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When we say that it is necessary that every portion of a 
revelation must be equally the result of a divine operation, 
as every other portion; that there cannot be degrees of 
inspiration ; that a human element cannot exist there ; or 
that God must have acted in this or that particular manner, 
it seems to me that we are placing ourselves on precisely the 
same basis as that of the so-called rationalist. 
Next comes the question of interpretation. A large por- 
tion of our difficulties arise from the want of a sound canon 
of interpretation, and from inattention to the real character 
of Scriptural language. I will illustrate from the opening 
chapters in Genesis. The supposed opposition between science 
and these chapters arises from the rigid application of the 
literal principle of interpretation, and the denial that they 
can contain anything parabolical or figurative. It is said 
that a day must mean a literal day of twenty-four hours. 
If so, why must not the serpent mean a literal serpent, which 
was more subtle than any beast of the field ? It will perhaps 
be said that we learn from inspiration itself that it was not 
so. We have such information, or rather a hint of it, in the 
New Testament; but I am not aware that the Old Testament 
gives us the smallest intimation that it was the devil, and not 
a literal serpent. On the strict principles of literalism, the 
Jew could never have divined this. If it is not necessary to 
understand by the serpent a literal serpent, the principle of 
literalism respecting these early chapters must be abandoned, 
and our only guide to their interpretation must, as Butler 
intimates, be reason, common-sense, and a gradually increas- 
ing knowledge, and not a 'priori theories. I can well under- 
stand the opponents of revelation insisting on interpreting 
these chapters to the letter, but not so its professed friends. 
Let it not for one moment be imagined that I am advo- 
cating an unlimited, figurative, or mystical interpretation of 
the Bible. I am deeply sensible of the madness of such a 
course. To say that all Scripture admits of a mystical sense 
is equivalent to saying that it has no certain sense whatever. 
By the application of such a method it is possible to make it 
mean anything we please. I remember once taking up 
Krummacher's Israel’s Wanderings in the Wilderness. I 
succeeded in getting as far as the part where he assigns a 
spiritual meaning to the names of the places of their encamp- 
ment. It so happens, owing to our imperfect knowledge of 
Hebrew, that a few of these places bear a double meaning. 
Krummacher finds a spiritual sense, and even a place in the 
spiritual life, corresponding to this double meaning. The 
supposition that the names might have a spiritual meaning 
