fact and doctrine,--so few as certainly not to pay for the expenses of the critical distillation.* ____ * It may be as well to remark, that we have frequently observed a disposition to represent the very general abandonment of the theory of 'verbal inspiration' as a concession to Rationalism; as if it necessarily followed from admitting that inspiration is not verbal, that therefore an indeterminate portion of the substance or doctrine is purely human. It is plain, however, that this is no necessary consequence: an advocate of plenary inspiration may contend, that, though he does not believe that the very words of Scripture were dictated, yet that the thoughts were either so suggested, (if the matter was such as could be known only by revelation,) or so controlled, (if the matter were such as was previously known,) that (excluding errors introduced into the text since) the Scriptures as first composed were--what no book of man ever was, or can be, even in the plainest narrative of the simplest events--a perfectly accurate expression of truth. We enter not here, however, into the question whether such a view of inspiration is better or worse than another. We are simply anxious to correct a fallacy which has, judging from what we have recently read, operated rather extensively. Inspiration may be verbal, or the contrary; but, whether one or the other, he who takes the affirmative or negative of that question may still consistently contend that it may still be plenary. The question of the inspiration of the whole or the inspiration of a part, is widely different from that as to the suggestion of the words or the suggestion of the thoughts. But these questions we leave to professed theologians. We merely enter our protest against a prevailing fallacy. ____