stereotyped the better; secondly, that if such book, like the book of Nature, or, as we deem, the book of Revelation, really contains truth, its study, so far from being incompatible with the spirit of free inquiry, will invite and repay continual efforts more completely to understand it.  Though the great and fundamental truths contained in either volume will be obvious in proportion to their importance and necessity, there is no limit to be placed on the degree of accuracy with which the truths they severally contain may be deciphered, stated, adjusted—­or even on the period in which fragments of new truth shall cease to be elicited.  It is true indeed that theology cannot be said to admit of unlimited progress, in the same sense as chemistry—­which may, for aught we know, treble or quadruple its present accumulations, vast as they are, both in bulk and importance.  But, even in theology as deduced from the Scripture, minute fragments of new truth, or more exact adjustments of old truth, may be perpetually expected.  Lastly, we shall reply, that the objection to a revelation’s being consigned to a ‘book’ is singularly inapposite, considering that by the constitution of the world and of human nature, man, without books,—­without the power of recording, transmitting, and perpetuating thought, of rendering it permanent and diffusive, ever is, ever has been, and ever must be little better than a savage; and therefore, if there was to be a revelation at all, it might fairly be expected that it would be communicated in this form; thus affording us one more analogy, in addition to the many which Butler has stated, and which may in time be multiplied without end, between ’Revealed Religion and the Constitution and Course of Nature.’

And this leads us to notice a saying of that comprehensive genius, which we do not recollect having seen quoted in connexion with recent controversies, but which is well worthy of being borne in mind, as teaching us to beware of hastily assuming that objections to Revelation, whether suggested by the progress of science, or from the supposed incongruity of its own contents, are unanswerable.  We are not, he says, rashly to suppose that we have arrived at the true meaning of the whole of that book.  ’It is not at all incredible that a book which has been so long in the possession of mankind, should contain many truths as yet undiscerned.  For all the same phenomena and the same faculties of investigation, from which such great discoveries in natural knowledge have been made in the present and last age, were equally in the possession of mankind several thousand year’s before.’  These words are worthy of Butler:  and as many illustrations of their truth have been supplied since his day, so many others may fairly be anticipated in the course of time.  Several distinct species of argument for the truth of Christianity from the very structure and contents of the books containing it have been invented—­of which Paley’s ‘Horae Paulinae’ is a memorable