THE present number closes the first volume of THE RADICAL. A new year will commence with the issue for September. The number of pages will then be increased to sixty-four, and the Subscription price advanced to Three Dollars a year. This increase of pages, and consequent advance in price, is deemed important as affording the opportunity for the publication to render more efficient service.

The Year just closed has, all things considered, been a prosperous one. THE RADICAL has done a good work, and found many warm friends. Encouragements have been received from all sections of the Country: from men and women who send words of faith from all the Northern and Western States, and from many Southern States. Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Maryland and Virginia, furnish their quota of independent persons, who accept both religious and political Radicalism as the only power which, in this formative period of our history, can mature the conditions of an enduring and prosperous peace.

This is the burden of the demand the People are making: Re-organize the political machinery of the Republic with a view to future security. Accept the principles of a free nationality by pledging the national honor for the protection of every citizen. Let no theory of the "rights of States stand between the Nation and its defence of the Rights of Man. Arm all the people for their own protection, without discrimination against Race or Sex, with the only legitimate weapon of a free State - the BALLOT!

This is a part of the work which now lies at the door of the Republic waiting to be done. Until it is done the Republic is such only in name. Its accomplishment is but the natural, inevitable sweep of the Revolution inaugurated, not against Great Britain alone, but against the whole despotic world abroad, and at home-by our fathers.

But there is another work for the people as individuals; a work which no society or form of government can take much of any part in, nor in most cases, even reach at all:- The achievement of a personal independence and freedom. (The political power can only guarantee to each the opportunity.) There -is the domain of Religion, where each person finds the authority for his daily life in God's revelation made direct to his own Soul, through the medium of his own educated Mind and Heart.-Is not this loyalty of the Human Soul to its highest Convictions a loyalty to God? And is it not for man his Religion?

THE RADICAL is devoted to Religion. That is the sphere in which it will work. It will seek to secure for the Religious spirit a right to preside everywhere. If it deals with the political questions, it will be to the end that Religion may be carried into politics. In other words, that every person may see whether or not the civil organization, for which he is to the extent of his influence responsible, represents his own real convictions of Justice and Love between himself and his neighbor. THE RADICAL will treat Social questions in the same way, and for the same purpose. Religion is first a private affair; a personal acquisition. It becomes public through its manifestations. To note the manifestations is one way in which to test its presence. But to fortify individuals in their own true sphere of life, by the discussion of principles and the presentation of ideas, is the work we are ambitious THE RADICAL should perform. "I will do of mine own accord," said the wise Greek, "what the righteous law would compel me to do." As the people advance to this position the Political State must disappear.

THE RADICAL has not so much faith in Institutions as in Ideas and Men.

Thanking our friends for their charity of criticism, and generous support, we begin the new year with confidence.

THE RADICAL will hereafter be published for the undersigned, by ADAMS & Co., to whose Prospectus on the 4th page of the cover, the reader is referred. S. H. MORSE.

THE RADICAL.

AUGUST, 1866.

THE RADICAL'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE BIBLE.

BY O. B. FROTHINGHAM.

HEN we were at the Divinity School in Cambridge, twenty years ago, it was an accepted principle that the " Bible was to be read like any other book." The professor had the phrase continually on his lips, and we listened to it with entire acquiescence. Why not? The books of the Bible were written in dead languages, but so were the Dialogues of Plato, the dramas of Sophocles, the cantos of the Iliad. Words were words, and we had plentiful assistance by means of grammars and dictionaries, in finding out what the words meant. Words conveyed ideas; but the ideas were as plainly conveyed by these words as by other words which we were in the habit of reading. The principle was so simple as to be self-evident; but it involved a position that was fundamentally opposed to the faith of Christendom.

