Bible, Correct Interpretation of the

The progressive elucidation of the Scriptures, whether by the expository labors of critics, the researches of travelers, or the fulfillments of prophecy, may be compared to the gradual rolling away of the morning mist from a splendid landscape. As the sun advances, the shades retire, and new and interesting features of the sconery are continually opening upon the delighted eye of the spectator; or it may be said to resemble the slow but momentous process of unfolding the ancient papyri, which the ravages of time and fire have spared among the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, Here, as every successive word and letter which can be redeemed from the crisp and crumpling texture of the blackened parchment is noted down with the most scrupulous care, as forming a part of the continuous record, and going to make out its entire sense; so the sense of the sacred volume is gradually elicited, item by item, and needs only to be collected and treasured up with equal solicitude, in order to constitute a possession of infinitely more value than the choicest literary relics of antiquity. Perhaps it may be safely affirmed that the materials are at this moment in existence for the satisfactory solution of nearly every doubtful passage of holy writ; but the great desideratum is to have them brought together—to collect them from their wide dispersion over a countless multitude of writings, in various languages, which the great majority of Christians can neither rocure nor understand.