thoughts by thus breaking up and macadamizing them, is, in a great measure, to destroy their force, their harmony, and their beauty.

This principle is nowhere more strikingly illustrated than in the narrative of our Saviour's temptation in the wilderness. The devil is there represented as an able advocate for verbal inspiration. He quotes Scripture in support of all his propositions, and he quotes it literally. But our Saviour plies him with great comprehensive ideas and principles; and compels him, notwithstanding his proverbial audacity, to give over the attack.

2. Another argument against the theory of verbal inspiration is found in the fact, that the several writers of the Bible, preserve their natural characteristics of language, style, thought, and expression. Their position, their educational tendencies, the circumstances under which they lived, the scenery and characters whence they derived their associations, may not unfrequently be detected in their several writings. The very language of Holy Writ varies with the varying circumstances of the Jewish people. The original Hebrew passes through its several ages, designated by Hartwell Horne, as the golden, the silver, the iron, and the leaden, till it merges finally into the Chaldee during the captivity in Babylon so in the New Testament, the pure Greek passes sometimes into the Hellenistic. If, therefore, there had been a peculiar sanctity and value attached to the mere words of inspiration, we might reasonably claim for them an exemption from such casualties, and changes, and corruptions, and vernacular peculiarities, as have unquestionably befallen them.

Besides all this we find, not unfrequently, the man breaking out in some word, or phrase, or dialectical peculiarity, plainly proving, notwithstanding his divine teaching, that he is of like passions with ourselves. Moses, for example, brought up as he was in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, draws many of his ideas from their mysterious theology; and two, at least, if not more, of the words he uses, from their language, exactly as an Englishman writing in France might now and then borrow a French expression. Each sacred writer from Moses to John, has his appropriate and peculiar style, and no one would for one moment confound the stern simplicity and rustic imagery of the prophet Amos, with the courtly splendour of Isaiah; or the close, and scholarly, and

logical reasoning of Paul, with the affectionate importunity of the beloved disciple.

3. But a more conclusive argument against the theory of verbal inspiration, lies in the fact that the sacred writers themselves (not excepting Christ and his apostles) never quote the Scriptures verbatim et literatim. They always sink the words in the sense, soul, and spirit of the quotation. Nay, our Saviour almost invariably cites the Septuagint version-unquestionably a faulty translation-in preference to the Hebrew, contenting himself with laying hold of the idea, and giving in some instances extraordinary latitude to the expressions in which he clothes it.

And certainly if the tree may be known by its fruits, it would seem that literal accuracy is no essential element in the machinery by which God is pleased to work out the moral renovation of the world. It was the popish, or at all events, semi-popish, and not the protestant Bible that convulsed Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It was not by quibbling about the mere words of Holy Writ that truth was established; but by enunciating from a volume full of literal, and even more serious, inaccuracies, the broad principles of God's great plan of salvation, that the Reformation was brought about.

4. And lastly, we might ask how a book intended for all climes and classes - whose very success must depend on its being rendered accessible by translations, could by any possibility rest its claims solely on the critical accuracy of every word, particle, jot, or tittle of the original language in which it was first written? All the world knows that no strictly literal translation of an author can convey his meaning accurately; and if the words are not reflected as in a glass (could their parallels be found in all languages, which is of itself an impossibility)—what becomes of their heaven-fraught sanctity, or their overpowering authority? As our Christian sympathies have lately been powerfully drawn out in the direction of the Chinese empire, it may be well to give in illustration of these remarks, a literal translation, in the language of that people, of Matt. vi. 9, 10.

"Our Father, heaven-in

"Wish your name respect!

"Wish your soul's kingdom providence arrive-"Wish your will do-heaven-earth-equality."

-This, though a short, is a true specimen of the havoc which must be made with the theory of verbal inspiration, before the Word of God can have free course and be glorified. By such a barbarous jargon must the glorious gospel be brought down to the cold, childish, stereotyped, ideas of the millions of China, before they can put in a righteous claim to the title they now so arrogantly assume-of denizens of the Celestial Empire-the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ! Yet by such feeble and apparently foolish instrumentality its first fruits have been brought in, as if to laugh down the littleness of those timid Christians who fear that the mere letters and symbols under which the great ideas of Bible truth are couched, are necessary elements in the conversion of the world.

PRETTY WRITING.

THERE is a vast deal of what is called "pretty writing" in the world, which is not only nonsensical, but positively mischievous, even when it purports to be directed towards a really useful object. Take of sunshine, and bright hair, and dove-like eyes, and "imaginings" and " things," and childish (not childlike) prattle, and sanctify your story by eliciting a specious moral from these materials, and you will be called a pretty-perhaps a usefulwriter.

