Scriptures, used with reference to the phenomena of the finite world, the character of divine inspiration, men have fallen with respect. both to thought and act into deplorable errors. Hence proceeded the trial of Galileo, and numerous other controversies, numerous other condemnations still more absurd, still more to be regretted, in which Christianity was immediately placed in opposition to human science, and constrained to inflict or receive remarkable disavowals. The same is the case at the present day with respect to numerous objections made in the name of the natural sciences to Christianity, and which from the learned circles where they have their birth, spread over a world at once curious and frivolous, where they cause the Christian faith itself to be regarded as ignorant credulity. Nothing of this kind could ever occur, no necessity of such a conflict could await the Christian religion, if on the one side the limits of human science, and on the other those of divine in

spiration, were recognized as they really are, and respected according to their rightful claims.

I might cite in aid of the opinion I support numerous and great authorities. I will refer to but three, appealed to by Galileo himself in 1615 in his letters to the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine,* (who could appeal to authorities more august?) more august?) "Many things," says St. Jérôme, "are recounted in the Scriptures according to the judgment of the times when they happened, and not according to the truth."+ "The purpose of the Holy Scriptures," says the Cardinal Baronius, "is to teach us how to go to heaven, and not how the heavens go." "This," says Kepler, "is the counsel I give to the man so ill-informed as not to understand the science of astronomy, or so weak as to regard adhesion to Copernicus as proof of want of piety. Let him at once

* Opere Complete di Galileo-Galilei, t. ii, chap. ii, pp. 26-64. Florence, 1843.

†Œuvres de St. Jérôme, Comment. in Jeremiam, ed. Vallars, t. ix, p. 1,040.

leave the study of astronomy and the examination of the opinions of philosophers; instead of devoting himself to those arduous researches, let him remain at home, till his fields, and occupy himself with his proper business; and thence, raising toward the admirable vault of heaven his eyes, which constitute for him his sole mode of vision, let him pour forth his heart in thanksgivings and praises to God his Creator. He may rest assured that he is thus rendering to God a worship as perfect as that of the astronomer himself, to whom God has accorded the gift of seeing clearer with the eyes of his intelligence; but who, above all the worlds and all the heavens that he attains, knows and wills to find his God."*

I discard, then, as absolutely foreign to the grand question that occupies me, all the difficulties suggested to the Scriptures in the name of those sciences whose province is finite nature. I seek and consider in these books only what

*Kepler, Nova Astronomia, Introductio, p. 9. Prague, 1609,

is their sole object-the relations of God with man, and the solution of those problems which these relations cause to weigh upon the human soul. The deeper we go in the study of the sacred volumes, restored to their real object, the more the divine inspiration becomes manifest and striking. God and man are there ever both present, both actors in the same history. Of this history it is my present object to illustrate the grand features.

SEVENTH MEDITATION.

GOD ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE.

Ir is far from my intention to evade the questions which concern the authenticity of the Bible, and of the respective books which compose it. I shall enter upon them in the second series of these Meditations, when I touch upon the history of the Christian religion. Those questions, however, have no bearing upon the subject which occupies me at the present moment; the Bible, whatever its antiquity, whatever the comparative antiquity of its different parts, has been ever that witness of God in which the Hebrews believed, and under the law of which they lived, the great monument of the religion in the bosom of which the Christian religion took its birth. It is this