In what do those relations consist? By what results does this continuous action manifest itself, of God upon man; this incessant dialogue between God and man? By laws, precepts, and commands, religious and moral--God proposes these to man; he enjoins nothing more; he speaks to him of nothing else; demands nothing from him but obedience to his Law. God does not teach, he commands; God does not discuss, he warns. And the organs of God's speech, the men whom he takes for his interpreters and his prophets, Moses, Samuel, Isaiah, do neither less nor more. Although superior to most of their contemporaries by reason of possessing certain attainments, they are no professors of human sciences: just as they speak the language of the common people whom they address, just so do they share most of their ignorance and errors respecting the objects and facts of the finite world, in the midst of which they are living. {108} When they are made the medium for the religious and moral precepts and warnings of God, it is then that they are no longer mere men of their time; it is then, only then, that the light of divine inspiration descends upon them, and that they diffuse it to all around them. I do not wish to limit myself to a general summary only of what I regard as the essential character of the Holy Scriptures,--the simultaneous presence of the divine element and of the human element; the one in all its sublimity, the other in all its imperfection; God revealing to man in a certain place his religious law and his moral law, but without conveying elsewhere the divine light; God taking man as he finds him, in the points of time and of space in which he is placed, with all his barbarism and imperfections. I proceed, therefore, to consider some of the particular examples presented by the Scriptures, which make this great truth so evident as to be incontestable. {109} I open the book of Genesis and read:-- "And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and clave the wood for the burnt-offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him. Then on the third day Abraham lift up his eyes, and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt-offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son: and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife: and they went both of them together.