s
indiscriminately, regarding the whole as sufficiently authoritative and
trustworthy for the purposes of the argument.

The above-mentioned general purpose the Scriptures may be supposed to
be adequate to fulfil, whether as expressed in the Hebrew tongue, or in
that of the Septuagint, or as translated in the English version,
notwithstanding that, as must be admitted, faults of transcription, or
translation, or interpretation have given rise to many verbal errors.
But the difficulties produced by these imperfections are of slight
importance in comparison with the great difficulty of discovering how
and on what principles to interpret the Scriptures so as to derive from
them the particular doctrines they are designed to teach. Amid the
great diversity of views that exists relative to modes of
interpretation, it may safely be maintained that the foremost and chief
requisite for making true deductions from the Scriptures is to have
_confidence_ in them as being depositions of Divine wisdom. Men of
science, in their endeavours to discover the secrets of Nature, are
baffled again and again, and yet by little and {8} little they obtain
accessions to knowledge just because they never doubt but that Nature,
if rightly interrogated, will give them true answers. It seems,
therefore, reasonable to expect that the words of God, handled on
principles analogous to those which have been successfully applied in
acquiring knowledge of His works, might be found capable of answering
the hard questions which are now, more, perhaps, than in past times,
agitating men's minds. This philosophy, having a surer basis than that
of any mere human intellectual system, might be expected to succeed
where these have failed. The bearing of these remarks on the main
subject of the essay will be seen as we go on.

Commencing now, after the foregoing preliminaries, the general
argument, I remark, in the first place, that since, as matter of fact,
all men die, they cannot partake of immortality unless they are
restored to life after death. We have, therefore, to inquire both as
to what the Scriptures say concerning _death_, and what they reveal
concerning _resurrection_. Again, it may be taken for granted that as
in the natural world, so in the spiritual world, the Creator of all
things effects His purposes by operating according to _laws_. On this
principle St. Paul in Rom. viii. 2 speaks of "the law of sin and
death," meaning that sin and death