The Main Object of this Inquiry.

I should, therefore, be utterly misunderstood if it were thought that Lam anxious to "lower" the Bible, or to "discard" the Bible, or to prove that it is "false," or, indeed, to do any one thing with it as a whole, except to prove that it is not one thing at all, but a very composite work, requiring the greatest possible care and discrimination from the reader of it. What I want to shew is that the Bible cannot be infallible, seeing that it is unequal, inconsistent, and full of startling contrasts of good and bad, earthly and heavenly; and that it cannot be a supreme and final authority, simply because it speaks in many tones, and says the most opposite things. In reading the Bible, the one great requisite is a moral and religious page 5 faculty for choosing the good and leaving the evil. But if that is so, it is surely obvious that it is the human conscience and not the written word that is supreme,—the enlightened living soul and not the dead letter that really rules. A moment's reflection ought to convince any one that this is so; and it would be universally seen and acknowledged but for the fact, that everything, however obvious, is made to yield to the primary assumption and assertion that the Bible is the supreme, perfect, and final word of God. My main object is to demonstrate that it is not this—that it is, as I have said, not one thing at all, but many things, that it contains the most striking opposites, of good and evil, false and true. Hence, the conscience, the mind, and the devout soul, are and must be supreme.