in their despite, and reject the truth which they sanction.  If writers of Mr. Newman’s school will persist in displaying the difficulties of the Scripture before the eyes of those who had not been before aware of them, let those who are so cruelly tempted be conjured not to be dismayed; to refuse utterly to surrender up their sense of truth,—­to persist in rejecting the unchristian falsehoods which they are called upon to worship; sure that after all that can be said, that system will remain false to the end; and their Christian faith, if they do not faithlessly attempt to strengthen it by unlawful means, will stand no less unshaken.

In conclusion, Christian faith rests upon Scripture; and as it is in itself agreeable to the highest reason, so the authenticity of the Scriptures on which it rests is assured to us by the deliberate conclusions of the understanding; nor is any “mortal leap” necessary at any part of the process:  nor any rejection of one truth, in order to retain our hold on another.  And if it should happen, as in all probability it will, that we shall be called upon to correct in some respects our notions as to the Scriptures, and so far to hold views different from those of our fathers, we should consider that our fathers did not, and could not stand in our circumstances; that the knowledge which may call upon us to relinquish some of their opinions, was a knowledge which they had not.  Till this knowledge comes to us, let us hold our fathers’ opinions as they held them; but when it does come, it will come by God’s will, and to do his work:  and that work will, assuredly, not be our separation from our father’s faith; but if we follow God’s guidance humbly and cheerfully, clinging to God the while in personal devotion and obedience, we may be made aware of what to them would have been an inexplicable difficulty, and which was, therefore, hidden from their knowledge; and yet, “through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, we believe that we shall be saved even as they.”

THE END.