Correspondence.

The Bible and its Real Enemies.

To the Editor.

Sir,—Turning over the leaves of my Bible the other day, I came upon the following passage, which, with your permission, I will transfer to your columns. "Ye shall keep my sabbath and reverence my sanctuary : I am the Lord. Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them : I am the Lord your God. Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God : I am the Lord. . . . The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight or in measure : . . . . I am the Lord your God "(Levit. xix. 30-37). Observe, here are five consecutive precepts, with nothing to denote any difference in relative importance, nothing to indicate any particular solemnity attached to one more than to another; and each of them concluding with the solemn asseveration "I am the Lord," stamped as it were with the seal of Deity himself. Yet out of these, the first and the fifth are made matters of compulsory observance, more or less, throughout Christendom. The third and fourth are left to be obeyed, with greater or less exactitude, according to the dictates of social decorum; whilst the second is now universally regarded as a mere relic of superstition. Here then is a crucial test for the gentlemen, reverend or laic, who, at religious meetings, persist in saying that the Bible is all true; that other books contain some truth and some error, whereas the Bible is unalloyed truth, and so on ad nauseam. If these apologists are right, then to keep the sabbath, to shun wizards, to respect age, to be courteous towards strangers, and to have fair weights and measures, are all alike part of the whole duty of man.

The rev. Mr. Howden in his address to the Congregational Union said much about certain enemies of the Bible. Whom he meant by the term page 318 he did not particularise. But if he intended to denote the friends of rational religion, it is only fair to remind him that such persons do not hate the Bible at all, that they only claim to do what Mr. Howden must himself have already done in respect of the biblical notions about science, which he does not pretend to uphold. In fact, free Christians ask leave for themselves to do in the case of the whole Bible only what every sane man must do with such a passage as the one above quoted, namely :—to discriminate, to pick out what reason and conscience recognise as sound and good, and to reject what is unnatural, childish, fabulous or degrading.

Mr. Howden, if he wants them, may find numerous enemies of the Bible, its real enemies, in the persons of those who, on the principle of "No Surrender," try to force down the throats of people, especially in these inquiring times, false science and true morality, the grossest views of God's nature as well as the most sublime; in short, everything which happens to be found within the compass of that most venerable but heterogeneous complication, to the confusion of weak minds, and to the disgust of the strong.

Vindex.