years of age, in another place at eighteen. I cannot explain it. But I can imagine and believe many solutions except one, namely, that the inspired writers contradicted themselves, or that in this they were not inspired.

So likewise, when I am told that the history of the Pentateuch is intrinsically incredible;—that half a million of men could not be slain in one battle; that the people in the wilderness could not have survived without water; that to furnish the paschal lambs would require I know not how many millions of sheep; that, according to sheep-masters in Yorkshire and Natal, this would require I know not how many millions of square acres of grass; that the priest could not carry every day a bullock, with his head and hide, and inwards, and appurtenances, six miles out of the camp, and the like;-I confess that it makes little impression on me. It reminds me of the Athenian, who, having a house to sell, carried about a brick in his pocket as a view of the premises; and of another, who showed in his olive garden the well out of which his forefathers used to drink; to which his friend-testing history by mensuration, and yet believing―said, 'What long necks they must have had!' I do not profess to be able to understand all the difficulties which may be raised. The history shows to me afar off like the harvest-moon just over the horizon, dilated beyond all proportion, and in its

aspect unnatural; but I know it to be the same. heavenly light which in a few hours I shall see in a flood of splendour, self-evident and without a cloud. So I am content to leave, as residual difficulties, the narratives which come down from an age, when as yet the father of secular history had not been born. Why should we assume that we must render an account of all difficulties in Scripture any more than in revelation, or in revelation any more than in science? Why should we be ashamed of saying with S. Augustine, 'Let us believe and immovably affirm that in Scripture falsehood has no place." As for us, in the history of our religion, upheld by Divine authority, we have no doubt that whatsoever is opposed to it is most false, let the literature of the world say what it will of it."" 'We cannot say the manuscript is faulty, for all the corrected Latin versions have it so; nor that the translator is in error, for all the corrected Greek have it so. It remains that you do not understand it." Even in the Holy Scriptures themselves, the things of which I am ignorant are many more than the things which I know." Adore in the Gospel what you do not as yet understand, and adore it all the more in proportion as it is now hidden from you." These may be hard sayings to the nineteenth 1 S. Aug. Ep. 82, ad Hier. tom. ii. p. 198.

6

'S. Aug. De Civ. Dei, lib. xviii. cap. 40, tom. vii. p. 522.

Ibid., Cont. Faust. lib. xi. c. 6.

4

Ibid., ad Inquis. Januar. Ep. LV. tom. ii. p. 143.

5

Ibid., Serm. LI. de Concor. Matt. et Luc. tom. v. p. 285.

century; but they are the judgments of reason illuminated by faith, 'which is yesterday, and to-day, and the same for ever.'

And if it should seem irrational and perverse to shut our eyes to difficulties, as men say, we can but answer-We neither derive our religion from the Scriptures, nor does it depend upon them. Our faith was in the world before the New Testament was written. The Scripture itself depends for its attestation upon the Witness who teaches us our faith, and that Witness is Divine. Our faith rests upon an order of divine facts which was already spread throughout the world, when as yet the Gospel of S. John was not written. Of what weight are any number of residual difficulties against this standing, perpetual, and luminous miracle, which is the continuous manifestation of a supernatural history among men; a history, the characters, proportions, and features of which are, like the order to which, it belongs, divine, and therefore transcend the ordinary course of nations and of men. One of these divine facts, and that which is the centre and source of all our certainty, is the perpetual Voice of the Church of God. That Voice has declared to us that the Sacred Books were written by inspiration, and that whatsoever those books contain, howsoever it may surpass the bounds of our experience, and refuse the criteria of our statistics, and the calculus of our arithmetic, is simply to be believed because it is divinely true.

CHAPTER IV.

THE RELATION OF THE HOLY GHOST TO THE INTER

PRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

.

In the last chapter we have endeavoured to ascertain, according to the tradition of the Catholic faith and theology, the relation of the Holy Spirit to the letter and to the substance of Holy Scripture. We may now go on to trace the relation of the same Divine Person to its interpretation.

At the close of the last chapter, it was affirmed that Christianity was neither derived from the Scriptures of the New Testament, nor is dependent upon them; that it was derived from, and that it still depends upon the order of divine facts introduced into the world by the Incarnation; among which facts, one is the perpetual presence of a Divine Teacher among men. In the present chapter, then, we will trace the relation of this Divine Teacher to the interpretation of Scripture. The faith teaches us that what the presence of the Incarnate Son in the years

of His ministry was to the Scriptures of the Old Testament, that the presence of the Holy Ghost is, servata proportione, to the Scriptures of the New. Now the Jews were not more unconscious of the presence of a Divine Person among them than the multitude of men at this day.

We read in the fourth chapter of S. Luke's Gospel, that on a certain Sabbath day our Lord 'went into the synagogue, according to His custom,' and that 'He stood up to read." The Sabbath rose upon Nazareth that day like any other, and the people of Israel went to their synagogue as at other times. Jesus was there, according to His custom; and He stood up to read as others were wont to do. The Book of Esaias the prophet was given to Him; and as He unrolled it, He found the place where it was written, 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Wherefore He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor.' And when He had folded the book, He restored it to the minister and sat down.' Then He said: 'This day these words are fulfilled in your ears.' That day was a day of visitation. The Messiah was come, but they knew Him not. With the Scriptures in their hands, they did not recognise the Divine Person of whom the Scriptures spoke. He was come fulfilling the prophecies; but they believed Him to be the carpenter, the son of Joseph. There was a Di1 S. Luke iv. 16-19.