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kind from all else. That tradition, comprising with much 
besides a philosophy of our origin, is condensed m a Record 
which has a character peculiarly its own, challenging inquiry. 
This, we shall show, is a fact to be faced in the world of moral 
reality. It deals too with the question to which u nature” 
has nothing to say. 
For if by the study of nature we had even attained to 
a minute examination of all the facts of present 
. , . . L Position ot 
existence, there would still be anterior ques- the Bible, in 
tions, in which we are so interested that we order. m ° ra 
are constantly and naturally turning to them. 
Science may call them “ unknowable,” but there is that 
within us which will not here be put off with any mere termi- 
nology ; and we have here also a fact. 
We can no more close our minds against facts of the moral 
than facts of the visible nature. We find too a correlation of 
human nature in its truest and noblest essence, and the 
great Tradition enshrined in that mysterious record, viz., the 
Bible. That Book, when you steadily look at it at all, is a 
Fact , far too venerable and surprising to be passed by with- 
out some attempt, at least, to give account of it. That it 
is often difficult, we fully grant ; but so is nature : so is many 
a truth slowly and carefully spelt out. Nature we say is true ; 
but we do not understand it all. The Bible we also say (for 
no reasonable alternative is shown) is true; though now we 
“ understand but in part.” 
VI. They who have but slightly examined the Bible need 
of course that we should give some reason why The Bible a 
we claim for it this position. Their moral world fact to be exa- 
seems to be their inner self compared with society. mme ‘ 
They have confronted it but little with this fact which comes 
from without ; and they are sometimes apt, too, to look on those 
who recognize it as theorists only. They would not deny that 
a true theory is the rationale of certain facts, but they look 
not at our facts. Mr. Herbert Spencer complains in one place 
that some rest on the negation of other men's theories, without 
pointing to the realities which belong to their own. Well, then, 
we will ask men now to look to certain very broad facts, 
patent to every eye that is turned on them. And when we 
have made them look at the Bible as what it actually is, we 
will appeal to them, whether it betrays credulity in us to 
accept the only conceivable rationale of assured facts, uncon- 
tradicted by anything within our knowledge, and correspond- 
ing to our moral nature's ineradicable tendencies ? 
I irst, then, this Book, the earlier portions of which are older 
2 a 2 
