selves, and there is a duty to our immediate successors, and there is a duty to the mass of imperfectly informed Christian persons, who, in due time, will be seen insensibly to accept, as good and safe, modes of thinking and speaking which, at one time, would have seemed to them quite inadmissible and dangerous.
The remaining defect or flaw in our scheme of belief concerning the conveyance of a Supernatural Revelation makes itself felt the most obtrusively in relation to the Old Testament Scriptures. It is here, and it is on this extensive field, that minds, negatively constituted, and perhaps richly accomplished, but wanting in the grasp and power of a healthful moral consciousness, and wholly wanting in spiritual consciousness, find their occasion. The surface over which a sophisticated reason and a fastidious taste take their course is here very large; for the events of a people's history, and the multifarious literature of many centuries, come to find a place within its area. The very same extent of surface from which a better reason, and a more healthful moral feeling gather an irresistible conviction of the nearness of God throughout it, furnishes, to
