ells us a most
important truth--that that same Great Person by whose "holy
inspiration" all true Christians still hope to be taught, inspired the
prophets. He protests against making it necessary to say that there is
a _generic_ difference between one kind of Inspiration and the other,
or "setting up the Bible as a book which encloses all that may be
lawfully called Inspiration." He looks on the Bible as a link--a great
one, yet a link, joining on to what is before and what comes after--in
God's method of teaching man His truth. He cares little about phrases
like "verbal inspiration" and "plenary inspiration"--"forms of speech
which are pretty toys for those that have leisure to play with them;
and if they are not made so hard as to do mischief, the use of them
should not be checked. But they do not belong to business." He bids us,
instead, give men "the Book of Life," and "have courage to tell them
that there is a Spirit with them who will guide them into all truth."
Great and salutary lessons. But we must say that they have been long in
the world, and, it must be said, are as liable to be misunderstood as
any other "popular" notions on the subject. If there is nothing more to
say on the subject--if it is one where, though we see and are sure of a
truth, yet we must confess it to be behind a veil, as yet indistinct
and not to be grasped, let us manfully say so, and wait till God reveal
even this unto us. But it is not a wise or a right course to raise
expectations of being able to say something, not perhaps new, but
satisfactory, when the questions which are really being asked, which
are the professed occasion of the answer, remain, in their Intellectual
difficulty, entirely unresolved. Mr. Maurice is no trifler; when he
throws hard words about,--when at the close of this essay he paints to
himself the disappointment of some "Unitarian listener, who had hoped
that Mr. Maurice was going to join him in cursing his enemies, and
found that he had blessed them these three times,"--he ought to
consider whether the result has not been, and very naturally, to leave
both parties more convinced than before of the hollowness of all
professions to enter into, and give weight to, the difficulties and the
claims of opposite sides.

Mr. Maurice has not done justice, as it seems to us, in this case, to
the difficulty of the Unitarian. In other cases he makes free with the
common belief of Christendom, and claims sacrifices which are a