are satisfied to know that the further the great volume of Nature is explored, the closer it is studied, the greater are the wonders which it will display. Why, then, do we doubt that the same holds good with the written word? Deep answers to deep, the deep of Nature to the deep of Revelation. The Same Who is the Author of Nature is the Author of Revelation; and we may therefore expect to find in one as in the other that “His thoughts are very deep,” “His ways past finding out;” that in one as in the other there is a similarity, a mighty variety yet an essential unity, a vast diversity yet a perfect harmony; that there are mysteries in both, through which, as through a glass darkly, shines the wisdom of the Creator. Commentators on Scripture, such as Scott and Henry, really fill pages and volumes with the most deplorable twaddle, and exhibit conclusively their utter incapacity for commentating on any single passage of Scripture. Not only are their comprehensions too dull to grasp the moral lessons in the least below the surface, but they entirely ignore the mystical signification of the events recorded in the Sacred Writings. To the Mediæval divines and those who followed their steps, every word of Scripture had its value; indeed, the very number, singular or plural, of a substantive was with them fraught with significance. Take one instance; Stella the Franciscan remarks, on St. John xiv. 23:—“‘Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love Me, he will keep My _word_ (τὸν λόγον μου τηρήσει): he that loveth Me not, keepeth not My _words_ (τοὺς λόγους μου οὐ τηρεῖ).’ Love of God makes one command out of many, for to him who loves, the many precepts are but as one. So here Christ says, ‘If any man love Me, he will keep My word;’ but of him who loves not, He says, ‘He keepeth not My words.’ Of him who loves, it is spoken in the singular; of him who loves not, in the plural. Eve said, ‘Of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die’ (Gen. iii. 3); whereas God forbade only the eating, not the touching. But a chilled heart made one command into two; whilst a heart full of love, like that of David, could sum up the six hundred and thirteen precepts of the old law into one, when he exclaimed, ‘Thy commandment is exceeding broad,’ and ‘Lord, what love have I unto Thy law, all the day long is my study in it.’” Compare with this suggestive passage the only remark made on the text in D’Oyly and Mant: “The manifestation I mean is, that of inward light and grace, which shall never depart from those who are careful to live as I have commanded them.” The observation of Stella is suggestive, that in D’Oyly and Mant is decidedly the reverse.