declaring her independence is agitated, and, unless England prepares herself so to remould her constitution as to enable her to assemble representatives from her numerous colonies, who may in some sort constitute a Parliament of the British Empire, in which all subjects of Imperial interest may be discussed and determined on, she must look forward to the time, possibly not far distant, when her vast American colonies, as well as others of her possessions, will transform themselves into sovereign states.

ART. IV.-BIBLE INFALLIBILITY-" EVANGELICAL
DEFENDERS OF THE FAITH.

1. An Introduction to the Criticism of the Old Testament and to Biblical Interpretation; with an Analysis of the Books of the Old Testament and Apocrypha. Originally written by the REV. THOMAS HARTWELL HORNE, B.D., now revised and edited by the REV. JOHN AYRE, M.A. 8vo., London, 1860.

2. Facts, Statements, and Explanations, connected with the publication of the second volume of the tenth edition of Horne's Introduction to the Study of the Holy Scriptures, etc., etc. By SAMUEL DAVIDSON, D.D. 8vo. 1857. 3. Dr. Davidson's Removal from the Professorship of Biblical Literature in the Lancashire Independent College, Manchester, on account of alleged error in doctrine; a statement of facts, with documents; together with remarks and criticisms. By REV. THOMAS NICHOLAS, Professor of Biblical Literature, and Mental and Moral Science, in the Presbyterian College, Carmarthen. 8vo. 1860.

A

BOUT four years ago, a new edition of Horne's Introduction to the Critical Study of the Scriptures was published, the second volume of which was the work of the Rev. Professor Davidson, purporting to be, not a revised edition of the old, but altogether a new treatise on the text of the Old Testament and Biblical interpretation. This volume, owing to the breadth of its criticism and candour of its deductions, almost immediately on its appearance, roused a storm of indignation and alarm in that section of Church and Dissenters appropriating to itself the epithet 'Evangelical.' The religious newspapers, so called, lucus a non lucendo, with their usual unprincipled ferocity and popish assumption, branded the author as heterodox, not only on the question of inspiration, but on the doctrines of the Trinity and justification by faith also; and at once consigned the book to

their index expurgatorius. The heavenly Cerberi who keep watch at the temple of orthodoxy barked furiously, and hounded off the Professor and his learning as Germanistic and dangerous; and to the disgrace of a denomination which has stood high in history for intelligence, learning, and freedom from intolerance, a party actuated by personal animosity and jealousy of feeling, rather than by the love of truth, ejected him from his professorship. A demand was made for another edition, not to supplant the offensive and outlawed work, but to please the taste of the Low Church or evangelical party, with which the publisher has thought it politic to comply; and the result is the appearance of the book above named, under the editorship of the Rev. John Ayre.

This volume then appears as the declaration of the Evangelical school upon the important subjects of Biblical inquiry: it has been compiled at their request, and to meet their views. The circumstance will at once stamp it in the opinion of many as inferior to the work it is intended to rival. If the aim of a book is avowedly not truth pure and simple-but truth according to preconceived and adopted theories, it can never become a trustworthy guide for the student. The editor's task in this case has been to re-arrange and condense an old work, making additions of his own, and maintaining a fixed key in the tone of his criticism—a pre-established theory to which that criticism must submit, and with which it must be squared. This is a very difficult part for an honest man and a scholar to fulfil. Thoroughly to acquaint himself with the arguments and conclusions of the most advanced and most competent critics; to give due weight to the astounding facts of modern discovery in the departments of geology, philology, and chronology; candidly to face the discrepancies and contradictions which a more minute and closer study of the Scriptures, and a higher scholarship, have elicited; and withal to arrive at the same conclusions and adopt the same views which were held previously to these accessions to our knowledge, the result of premises now found to be narrow and erroneous- -this truly is a herculean labour.

