While the good man
should find in it meat divine for every earthly need, the sneerer should
proclaim it the very easiest manual for his jests and lewd profanities.
The unlettered should not lack humble, nay vulgar, images and words, to
keep himself in countenance: neither should the learned look in vain for
reasonings; the poet for sublimities; the curious mind for mystery; nor
the sorrowing heart for prayer. I do discern, in that great book, a
wondrous adaptability to minds of every calibre: and it is just what
might antecedently have been expected of a volume writ by many men at
many different eras, yet all superintended by one master mind; of a
volume meant for every age, and nation, and country, and tongue, and
people; of a volume which, as a two-edged sword, wounds the good man's
heart with deep conviction, and cuts down "the hoary head of him who
goeth on still in his wickedness."
On the whole, respecting faults, or incongruities, or objectionable
parts in Scripture, however to have been expected, we must recollect
that the more they are viewed, the more the blemishes fade, and are
altered into beauties.
A little child had picked up an old stone, defaced with time-stains: the
child said the stone was dirty, covered with blotches and all colours:
but his father brings a microscope, and shows to his astonished glance
that what the child thought dirt, is a forest of beautiful lichens,
fruited mosses, and strange lilliputian plants with shapely animalcules
hiding in the leaves, and rejoicing in their tiny shadow.
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