ve
found so ridiculous, were it not that he had previously addicted himself
to viewing the whole existence of evil spirits as a nursery fable. Now
it is not our intention to enter upon any speculation so mysterious. It
is clear from the first that no man by human researches can any more
add one scintillation of light to the obscure indications of Scripture
upon this dark question, than he can add a cubit to his stature. We do
not know, nor is it possible to know, what is even likely to be the
exact meaning of various Scriptural passages partly, perhaps, adapted to
the erring preconceptions of the Jews; for never let it be forgotten
that upon all questions alike, which concerned no moral interest of man,
all teachers alike who had any heavenly mission, patriarchs or lawgivers
conversing immediately with God, prophets, apostles, or even the Founder
of our religion Himself, never vouchsafe to reveal one ray of
illumination. And to us it seems the strangest oversight amongst all the
oversights of commentators that, in respect to the Jewish errors as to
astronomy, etc., they should not have seen the broad open doctrine which
vindicates the profound Scriptural neglect of errors however gross in
that quality of speculation. The solution of this neglect is not such as
to leave a man under any excuse for apologizing or shuffling. The
solution is technical, precise, and absolute. It is not sufficient to
say, as the best expounders do generally say, that science, that
astronomy for instance, that geology, that physiology, were not the kind
of truth which divine missionaries were sent to teach; that is true, but
is far short of the whole truth. Not only was it negatively no part of
the offices attached to a divine mission that it should extend its
teaching to merely intellectual questions (an argument which still
leaves the student to figure it as a work not indispensable, not
absolutely to be expected, yet in case it _were_ granted as so much of
advantage, as a _lucro ponatur_), but in the most positive and
commanding sense it _was_ the business of revelation to refuse all
light of this kind. According to all the analogies which explain the
meaning of a revelation, it would have been a capital schism in the
counsels of Providence, if in one single instance it had condescended to
gratify human curiosity by anticipation with regard to any subject
whatever, which God had already subjected to human capacity through the
ample faculties