The Value of the Bible.

At the same time, I most earnestly desire to say that I am not insensible to the supreme value of the Bible. There, the devout reader may find recorded the purest, wisest, and most consoling thoughts concerning the dealings of God with man, and the hope of man in God. There, the anxious soul may see how men have sinned and suffered, risen and triumphed in days gone by. There, every tone of the spirit's yearning cry, and every cadence of its confiding song, can be heard. There, the sage may find more than he can master, and the child all that it can need. There, saint and sinner may see that their rapture or their remorse is not the accident of to-day, that other wayfarers have felt as they feel, and that the strange living link of a common experience and a common destiny binds them to the great mysterious brotherhood of humanity. There, the heavy-laden may indeed find rest for their souls,—a refuge from earthly tumults, a shelter from the storm.

But the "orthodox" world is under a great delusion in supposing that this is so because the Bible is supernaturally inspired: it is under a greater delusion still when it imagines that the Bible is all wise, and beautiful, and good, as a whole: it is under the greatest delusion of all when it asserts that it is in every part the final and authoritative word of God. To dispel these delusions, then, and not to depreciate the Bible, is the object I have in view,—to make it possible to read the Bible with discrimination and true understanding, and to make it to us what it ought to be,—a book subordinate to conscience and reason, whose sacred duty it is to" prove all things, and hold fast that which is good."