must be of the feeblest order, and the clue to conjecture vague and speculative beyond expression. And this is the manner in which "the very word of very God" was written, and in this state it remained, more or less, for over a thousand years after Hebrew had ceased to be a living language, even if we concede the absurd point urged by some theologians, that Hebrew ceased to be the language of the people, not in the days of Ezra, but in the time of Christ. Dupin, just by way of illustrating how precisely and accurately God's own holy word was understood, mentions that the translators of the Septuagint rendered a certain word chimney which Theodotius, in his version, rendered locusts! God, of course, meant either locusts or chimney—or something else. The Bible is inspired, every word and every letter; and, really, the difference between a "locust" and a "chimney" is so trifling "in the eyes of him with whom we have to do" that it is very wrong of us poor ignorant laymen not to believe all that our pastors and masters tell us, and be ready to die for the Bible, "the source of England's greatness," knowing little of what is in it, and still less of how it came there.
The high priests of the Christian Church—men of intellect and learning—know all that I here adduce, and much more of the same character; but the ordinary little sermon-spinner knows as little of it as do the devout ignoramuses who follow him into such places as Parker's Gospel huxter-shop, or into Spurgeon's tabernacle of shallow and solemn buffoonery. The ignorance of the small half educated hedge-priest keeps him honest: he believes the nonsense he preaches; his abler neighbour indulges in his enlightenment at the expense of his honesty. He has learnt to be a priest, and he can be nothing else. He cannot dig, and to beg he is ashamed; so he goes on in his vocation of parson-craft, committing himself as little as possible to concrete dogma, and thanking his stars that the damning admissions of the Church's ablest men are contained in erudite and expensive works, altogether out of the reach of the vulgar.
There is no fiction that the Protestant parsons would like to be so unequivocally accepted as fact as that the Bible is the correct and indisputable word of God; and