By way of illustration, we select from an author of the American school, who shall be nameless, the little tale which follows; and with which we have interwoven a few remarks of our own. Though it professes to decry slave-holding, it touches it with so very polite and gentle a hand, as to make it appear rather a merely questionable unkindness, than one of the most revolting crimes of which humanity can be guilty. The master and mistress, whose property is in human flesh, are both tenderhearted and susceptible in the highest degree, sobbing over and kissing their little ones-the latter for exactly sixty minutes "by Shrewsbury clock"-commiserating a pair of imprisoned birds which were, nevertheless, sufficiently at home to become parents in their captivity, and " coloring to the eyes" at the sight of their deserted cage. Yet this "benevolent looking man," and his highminded and tender-hearted "Martha," think that black and

white mothers and children are not of the same flesh and blood; and that a merciful visitation of Providence is not to be thought of, as they would be two hundred dollars out of pocket by it! But our extract shall speak for itself.

"INSTINCT OF CHILDHOOD."

6

"A BEAUTIFUL child [children are nothing without beauty] stood near a large open window. The window was completely overshadowed by wild grape, and blossoming honeysuckle, and the drooping branches of a prodigious elm-the largest and handsomest you ever saw [or any Britisher' either]. The child was leaning forward with half open mouth and thoughtful eyes, looking into the firmament of green leaves for ever at play, that appeared to overhang the whole neighbourhood; and her loose, bright hair, as it broke away [it was 'loose' before] in the cheerful morning wind, glittered like stray sunshine among the branches and blossoms. Just underneath her feet, and almost within reach of her little hand, [feet and hands must be very near together in America,] swung a large and prettily covered bird-cage, all open [. e. covered'] to the sky! The broad plentiful grape leaves lay upon it in heaps [for it was 'open to the sky']—the morning wind blew pleasantly through it, making the very music that birds and children love best- and the delicate [a decided improvement on our English elms] branches of the drooping elm swept over it—and the glow of blossoming herbage round about fell with a sort of shadowy lustre [i. e. a dark light,] upon the basin of bright water, and the floor of glittering sand within the cage.

"Well, if ever!" said the child; and then she stooped and pulled away the trailing branches and looked into the cage; and then her lips began to tremble, and her soft eyes filled with tears. [Exactly what a child would do.]

Within the cage was the mother bird, fluttering and whistling -not cheerfully, but mournfully—and beating herself to death against the delicate wires; and three little bits of birds watching her, open-mouthed, and trying to follow her from perch to perch, as she opened and shut her golden wings, like sudden flashes of sunshine, [very!] and darted hither and thither, as if hunted by some invisible thing—or a cat foraging in the shrubbery !

"There now! there you go again! you foolish thing, you! Why, what is the matter? I should be ashamed of myself! I should so! Hav'nt we bought the prettiest cage in the world for you? Hav'nt you had enough to eat, and the best that could be had for love or money-sponge-cake-loaf sugar, and all sorts of seeds? [An exact parallel to the luxuries of slave-life in America.] Didn't father put up a nest with his own hands; and havn't I watched over you, you ungrateful little thing, till the eggs they put there had all turned to birds no bigger than grasshoppers, and so noisy-ah, you can't think! [Exceedingly probable under such happy circumstances. Why did not the mother bird 'beat herself to death' at an earlier period?] Just look at the beautiful clear water there-and the clean white sand-where do you think you could find such water as that, or such a pretty glass dish, or such beautiful bright sand, if we were to take you at your word, and let you out, with that little nest full of young ones, to shift for yourselves, hey?'

"The door opened, and a tall benevolent looking man [as all slave-holders are,] stepped up to her side.

"Oh, father, I'm so glad you're come. is the matter with poor little birdy?'

What do you think

"The father looked down among the grass and shrubbery, and up into the top branches, and then into the cage-the countenance of the poor little girl growing more and more perplexed and more sorrowful every moment.

"Well, father, what is it? does it see anything?'

667

'No, my love, nothing to frighten her; but where is the father bird?'

"He's in the other cage. He made such a to-do when the birds began to chipper this morning, that I was obliged to let him out; and brother Bobby, he frightened him into the cage and carried him off.'

"Was that right, my love?'

"Why not, father? He wouldn't be quiet, you know; and what was I to do?'

"But, Moggy, dear, these little birds may want their father to help to feed them; the poor mother bird may want him to take care of them, or to sing to her?'

Or, perhaps, to show them how to fly, father?'