ind in order to
render perfectly harmless. With such a system of interpretation as this,
no one who adopted it could pretend to assign for himself a limit to his
skepticism. Whatever defied the critic's acumen or the believer's
spiritual grasp was unraveled on the principle that it was local and
temporary. Surely Rationalism was making a bold stroke for supremacy,
and it had the rare fortune of possessing a man of Semler's versatile
taste and boldness of utterance.

In one aspect he came into harmony with the English Deists, though his
praise of them was extremely moderate. He maintained that they had done
more good than harm; but it was only the best of them whom he really
admired. He silently repudiated the volatile French school, the learned
Bayle being the only one of the number whom he mentioned with any degree
of satisfaction. The view by which he came into nearest relation to the
free-thinkers of England was, that the Bible is but the republication of
the religion of nature. He held that the world had been taught religion
long before the Scriptures were written; though he confessed that in
them we find it more clearly stated and more rigidly enjoined than
anywhere else. Among the mass of natural teachings in the Bible we
occasionally come across a modicum of eternal truth; but the seeker is
very seldom rewarded with a real gem of permanent value. The Jews were
grossly ignorant of all important spiritual light. Their chief idea of
Jehovah was that he was their national God; and their religion was
purely one of circumstances and ceremonies. Moses had some idea of the
soul's immortality, but his countrymen were not so highly favored as
himself. The Messiah of the Old Testament was a very vague personage;
and indistinct indeed must have been the Jewish idea of a coming
Redeemer.

But it was not here that Semler won his greatest victories. His chief
triumph was against the history and doctrinal authority of the church.
His mind had been thoroughly imbued with a disgust at what was ancient
and revered. He appeared to despise the antiquities of the church simply
because they were antiquities. What was new and fresh, was, with him,
worthy of unbounded admiration and speedy adoption. His prejudice
against the Fathers may have been imbibed in part from the Reformers;
but, however derived, his distaste and censure knew no bounds. All the
early Christian writers, he believed, were brimful of imperfections.
Tertullian was f