ART. V. Interpretations, affecting the credibility of the Scriptures. It is by no means astonishing, that many parts of the sacred writings, in the English version, have lost much of their original vigor and beauty. Were we sure that all the manuscripts had been well preserved, or faithfully copied, and that they were correct before us, still it is impossible by any artificial translation to express the peculiar power and import of every passage. We say artificial; for we believe all our translations are so. Too much dependence has been placed upon mere philological rules and the mechanical definitions of Lexicons. Prof. Norton of Cambridge, an eminent Greek critic, we understand is engaged in making a translation of the New Testament, in which the spirit, rather than the letter of the word, is to be primarily consulted. The public, we think, may derive essential advantage from the fruits of his labors. But when we consider for how many centuries the sacred writings remained in manuscript, passing through the hands of perhaps corrupt and designing men, the wonder is, that there are not more and grosser errors in the received text than do exist. It is cause of gratitude to heaven, that the Scriptures have been so well preserved. But necessity compels us to take things as we find them. The truth is, the Scriptures, as they are presented to us in the current English dress, have lost much of their ancient intelligibility and power, and in some respects, are hard to be understood.' We are obliged, therefore, to resort to interpretations. We speak not now of those passages which are involved in the most obscurity, and which none can pretend to understand with any great claims to positive accuracy. We speak, rather, of passages more explicit; but which are still so expressed as to leave some room to conjecture and speculation. On such passages we must exert our reason-carnal and dangerous as some are pleased to consider it; we must compare them with other scriptures, and avail ourselves of such other auxiliary helps as are accessible to us. The conclusions to which we may thus arrive, we call interpretations. We use this word as a convenient one, not caring to vouch for its full propriety. It is not to be denied, that the Scriptures have been so interpreted as to weaken their claims to the confidence and respect of mankind. They have, indeed, been made to teach doctrines which are expressly censured on the very face of the sacred text. For instance: No maxim is more prominent in the New Testament-one the spirit of which is diffused throughout the whole record -than that Christianity was given to save, not to destroy men's lives. Its author reproved every attempt at violence and bloodshed on the part of his followers. He would have his religion propagated, not by the sword, but by the simple and yet mighty power of truth over the minds of an intelligent world. And yet Urban and the Council of Clermont could very readily so interpret certain passages in the two Testaments, as not only to authorize, but expressly to require a crusade to Palestine, to murder the Saracens and rescue the Holy Land and its sacred relics from longer profanation. This is but a single, though a tremendous and bloody, case in point. All history, and even our own observation, will show how Christianity has been perverted, abused and injured by the conjectures, speculations and interpretations in which its ignorant and misguided friends have indulged. The manner in which many parts of Scripture are explained at the present day, has given an immense advantage to scoffers and unbelievers. The fact is not to be concealed or disguised, that the greatest objections ever conceived and urged against Christianity as a system, have been predicated on the irrational and contradictory dogmas of the Church. These have been taken for granted to be, what their friends have imperiously claimed for them, the genuine doctrines of the gospel. Being so taken, the objections of infidels, we must say, have been weighty; and they have produced an extensive distrust of the truth of the sacred writings. Volney has said, that, at the time of Christ's advent, the expectation amongst the better informed Jews was, that the Messiah, when he came, would effect a salvation for all the world. Jesus, on the contrary, taught a partial salvation-so it is now contended. He came preaching eternal damnation for a majority of mankind. The inference of that sceptic was a natural one, viz.-that Christ was not the true Messiah whom the prophets of Judea had foretold. His mission, it is added, was at war with the promise of his coming, and at variance with his professed philanthropy and universal benevolence. Now Volney took the current dogmas of the Church, and the popular interpretations of the New Testament, as the sound doctrines, as the true interpretation. Hence he found a serious objection to the divinity of Christ and to the truth of his system. But it was not our design to indict a labored article on the general subject of objections to the Christian faith. Our object more particularly, in this place, is to say, that the most of those objections must be deemed valid as long as what is now commonly called orthodoxy, is taken as a correct summary of the Christian system. If ever the main objections of unbelievers are silenced, we are persuaded that the work must be done by Universalists, or by others assuming the grounds of Universalist interpretations. No system is so friendly to the authority of divine revelation as theirs. After all the abuse that has been heaped upon them, as errorists, heretics and semi-infidels, the credit of so interpreting the sacred writings as to preserve their harmony and consistency, must belong to the Universalists. If their interpretations are rejected, it will be impossible to commend the Scriptures to the favor of candid and inquiring minds. The more learned and sagacious opponents of this faith, are not ignorant of the fact, as we shall soon show. If the popular notion of a day of judgment' be correct, that is, if the opinion is actually sustained by the passages which are always appealed |