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NEW WINE

IN

OLD BOTTLES.

BY THE

REV. J. B. HEARD, A. M.,

Minister of Percy Chapel, Fitzroy-square.


"No man having drunk old wine straightway desireth new, for he saith,
The old is better."-ST. LUKE, v. 39.

LONDON:

HATCHARD AND CO., 187,

PICCADILLY.

DUBLIN: HODGES SMITH, AND CO.

1862.

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ADVERTISEMENT.

If it were only as a reply to the "Essays and Reviews," this little volume would neither ask nor obtain indulgence. Since it was projected and first published in the columns of a London newspaper now extinct, the "Aids to Faith," edited by the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, and a volume of Replies, with a preface by the Bishop of Oxford, have appeared, and quite satisfied the demand for replies to the "Essays and Reviews."

But the question of Inspiration, which lies at the root of all the attacks of German Rationalism, led me to consider the way in which the Church of the first four centuries waged a similar controversy about the person of our Lord, both God and Man. I do not know of anything in English theology beyond a passing comparison between the nature of Scripture, human and Divine, and that of our Blessed Lord. I am told that a writer in the "Studien

und Kritiken" has already traced out this analogy, and I should have been surprised if some German divine had not already anticipated me in drawing this parallel. In such researches we are to the Germans what the Greeks were to the Egyptians-always children. But I am not therefore deterred from tracing out this analogy, which is new to myself, and which is probably new to the majority of my readers. All I have attempted to do is to set forth some of the principal stages of the one controversy, and to point out the similar stages through which the other will probably run. If these thoughts on Inspiration should set some younger student, with more learning and more leisure than I can command, on the right track for laying down a sound theory of Inspiration, I shall rejoice at the impulse given to one who will succeed, as I believe, by taking that analogy as the basis of his enquiries. All I have done is to set up a fingerpost to mark the direction in which he should travel. Such a theory, elaborately wrought out, would meet all the demands both of reason and faith in the study of the Scriptures, and go far to reconcile the Humanitarian and the orthodox schools, now so painfully divided on this question.

May we all see in the Word of God that which the beloved disciple saw in God the Word, the Divine coming out of the human and the human from the Divine, as the lion is seen coming out of the lamb, and the lamb out of the lion, in the vision in the Apocalypse!

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