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one: but it becomes more significant still when connected with the farther fact, that M. Gustave Doré, the designer of this series of plates, has just been received with loud acclaim by the British Evangelical Public, as the fittest and most able person whom they could at present find to illustrate, to their minds, and recommend with graciousness, of sacred art, their hitherto unadorned > Bible for them.

Of which Bible and of the use we at present make of it in England, having a grave word or two to say in my next letter (preparatory to the examination of that verse which haunted me through the Japanese juggling, and of some others also), I leave you first this sign of the public esteem of it to consider at your leisure.

Letter S.

The Four Possible Theories respecting the Authority of

the Bible.

March 7, 1867.

I HAVE your yesterday's letter, but must not allow my. Belf to be diverted from the business in hand for this once, for it is the most important of which I have to

write to you.

You must have seen long ago that the essential difference between the political economy I am trying tc teach, and the popular science, is, that mine is based on 1 presumably attainable honesty in men, and conceivable respect in them for the interests of others, while the popular science founds itself wholly on their supposed constant regard for their own, and on their honesty only so far as thereby likely to be secured.

It becomes, therefore, for me, and for all who believe anything I say, a great primal question on what this presumably attainable honesty is to be based.

"Is it to be based on religion?" you may ask. "Are we to be honest for fear of losing heaven if we are dis

honest, or (to put it as generously as we may) for fear of displeasing God? Or, are we to be honest on speculation, because honesty is the best policy; and to invest in virtue as in an undepreciable stock?"

And my answer is not in any hesitating or diffident way (and you know, my friend, that whatever people may say of me, I often do speak diffidently; though when I am diflident of things. I like to avoid speaking of them, if it may be; but here i say with no shadow of doubt)—your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night. If you ask why you are to be honest-you are, in the question itself, dishonoured. "Because you are a man," is the only answer; and therefore I said in a former letter that to make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education. Make them men first, and religious men afterwards, and all will be sound; but a knave's religion is always the rottenest thing about him.

It is not, therefore, because I am endeavouring to lay down a foundation of religious concrete on which tc build piers of policy, that you so often find me quoting Bible texts in defence of this or that principle or assertion

But the fact that such references are an offence, as I know them to be, to many of the readers of these political essays, is one among many others, which I would desire you to reflect upon (whether you are yourself one of the offended or not), as expressive of the singular position which the mind of the British public has at present taken with respect to its worshipped Book. The positions, honestly tenable, before I use any more of its texts, I must try to de

fine for you.

All the theories possible to theological disputants respecting the Bible are resolvable into four, and four only. ·

1. The first is that of the comparatively illiterate modern religious world, namely, that every word of the book known to them as "The Bible" was dictated by the Supreme Being, and is in every syllable of it His “Word.” This theory is of course tenable, though honestly, yet by no ordinarily well-educated person.

2. The second theory is, that although admitting verbal error, the substance of the whole collection of books called the Bible is absolutely true, and furnished to man by Di. vine inspiration of the speakers and writers of it; an that every one who honestly and prayerfully seeks for such truth in it as is necessary for salvation, will infallibly find it there.

This theory is that held by most of our good and up

right clergymen, and the better class of the professedly religious laity.

3. The third theory is that the group of books which we call the Bible were neither written nor collected under any Divine guidance, securing them from substantial error; and that they contain, like all other human writings, false statements mixed with true, and erring thoughts mixed with just thoughts; but that they nevertheless relate, on the whole, faithfully, the dealings of the one God with the first races of man, and His dealings with them in aftertime through Christ; that they record true miracles, and bear true witness to the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

This is a theory held by many of the active leaders of modern thought in England.

4. The fourth, and last possible theory is that the mass of religious Scripture contains merely the best efforts which we hitherto know to have been made by any of the races of men towards the discovery of some relations with the spiritual world; that they are only trustworthy as expressions of the enthusiastic visions or beliefs of earnest men oppressed by the world's darkness, and have no more authoritative claim on our faith than the religious specu lations and histories of the Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, and Indians; but are, in common with all these, to be rev

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