any individual partial, may be, by Divine aid, as far as the matter of revelation is concerned, universal, so that the wisdom usually accumulated in a long life, and elaborated and treasured up by successive minds in long ages, may be anticipated and conferred by inspiration, without induction and personal experience.

There must be, of course, such a thing as absolute truth, and duty growing out of it, existing in the nature and relations of things. All knowledge, both natural and supernatural, is only an approximation to this absolute truth. It is fully known to God alone. He may take different methods of imparting it to his creatures, through the senses, by reflection and deduction or by testimony,why not by supernatural aid rendered to natural faculties ? He makes use of minds of extraordinary power to instruct those of less endowment or opportunity, on the ordinary things which it is for man's interest to know; why not endow some minds with supernatural knowledge, which he intends to use as instructors of mankind in all ages, on that subject which is most important and vital of all, religion?

This view of things, I think, will account for two phenomena, which are most puzzling to the believer in a supernatural revelation. One is the appearance of gross errors on collateral subjects in close connection with the sublimest truths, and truths so strongly and vividly stated as to carry the highest evidence of inspiration. On the supposition of suggestive, universal inspiration, this phenomenon becomes wholly inexplicable. If the immediate suggestion of God becomes responsible for every thing there is in the Bible, then revelation itself must be given up.

The other phenomenon is, that all sects and parties,

even those who make the most extravagant claims for the Bible, subordinate revelation to reason. The Catholic does this, the Protestant does it, the advocate of general supervision, and the stickler for plenary inspiraration. All Christians, of all sects and parties, are rationalists in this sense and thus far. Though all agree as to what the Scriptures say, yet all undertake to decide, on the grounds of reason, what the Scriptures can and cannot mean. All agree in rejecting the literal sense of the Bible, on the ground that it is contradictory to reason, in cases in which they cannot be reconciled. Thus all sects and parties, however they may talk, exalt reason above revelation, and trust the plain dictates of that inspiration which giveth all men understanding, in preference to a verbal statement of the written word, whenever they come in conflict. And yet reason joyfully accepts the disclosures of revelation when it confirms the suggestions of reason, and goes in the same direction with reason, and even goes beyond its utmost stretch. Is not this a plain indication of what inspiration must be, a supernatural exaltation of man's natural powers, an anticipation of the full development of humanity in knowledge and spiritual perception? It is the complement of reason, instead of something added to it.

There remain, then, only miracles and prophecy to be accounted for. There is nothing impossible in a miracle. There is nothing improbable in it, when the end to be obtained by it is worthy of an interruption of the normal course of nature. It remains for every one to determine for himself, whether the authentication of such religions as those contained in the Old and New Testaments constitutes such an occasion.

Prophecy is certainly one of the fairest tests of a su

pernatural revelation, as it is capable of being prolonged for an indefinite period, and each age, as it fulfils ancient predictions, may bring new proofs of supernatural knowledge possessed long ago. The predictions of Moses, in the closing chapters of Deuteronomy, so accurately fulfilled more than fifteen hundred years afterwards, are a strong argument for his Divine legation.

There have been, it is true, some startling alleged developments of psychology, which, if sustained, would go to show that prevision is one of the natural powers of the human mind, under certain circumstances. Some timid people are alarmed by these reports, as if the evidences of a supernatural revelation were shaken by them. For my part, I do not view the matter in that light at all. To my mind it furnishes an analogy which renders supernatural prevision more probable, instead of less so. It reveals powers in the human soul coincident with the prophetic function, which make it only necessary that God should put in action faculties constitutionally belonging to the human soul, in order to constitute a fit instrument for the prophetic office, instead of creating them and placing them in the soul for the occasion. It would be only another case of natural powers supernaturally assisted, of precisely the same kind as making inspiration to consist in raising to perfect and infallible action the natural intellectual and spiritual powers of man.

That there is no tendency to skepticism in the belief of the powers lately alleged to reside in the human mind, of supersensual vision and knowledge, is proved by the fact, that many have been converted by it from utter skepticism as to all spiritual realities, to a belief in the separate existence and immortality of the soul.

DISCOURSE XIII.

EXPLANATION OF THE PHRASE, “THE NATURAL MAN."

BUT THE NATURAL MAN RECEIVETH NOT THE THINGS OF THE SPIRIT OF GOD; FOR THEY ARE FOOLISHNESS UNTO HIM: NEITHER CAN

- HE KNOW THEM, BECAUSE THEY ARE SPIRITUALLY DISCERNED. 1 Cor. ii. 14.

It is surprising to find, on examination, how few passages there are in the Bible on which reliance is placed in proving the commonly received doctrine of the inherent and constitutional corruption of human nature, and for most of them we are indebted to the English translators, who were generally brought up in the Calvinistic school of theology. One of them we have already explained in a previous discourse," and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others," in which we proved by a parallel passage treating upon the same subject, that the adverbial phrase pure does not mean by constitution, but by education and circumstances.

Another and still stronger case is that of our text. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God." Every Greek scholar knows that the word

xikós, translated natural, has no such meaning in the New Testament. Its literal, etymological signification is animal, and represents precisely that part of man's nature which he shares with the brutes. As a proof of this, I refer you to the fifteenth chapter of this same Epistle, in which it is applied to that part of man which is buried in the "It is sown a natural [↓vxikóv, grave: literally, an animal] body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is an animal body and there is a spiritual body."

There is one case in which our translators have given this word a meaning nearly corresponding to truth. It is in the Epistle of Jude: "How that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. These be they who separate themselves, sensual, vxikoí, having not the spirit." Had they rendered the same word in the same way in the text, "The sensual man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God," they would have given the meaning of the original as nearly perhaps as it can be translated into English. They would have made the Scripture say precisely what it does say, and what is most obviously true, that a sensual man, one who has given himself over to his senses and appetites, and has made himself a mere animal, does not appreciate spiritual things, - an assertion, the truth of which we witness every day of our lives.

But by rendering a word which means sensual natural, our translators have interpolated into the Scriptures a totally different doctrine. They make the Scripture assert, that the incapacity spoken of to spiritual things is inherent and constitutional, not voluntary and induced by habit. The difference between these two doctrines is fundamental, immense, unspeakable, both as