Note 8 — DIVERSITY OF OPINION VERY NATURAL.

"No such a thing," says Archbishop Whately, "is to be found in our Scriptures as a catechism, or regular elementary introduction to the Christian religion; nor do they furnish us with anything of the nature of a systematic creed, set of articles, confession of faith, or by whatever other name one may designate a regular, complete compendium of Christian doctrines; nor, again, do they supply us with a liturgy for ordinary public worship, or with forms for administering the sacraments, or for conferring holy orders; nor do they even give any precise directions as to these and other ecclesiastical matters—anything that at all corresponds to a rubric, or set of canons." Why these omissions? A great defect in our Scriptures, say some; but, in my opinion, it amounts to a self-evident confirmation, that the writers of the New Testament were under the special dictation of the Divine Spirit, as to what they should, and what they should not record. If they were carrying out a fraudulent design, conceived by their predecessors, who wrote the Old Testament, they would, from their educational training and desire to act in character with their confederates, have imitated their example, and been very specific and minute in all their ecclesiastic arrangements. They would have inserted the law of dictation and prescription, which was so absolute under the Jewish theocracy, in the Christian code, and thus have rendered division of opinion and freedom of action impossible. The question then turns upon us: Why did they not do what it was very natural they should do, and what the necessity of the case would seem to require to be done, according to the judgment of every intelligent and reflective mind, who looked at it through the medium of the existing ecclesiastical regulations of the age and country? Their not doing what was thus natural they should do, and what the necessity of the case, according to human judgment, required them to do, is of itself a proof that they were not left to the guidance of their own understanding, but were held in subjection, according to their own confession, by the controlling power and wisdom of the Holy Ghost, under whose inspiration all Scripture is given. "The Jewish ritual, designed for one nation and country, and intended to be of temporary duration, was fixed and accurately prescribed. The same Divine wisdom, from which both dispensations proceeded, having designed Christianity for all nations and ages, left Christians at large in respect of those points in which variation might be desirable. But I think no human wisdom would have foreseen and provided for this. That a number of Jews, accustomed from their infancy to so strict a ritual, should, in introducing Christianity as the second part of the same dispensation, have abstained not only from accurately prescribing for the use of all Christian churches for ever the mode of Divine worship, but even from recording what was actually in use under their own directions, does seem to me utterly incredible, unless we suppose them to have been restrained from doing this by a special admonition of the Divine Spirit."—Whately.

At any rate, whether these omissions are to be attributed to the controlling power of the Holy Ghost, or the extraordinary policy of the writers of the New Testament, we arrive at the same conclusion, that, while we are required to believe, and to contend earnestly for the essential facts and doctrines of the Christian faith, which are set out with great precision and explicitness, a freedom of action is allowed on what may be deemed the subordinate and non-essential parts of the same faith. Hence we may differ on some things, without any valid impeachment of our Christian wisdom and integrity, unless we allow our difference of opinion to produce alienation of brotherly affection. When it does this, we make a sacrifice of our honour, and give a sanction to the accusation of the common adversary, that our hostile divisions are a proof that our religion does not come from a wise and benevolent Being—that it is of the earth, earthy.