to us most safely in the simple language of the Evangelists; and because that language taken in connection with the rest of their story, offers itself, I suspect, to a majority of those who have taken in the idea of an Incarnation, as the only natural and rational account of the method by which the eternal Son of God could have taken human flesh.”

Now, would not Mr. Maurice have done better if he had enounced the definite meaning, or shade of meaning, which he considers short of, or different from, our ordinary meaning of miraculous, as applied to this subject, and yet the same as that suggested by the Gospel account?  We have no doubt what Mr. Maurice does believe on this sacred subject.  But we are puzzled by what he means to disavow, as an “untrue meaning” of the word miraculous, as applied to what he believes.  And the Unitarians whom he addresses must, we think, be puzzled too.

We have quoted this passage because it is a short one, and therefore a convenient one for a short notice like this.  But the same tormenting indistinctness pervades the attempts generally to get a meaning or a position, which shall be substantially and in its living force the same as the popular and orthodox article, yet convict it of confusion or formalism; and which shall give to the Unitarian what he aims at by his negation of the popular article, without leaving him any longer a reason for denying it.  The essay on Inspiration is an instance of this.  Mr. Maurice says very truly, that it is necessary to face the fact that important questions are asked on the subject, very widely, and by serious people; that popular notions are loose and vague about it; that it is a dangerous thing to take refuge in a hard theory, if it is an inconsistent and inadequate one; that if doubts do grow up, they are hardly to be driven away by assertions.  He accepts the challenge to state his own view of Inspiration, and devotes many pages to doing so.  In these page’s are many true and striking things.  So far as we understand, there is not a statement that we should contradict.  But we have searched in vain for a passage which might give, in Mr. Maurice’s words, a distinct answer to the question of friend or opponent, What do you mean by the “Inspiration of the Bible?” Mr. Maurice tells 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