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in stands as a positive and unqualified assertion. But this is just the reverse of the fact, for the passage does not head a paragraph, but on the contrary stands in the middle of a sentence, of which the first part is omitted[1] Read it as I shall now set it before you. After stating the many peculiarities of the Bible when contrasted with mere human writings, the difference of the tone of morals by which it teaches, its ideas, thoughts, and sentiments so utterly beyond ourselves, its dealing with mysteries of faith beyond our comprehension, and above all its different manner of composition in being derived immediately from the Holy Spirit of God, I then go on to say thus:
"… All this shows you the peculiarity of the holy word of God, and accounts to you at once for the difficulty with which it is received by the worldly and natural man. It speaks a language unintelligible to him; its beauties and its graces are hidden from him simply because his heart is waxed gross, and his ears are dull of hearing, and his eyes he has closed, by the sinful nature which dwells within him, in direct opposition to the spirit of that Book which comes from God. And so it comes to pass that all the ideas of the Bible, and the dispensing of the Bible as in itself a means of propagating Christianity, are a fiction and an absurdity. Here are two minds to be brought together, the Mind of God, and the mind of man; how can the latter approach the former, how is it possible that the spirit of the one can enter into the spirit of the other, unless by some previous process, there is a preparation thereto? All by nature is sin, hatred of God, and flying from His ways. If God does not first by some operation of His grace soften the heart, the speaking of God by His Scriptures is unheard. In conversion of the unbeliever, or reclaiming of the sinner; in argument to show the truth, and in persuasion to move to holiness, it is all the same, the Bible as such is of no use, unless it be accompanied, at least, if not preceded by the Church. There must be a movement from God, that man may understand God. There must be an invitation and a grace, that the words may have a meaning and the pages life. Neither the intellect, as shown in Gibbon and Voltaire, nor the taste and skill of literature as shown in Hume, nor the deep musings of philosophy as shown in Bolingbroke and Herbert of Cherbury, can of itself take in what God says, much less the savage life of heathenism, and the unchecked nature of the libertine and the sinner. No. God must speak to man by a still small voice within, before man can understand God in the Great Book, which of His mercy He has given for his use. And that Book must be brought to him
- ↑ Memorial or protest addressed to the Marchioness of Bath. Guardian, Jan. 7, 1852.
