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point whatever to which reason fairly and legitimately leads them. I com- 
plain deeply of those opponents of revelation who call themselves rationalists, 
and yet make large assumptions from narrow and insufficient premisses, 
while they are afraid to face all the facts. If they can bring the same accu- 
sation against us, they are free to do it ; but instead of that I find they are 
always sneering at the clergy in place of reasoning with them. In one part 
of Mr. Row’s paper there are certain statements as to the mystical interpreta- 
tion of Holy Scripture which I may refer to. It is in reference to the 
temptation in Paradise, and Mr. Row is of opinion that nobody, apart from 
the interpretation of the later Christianity, could ever have divined that the 
serpent was the devil, or anything but a literal serpent. Now I venture to 
say that it was far otherwise. In the Targum of Jonathan the temptation 
in the garden of Eden is attributed to the devil 
Mr. Row. — I was con fin ing myself to the strict letter of the Bible — of the 
Old Testament. 
Dr. Irons. — But the letter of the Bible never did stand alone. There was 
always a strong interpretation deemed as authoritative and divine as the 
letter itself, and it is to that which St. Paul refers when he says : “ The 
letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” Throughout the Old Testament, 
and in parts of the New, if we want to understand the spirit at all, we must 
have the traditional meaning incorporated with the letter. I should apologize 
to Mr. Row, considering that the paper is so carefully and admirably con- 
structed, and so full of great and deep thoughts— I should apologize to him 
for dealing with it in this sketchy way; but when I assure him that I came 
here with my mind full of other things, and even then only heard part of his 
paper, I know he will forgive me, and excuse my differing from him on one 
or two points. 
Thomas Paterson, Esq. — I should like to say a few words to express 
my great admiration for the paper, and my conviction that if the generality 
of the clergy and religious teachers throughout the land were to deal with 
the great questions before them in the spirit in which this paper has been 
written, there would soon not be much of what is called rational opposition 
left. But unfortunately that is not so. With regard to the paper itself, it 
seems to me that on this question, dealing with the infinity of God and the 
possibility of the human mind being able to grasp it, we fall into two or three 
errors. In the first place, if we take the Bible as a revelation, no’bne can 
think that the Jews, great as many of their thoughts were, had any such 
idea as we have of mathematical infinity. Their idea was directed rather to 
the perfection of certain attributes, and not to their mere extension as a 
matter of space, number, or power. The quarrel with Mr. Mill is rather 
this, that supposing we accept perfection as the figure of infinity present 
to the inspired writers, Mr. Mill denies that perfection altogether, or denies 
the possibility that the human mind can appreciate it. Thus, in reference to 
Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy of the Conditioned, speaking of our 
ideas of number and quantity, he attempts to refer them to constantly 
repeated impressions received by the senses. He says it is quite possible 
