until they reach a result which might be reported of and accepted. Meantime it is enough for us to know that no such result has hitherto ever rewarded the labours, either of oriental sages in the remotest periods, or of Grecian philosophers, or of the Alexandrian teachers, or of mediæval doctors, or of the great thinkers of the sixteenth century, or of those of the times in which we live. Metaphysic Theologies, except so far as they take up the very terms and figures of the Hebrew Scriptures, have hitherto shown a properly religious aspect in proportion as they have been unintelligible:—when intelligible they become—if not atheistic, yet tending in that direction. When this is affirmed the inference is not—that a True Theology might not be embodied in abstract terms, in an upper world; but this, that the terms and the modes of human reason are, and must ever be, insufficient for purposes of this kind.
This failure, or this succession of failures, may indeed affect the credit of Philosophy; but in no degree does it throw disadvantage upon the religious well-being of those who are content to take their instruction and their training from the Holy Scriptures. These writings, age after age, have in fact met, and they have satisfied the requirements of piety and of virtue in the instance of millions of the humble and devout readers of the Bible; and it has been so as well among the most highly-cultured as among the unlearned; and they have imparted to such whatever it is needful and possible for man to
