d doctrines;
and these he handled under the set purpose of simplifying the
fundamentals of Christianity to the utmost. Such purpose was not the
result of his Bible study, but of his wish to overcome the political
difficulties of the time. He found, by keeping close to the Gospels and
by making proper selections from the Epistles, that the belief in Christ
as the Messiah could be shown to be the central fact of the Christian
faith; that the other main doctrines followed out of this by a process
of reasoning; and that, as all minds might not perform the process
alike, these doctrines could not be essential to the acceptance of
Christianity. He got out of the difficulty of framing a creed, as many
others have done, by simply using Scripture language, without subjecting
it to any very strict definition; certainly without the operation of
stripping the meaning of its words, to see what it amounted to. That his
short and easy method was not very successful, the history of the
Deistical controversy sufficiently proves. The end in view would, in our
time, be sought by an opposite course. Instead of disregarding
commentators, and the successions of creed embodiments, a scholar of the
present day would ascend through these to the original, and find out its
meaning, after making allowance for all the tendencies that operated to
give a bias to that meaning. As to putting us in the position of
listening to the Bible authors at first hand, we should trust more to
the erudition of a Pusey or an Ewald, than to the unassisted judgment of
a Locke.

* * * * *

II. "What constitutes the study of a book?" Mere perusal at the average
reading pace is not the way to imbibe the contents of any work of
importance, especially if the subject is new and difficult.

There are various methods in use among authoritative guides. To revert
to the Demosthenic traditions: we find two modes indicated--namely,
repeated copying, and committing to memory _verbatim_. A third is,
making abstracts in writing. A fourth may be designated the Lockian
method. Let us consider the respective merits of the four.

[STUDY BY LITERAL COPYING.]

1. Of copying a book literally through, there is this to be said, that
it engages the attention upon every word, until the act of writing
serves to impress the memory. But there are very important
qualifications to be assigned in judging of the worth of the exercise.
Observe what is the main des