The anti-spiritual theory of hermeneutics is based on two fundamental er tors. The first relates to the design of the Bible. It is assumed by Prof. Stuart that the Bible is designed to be a revelation in itself, and in fact the only revelation from God to man. Whereas we learn from that book itself that God's principal medium of communication with the church, under the Christian dispensation, is the Holy Ghost. The Bible is to be regarded as a text-book, designed, not to supersede, but to assist the personal instructions. of the Paraclete. Prof. Stuart publishes Ernesti's manual of interpretation, and places it in the hands of his exegetical class. Does he mean thereby to supersede his own lectures? Suppose his pupils should say You have given us a manual; we have therefore no further need of your instructions; if this book needs to be expounded and illustrated by you, it is no manual at all.' Would he not say to them-I placed that book in your hands merely as an auxiliary to my lectures. If you are to convert it into a substitute for my personal instructions, and turn me out of the lecture-room, you would do better to burn the book at once.' So, to make the Bible a substitute for the teachings of the Spirit of truth, or to account it the principle medium of divine instruction, and the Spirit only secondary, or to use it in any way other than as a text-book auxiliary to the personal instructions of God, is to pervert it from its true design, and grossly to abuse the Giver of it.

It is assumed

The second error relates to the normal condition of man. by the anti-spiritualists that men, properly so called, and even Christian men are not to expect the direct teachings of the Spirit. Inspiration is considered an anomalous condition of humanity, restricted to a favored few in ancient times, not accessible to all, and therefore not to be regarded as the appropriate condition of those who are to receive the scriptures. But to us it is evident, that a state of personal spiritual communication with God (which is in fact a state of inspiration) was the state of Adam in Eden, will be the state of the redeemed in heaven, and is the state of Christians in this world. We consider this therefore as the natural, healthy condition of the race-that for which human nature was designed, and with a view to which it was constructed; and the uninspired state as a diseased abnormal condition. To us therefore it seems perfectly reasonable that the Bible-at least in all its deeper parts-should be adapted to men more or less advanced in a state of Inspiration.

It is not to be understood from what we have said that we deny the ability of uninspired men to interpret those parts of the Bible which may be said to belong to its humanity; or that we undervalue philology and other resources of ordinary criticism. We hold simply that uninspired men, with all their resources, are utterly incompetent to interpret those parts of scripture which are concerned with the deep things of God; and that the Paraclete, instead of the church as the Papists hold, or the philologists as Protestants hold, is the ultimate arbiter of biblical interpretation.

§7. OBJECTIONS OF ANTI-SPIRITUALISTS.

Ir will be objected against the views presented in several preceding arti cles, that the idea of open communication with God as the ultimate ground of faith and source of interpretation, is the very charter of all fanaticism, To this general charge, we may oppose the general reply, that the doctrine of the existence of God, (which is back of the idea of communication with him) is the more radical germ of all fanaticism; and yet that doctrine is not the less credible and wholesome. Or we may appeal to the undeniable fact, that, belief in immediate access to God has been honored by patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, as much as it has been disgraced by fanatics and impostors.

But this sweeping objection often assumes more specific forms. We find men bold enough to affirm that sensible communication with the spirit of God is impossible, and of course that all pretensions to it are delusive, and all aspirations after it presumptuous. The following extract from Coleridge's 'Aids to Reflection' is a specimen of the reasoning and assertion to which we refer, and on which we wish to remark:

"Were it my task to form the mind of a young man desirous to establish his opinions and belief on solid principles, and in the light of distinet understanding, I would com. mence his theological studies, or, at least, the most important part of them respecting the aids which religion promises in our attempts to realize the ideas of morality, by bringing together all the passages scattered throughout the writings of Swift and But ler, that bear on enthusiasm, spiritual operations, and pretenses to the gifts of the Spirit, with the whole train of new lights, raptures, experiences, and the like. For all that the richest wit, in intimate union with profound sense and steady observation, can supply on these topics, is to be found in the works of these satirists; though unhappily alloyed with much that can only tend to pollute the imagination,

Without stopping to estimate the degree of carricature in the portraits sketched by these bold masters, and without attempting to determine in how many of the enthusiasts brought forward by them in proof of the influence of false doctrines, a constitutional insanity that would probably have shown itself in some other form, would be the truer solution, I would direct my pupil's attention to one feature common to the whole group -the pretence, namely, of possessing, or a belief and expectation grounded on other men's assurances of their possessing, an immediate consciousness, a sensible experience of the Spirit, in and during its operation on the soul. It is not enough that you grant them a consciousness of the gifts and graces infused, or an assurance of the spiritual origin of the same, grounded on their correspondence to the scripture promises, and their con, formity to the idea of the divine giver. No! they all alike, it will be found, lay claim (or at least look forward) to an inward perception of the Spirit, and of its operating.

