical craze. They believed also in the resurrection of this body from the grave VOL. CXLVII.-NO. 380.

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at the last day, and every time our good advocate across the water recites his creed, he says, I believe in the resurrection of the body. It is none of my business to ask what meaning he gives to the sentence. I can only say that for myself the evident faith of the Apostles is simply incredible, I can only believe that these bodies of ours wait not a moment for the call of the angels of the great resurrection. It is rising now, in this June splendor, the dust of the dear sacred dead, and by October some sweet and holy essence from it will have been hidden in the flowers, the fruits, and the corn. My dear friend and brother, Dr. Field, has no doubt found poor remnants of them in the caves by the Nile. They were laid there at endless cost and pains by the heathen, as we call them, who also believed in this resurrection, that so they might be ready when the call came sounding through the valley, and the rocks would rend to let them come forth. They burn them for fuel now, as I hear, in the fires; and I think as I read that, there must be a dim, dumb joy in them to be so disimprisoned at last, and be free to be one again with the beautiful living world. These are but the instances of the truth which touches me always as I read my New Testament, of the way it may make and lose, and how we must verify and rectify the truths we find here; winnow the grain and let the chaff burn or rot, as it pleases the Creator of the grain and the chaff.

more.

But if I must use such reason as I have again as the twin sister of such faith as I have, I find I must reject some things I find in my Bible as what we used to call "Bible true" and written by a divine inspiration or done by it, as heartily as Mr. Ingersoll rejects them. Some he has quoted in his rejoinder. I will quote some The book makes the walls of a city fall down flat at the noise of a great shouting and the blowing of rams' horns; and says the sun stood still on Gibeon and the moon on the valley of Ajalon until the people had avenged themselves of their enemies, and hasted not to go down a whole day, so that there was not a day like that before or after it; and makes Deborah bless Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, and tip, with a divine approval, the nail she drives into the temple of her sleeping and trusting guest. Now if we found things like these wonders written a great while ago in, let us say, Hindostan, we should say at once they were myths and legends; and of such treachery done in the name of their God, What a deity! I have no option about saying just

the same thing when I read these chapters in my Bible. They may be myths, legends, poems, whatever you will; but they are no word of God to me or true word about Him. So, because I must be true to my own soul, I have to say if those walls went down at all it must have been by good solid pounding; and the courses the steadfast sun and moon keep now they kept then, while barbarian fought barbarian ; and it was by no divine inspiration the woman drove that nail into the man's temple after she had given him that bowl of bread and milk, but by the inspiration of a very evil spirit of treachery and revenge. They might believe it who made the record, I will not; and since then all Christendom might believe it, I will not; and Newton might believe what they say about the sun and moon as a Christian, and doubt it as a philosopher, then I stand with the philosopher against the Christian. I say amen also to the things Mr. Ingersoll quotes for ruthless condemnation touching this whole business in the old fighting books. It was noticed when the missionaries had got hold of some New Zealanders, and were teaching them from the Bible, that they preferred these fighting books above all others, and would fain have had the holy men read from them all the time. And I have read how a good bishop, who "did a great work" among the Goths in his time, undertook to translate the Bible for them, but would not translate these books at all, because, as he told them, they were over-fond of fighting already. When they were holding a debate over them and their like in Concord many years ago, and Master Rogers asked his antagonist, point blank, whether he would slay innocent women and children then at the command of his god, and the man said: "Yes, I would," Rogers answered very quietly. "Well, I wouldn't, and there's where we differ."

