dream of a meaning so utterly different, and which other language could have been easily chosen to convey? a meaning sought to be propped up too by assumptions, at variance alike with probability and the deductions of ethnological research, respecting the paucity and the slight territorial diffusion of the human race at the time, fixed by most chronologers at about 2,300 B.C., when there is every reason to believe that the Egyptian empire had been flourishing for centuries if not millenniums.

But waiving these or other dilemmas on topics within the range of primæval history or tradition, and the multiplication of reasonings that might haply suggest the simile of "breaking a butterfly upon a wheel," I would remark, once for all, that the force of prescription or of prevailing assent, so powerful with the mass of minds in relation to systems of thought, as to modes and usages, will not prevent intellects awakened to reflection from inquiring how far the antique Jewish narratives are susceptible of the application of a style of criticism as yet, I am aware, in little vogue with the self-esteemed conservators of truth, but which no truth-loving mind will on that account feel authorised to reject,―any supposition or exegetical process being necessarily false which imposes a sacrifice of the understanding, or the slightest tampering with the moral sense. Those indeed accustomed to weigh dicta for what they are worth, need scarcely be told that assumption plays the part of proof in few things more than in the principles forming the basis of the popular and indiscriminating conceptions both of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, called unitedly the Book, though strictly a library or collection of books, written in the most marked variety of epochs and stages of religious developement :-a collection that, embodying the noblest forms of divine philosophy, and the most enchanting strains of devotional aspiration, stands forth as some ancient pile of oriental magnificence, stamped with the successive and heterogeneous styles of a slow and complicated structure, but which, even

in its rudest or most Cyclopean fragments, or its strangest appendages, can excite the bewildering thought of no rightseeing mind, if contempt for those who, confounding its several parts, and imputing qualities to which it offers no claim, misinterpret its nature, and read perversely its sculptured hieroglyphics.

In fine, if the suppression or partial operation of reason were not essential to the systems patronised by some, it would be impossible to account for the multitude of chimeras still current in certain quarters ;-abortions as the offspring of fancy, and prodigies as subjects of belief; among which -to close the array of illusions here glanced at-should not be forgotten the fables respecting the progenitors of our race as possessed of transcendant genius and accomplishments, and which Coleridge, in tone and temperament one of the most enlarged and truly charitable of thinkers, though often warped by party and dogmatic prepossessions, shadowing out in their juxta-position a resemblance to the case of a giant bound with fetters of straw, not unjustly characterises as rabbinical dotages.

X

THE CONTEST OF THE OUTWARD AND

THE INWARD.

HE great controversy of the Pauline epistles I take to be this: Whether moral purity-in Scriptural and theological language, righteousness-is to be effected by a process ab extra, or by a process ab intra; in other words, whether a man is to be made holy by the ritual and exterior, or by something more closely related to his intellectual and spiritual being. This end, it is argued, is not attainable in the former way; by participation, that is, of outward privilege peculiar to a nation selected to that distinction; by the intervention of ceremonial observances, which cannot touch the conscience or springs of ethical action; or by the authority of mere Law, which comes but in the shape of prescription and penalty. It is to be achieved, says the Apostle, by the operation of an interior or spiritual principle called Faith:-a principle, by the way, not to be confounded with assent to certain speculative or historical propositions, but which is rather a spirit of reliance or child-like Trust, carrying with it a surrender of the individual will to the will of God. In this manner, it is contended, assimilation to the Divine image has ever been formed and cherished in man.

The topic thus briefly analysed and summed up has been embarrassed with difficulty, partly through artificial and traditionary assumptions with which it has been blended;

δικαιόω

partly from the technical or latinised rendering of the verb dixaiów by justify-a word which never, in its pure English acceptation, denotes to make righteous, or the like, though a meaning most consonant with the radical signification of the original, and which, assigned to all the instances of its occurrence in the passages relating to the subject, would serve to make the scope of the Apostle sufficiently clear.*

By pursuing a different course, the most perplexed and perplexing misapprehensions have been generated and sustained; as, in a perpetual confusion between the meanings of justification and righteousness;-in a confusion no less perceptible in relation to the word law, as referring to what the Apostle denies to be an instrument of making holy, and which, in the popular theories, is represented as denoting, now the ritual or Levitical part of the Mosaic institute; now, moral law, in its widest signification, but which, by an elasticity or puerility of criticism that, applied to other subjects, would give to expression almost any meaning that fancy might suggest, is resolved into the mere decalogue, though chiefly a string of prohibitions against polytheism, idolatry, labour on the Saturday, and certain social vices; —and, to crown the whole, in a most arbitrary and

* The word, I find, is so translated in Luther's version,-the active and passive forms being expressed respectively by gerecht machen, to make righteous, and gerecht werden, to become or be made righteous. It is worth while to notice the effect of such a rendering in the following passages, which comprehend all the more salient instances:-Rom. iii. 24, 26, 28, 30.; (where, it may be observed, the force of the correlated words in the 26th verse-δικαιοσύνης, δίκαιον, and δικαιοῦντα—is unwarrantably varied in our common translation) ch. iv. 5. v. 1, 9. viii. 30, 33. 1 Cor. vi. 11. Gal. ii. 16, 17. iii. 8, 11, 24. v. 4.

Whether the notion above propounded was held by this or that party at the time of the Reformation, or other period of ecclesiastical history, has of course nothing to do with its correctness: while to urge the incompatibility of such a view with certain theories or current theological distinctions, is a matter with which no one need concern himself who cares for truth, and not for systems.

324 THE CONTEST OF THE OUTWARD AND INWARD.

one-sided interpretation of the word faith throughout the reasoning.

The doctrine of the Apostle, as rescued from the dogmatic perversions of the schools, supplies the key to ecclesiastical story, whether of ancient or modern times, the picture it presents being mostly the phases of these antagonistic systems or processes of purification; unfolding themselves, one in the shape of superstition, the other of spirituality and ethical worth. In particular, it unveils the nature of the Christian life and of all true religion as an interior power or principle, which, emanating from a divine source, and nourished by the fountain from which it sprang, excludes all pretence of self-exaltation; while, having its seat in the heart, and operating from within, it extends its influence to the character and the whole circle of moral behaviour. Finally it exposes, by implication and contrast, certain phantoms or devices which often pass under the name of Christianity, and usurp its honours while they obscure its lustre.

But, say some, if this be the case, what is to become of so many elaborate tomes of controversial theology, or of systems inculcated as quintessential if not sole embodiments of Truth? Where, in the wide range of Scripture statement or allusion, shall we find any fragment or shadow of the great doctrine of imputed righteousness, as figured in the theoretic schemes of divines? I leave, not Echo, but Reflection to answer, Where ?

To remove any misconception arising from a supposed resemblance of phraseology, I may remark, that there is an obvious difference between the Scripture representation that faith is imputed to a man for righteousness, (that is-so I take it is accepted as its token, guarantee, or essence, being the root or elemental principle of holiness,) and the assumption that a person may be accounted righteous in