Whatever must be misrepresented in order to be ridiculed, is in fact not ridiculed; but the thing substituted for it. It is a satire on something else, coupled with a lie on the part of the satirist, who knowing, or having the means of knowing the truth, chose to call one thing by the name of another. The pretensions to the supernatural, pilloried by Butler, sent to bedlam by Swift, and (on their re-appearance in public) gibbeted by Warburton, and anatomized by Bishop Lavington, one and all have this for their essen, tial character, that the Spirit is made the immediate object of sense or sensation, Whether the spiritual presence and agency are supposed cognizable by indescribable feeling or unimaginable vision by some specific visual energy; whether seen or heard, or touched, smelt, and lasted-for in those vast storehouses of fanatical assertion, the volumes of ecclesiastical history and auto-biography, instances are not wanting of the three latter extravagances,--this variety in the mode may render the several pretensions more or less offensive to the taste; but with the same absurdity for the reason, this being de rived from a contradiction in terms common and radical to them all alike, the assump tion of a something essentially supersensual, that is nevertheless the object of sense, that is, not supersensual." p. 112,

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The enthusiasts alluded to, ought not to be charged with a 'contradiction in terms, for they certainly never use the terms ascribed to them by Coleridge. Who ever heard of an enthusiast, who first defined the spirit as something essentially supersensual,' and then affirmed that it is an object of sense? The definition belongs to Coleridge, not to the enthusiasts; and the contradiction is between their doctrine and his definition, not between the terms of their doctrine. Coleridge assumes, that the spirit is essentially supersensual,' and then assumes that every body admits his assumption-the enthusiasts of whom he is speaking among the rest-and so lays the foundation of his charge of self-contradiction, in a twofold assumption of his own!

We are not disposed to admit that the spirit is essentially supersensual," in the sense which Coleridge attaches to that expression. We agree that it is not cognizable by the five bodily senses. But this does not satisfy Coleridge. He denies that the spirit is immediately cognizable by any inward perception,' by 'consciousness or any sensible experience,' by spiritual' feeling or vision; and this is what he means by the word supersensual. He would have expressed himself more accurately, if he had used some such term as super-perceptible, which excludes every mode of cognizance, spiritual as well as sensual. We object to calling all possible modes of direct perception, sensual, for that word has commonly been used in connection with the corporeal senses, in contrast to the word spiritual, and so has contracted a contemptible meaning. We believe that the Spirit is super-sensual, in the proper meaning of that word, i. e. that it is above the cognizance of the corporeal senses, but we do not believe that it is super-perceptible.

It is certainly too much to assume that the five bodily senses are the only modes of direct perception, and call all other supposed modes, indescribable' and unimaginable,' as though they were chimerical. By which of the five senses does a man perceive his own thoughts? He certainly neither

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sees, nor hears, nor touches, nor smells, nor tastes them, and yet he perceives them, and that not merely by their effects, but directly. In fact, the mode of perception by which a man takes cognizance of his own thoughts, or which is the same thing, of his own spirit, is the most direct conceivable; for whereas in all external perception the perceiving power acts through material organs, which are to it as the telescope to the eye, in reflection or consciousness, the perceiving power acts without any intervening organ; the man perceives his own thoughts, or his own spirit, as it were, with the naked eye. If it is admitted (as we suppose it is) that the five senses are only five modes by which one perceiving power, called the mind or spirit, takes cognizance of the outward world, is it reasonable to suppose that that one perceiving power has no visual energy' in its naked independent state, and with relation to objects in immediate contact with, and homogeneous to itself? As well might we say, that a man in a room with five windows, has no visual power but that which he employs in looking abroad. Whereas, in fact, his perception of things within the room is more direct and naked, than any possible perception of things outside the windows. So it is when spirit looks on spirit.

