but gradually he comes to see that God does not mean to divorce us from this world, and that we are to use it while not abusing it, and he finds the Bible full of minute instructions about the duties of life. His horizon expands, and the life beyond is not seen in violent antagonism to the life below, but rather as its complement and full development; he sees the gracious purpose of God running through all things, and voices from the eternal world reach him even in the workshop and at the plough. Now this spiritual growth is entirely in accord with the laws of our nature, and the Bible, in providing for it, shows consummåte knowledge of man: it has, in a very true and real sense, an exoteric and an esoteric circle; not like the philosophies of old, which despised the vulgar and declined to stoop from their oracular heights, but proceeding by a gentle gradation so that the babe may find milk and the man strong meat. Nor is human learning needed in order to understand the deep things of God, but only the teaching of the Holy Spirit, who is promised to all who ask Him.

CHAPTER VI.

I

VARIETIES OF OPINION INEVITABLE FROM THE

STRUCTURE OF THE BIBLE.

T must be evident to any one who reflects upon

these facts, that the materials lie ready for numerous schools of thought among even true believers. Those who are in the stage of spiritual infancy will not see truth in the same light as those in spiritual manhood; the worldly Christians who have not progressed far will stumble at the lofty utterances of those who have been within the veil. Even the intellectual differences of man will be reflected in the interpretation of the Bible: the narrow matterof-fact mind will lean toward hard literal interpretation; the imaginative mind will prefer the figurative; the recluse who shuns the world will look at human life with a tinge of monasticism; The busy man of affairs will find in the Bible an endless repertory of practical maxims for daily life.

In the free play of Christian society sects and churches must necessarily arise embodying those types of character, and their statements of Divine truth, and their applications to human life, will vary within the degrees we have indicated, without overstepping the bounds of genuine orthodoxy. We thus see a true reflection of Scriptural teaching in bodies so far apart as the Calvinists and the Quakers; and even the High Church and the Plymouth Brethren have a meeting-point in the Bible, and occupy a large common groundprobably much larger than they would respectively admit.

There is, in fact, a great resemblance between political and Christian societies, in respect of their variety of structure and creed. One who looked cursorily over the nations of the world might conclude that there are no axioms of political science-so extraordinary a diversity of government does he see; but the more careful student will find many points of resemblance between the most diverse, and, what is more important, a steady progress towards certain cardinal ideals of order, liberty, and intelligence. He will also find a fitness

in the different Governments to the various degrees

of civilization. the ignorant Russian, while Republicanism best suits the intelligent Anglo-Saxon in North America; and what will surprise him much will be the large common ground which is occupied by Government both in Russia and America. In like manner the Episcopal and Presbyterian polity, the rudimentary Church-life of the Bible Christians, and the preeminently elaborate system of Wesley, cover a wide area of common ground, and serve as true channels for the varying requirements of Christian Society.

The despotism of the Czar suits

This leads us to observe further, that the differences among Christians are not owing entirely to varieties of thought among individual believers. Another cause has co-operated with this and served not a little to deepen and indurate these differences-we refer to the influence of ecclesiastical organisations. When large bodies of professed Christians associated themselves in churches, the framework of organisation that bound them together acquired an adventitious importance, and so questions of

Church polity came to get a degree of importance they do not hold in the Bible. The clergy attached to those bodies came, by the force of circumstances, to spend much of their time in defending their ecclesiastical systems, and in the heat of controversy the small points of difference were magnified into essentials, and the lines drawn deep and broad around each Church enclosure. The Episcopalian, to hold his own against the levelling system of the Presbyterian, had to develope a doctrine of Apostolical succession; and the Puritan, to hold his ground against the Quaker and Antinomian, had to formulate a rigid and metaphysical confession of faith. The exigencies of ecclesiastical warfare widened the differences between Christian sects, just as those of political warfare deepened the dislikes and dissimilarities between nations.

But we would ask those who assail the Bible, and with it the religion of Christ, on the ground of those dissensions, how they could possibly have been avoided in any revelation appealing to man as a moral and rational being?. If Christ had merely established a system of ordinances, like