words, not merely strange to the ear, but formed without attention to the rules and in contradiction to analogy, as [Greek text] for [Greek text][Footnote 129]--we may again, without any departure from logical rules, by judicious or subtle distinctions, escape from the difficulties which the passages suggest, and have a perfect right to do so. But after having made allowances for the irregularities susceptible of explanation in the language of the New Testament, there still remain some which are real faults. The same word cannot be written by the same hand, at an interval of but three pages, both masculine and feminine, as the word [Greek text], _rainbow_, in the _Apocalypse_. [Footnote 130] When the substantive is feminine, the adjective cannot be masculine, as [Greek text]. [Footnote 131] [Footnote 127: 1 Peter i. 11.] [Footnote 128: Matthew xvii. 20; Luke i. 37.] [Footnote 129: 1 Corinthians ii 1.] [Footnote 130: Compare iv. 3, and x. 1.] [Footnote 131: Apocalypse xiv. 19.] {304} When the substantive is in the accusative, the adjective cannot be in the nominative. In such an employment of words we are able to trace in the sacred writings the hand of man, marks of human imperfection and error; and we must not forget that these faults become more numerous and grosser the greater the antiquity of the MS. in which we find them, and the purer the Jewish origin of the writer. Thus the Greek of the Apocalypse is singularly incorrect, at the same time that the imaginative turn of the expression is remarkably Hebraic. [Footnote 132] In the text, styled the received text, and which was fixed in the 16th century, many of these faults have disappeared, because it has borrowed from MSS. of then recent date. But now that biblical philosophy has mounted higher, we can discern how the copyists, one after the other, actuated by pious scruples, or thinking only to correct some error of their predecessors, have little by little effaced what appeared to them too great a departure from rules to have been written by an evangelist or an apostle. At the present day, these admitted irregularities are an element indispensible to every serious discussion respecting the nature and extent of the divine inspiration to be met with in the sacred volume. [Footnote 132: Apocalypse i. 16; iii. 12; iv. 7; ix. 13 & 14; xiv. 12; xvi. 13; xx. 2, &c.] THE END. Bradpury And Evans, Printers, Whitefriars. {305} Albemarle Street, _July_, 1864 Mr. Murray's List Of New Works. The Quarterly Review, No. CCXXXI. 8vo. 6s. Contents: I. Words And Places. II. Ludwig Uhland. III. Free Thinking; Its History And Tendencies, IV. The Circassian Exodus. V. Lacordaire. VI. Christian Art. VII. Public Schools. VIII. Travelling In England. IX. The House Op Commons.