interested in
man could save him; not God; He might have power, but His purity
revolted. Power (or doubtfully so), but no will. Not man--for he, having
the will, had no power. God was too holy; manhood too _un_holy. Man's
gifts, applicable, but insufficient. God's sufficient, but
inapplicable. Then came the compromise. How if man could be engrafted
upon God? Thus only, and by such a synthesis, could the ineffable
qualities of God be so co-ordinated with those of man.

Suppose even that a verbal inspiration could have been secured--secured,
observe, against _gradual_ changes in language and against the
reactionary corruption of concurrent versions, which it would be
impossible to guarantee as also enjoying such an inspiration (since, in
that case, _what_ barrier would divide mine or anybody's wilfully false
translations from that pretending to authority? I repeat _what_? None is
conceivable, since what could you have beyond the assurance of the
translator, even which could only guarantee his intentions)--here is a
cause of misinterpretation amounting to ruin, viz., after being read for
centuries as if practically meant for our guidance, such and such a
chapter (_e.g._, Jael and Sisera), long proscribed by the noble as a
record of abominable perfidy, has at length been justified on the ground
that it was never meant for anything else. Thus we might get rid of
David, etc., were it not that for his flexible obedience to the _clerus_
he has been pronounced the man after God's own heart.

Is it not dreadful that at the very vestibule of any attempt to execute
the pretended law of God and its sentences to hell we are interrupted by
one case in every three as exceptional? Of the deaths, one in three are
of children under five. Add to these surely _very_ many up to twelve or
thirteen, and _many_ up to eighteen or twenty, then you have a law which
suspends itself for one case in every two.

_Note in the argument drawn from perishableness of language._ Not only
(which I have noted) is any language, _ergo_ the original, Chaldaean,
Greek, etc., perishable even for those who use it, but also the vast
openings to error which all languages open to translators form a separate
source of error in translators, viz.:

1. The old one on my list that for them the guidance of inspiration has
ceased, else, if not, you must set up an inspiration separately to
translators, since, if you say--No, not at all, why, which then?

2. The uncert