8th. Now, then, the clearest notion which can be given of rationalism would, I think, be this: that it is the abuse of the understanding in subjects where the divine and the human, so to speak, are intermingled. Of human things the understanding can judge, of divine things it cannot;--and thus, where the two are mixed together, its inability to judge of the one part makes it derange the proportions of both, and the judgment of the whole is vitiated. For example, the understanding examines a miraculous history; it judges truly of what I may call the human part of the case; that is to say, of the rarity of miracles,--of the fallibility of human testimony,--of the proneness of most minds to exaggeration,--and of the critical arguments affecting the genuineness or the date of the narrative itself. But it forgets the divine part, namely, the power and providence of God, that He is really ever present amongst us, and that the spiritual world, which exists invisibly all around us, may conceivably, and by no means impossibly, exist, at some times and to some persons, even visibly. These considerations, which the understanding is ignorant of, would often modify our judgment as to the human parts of the case. Things not impossible in themselves are believed upon sufficient testimony; and with all the carelessness and exaggeration of historians, the mass of history is notwithstanding generally credible. Again, with regard to the history of the Old Testament, our judgment of the human part in it requires to be constantly modified by our consciousness of the divine part, or otherwise it cannot fail to be rationalistic; that is, it will be the judgment of the understanding only, unchecked by the reason. Gesenius' Commentary on Isaiah is rationalistic, for it regards Isaiah merely as a Jewish writer, zealously attached to the religion of his country, and lamenting the decay of his nation, and anxiously looking for its future restoration. No doubt Isaiah was all this, and therefore Gesenius' Commentary is critically and historically very valuable; the human part of Isaiah is nowhere better illustrated; but the divine part of the prophecy of Isaiah is no less real, and the consciousness of its existence should actually qualify our feelings and language even with reference to the human part.