The method of hypothetical interpretation is, if possible, more absurd in theology than in natural science. Every mind not infatuated by intellectual vanity, must admit, that it is only some few necessary points of knowledge, relating to the constitution and movements of the infinite and spiritual world, that can be made the matter of revelation to mankind; and these must be offered in detached portions, apart from their symmetry. Meanwhile the vast interior, the immeasurable whole, is not merely concealed, but is in itself strictly incomprehensible by human faculties. Metaphysical projections of the moral system, how neat soever, and entire, and plausible they may seem, can have no place in what deserves to be called a rational theology. We not only do not know, but we could not learn, the very things which the framer of a "scientific divinity" professes to spread forth in all their due proportions on his chart of the upper world. The mode in which the necessarily incomplete revelation of that upper world is conveyed in the Scriptures, is in harmony with that in which the phenomena of nature offer themselves to our notice. The sum or amount of divine knowledge really intended to be conveyed to us, has been broken up and scattered over a various surface: it has been half-hidden, and half-displayed; it has been couched beneath hasty and incidental allusions; it has been doled out in morsels and in atoms. There are no logical synopses in the Bible; there are no scientific presentations of the body of divinity; no comprehensive digests; for such would have been not only unsuited to popular taste and comprehension, but actually impracticable; since they must have contained that which neither the mind of man can receive, nor his language embody. Better far might a seraph attempt to convey the largeness of his celestial ideas to a child, than God impart a systematic revelation to man. On the contrary, it is almost as if the vessel of divine philosophy had been wrecked and broken in a distant storm; and as if the fragments only had come drifting upon our world, which, like an islet in the ocean of eternity, has drawn to itself what might be floating near its shores. The abrupt and illogical style of oriental composition, and in some instances, the characteristic simplicity of untutored minds, are to be regarded as the appropriate means chosen for imparting to mankind such loose particles of religious truth as it was necessary for them to receive. This inartificial vehicle was, of all others, the one best adapted to the conveyance of a revelation, necessarily imperfect and partial.