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LECTURE III.

OBJECTIONS TO THE EXISTENCE OF DIFFICULTIES IN THE SCRIPTURES AS AN INSPIRED WORK CONSIDERED.

2 PET. iii. 16.

"In which are some things hard to be understood."

As the cloud which drops fatness upon the earth, dims, at the same time, the brightness of the day, and brings an uncomfortable chillness on the air, notwithstanding the blessings it pours down; so the difficulties of Scripture, whatever may be the benefits which they confer, and however powerfully they may contribute by their existence to call forth the energies of the human mind, and by their elucidation, to increase and strengthen the Christian's faith, are yet undeniably attended with certain corresponding inconveniencies, inasmuch as they both obscure the distinctness of the contents of revelation, and create a partial and transitory interruption to the faith of weak and unlearned and inconsiderate Christians.

Nor is it in these points alone that the obscu rities of nature and of grace resemble each other. The manner in which they operate upon different individuals, or upon the same individuals under different states of feeling and in different circumstances, is also in many respects similar. The husbandman is delighted to behold the rain descend upon the earth in the hope of having his fields refreshed and fertilized by the genial moisture: and not only does he willingly suffer the suspension of his labours, and his confinement at home, for the sake of the advantages which he expects ultimately to reap; but he actually rejoices in the storm, and turning away his thoughts from the sufferings of the houseless wanderer, looks upon the raging of the elements with an eye of the most grateful and unmingled satisfaction. The traveller, on the other hand, whose feelings are sensibly affected by the gloomy darkness of the day, and the comfortless character which his journey in consequence, assumes, forgets that the general interests of man are connected with the benefits of the fertilizing showers, and is apt to murmur at every step, and to fix his repining meditations only upon the inconveniencies to which he is personally subject. In the same exclusive and partial manner do men of different complexions contemplate in the Bible things hard to be understood." The sceptical

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and philosophic enquirer is angry at every obscurity which checks the boundless aspirations of his mind after universal knowledge, or gives him only an indistinct and imperfect view of those mysterious beings whom his curiosity desires to "see face to face." Irritated by the clouds and darkness which rest upon the heights of divine philosophy, he reflects upon nothing but his own disappointment, and condemns without a limitation, every thing in revelation which serves to retard his ambitious progress. However great or general the advantages derived from the difficulties of the Bible may appear to others, he feels them not, allows them not, examines them not. He feels only that the darkness of God's word teaches him the limited range of his mental, as well as his bodily eye; and he is too much mortified by the humiliating lesson, to perceive that it is in kindness that the lustre of an unclouded light has been withheld, and that, perhaps, in his mortal and finite state, a partial knowledge of divine things is all that his intellectual organs could receive. Such, however, be the cause what it may, is too often the conduct of the sceptic: whilst, on the other hand, and in direct opposition to such an unjust censure, the idle and less inquisitive Christian sits down contented under the shelter of a blind, unthinking, and implicit faith. Satisfied to see all things "as through a glass

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darkly," he not only consoles himself under his ignorance of what he does not, with the advantages he derives from what he does comprehend; but he has no patience with those who desire to "know even as they are known," and not the smallest pity for such weaker brethren as may feel the security and fulness of their belief disturbed, though but for a moment, by the occurrence of those hard things which they cannot understand. He finds his own reliance, perhaps, strengthened, rather than interrupted by the dark places of Holy Writ, and with the most uncharitable inattention to the different constitution of different minds, he condemns every attempt to reconcile the mysteries of revelation to the principles of reason, as useless, and holds those as deserving only the name of Heretics or of Infidels, who experience or express the slightest repugnance to admit, without examination or thought, every thing which the Bible records, whether easy or hard, whether obvious or abstruse, whether explicable or inexplicable to the human faculties. The one forgets the benefits of Scripture difficulties, and the other disregards their inconveniences.

Those, however, who would think or reason aright upon any theological subject, must be careful to fall into the error of neither party. They

must give their due weight to the arguments of both, and, balancing them with a steady hand, assign the preference only where the preference is due. Now this was by no means the method we pursued in the last discourse. It was the benefits derived from Scripture difficulties that there occupied our attention alone; and they certainly seemed great enough, when separately considered, to justify their appearance in Holy Writ. But that was only an advocate's view of the case. It will be necessary, therefore, in the present instance, to bring into notice the objections which may be urged against the arguments there advanced, and after comparing both, to pronounce a final decision. For thus only will that decision be made satisfactory and correct.

1. The first benefit I mentioned as arising from the ordinary difficulties of Scripture, was this; that those of a philological and historical kind afford strong internal evidence of the genuineness and authenticity of the sacred writings. But to this it may be objected that the genuineness and authenticity of the sacred writings might have been sufficiently supported by external evidence, without encumbering them with difficulties for the sake of the additional and supernumerary ar→ guments derived from internal proof.

No doubt this might have been done; and no

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