THE LATE SECESSION. 173 chair, erects himself into a scholar with- out literature, and a theologian without theology. On the strength of a few texts ill understood, and worse applied, he undertakes to give his young neigh- bours new views of the Bible, and with- out eyes himself, sets up for a guide of the blind. These young persons in reading the Scriptures seem to be setting out on a voyage of discovery of something new, rather than on a course of observation on what their precursors have done for them. They search, not with devout enquiry, but fearless curiosity ; they look out for passages written in a different connection, and applied to different pur- poses, and then try to prove that they produce not consecutive reasoning, that they do not establish the generally re_ ceived doctrines. How should they ? They were never intended to produce the one, or to establish the other. They bring together propositions which have no relation, and which require different 3
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=