Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/241

Rh any passage of Holy Scripture is not to be considered as something insulated: resulting, as it does, from our general frame of mind, our habits of thought and feeling, and the character of our religious belief. Our insight into Scripture, as it is an instrument in forming our minds, so is it in part the result of the mind formed within us: our character of mind is a condition of understanding Word: according to what we ourselves are become, does that Word appear to us: it is given to us according as we have: our present is in proportion to our past, profit. No misunderstanding then of any portion of Holy Scripture; (I speak—not, of course, of words or expressions, but—of the general tenor of passages of Scripture;) no shallowness of conception; no false spiritualism, or sluggish resting in the letter of any place, can stand singly; for, whatever be the defect which dims our sight in the one place, it will obscure our understanding of other passages also. This, as before said, we readily admit in gross and palpable cases; we know, indeed, from authority, of the veil on the hearts of the Jews, and of the god of this world, who blindeth the understandings of the unbelieving: we readily admit that one who has, practically, vague notions of justification by faith will understand but little of St. Paul; but we fail often to apply the test to our own case, and thoroughly to examine what is wanting to our own mental character, and how that deficiency prevents our more fully understanding Word. What our dull eyes see in large and flagrant instances, exists, we may be sure, where they are too heavy to penetrate; so that no one wrong habit of mind, or faulty principle can exist, in however slight a degree, without affecting our views of Scripture truth.

It may be useful, however, to see the effect of our modern principles, and our practical depreciation of Baptism in other passages of Holy Scripture. When people then, again, read (Col. ii. 11.) of our "being circumcised with the circumcision which is made without hands,—buried with in Baptism, raised together with Him through faith of the operation of, who hath raised Him from the dead," they probably think of the circumcision of the heart which we ought to have, of the