ent is intelligible only in so far as it too comes within the
range of spiritual experience. The apostolic language took colour from
the traditions concerning sacrifice. Much has been taken by the Church
as literal dogmatic statement which should be taken as more figure of
speech, borrowed from Jewish sources.

Coleridge feared that his thoughts concerning Scripture might, if
published, do more harm than good. They were printed first in 1840.
Their writing goes back into the period long before the conflict raised
by Strauss. There is not much here that one might not have learned from
Herder and Lessing. Utterances of Whately and Arnold showed that minds
in England were waking. But Coleridge's utterances rest consistently
upon the philosophy of religion and theory of dogma which have been
above implied. They are more significant than are mere flashes of
generous insight, like those of the men named. The notion of verbal
inspiration or infallible dictation of the Holy Scriptures could not
possibly survive after the modern spirit of historical inquiry had made
itself felt. The rabbinical idea was bound to disappear. A truer sense
of the conditions attending the origins and progress of civilisation and
of the immaturities through which religious as well as moral and social
ideas advance, brought of necessity a changed idea of the nature of
Scripture and revelation. Its literature must be read as literature, its
history as history. For the answer in our hearts to the spirit in the
Book, Coleridge used the phrase: 'It finds me.' 'Whatever finds me bears
witness to itself that it has proceeded from the Holy Ghost. In the
Bible there is more that finds me than in all the other books which I
have read.' Still, there is much in the Bible that does not find me. It
is full of contradictions, both moral and historical. Are we to regard
these as all equally inspired? The Scripture itself does not claim that.
Besides, what good would it do us to claim that the original documents
were inerrant, unless we could claim also that they had been inerrantly
transmitted? Apparently Coleridge thought that no one would ever claim
that. Coleridge wrote also concerning the Church. His volume on _The
Constitution of Church and State_ appeared in 1830. It is the least
satisfactory of his works. The vacillation of Coleridge's own course
showed that upon this point his mind was never clear. Arnold also,
though in a somewhat different way, was zealous f