A book which exercises this great influence over our fellow-men ought to be approached with reverence. It is for the same reason that we approach with faith and expectation the writings of Shakespeare and Milton. We read them expecting to find in them great truths, and this expectation enables us to find them. “Seek and ye shall find” is the law. How often we should have been disappointed and dissatisfied with such books, and have thrown them aside impatiently, had we not remembered the great universal testimony to their surpassing excellence! This Christian prepossession is, however, only a general confidence that there is something exceedingly good in the New Testament; that it is a book containing in some way a divine revelation, in some way or other inspired, in some way likely to be a great help and comfort to our spiritual nature, and the best guide we can have for this life and towards the next. It is an expectation of all this, an expectation based on the testimony of mankind. So far it is a reasonable expectation. So far it is right and just to entertain it. It is the natural inheritance to which we were born, by being born Christians. To throw it away, or to try to throw it away, would be as though one should try to throw away the habits of civilization which he inherits by being born in a civilized community, and try to go back and start as a savage. It is neither more futile nor more foolish in the one case than in the other. But, though this Christian prepossession is a perfectly legitimate one with which to begin, it is not a legitimate one in which to remain. It is our business, by the free action of our intellect, to change this general and vague expectation into a distinct opinion of one kind or another. Protestantism allows us to take our faith in the Bible from the Church, but not to take from the Church our opinions about the Bible. Faith may, and ought to be, received, but opinions are to be formed. An opinion or belief received from another man is his opinion, and not ours.