from 'mental development' are indubitably certain, therefore the account of that literal ascent into heaven is incredible. There is we believe in many minds, particularly those in their novitiate of thought and knowledge, a secret misgiving, a painful distrust respecting this latter topic, inconsistent with that child-like simplicity of belief, which revelation demands of all its readers, and which is so essential to the efficiency of faith. It is also felt by others, who in their enlarged ideas of the divine omnipresence, and of the nature of intellectual and spiritual happiness, think it only becoming their conceptions to discard the local and material as much as possible from their views and feelings. These persons stumble at the same fact. Heaven,' say they, 'is a state of the mind and affections, not a place. Heaven is everywhere to God and all good beings. Render a human being perfectly holy, and by that change in his moral condition you translate him into the only heaven, which correct ideas of felicity warrant us to expect.' In the delight they find in their ideal heaven, all the difficulty of the question becomes absorbed; which nevertheless stands forth in the invincible reality, that our Lord 'ascended into heaven.'

Another solution affords a refuge to some minds from the difficulty of the general subject, namely, the theory of divine vision. In this solution Hugh Farmer finds a resource from the perplexities attendant upon the literal interpretation of the narrative of our Lord's temptation, and it has been applied by others to many of the divine manifestations and miraculous events recorded in Scripture-such, for instance, as the wrestling of 'God' with Jacob, the appearing of the star to the magi, and the appearance of angels to mankind on many occasions. This theory is not to be hastily decried. Divine vision was the general mode whereby God communicated revelations to mankind in all ages, from the time when he caused the 'deep sleep' to fall on our first parent, during which he represented to him the nature and obligations of marriage, down to the time when St. John received the apocalypse while 'in the Spirit.' And Bishop Law justly remarks, that some things in Scripture were revealed by this means, which are not formally stated to have been so communicated—as, for instance, the appearance of Christ to the protomartyr. It should also be borne in mind that this theory does not at all infringe upon the miraculous nature of such communications nor invalidate their certainty. It is also recommended by its affording an easy solution to all the chief difficulties under consideration. It applies with peculiar efficacy to the narrative of our Lord's ascension into heaven. Many good reasons can be

b Theory of Religion, London, 1820, p. 85, &c.

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assigned why the idea should be communicated to the Christian church and to the world, that the Saviour had personally departed from the earth to return no more till he should come in his glory.' The bare supposition that he was still remaining on it would have unsettled the views and feelings of his followers in every age to an extent subversive of the whole design of his religion. Let it then be granted, that the fact of his removal from the earth must be certified to us; and we see no fatal objection to the supposition, if nothing less will satisfy the mind of some inquirers, that a divine vision of his actual and final departure was presented to the minds of the apostles. This theory, though it by no means renders the ascension perfectly intelligible to us in the present state of our knowledge, may afford some relief to those whose ideas of the system and extent of the universe are violently opposed to the notion of the Saviour's local transition from earth to heaven, the abode of Deity. Such a reader revolts at the very idea of such an ascent. From whatever point on the earth's surface he directs his view, he believes himself to be looking into an infinite abyss of space, with regard to which the words ascent and descent have no meaning. He applies the same conviction to every other world within his observation. He transfers it to his imagined survey from the most distant star within reach of the telescope, and thence onward to new firmaments, which he multiplies to his own conceptions, till his overpowered fancy descends again to the domestic scenes of the earth for a refuge. But in all this conceptual survey he finds no local abode of Deity, whom he thinks it most philosophical to conceive of, as indeed pervading all things, but to be Himself nowhere, not more in one place than in another.

But before such a reader takes refuge in some such theory as divine vision, we would request him to consider whether the difficulties he experiences are really so great as to require a departure from the usual and more natural interpretation of the narrative of Christ's ascension into heaven. These difficulties seem to us to owe their formidableness to the assumption, that we are in possession of far more extensive knowledge and of far greater certainty than we conceive to be at present dreamt of in philosophy.' These difficulties take for granted that there are no powers of matter but such as are cognizable to our senses; no other kind of matter than that to which we are accustomed; that all the laws by which all created things are regulated are already decyphered; and that all possible modes of existence and agency are already understood. Vested with these assumptions, the sceptical philosopher looks through the blue ether and believes that it contains nothing more than is included in modern discoveries, or consistent with them. He can, indeed, understand you if you speak to him

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of laws, causes and effects, of divine operation and agency through constituted intermediate means. He is awed with representations of the divine omnipresence and omniscience, infinite power, wisdom, and benevolence; he feels the deepest conviction of the universal government of the Deity, both natural and moral, but he demands. that all his religious conceptions should be similarly abstract and infinite, and he must have a revelation framed upon the same model, for such a revelation alone he conceives worthy of Deity. He finds, indeed, something satisfactory in the declaration, that God is a spirit, and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.' This and similar passages appear to him to be redeeming portions amid the general anthropomorphism of the Scriptures, like gleams of intellectuality, which somewhat relieve the humanized and limited ideas which darken and degrade the remainder. He could, he pleads, easily conceive of a revelation consisting only of abstractions, and which should have carried the impress of its origin from the Father of our Spirits by its being addressed to the pure perceptions of the understanding.