The great George Stephenson used to say, that he had acquired the faculty of stripping the word impossible of its first syllable; but it needs a cleverer engineer, a more skilful 'navigator' in the department of criticism than even Stephenson was in his, to level hills of difficulties, to pierce through stubborn rocks of fact, to harmonize modern discoveries with ancient forms of speech, and to carry the self-satisfied Evangelicals in easy and somnolent security across the mountainous country of Biblical criticism. The book before us witnesses the difficulty of the task. The editor continually finds himself going too far, allowing too much;

and he retracts or makes some excusing or palliating remark, interjecting a few commonplaces of orthodox phraseology as a makeweight. Difficulties loom in the distance, and leave on the mind an impression of uneasiness and dissatisfaction, though they are immediately clouded over by vague misty words of Evangelical sentiment. Arguments are given and considerations stated which are allowed to be of very great weight, and which are not answered; yet the editor avows his belief in the conclusion opposite to that to which they lead. To such an extent is this observable, that in reading it, the comparison occurred to us again and again, of his book to the dish called Irish stew, which consists of fragments of meat hidden in a large quantity of potato. In Mr. Horne's matter, which constitutes the bulk of the book, we have the plain food, not very nourishing though not unwholesome; and in the extracts given by the editor from modern and enlightened critics, we have the strong meat, in small proportion it is true, and fragmentary, carefully marked off in brackets, yet too strong for orthodox stomachs to digest, and therefore, to make it palatable, well seasoned with the known phraseology of the school for whom the dish is intended.

Mr. Ayre deserves credit for having made himself acquainted with the literature of the subject in Germany as well as England, and for giving in good faith, for the most part, the arguments of those to whom he is opposed. But he has not been able to conceal the fact that his increased knowledge has altered in some measure his previous opinions, which yet he has not the courage to surrender. His book therefore is very inconsistent, part with part, and not unfrequently it is self-contradictory. The force of truth has been too much for his pre-adopted theory, and he seems to be in an uncomfortable transition state of judgment.

He evidently wishes to identify himself with the Low Church party, a large class of whom, on account of their newspaper, so notorious for its rancour and invective, has been designated "Recordite," a name not to be understood as meaning anything approaching recondite. It may be said, by the way, that instead of the old and well-known appellations, High, Broad, and Low Church, the epithets Attitudinarian, Latitudinarian and Platitudinarian, would perhaps be more expressive to designate the religious parties of our day. With the last of these we have now to do. The Recordites or Platitudinarians, take for the corner-stone of their creed Bible infallibility; maintaining it on the ground that if we introduce the slightest uncertainty into Scripture we are left without any guide; and contenting themselves with the repetition of "orthodox" commonplaces and bitter anathemas against the "unsound." Mr. Ayre evidently desires to make his

conclusions square with the tenets of his party; but his increased knowledge and his facts are continually in his way. The consequence is a strange inconsistency and self-contradiction in his book, which the following passages are an example of:

Notwithstanding these contradictory statements, instances of which might be multiplied, it is evident that Mr. Ayre adopts the dynamical theory of inspiration, of which Dr. Lee is the ablest exponent. This theory insists upon that distinction between Revelation and Inspiration, which applies the one name to direct communications of God to man, as contained in the scriptures; and the other to that actuating energy of the Holy Spirit, under which all parts of the Bible have been committed to writing, whether they contain an account of ordinary historical facts, or the narrative of supernatural revelations. Dr. Lee justly

remarks :—

“It should never be forgotten that the real question with which our inquiry is concerned, is the result of the Divine influence, as presented to us in the Holy Scriptures, not the manner according to which it has pleased God that this result should be attained."

And he goes on to say, as the verdict of the school he represents :

"Moses unquestionably received more abundant tokens of the divine favour than Ezra, or Nehemiah, or the author of the books of Chronicles; but this does not render that element of the Bible, in composing which Moses was the agent, one whit more true or more accurate in its details, than the writings of the others." (Lect. 1. p. 28).

Here, then, is the doctrine of the infallibility of the Bible, a doctrine which, according to Mr. Ayre and his school, the apostles held and Christ sanctioned; which from the earliest times the Church has adopted, and which the plenary as well as the verbal inspirationists still maintain. Our object now shall be to prove the utter untenableness of this theory, from facts deducible from the volume before us.

The question of Bible infallibility is one of fact, not of theory, to be answered by careful induction from the records themselves, not by a priori reasonings. We are not called on to theorize as to what ought to be or might be expected to be, but as to what actually is—a fallible or an infallible record. Yet at the outset we are met by presuppositions and opinions. "When we bear in

mind," argues Lee,

"That so many astonishing miracles have been performed to convey this revelation to man, and to bring to pass the system of things which it announces, we feel instinctively inclined to presuppose that God cannot have withheld the far less striking miracle of providing against error in the documents which preserve it. If we had never heard of the difficulties which have been urged against Inspiration -if we had never opened the scriptures themselves-could the suspicion