THE JOURNAL OF SACRED LITERATURE AND BIBLICAL RECORD. EDITED BY THE REV. HENRY BURGESS, LL.D., PH.D., MEMBER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE. VOL. II. LONDON: ALEXANDER HEYLIN, PATERNOSTER ROW. EDINBURGH: W. OLIPHANT AND SON. DUBLIN: S. B. OLDHAM. 1856. THE JOURNAL OF SACRED LITERATURE AND BIBLICAL RECORD. No. III.-OCTOBER, 1855. THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE: IN WHAT SPIRIT SHOULD IT BE PURSUED? PERHAPS, in the present day and in our own country, there is no question more important than the one we have given above, in relation both to individual advancement in religious truth, and to the interests of the church at large. In the course of Divine Providence the Bible occupies a place in Christendom which it never before held, given to it by the invention of printing and the development of Protestantism. In the earliest periods of the Christian church, the Holy Scriptures had more or less of a fragmentary character, and could not be appealed to as they now are, as an organic whole; and even after the canon was authoritatively settled, and the Bible took substantially the form which it has now, the scarcity of complete copies, and the want of literary culture, placed it in a different relation to the bulk of Christian people from that which it now holds. The influence of these remarkable changes is felt most by Protestants, but they are by no means solely affected by them. The old churches of the Christian world—the Romish, the Greek, and the more primitive Oriental-all participate, in some degree, in the effects of a free circulation of the documentary records of the faith. These are phenomena which demand the attention of thoughtful minds, anxious that the Word of God may have free course and be glorified; for, as no advantage has ever been given to mankind without some measure of mis-direction or abuse VOL. II.-NO, III. B I57696 |