We acknowledge that there is something sublime and noble in such a beau ideal of a revelation. We would even advocate the plea upon which it is founded, that all our conceptions of Deity should be as pure and exalted as possible. We deplore the fact, adverted to by Mr. Locke, that many even among us will be found upon inquiry to fancy Him in the shape of a man sitting in heaven, and to have many other absurd and unfit conceptions of Him.' But we would recal the philosopher's attention to the fact, that even the most abstract representations which the mind can form amount in reality to no more than to a mere assemblage of material perceptions of the most palpable nature. We waive the plea in behalf of the existing style of biblical representations, that such alone is suited to the generality of mankind, who would have been incapable of comprehending a revelation made on the model which delights the philosopher's imagination. We will not urge that the most striking mode of conveying truth is by events and realities addressed to the senses, or by the record of such events. We call attention to the well-established position that all the restrictions of materialism do in fact adhere to the most spiritual conceptions attainable by mankind; that the philosopher's most incorporeal ideas, as he deems them, are, after all, inextricably invested with the earthliness and anthropomorphism to which he aspires to be superior. In maintaining this point, we will concede to him the debated question, whether we do not think in words? we will not urge the well-known influence of

words on all our perceptions. We will even yield in his favour the question, whether the mind can really form abstract ideas. We will simply remind him that all language consists, when reduced to its elements, of the signs of sensible ideas only, and we would plead that a revelation conveyed in the most abstract language possible must still partake of the characteristics which cause his discontent with the style of Scripture. Let such a reader draw out his religious creed in the language best suited to his own conceptions, and to the eye of the accomplished etymologist it shall present nothing more than so many signs of sensible objects of the most homely and tangible description. It is universally allowed, for instance, that every verb is but some noun in action, and that every noun is originally the name of something perceived by the senses or by our internal feelings; even the words, which are the signs of our most abstract conceptions, are reducible to this origin. How great, for instance, seems at first sight the remove from the act of breathing to the idea of inspiration, and yet both these words are ultimately reducible to the same etymon. Perhaps a more abstract idea can scarcely be selected than that conveyed by the common affix ness to our English words, as the exponent of a condition or quality, in such words as goodness, whiteness, &c.; and yet a celebrated etymologist finds its origin in nothing more abstract than the French word nez, whence comes the English word nose. Even the word idea itself involves an obvious reference to the use of the eye. How unfounded then is the fastidiousness which would banish the material from the language which it would deem the most suitable vehicle for a revelation! If it be a fault that the Scriptures speak by sensible images, it is a fault with which the writings of the most transcendental metaphysician are also chargeable.

But we may go farther, and, from showing that scepticism can raise no real objection on the score of language, may proceed to question whether the difficulties it alleges to arise from the nature of things may not be also precarious. Is the sceptic quite sure, that his ideas even of external nature itself are so correct as to render all his deductions from its supposed infinity perfectly irrefragable? Has he never met with reasonings which have shaken, at least for a time, his confidence in the very reality of the external universe itself, upon whose fixity and unlimited extent, and upon the inflexibility of whose supposed laws his chief objections to the miraculous facts of the Scriptures are grounded? Has he never been led to question whether even the theory of his ideas themselves may be not mistaken? If he have that extent of reading which the consistency of his philosophical pretensions demands, he will understand our allusion. One of the most eminent writers on the philosophy of mind has thus pronounced upon the me

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rits of the hypothesis we have in our view. It is entirely owing to our early familiarity with material objects, and our early habits of inattention to what passes within us, that materialism is apt to appear at first sight to be less absurd than the opposite system, which represents MIND as the only existence in the universe. Of the two doctrines, that of Berkeley is at once the safest and the most philosophical.' Is the sceptic competent to demonstrate the absurdity of this judgment? If it may possibly be correct, then certainly his objections founded upon the supposed extent of the universe may as possibly be precarious. Is not the bare possibility that either this, or some other imperfection, may attach either to the objects of his researches, or to his methods of investigating them, sufficient to induce caution in his conclusions ?

We must, however, just advert to another theory, upon which it has been attempted to account for much of the anthropomorphism, and for all the theophanies recorded in Scripture; namely that the divine Logos, who afterwards assumed actual humanity, having been the great medium of God's communications with mankind in all prior ages, manifested himself to mankind in those periods in the human form, as a kind of anticipatory display of himself in that state of humiliation in which he would ultimately appear, and that accordingly throughout the Old Testament it is HE who speaks of himself in a human manner.

We are not prepared with any new theory of the subject. Our object has chiefly been to show cause, why the philosophical inquirer should not rely, with absolute certainty, on any of his various grounds of objection to the anthropopathia of the Bible. With the same view we would propose for his consideration one point only, namely, the indispensable utility of the biblical representations of Deity to men of even the most capacious mind, and the most profound attainments. We lay it down then as an incontestable principle, that it is the great design of the scriptures, the legitimate result of all truly philosophical views, and the true end of all scientific researches, to increase man's practical reverence for his Maker. Now if it can be shown that the consequence of abandoning that class of conceptions of the Deity, to which our remarks are directed, is attended with a decided and very extensive diminution of that reverence; then we require no further proof that the philosophy which scouts such conceptions, or regards them with a suspicious eye, has overshot its mark, and has fallen into an error alike degrading to its pretensions, and destructive of its proper office. It will also follow that in the very moment when philosophy plumes itself upon the supposed superiority of its conceptions over those of the Bible, it most effectually

d Dugald Stewart, Outlines of Moral Philosophy, p. 227, Edinburgh, 1829.

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