nation, at the hazard of being treated as outlaws from society and traitors to the state. Of them it may be said in sacred language, that "except the Lord of hosts had left us that remnant, our country had been as Sodom or Gomorrah." The apostacy of the nation from the sentiments and spirit of the Gospel had been total, but for the Dissenters: by their means a vital spark was preserved, and the nation is now warmed with the spreading flames. To have been, for almost a century, the witnesses for God in the land, though prophesying in sackcloth, was a high honour. A thousand Dissenting churches were during all that time, receiving into their communion those who were converted by the preaching of the Gospel among them, while no such effects were looked for by the established ministers. To form an adequate estimate of all the benefits direct and indirect, which must have been produced in our cities, towns, and villages from such a practical testimony borne to the most important of all truths, is beyond the power of a finite mind. But he who exults in the prosperity which now attends the Gospel of Christ in various communions, must look back with veneration to the people who once professed alone what now forms the glory of our land. Though the numbers of the Dissenters are more than doubled, and their activity is much increased, it is become difficult, if not impossible, to calculate the influence which they have at present on true religion; because they share it in common with new sects, and with a new party in the Establishment. But as their ministers form more than twice the number of the Evangelical clergy, it is sufficiently manifest, that so many labourers added to those who preach the Gospel within the Established Church, must produce the happiest effects in diffusing religion through the land. Nor should it be forgotten, that many of the Dissenting churches are of as much importance as ever they were, since they are placed in situations where all around them is still as dark as before the rise of the Methodists, or the revival of religion within the bosom of the Establishment. The fire which was secretly cherished by the Dissenters, has, however, at length communicated its heat to many who avoid their name. Those clergymen who were the fathers of the Methodists, might never have been heard of beyond the boundaries of a single parish, had not the Dissenters opened for them the way, The and taught them that the whole kingdom is the parish of him who has a heart to take so extensive a cure. social religion which is cherished by Dissenters as the life of the Christian church, has not only produced the happiest effects among themselves, but has also been imparted in a considerable degree to the friends of evangelical truth in the Establishment. Many who remain under Episcopal government are induced also to imitate the Dissenters in the choice of their own ministers. Thus several parishes in London have obtained the benefit of afternoon lecturers of evangelical principles, and not a few livings have been procured for those who preach the creed to which they have sworn. In another way, the example of Dissenters has had the most mighty and beneficial influence; for, observing that the Dissenting seminaries for the ministry are supported by voluntary contributions, the zealous friends to the doctrines of the articles have established a similar fund to support serious young men while preparing at the Universities for the ministry of the Church of England. The missionary society, formed among various classes of Dissenters, has given rise to another which is confined to Churchmen; and some new proofs are continually exhibited of the happy effects of Dissent on the cause of true religion even beyond the circle of Dissenting churches. INFLUENCE OF DISSENT ON MORALS. WHILE the devout Christian regards the prayers of the faithful as an immense blessing to their country, the mere politician values religion only for the sake of the superior morals it inculcates and inspires. Industry, essential as it is to the cultivation of the soil, as well as to the progress of arts, manufactures, and commerce, will seldom be carried to the utmost degree, but by the influence of the religious principle. The temperance and frugality which husband the produce of labour, and leave to the individual a surplus to supply the demands of the state, must proceed from the prevalence of the mental over the sensual part of our nature: and the good order which leaves a government nothing to fear from the open insurrection of the many, or the secret crimes of the few, is most effectually secured by the fear of that supreme Ruler who can equally detect secret villany and punish prosperous violence. That Dissenters are not, as a body, chargeable with open vice, is virtually acknowledged even by their enemies, who are accustomed to accuse them of hypocrisy which conceals odious tempers under a decent exterior. But as the National Church avowedly embraces the whole population of the country, it must have whatever character belongs to the nation; so that declamations against the vices of our land, ultimately fall upon the church which claims the aggregate body of Englishmen as her children. When excommunication was practised, its thunders fell not on notorious sinners against morality, but on rebels against ecclesiastical authority; and now that its thunders are silent, lest they should be derided, all who are not avowed Dissenters are considered as members of the Established Church, from the splendid debauchees whose divorce bills continually occupy the attention of the