46 MIND. 



surance besides that of the gospel, which, they read, " has 



"clave unto Gehazi;" that Adam "surely" (more properly "utterly," "to- 

 tally," or " entirely") died on the very day he tasted the forbidden fruit; that 

 the winds possessed sense, because Christ said, " Peace, be still ;" that the earth 

 is square, because we twice read of its four corners (/set. xi. Rev. vii. ) ; and that 

 Saul's melancholy, and the cases of insanity and epilepsy related in the New 

 Testament, were possessions by demons, which are pronounced by St. Paul 

 to be " nothing in the world." (See the Rev. Hugh Farmer's original and 

 admirable works, especially his Essays on the Demoniacs of the New Testament, and 

 on Christ's Temptation.) Without due allowance, what absurdities might not be 

 inferred from Christ's use of the word heart ? But the most enlightened divines 

 allow us at present to follow Bacon's advice, and to read the Bible, not as a work 

 of philosophical instruction, but of the revelation of religious matters beyond our 

 knowledge, v. c. to learn from Genesis only how the world was created by God, 

 and to study geology without reference to Moses. " The expressions of Moses are 

 evidently accommodated to the first and familiar notions derived from the sensible 

 appearances of the earth and heavens ; and the absurdity of supposing that the literal 

 interpretation of terms in Scripture ought to interfere with the advancement of 

 philosophical enquiry, would have been as generally forgotten as renounced, if 

 the oppressors of Galileo had not found a place in history." A Treatise on the 

 Records of the Creation, &c., by J. B. Sumner, M. A., Prebendary of Durham, &c. 

 now Bishop of Chester, 3d edit. 1825, vol. i. p. 327. We may, therefore, learn 

 the miracle of the resurrection from the gospels, and enjoy our own opinions 

 respecting matter and spirit, body and soul, which, as relating to our nature, are 

 objects of physical enquiry, and therefore not of revelation, any more than astronomy 

 or geology. The writer of the celebrated Apology for the Bible says, " when I 

 went to the University, I was of opinion, as most schoolboys are, that the soul was 

 a substance distinct from the body, and that when a man died, he, in classical 

 phrase, breathed out his soul, animam expiravit ; that it then went I knew not 

 whither, as it had come into the body, from I knew not where nor when, and had 

 dwelt in the body during life, but in what part of the body it had dwelt I knew 

 not." " This notion of the soul was, without doubt, the offspring of prejudice 

 and ignorance." " Believing as I do in the truth of the Christian religion, which 

 teaches that men are accountable for their actions, I trouble not myself with dark 

 disquisitions concerning necessity and liberty, matter and spirit ; hoping as I do 

 for eternal life through Jesus Christ, I am not disturbed at my inability clearly to 

 convince myself that the soul is or is not a substance distinct from the body." 

 Anecdotes of the Life of Bishop Watson, p. 14. sqq. 



" Well indeed is it for us," says a liberal writer in the Quarterly Review, 

 on the subject of geology, " that the cause of revelation does not depend upon 

 questions such as these ; for it is remarkable that in every instance the controversy 

 has ended in a gradual surrender of those very points which were at one time 

 represented as involving the vital interests of religion. Truth, it is certain, can- 

 not be opposed to truth. How inconsiderate a risk, then, do those advocates run, 

 who declare that the whole cause is at issue in a single dispute, and that the sub- 



