les,--of
the fallibility of human testimony,--of the proneness of most minds to
exaggeration,--and of the critical arguments affecting the genuineness
or the date of the narrative itself. But it forgets the divine part,
namely, the power and providence of God, that He is really ever present
amongst us, and that the spiritual world, which exists invisibly all
around us, may conceivably, and by no means impossibly, exist, at some
times and to some persons, even visibly. These considerations, which the
understanding is ignorant of, would often modify our judgment as to the
human parts of the case. Things not impossible in themselves are
believed upon sufficient testimony; and with all the carelessness and
exaggeration of historians, the mass of history is notwithstanding
generally credible. Again, with regard to the history of the Old
Testament, our judgment of the human part in it requires to be
constantly modified by our consciousness of the divine part, or
otherwise it cannot fail to be rationalistic; that is, it will be the
judgment of the understanding only, unchecked by the reason. Gesenius'
Commentary on Isaiah is rationalistic, for it regards Isaiah merely as a
Jewish writer, zealously attached to the religion of his country, and
lamenting the decay of his nation, and anxiously looking for its future
restoration. No doubt Isaiah was all this, and therefore Gesenius'
Commentary is critically and historically very valuable; the human part
of Isaiah is nowhere better illustrated; but the divine part of the
prophecy of Isaiah is no less real, and the consciousness of its
existence should actually qualify our feelings and language even with
reference to the human part.

9th. The fault, then, of rationalism appears to me to consist not so
much in what it has as in what it has not. The understanding has its
proper work to do with respect to the Bible, because the Bible consists
of human writings and contains a human history. Critical and historical
inquiries respecting it are, therefore, perfectly legitimate; it
contains matter which is within the province of the understanding, and
the understanding has God's warrant for doing that work which he
appointed it to do; only, let us remember, that the understanding cannot
ascend to things divine; that for these another faculty is
necessary,--reason or faith. If this faculty be living in us, then there
can be no rationalism; and what is called so is then no other than the
voic