Such things are but the instances of the cleft between those who still love the Bible and find in it a divine inspiration and those who say it is all divine and must be accepted without question, and, as near as may be, without debate. It cannot be so accepted in our time. We must bring the Bible to the truth, and not the truth to the Bible, and having long done with the worship of golden idols-so we say we must not now worship a verbal The fine wheat is there, so is the chaff; the fair flowers, so are the weeds; the pure gold, so is the dross and refuse and the slag of holy and unholy fires long burnt out; and we must weigh

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these things at their true worth and call them by their right names, no matter who gets hurt. Prove all things and hold fast that which is good, as honest old Paul says-as fine a bit of manhood as ever breathed the breath of life. "The truth should be no less than the Gospel of God, presented under a living form so human and so gentle that, being accepted by all, it may rouse the souls of all to a community of thought."* I know of no other way to win or silence men like our honest Atheist, or to "leave religion on a higher and more impregnable basis than it was before." Some years ago, I was riding across the prairies with a missionary who had newly come home from Egypt, where he had been eleven years, and talking of many things, I said to him, "Tell me truly who was the very best man you found there." "My Mahomedan teacher of Arabic," he answered at once; "he was the noblest and best man I found in the valley." "Then what will become of him," I said again, "if he dies in that faith," and his answer was, "He will go to hell, sir, because he would not accept the terms of salvation laid down in the Bible." So say those who sent him out. How mean and vile such dogmas are in contrast with the saying of Achmet the Turk to John Tempest of Broughton: Religion is that manner of serving one and the same God which suits the constitution of each respective country." And when we blazon such things as my missionary said to me on our banners and fall back on our Bible to maintain them, yes, and give them to our children for "the sincere milk of the Word," what wonder that a man so wholly human and tender as our friend should say if that is your God and this your Bible I will fight them both to the bitter end.

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ROBERT COLLYER.

THE VINDICATION OF JEHOVAH.

I HAVE followed the Field-Ingersoll and the Gladstone-Ingersoll controversy with exceeding interest, not unmingled with quiet merriment evoked by the serio comic gravity with which the gallant Colonel gets in his favorites heaves and stabs at the fictions of his own creation, while he loudly declares them to be the figments of religion. Who was the genius who compiled an

* Conversations of Rabelais in the Life of Stephen Dolet.

+ Reported in Whitaker's History of Craven.

essay to prove the non-existence of Napoleon I. ? I could well fancy the mantle of his painstaking audacity enwrapping the shoulders of this sturdy Paynim-knight, a most genial and cultured gentleman as all have it, and whose sweet and reverent home-life has been repeatedly described to me by those privileged to witness it. In these most sacred relations of our existence, by the unconscious growth of heredity and the unknown absorption of custom and habit of thought, Colonel Ingersoll is intensely religious in spite of himself. But all well-founded reverence for him who thus practices better than he preaches must never relax the sinews of one who is called upon to parry to the best of his poor ability the thrusts of "that other man over yonder," the blusterous and audacious writer who likewise bears the honored name of Colonel Ingersoll. Therefore I, too, who would be well content to practice only what I preach, must close my visor and put forth my shield, and present my buckler for the weight of the quasiwrathful arm that is wildly flourishing the blade of trenchant and ready wit in the pages of the NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

Basing, as I do, upon the Bible only (with a big B, Colonel; decades of centuries entitle it to that), by which term we Hebrews mean only what is commonly known as the "Old Testament," I do not feel authorized to discuss any of the magnificent feints and terrifying slashes made at doctrines or principles specifically Christian. What Colonel Ingersoll attacks herein has no authoritative existence for us whatever. Pauline Christianity, i. e., the Christianity of fact as opposed to that of theory, is eo ipso antiJewish; and, for the matter of that, could readily be shown to be antagonistic, too, to the teachings of that pious Essene Hebrew of Nazareth, whom posterity has elevated to the dignity of founder of a world-religion and made the recipient of divine honors. Attacks concern Hebrews which are directed against Jewish teachings; some of these only, appearing in Colonel Ingersoll's latest utterance, shall I consider.

I have heard that many men seek refreshing relaxation from the toil of business or the cares of professional life by the vigorous exercise of muscle and sinew in the science of the fencer or the boxer. Some such motive seems to me to dominate Colonel Ingersoll, who, however, endowed with more than the average intellectuality, prefers to be intellectual even in his relaxation, and so fences and boxes, as it were, with a pen, upon paper, and