as numerɔus—which were indited by Moses, and Asaph, and others. In one cover might be bound up the Gospel, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse of John; and in another, that divine Song, those confessions of a converted philosopher, and that ancient "Wealth of Nations," which were written down by Solomon. And under such an arrangement might we not hope that books, usually read in chapters or smaller morsels, might sometimes be read continuously, taken down from the shelf, as another attractive book would be taken, on a leisure evening, and read through at a single sitting? Might we not hope, in such a case, that while those who now read the Old and New Testaments would read them still, some who at present do not read the Bible might be tempted to read Paul, Moses, and Isaiah? And is it too sanguine to expect that, as the searching of Scriptures and sacred knowledge thus increased, some who first resorted to the book, for literary entertainment, might learn from it the lessons which make wise to life everlasting?

At all events, theology has not yet turned to sufficient account the Bible's marvelous diversity. You know how opposite are the turns, and how various the temperaments, of different people, and how unequal their capacities. One has a logician's intellect, and delights in dialectic subtilty. Another has a prompt intuition, and deprecates as so much bamboozlement every ingenious or protracted argument. Some have the ideal faculty so strong, that they never understand a proposition rightly till it sparkles as a sentiment; poet-wise, their eyes are in their apex; they can not descry matters of fact and homely truths, which creep along the ground or travel on all-fours; but in order to arrest a vision so sublime as theirs, thoughts must spread the wings of metaphor, and soar into the zenith: while others are so prosaic, that

they are offended at all imagery, and grudge the time it takes to translate a trope or figure. Some minds are concrete, and can not understand a general statement till they see a particular example. Others are so abstract, that an illustration is an interruption, and an example a waste of time. Most men love history, and nearly all men live much in the future. Some minds are pensive, some are cheerful; some are ardent, and some are singularly phlegmatic. And had an angel penned the Bible, even though he could have condescended to the capacity of the lowliest reader, he could not have foreseen the turn and fitted the taste of every child of Adam. And had a mortal penman been employed, however versatile his talent, however many-faced his mind, he could not have made himself all things to all his brethren, nor produced styles enough to mirror the mental features of all mankind. In his wisdom and goodness the Most High has judged far better for our world; and using the agency of forty authors-transfusing through the peculiar tastes and temperaments of so many individuals— and these "men of like passions with ourselves"—the self-same truths, the Spirit of God has secured for the Bible universal adaptation. For the pensive, there is the dirge of Jeremiah and the cloud-shadowed drama of Job. For the sanguine and hopeful, there sounds the blithe voice and there beats the warm pulse of old Galilean Peter. And for the calm, the contemplative, the peacefully-loving, there spreads like a molten melody, or an absymal joy, the page-sunny, ecstatic, boundlessof John the Divine. The most homely may find the matter of fact, the unvarnished wisdom and plain sense, which are the chosen aliment of their sturdy understandings, in James's blunt reasonings; and the most heroic can ask no higher standard, no loftier feats, no consecration more intense, no spirituality more ethereal, than they

will find in the Pauline Epistles. Those who love the sparkling aphorism and the sagacious paradox are provided with food convenient in the Proverbs; and for those whose poetic fancy craves a banquet more sublime, there is the dew of Hermon and Bozrah's red wine-the tender freshness of pastoral hymns, and the purple tumult of triumphal psalms. And while the historian is borne back to ages so remote that gray tradition can not recollect them, and athwart oblivious centuries, in nooks of brightness and in oases of light sees the patriarch groups, clear, vivid, and familiar as the household. scenes of yesterday-there is also a picture sketched for the explorers of the future. For while the apocalyptic curtain slowly rises-while the seven thunders shake its darkness palpable, and streaks of glory issue through its fringe of fire, the New Jerusalem comes down from heaven; and gazing on the pearly gates, and peaceful streets, and bowers of sanctity, our planet can scarce believe that she is gazing on herself that this is old Mother Earth grown young again—that this vision of holiness and bliss is nothing more than Paradise restored-that "new "but ancient "earth in which dwelleth righteousness."

But in order rightly to appreciate the literary diversity of the Bible's several books, it is essential to remember the plenary inspiration of the Bible collective. Imagine the case of an accomplished evangelist. Suppose there were a missionary endowed with the gift of tongues, and called to ply his labors in different places at successive periods. He goes to France, and, addressing its vivacious inhabitants, he abandons the direct and sober style of his father-land; every utterance is antithesis; every gem of thought is cut brilliant-wise; and the whole. oration jigs on gay, elastic springs. He passes thence to Holland, and in order to conciliate its grave burghers his

steady thoughts move on in stiff procession, trim, concinnate, old-fashioned-in peaked beaver, starched ruff, and velvet mantle. Anon he finds himself amid a tribe of red Indians; and instantly his imagination spreads pinions of flame, and, familiar with thunder-water and burning mountains, his talk is to the tune of the tempest. And ending his days in Arabia or Persia, through the fantastic sermon skip shadowy antelopes or dreamlike gazelles; while each interstice of thought is filled by a voluptuous mystery, like the voice of the darkling nightingale as it floats through air laden with jasmin or roses. And thus, "all things to all men," this gifted evangelist wins them all; whereas, had he spoken like an Oriental to the Indian, or like a Persian to the Hollander, he would have offended each, and would have been a barbarian to all. The teacher is one-the same evangelist every-where. The truth, the theme is oneover and over again the same glorious Gospel. Nay, the substance of each sermon is essentially one; for it is a new forth-pouring from the same fountain-another yearning from the same full heart. But to suit successive hearers the rhythm alters, the tune is changed.

Such is the principle on which the great Evangelist has acted. In inditing sermons for the world, such is the principle on which the divine Spirit has proceeded. Speaking to men, he has used the words of men. When on the two tables God wrote the Ten Commandments, he did not write them in the speech unutterable of the third heavens-he wrote them in Hebrew letters, Hebrew words, and Hebrew idiom; and had it so pleased him, he might have given all the Scriptures in the self-same way. Employing no mortal pen whatever, from the top of Sinai he might have handed down the one Testament, and from the top of Olivet the other the whole, from Genesis to Revelation, completed without human inter

vention, and on amaranthine leaves engraven in heaven's own holograph. And in such a case there would have been no dispute as to the extent of inspiration; there would have been no need that, like the electrometers of the meteorologist, theologians should invent tests of its intensity, nicely graduated from the zero of superintendence up to the fullness of suggestion. But Infinite Wisdom preferred another way. Inspiration he made the counterpart of the incarnation; and as in the incarnate mystery we have, without mutual encroachment and without confusion, very God and very man, so in theopneustic Scripture we have a book, every sentence of which is truly human, and yet every sentence of which is truly divine. Holy men spake it, but holy men spake and wrote it as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. And just as when God sent his Son into the world, he sent him not in the fashion of an angel, nor even in the fashion of a glorified and celestial man, but in all points like his brethren; so when he sent into the world his written word, it came not ready-written with an angel's plume, but with reeds from the Jordan it was consigned to paper from the Nile, every word of it Hellenistic, or Hebrew, and yet every word none the less heavenly. And though the unlettered disciple, who in the identity of the ultimate Author forgets the diversity of the intermediate scribes-though he loses less than the dry critic, who only recognizes the mortal penman-that student alone will get the full good of his Bible who recognizes these parallel facts-its perfect and all-persuasive divinity, its perfect and all-investing humanity. Or, to sum it up in the vivid words of Gaussen: "As a skillful musician, called to execute alone some master-piece, puts his lips by turns to the mournful flute, the shepherd's reed, the mirthful pipe, and the war-trumpet, so the almighty God, to sound in our ears his eternal word, has