Consciousness is admitted to be the very highest kind of evidence; more

sure than that of the senses; and consciousness is nothing but self-percep tion, i. e. spirit looking at spirit. There is nothing in the nature of things so far as we can judge abstractly, which should preclude a man's spirit from perceiving any other spirit as well as his own. If a man can perceive by direct sensation, his own thoughts, (as he does in memory,) why may we not suppose, that under favorable circumstances, by a great increase of spiritual energy, or by special intimacy of spiritual fellowship, he might in the same way perceive the thoughts of others? There is abundant evidence that this actually takes place in the case of the subjects of animal magnetism. It is said of Jesus that he perceived the thoughts' of the people around him; and the power of 'discerning spirits' was one of the gifts of the primitive church. Spirits in general, then, are not super-perceptible; and we have no reason to believe that the Spirit of God is an exception to this principle. The metaphysical argument on this subject, so far as it goes, would lead us to presume that men in a suitable state of spirituality, may perceive the Spirit of God, even more sensibly and nakedly than any material object.

We will now appeal more directly to the Bible for evidence on the point in question. And in the first place, we would ask those who, like Locke and Coleridge, still maintain the sensual maxim of the heathen logician-nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu, [nothing was ever in the intellect, which was not first in the sense, i. e. in the corporeal senses,] by which of the five senses men perceived those spiritual things, which were manifested in the visions which abound in the records of scripture? For instance, when Paul was caught up to the third heaven, and knew not whether he was in the body or out, which of his corporeal senses perceived the things which he reports himself to have seen and heard? or are we to believe that his report is a muthos or fable, and that he actually perceived nothing but the phantoms of his imagination, which originally entered his mind by his corporeal senses? In a word, are angels, disembodied souls, and all celestial things, as well as the Spirit, supersensual in the sense of super-perceptible? If they are perceptible, and yet not by the corporeal senses, is it not certain that man is capable of an inward visual energy,' adapted to the perception of spiritual substances?

Again, if the operations of the Spirit are cognizable only by the gifts and graces infused' by it, how shall we explain the process of inspiration? When the word of the Lord' came to the prophets, it was certainly the 'immediate object' of a sense of some kind. So when the Spirit bade' Peter go to Cornelius, (Acts 10: 19,) who can doubt that he heard in some way, the words which are reported? The sound as of a mighty rushing wind, which came from heaven on the day of Pentecost, was certainly produced by the Holy Ghost, and as certainly was an object of sensation.

The Spirit is represented in scripture, as a life given to men, and by their faith received into their life. Is it conceivable that the soul should receive life and not feel it, or perceive it in any way but by its objective results? External observers may indeed know its presence only by its fruits: but shall we believe that the soul itself, in naked union with the vital energy of God, has no way of perceiving the presence of that energy but by observa

tion of its effects, and by inference? The following language evidently rep resents the presence of God by his Spirit in the soul, as a matter of direct perception:

"I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever; even the Spirit of truth, whom the world can not receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me; because I live, ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father; and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. Judas saith unto him, (not Iscariot,) Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world? Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." John 14: 16-23.

'He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit,' i. e., one spirit with the Lord, as they that are married are one. (See 1 Cor. 6: 17, and context.) This being true, if a Christian can feel his own spirit, he can feel the Spirit of the Lord; for they twain are one. Thus consciousness itself, the most direct mode of perception possible, may be brought to bear on the Spirit of God. In fact the faith of salvation is not our own, but the faith of the Son of God, and yet we feel it. How? Most clearly by unity with his Spirit, and by fellowship with his consciousness. In the same way also, the Spirit beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God."

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But the Spirit of God works not only in the soul, but in the body. By the Spirit Jesus healed diseases, cast out devils, raised the dead, &c. Is it probable that an agent that wrought such mighty visible effects, was itself altogether imperceptible? When Jesus perceived that virtue was gone out of him,' we doubt not that the woman perceived that the same virtue had entered into her blood. It is said the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.' 'If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead, dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies, by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.' Rom. 8: 11. Can the body be quickened, without feeling that which quickens it?

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We see that according to Coleridge's test, the Bible itself is a vast storehouse of fanatical assertion;' and its pretensions to the supernatural,' are of the same sort with those which were pilloried by Butler, sent to bedlam by Swift, gibbeted by Warburton, and anatomized by Bishop Lavington,'