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"It's hard to say, sir," replied Malachi; "for he well deserves the name of a snake, if, as the Scripture says, it's the subtlest thing on earth: he will try all he can, you may be sure; and if it were not that he is afraid of us, he would attack us immediately; but that I have no idea that he will venture upon."

On the contrary, they would not dare to adopt, as the teaching of Scripture, anything which they could not plainly deduce therefrom: lastly, these sacrilegious persons who have dared, in several passages, to interpolate the Bible, would have shrunk from so great a crime, and would have stayed their sacrilegious hands.

To be consistent, Adam must have been dumb with awe, incapable of holding converse such as is described. Between sinless man and his sinful progeny, the distance is immeasurable. And so, too, must be the effect on the latter, in such a presence; and for this conclusion we have the authority of Scripture, in the dismay of the soldiers at the Saviour's sepulchre, on which more directly.

To all this plausible modern argument for oppression, the only adequate answer is, that there is a permanent human ideal that must not be either confused or destroyed. The most important man on earth is the perfect man who is not there. The Christian religion has specially uttered the ultimate sanity of Man, says Scripture, who shall judge the incarnate and human truth.

I know, of course, that, apart altogether from the exercise of faith in Jesus Christ, there do shine in men's hearts rays of the light of knowledge and of purity; but if we believe the teaching of Scripture, these, too, are from Christ, in His universally-diffused work, by which, apart altogether from individual faith, or from a knowledge of revelation, He is 'the light that lighteth every man coming into the world. And I hold that, wheresoever there is conscience, wheresoever there is judgment and reason, wheresoever there are sensitive desires after excellence and nobleness, there is a flickering of a light which I believe to be from Christ Himself.

Well, they held the auction in the public square, along towards the end of the afternoon, and it strung along, and strung along, and the old man he was on hand and looking his level pisonest, up there longside of the auctioneer, and chipping in a little Scripture now and then, or a little goody-goody saying of some kind, and the duke he was around goo-gooing for sympathy all he knowed how, and just spreading himself generly.

These altars will sanctify many such gifts. For, who that knows anything at all about himself, about his own soul, and about the hindrances and helps to its salvation from sin; who that ever read a page of Scripture properly, or spent half an hour in that life which is hidden in God who of such will deny or doubt that fasting is superseded or neglected to the sure loss of the spiritual life, to the sensible lowering of the religious tone and temper, and to the increase both of the lusts of the flesh and of the mind?

But if you would be justified in excluding those, with whom yet you see God hath communion, because they yet see not a shadow with you; produce the scripture for such order, that we may believe it is the order of God. But deal fairly, lest we shew your nakedness, and others see your shame.

If every difficult theological question is to be solved by simply appealing to passages of Scripture, it is obvious that little room is left for profound and original reflection; and that, speaking broadly, was the method adopted by Spangenberg in this volume. His object was twofold.

And in the interval between those two conditions no new karman originates. When, therefore, the text says that the souls are born as plants, the statement cannot be taken in its literal sense. It is unholy. Not so, on the ground of Scripture. The conclusion arrived at above cannot be accepted, since there is a reason why the descending soul should enter on the condition of an enjoying soul.