legislature, to the culprits recorded in the calendar of Newgate. While this scandal cleaves to national churches, it prevents them from practically promoting the cause of morality, by excluding from their communion those who grossly violate the pure code of morals which they may publish from their pulpits. But the Dissenting churches can follow up the moral doctrine which all parties profess to inculcate, by the strictest discipline. As excommunication among them involves no injury to civil rights, it is practised whenever the vices of a member are considered as a disgrace to the body. Knowing that they are objects of notice and of censure, Dissenters are unwilling to be identified with the loose and immoral; and within the limits of a single congregation the character of an individual cannot be long unknown. The Independent churches, in general, feel themselves bound by the authority of Scripture to "put away from among them a wicked person; and even the less honourable motive of zeal for the party would induce any sect to watch for its moral reputation, as essential to accession of proselytes and even to the preservation of its own members; since the grossly profligate will cease to trouble themselves with any profession, or sink into the easier and more fashionable religion of the state. While on the one hand, therefore, some are deterred from vice by the fear of exclusion from a society composed of their most intimate acquaintances, friends, or relations; on the other, those who are lost to fear or shame, usually abandon Dissent altogether, and transfer their character and their influence to the National Church. If, on these accounts, the interest of morality is more powerfully promoted by Dissenters than by the Establishment, to this cause must be attributed much of the odium attached to Dissent. For while the religious condemn and abhor every species of vice, the vicious will not fail to retaliate by the ridicule or the calumny which they pour upon the stricter profession of religion. Hence the national rage against the Nonconformists at the Restoration. Had they been content to join the revels of the debauched monarch, their dissent from the religion which he established, would have been considered a venal crime; for while he was reconciled to the Church of Rome, he was in perfect good humour with the Church of England. But they wounded at once his pride and his conscience, by moral conduct too far beyond his own. For the same reason, Dissenters are frequently unpopular at the present day, especially at villages and smaller towns, where men are better acquainted with each other's characters than in great cities. The supporters of the village alehouse or playhouse are the greatest enemies to those who attend the meetinghouse, who are frequently reminded as they pass the Sunday cricket-players or tipplers, how hateful their superior strictness is to those who are "lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God." Good example, however, has a most beneficial influence, even when most hated. The societies for reformation which sprang up immediately after the Revolution, were the first fruits of the superior moral sense which the Dissenters had preserved in the country, and the strict manners of the Methodists, who emanated from these societies, may be traced up to the ancient Puritans. The modern associations for the suppression of vice, and for the observance of the Lord's day, find their most zealous members and patrons among Dissenters, who have by these and other means, elevated the standard of public morals. In another way they have improved the morality of the country, for as the Reformation compelled the clergy of the Church of Rome to adopt a more correct conduct, the influence and increase of Dissenters often obliges the Established ministers to regulate their conduct so as to avoid odious comparisons. Even this constrained morality is advantageous to the parish; for though it will not render the parson or his hearers real Christians, it precludes the triumphs of vice which would otherwise be sanctioned by law. Theology. NATURE AND EXTENT OF INSPIRATION.* IN our judgment, the dispute about what to direct is not to originate. Inspiration does not precede these individualities, for the purpose of giving them existence; it comes after them, for the purpose of directing them to a special use. In this view, the only sense in which * In these days it is of the first moment that the rising race, more especially, be well grounded on the subject of first principles, and, in particular, with respect to Inspiration. It is much to be desired that we had a cheap and popular treatise, setting forth the elements of the question. In the absence of this, we are glad to find disquisitions issuing, from time to time, in divers quarters; and more especially are we pleased with a masterly dissertation from the pen of Dr. Vaughan, in the last Number of the British Quarterly, which we commend to the careful perusal more especially of our Young Men readers.