all around us, may conceivably, and by no means impossibly, exist, at some times and to some persons, even visibly.  These considerations, which the understanding is ignorant of, would often modify our judgment as to the human parts of the case.  Things not impossible in themselves are believed upon sufficient testimony; and with all the carelessness and exaggeration of historians, the mass of history is notwithstanding generally credible.  Again, with regard to the history of the Old Testament, our judgment of the human part in it requires to be constantly modified by our consciousness of the divine part, or otherwise it cannot fail to be rationalistic; that is, it will be the judgment of the understanding only, unchecked by the reason.  Gesenius’ Commentary on Isaiah is rationalistic, for it regards Isaiah merely as a Jewish writer, zealously attached to the religion of his country, and lamenting the decay of his nation, and anxiously looking for its future restoration.  No doubt Isaiah was all this, and therefore Gesenius’ Commentary is critically and historically very valuable; the human part of Isaiah is nowhere better illustrated; but the divine part of the prophecy of Isaiah is no less real, and the consciousness of its existence should actually qualify our feelings and language even with reference to the human part.

9th.  The fault, then, of rationalism appears to me to consist not so much in what it has as in what it has not.  The understanding has its proper work to do with respect to the Bible, because the Bible consists of human writings and contains a human history.  Critical and historical inquiries respecting it are, therefore, perfectly legitimate; it contains matter which is within the province of the understanding, and the understanding has God’s warrant for doing that work which he appointed it to do; only, let us remember, that the understanding cannot ascend to things divine; that for these another faculty is necessary,—­reason or faith.  If this faculty be living in us, then there can be no rationalism; and what is called so is then no other than the voice of Christian truth.  Where a man’s writings show that he is keenly alive to the divine part of Scripture, that he sees God ever in it, and regards it truly as his word, his judgments of the human part in it are not likely to be rationalistic; and if his understanding decides according to its own laws, upon points within its own province, while his faith duly tempers it, and restrains it from venturing upon another’s dominion, the result will, in all probability, be such as commonly attends the use of God’s manifold gifts in their just proportions,—­it will image, after our imperfect measure, the holiness of God and the truth of God.