Note 32 — PRELIMINARY REMARKS

Quite ineffectual, at the very close of this unhappy composition, as a set off to the compacted and often repeated asseverations of his earlier pages, is the amiable author's plaintive plea for "even the perverted use of the Bible;" adding,—"And meanwhile, how utterly impossible it would be in the manhood of the world to imagine any other instructor of mankind!" (p. 47.) It is one of the favourite devices of these seven writers, side by side with their most objectionable statements, to insert isolated passages of admitted truth,—and occasionally even of considerable beauty: which however are utterly meaningless and out of place where they stand; and (like the sentence above written,) powerless to undo the circumstantial wickedness of what went before. I repeat, that the words above-written are meaningless where they stand: for if Dr. Temple really means that it is "utterly impossible in the manhood of the world to imagine any other instructor of mankind" than the Bible,—what becomes of his Essay?