-ED. they can be said to be inspired, is in the sense of their being in some special mea. sure purified, elevated, or divinely guided; and that is readily ceded by the advocate of plenary inspiration, while perhaps strictly denying what is called verbal inspiration. It is usual to remind the adherents to the verbal scheme, that the New Testament writers do not cite the Old Testament with verbal accuracy, and that their texts are often taken from the Septuagint, and not from the original Hebrew. The superstitions of the Jews in favour of every iota of their sacred writings is well known; and the manner of the New Testament writers, when citing the Old, was such as to reprove, and not to encourage, a weakness of that nature. We have never seen any satisfactory answer to this objection. It is further alleged, that if verbalism be a part of inspiration, then translations, as a matter of course, cannot be more than partially inspired writings. Strictly synonymous words cannot always be found in other tongues; and when of the same meaning, they are not the same words. The presumption is strong against that theory of inspiration being the most true, the benefits of which must be the most limited. The theory which regards the thoughts, sentiments, and facts of the sacred writings as being properly the inspiration of them, and which views these as admitting of conveyance with little, if any, loss of power, into the ever-shifting languages of the human family, seems to us much the most consonant with the Divine wisdom and benevolence, and with the analogies of the Divine dispensations. It is said, indeed, that men always think in words-never without them; and that if this be the case with ordinary thoughts, much more would it so be with thoughts so extraordinary as those which come to the human mind by revelation. But admitting that it becomes very much a habit with most men to think in language, it would not be possible to show that they so do invariably; and the radical fact, that in the early experience of humanity words come as the offspring of thought, and not as conditions necessary to its existence, should not be overlooked. Besides which, is not the very elevation of the matters constituting the substance of revelation, a reason why they might come to the mind independently of human language, seeing that all such language in relation to such themes must be, to a great extent, the language of analogy and accommodation? In our view, it is enough that the inspiration which gives us the substance of revelation should so influence the mode of conveyance as to secure accuracy and truthfulness. It is, no doubt, revelation as written, that is before us as the inspired word of God; but the language is merely the vehicle of the thought, and may itself have been the result of nothing beyond a very general superintendence or direction. Nor do we find that the texts of Scripture generally appealed to in support of the verbal theory are adequate to sustain it. The term "word," and "words," so common in Scripture, are often grossly misunderstood in this connection. When our Lord says, "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life,' no one can doubt that the term "words" is used to denote, not the language, but the substance or matter of his teaching. So, by the expressions-the word of the Lord-the word of God-we are to understand, not the words in which the Divine Being speaks, or in which his prophets speak, but the message, the thought, which so comes to us. Not to see this, is to be spell-bound by a most wretched literalism. We believe that "ALL Scripture is given by inspiration of God," but not all in the same sense,very little of it in the sense which regards the words, as well as the thoughts, as having come to us from a supernatural agency. Whatever the sacred writers teach as truth, we regard as truth. Everything of that nature takes the Divine authority along with it—but everything beyond that may take with it nothing more than the Divine guidance, superintendence, or permission. Nor is 1 Cor. ii. 13 really more to the purpose of this theory: "Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth." Here the words taught by the Holy Ghost stand in contrast to the words taught by human wisdom. Now, what is meant by this teaching of human wisdom? Does it mean the teaching of mere words? The reference is not so much to mere words, as to language, style-manner in the largest sense -to the literary, elaborate, and artistic style of oratory and authorship taught in the philosophical schools of those times. The meaning accordingly is, that the influence of the Holy Spirit, in so far as it was present with the apostles in relation to their manner as teachers, was with them to dispose them towards the simple and natural manner becoming their function;-not for the purpose of giving them, word by word, the terms they should use, nor to qualify them for emulating the artificial, ornate, and rhetorical style observable in the secular authorship and oratory of that day. There was a Divine influence which affected their manner as teachers, but it did so by affecting their character as men, imparting, through that medium, to everything they did, the signs of sincerity and nature. Nor must we hesitate to say, that if inspiration had extended to the very words of Scripture, the Bible could scarcely have presented those different modes of statement, in relation to the same facts and truths, on which the sceptic has founded his charges of discrepancy and contradiction. It may be true that these alleged differences are greatly exaggerated, and often imaginary, but a dictation descending to words would have left no place for such diversities in more extended forms of expression and statement. In short, we do not see how the doctrine of inspiration is to be saved in reference to any part of Scripture, if it is to be extended thus literally to every part. Revelation, in any form, is imperilled to the last degree, by identifying it in this manner with the mint and cummin of mere phrases and words. If this oneness of manner and diction had been necessary or expedient in a revelation, then the Bible should have come to us bearing, like the Koran, the impress of one mind only. But the Holy Spirit, in speaking to us through diversities of times, and circumstances, and agencies, has declared explicitly that it is not so much one manner, as "divers manners, that befits a communication from the Deity to our race. But we must now proceed further, and say, that the influence we intend by the word Inspiration, includes a difference as to mode and degree. Professor Gaussen, indeed, insists, that there is not the least warrant in Scripture for regarding any one portion of Scripture as being inspired more than another, or differently from another. In our view, such a manner of writing, on such a subject, betrays great wilfulness. In Exod. xxiv. 12, xxxi. 18, xxxii. 