'I have read the Bible over and over again, with the greatest care, with no intention either of criticizing it or apologizing for it, but with the single aim of learning to understand its character and meaning aright. The more I have advanced in this study, and have been able to live as it were in the Bible, the more clearly have I apprehended two contemporaneous facts, a divine fact and a human fact, which are at the same time entirely distinct and closely connected. In every part of the Bible I find God and man: God, a real and personal being, not affected by any external incident, and in whom there is no change, always the same and immoveable though the centre of universal movement, and Himself giving this unprecedented definition of Himself, "I am that I am;" and man, an incomplete, imperfect being, subject to change, full of flaws and contradictions, of lofty instincts and degrading tendencies, inquiring and yet ignorant, capable of good and evil, and able to attain perfection in spite of his imperfection. Throughout the whole Bible we see God and man, their union and their antagonism: God watching over man and guiding him; man sometimes accepting and sometimes rejecting the influence of God. If I might be allowed to use such an expression, I would say that the Divine person and the human person are brought face to face with each other; we see them acting on each other, and influencing events. We see the education of man after his creation, the education of a religious and moral being, neither more nor less. At the same time, whilst God elevates he does not transform mankind; he created man intelligent and free; he illuminates the laws of his spiritual and moral life with a Divine light; but he leaves him to struggle with great dangers and much peril, until he learns the right use of his intellect and will. And at every period, in all circumstances, even whilst he still continues to influence him, God takes man just as he finds him, with all his passions, vices, weakness, error, and ignorance, just what he has made himself, and is making himself every day, by the good or evil use of his intellect and his will. This, I say, is the Bible, and its history of the relations between God and man. {185}