15, 16; Deut. xi. 5, we are told that the precepts of the Decalogue were "written by the finger of God." Will it be said that all Scripture has come to us in this manner? But when God did employ human agency, how did he employ it? If in one mode, what was it? If in more than one, can we know the difference? We are charged with presumption in asking such questions-with attempting to make distinctions on a subject confessedly above our comprehension. Now, we admit that it does not become us to make distinctions on this subject; but if there be distinctions already made, and by the great Source of Inspiration himself, it becomes us to be carefully observant of what has been so done. Rea son and analogy suggest, that the influence we designate by the word Inspiration would be varied in its mode and degree, according to the special purposes to be accomplished from time to time by it. Thus viewed, we should say it will lack nothing necessary to its efficiency, neither will it be in anything superfluous. Sometimes it may act with special force on one faculty, sometimes on another, and sometimes on the susceptibility of the man generally, both mental and physical. In its humblest measure, we suppose it to be supernatural; but this it may be, and still vary greatly. God never resorts to miracle without occasion, nor beyond occasion. Now, almost everything in Scripture is of a nature to sustain this view of inspiration. The manner in which the sacred writers speak of each other is to this effect, suggesting the prominence of the human element in all inspired writing. Thus, of the Old Tes tament writers, it is-"as David saith" -"as Esaias saith"-" as Moses saith." So Peter of Paul-" as Paul hath written." In like manner we speak daily of what has come to us, both by prophets and apostles, in terms which, instead of ignoring the human element in Scripture, seem to recognize nothing else. The language we cite we give as that of Moses or Malachi, of Paul or John. Such are our expressions concerning the sacred penmen, whatever may be the nature of our theory concerning their inspiration. It is clear, moreover, from the contents of the Scriptures, that there must have been a wide difference both in the nature and the measure of the influence under which they were written. Very much of what is given us by the sacred writers is given from their natural memory and observation, and no influence of a supernatural kind could have been necessary to enable them to place such things on record. Such influence may have been present with them so far as to have guided them in their selection from such materials, but could not have been necessary beyond that point. Surely Paul might write to a friend to bring a cloak with him, and certain parchments, without being under the influence requisite to enable him to give his revelations of the Man of Sin. He could not have discoursed to the Corinthians as he has done on the resurrection, without coming under a supernatural and special teaching; but he needed not that same teaching to qualify him for stating to the churches of Galatia that he went into Arabia, after his conversion, before going to Jerusalem. In the one of these cases, there could be no need of any direct inspiration at all; in the other, everything was dependent on it. In Nature and Providence, the presence of the Divine power is every where regulated by the natural exigency. It is always to the occasion and necessity, both in kind and degree. It is so in the ordinary operations of grace. God worketh in us to will and to do, but it is in a mauner so apportioned and so adjusted, as to enable us to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. Why, then, should it be deemed unreasonable-almost irreligious -to suppose that the spirit of Inspiration came to men in old time after this manner? Assuredly there must be some safe halting-place between the position taken by those who leave no place to the supernatural element in revelation, and those who leave-or, at least, seem to leave-no place to the natural. Among the writers who do not hold that inspiration extended, in the manner alleged, to the very words of Scripture, and who, while they hold that all the parts of Scripture are in a sense inspired, do not hold that all those parts are inspired in the same sense, are such men as Baxter and Doddridge, Stennett and Parry, Pye Smith and Hartwell Horne, Knapp and Dick, Wilson and Henderson. The eminent learning, judgment, and piety of these men should suffice to protect them against rash imputation on this subject. They are not infallible. We do not vouch for the strict consistency or accuracy of every statement made by them; but no man whose opinions are entitled to any consideration can hesitate to admit that the authors named have earned a right to speak with some decision on this question, and that their known attachment to |