For, in professing to read the Bible as we would read any other book, we actually, though perhaps unconsciously, classed it among other books; we placed it in the Catalogue of Literature; we ranked it among the productions of the human mind; we admitted the mind's capacity to understand it by natural effort; and in admitting that, we admitted the mind's competency to judge it by its own rational standard; we assumed that the requirements for a first interpretation of it were the requirements ordinarily demanded for the study of any author, namely, an acquaintance with the language in which the books were written, familiarity with the order of thoughts dealt with, and candor enough to recognize all the thoughts we found, exactly as we found them. The Bible claimed of its student " mind," unless an acquaintance with its literary peculiarities might be no peculiar state of taken to signify such a state of mind.

The professor saw all this and had the courage to be faithful to his principle. He dealt fairly with his text. If the language contained an "orthodox" sense he said so: if it contained a "heterodox" sense he said so if the two senses were inconsistent with each other, he tried, perhaps a little harder than he would if a passage in Plato had been under discussion, to reconcile them; - but if he could not honestly reconcile them, he said so, and let them stand as they were, unreconciled. Discrepancies in the history he regretfully allowed, and would make no unrighteous attempt to force repellant statements of fact into harmony. Weaknesses in argument, impertinencies in illustration, non lequiturs in deduction, slips in allusion, blunders in application and quotation, mis-fits of parallelism, infelicities of rhetoric, inconsistencies of opinion, he discerned, noted and felt no call to apologize for or annul. If Matthew taught that Jesus was the "Son of Man," and John that the Christ was the "Eternal Word," his duty was to make the fact known; not to cover it up, or explain it away. To assume an immunity from error was to assume that the Bible was different from other books, and of course was not to be read like other books. To assume historical, doctrinal, ethical, or any other kind of consistency in advance of criticism, was to disarm criticism and take the books out of the department of Literature. To assume that there was a sense which dictionary and grammar did not disclose, and which trained intelligence could not extract, was to discredit grammar and dictionary, and warn intelligence off the field.

The rule often grated harshly against pre-existing reverences, as well as against preconceived ideas. That however could not be helped, a self-evident principle could not swerve from its line. There were passages that came into somewhat rude collision with the discoveries of modern science, but no rational power existing to prevent it, the collision must, however damaging, take place. Had the earliest documents of the Old Testament come to us bearing the name of Aratus or Hesiod, there would have been no reluctance to declare that their descriptions of the physical universe were childish in the eyes of actual knowledge. Why be deterred from saying so, by the mere fact that the books bear the name of Moses? Does the circumstance of authorship alter the meaning of the text? Or does it discharge from the duty of reading the text? Do the "six days " become six epochs, or eons, simply because the phrase is found in "Genesis" instead of in the "Works and Days"? Does the steel firmament with its windows for light, its openings for rain, and its solid frame work dividing the upper from the lower waters, become a mere figure of speech in the document "Ehohim," when it would be a literal state

ment of belief in the "Theogony"? Why should a Hebrew cosmo、 gony be turned into poetry, and a Greek cosmogony into ridicule, when the latter is no more wild than the former? The sacred books of the East abound in records of miracle, and as we read them, we smile at the fantastical stories as indicating an untrained intelligence and an unbridled fancy: why not smile at similar records in Exodus or Chronicles? Is Hebrew ignorance of natural laws, more respectable than Boodhist? Or do Hebrew accounts of a Miracle-governed world, imply a Deity who transcends Law: while other similar accounts imply no more than a populace that never suspected Law?

The Cambridge Professor did not think so. He called about him his learned helps, and what they revealed to him he frankly disclosed.

The accounts of the creation were ancient, and no sensibilities were much hurt by their free handling. The Old Testament might be read "like any other book" and welcome. A slight twitching of the nerves was manifest when the New Testament was taken up the same way. Did the apostles believe in the speedy end of the world? Did Jesus think that the Last Judgment, which was preliminary to the Millennial Rest, would take place during the life-time of men with whom he was then conversing? If Hermas or Clement, or the author of the "Gospel of Nicodemus" had told us so, we might have questioned the truth of their statement, but we should have admitted its import, saying, "The language means this and cannot mean anything else." Why not admit as much when the reporter is Matthew, or Luke, or Peter, or Paul, and the writings containing the statements are called the Gospels? What charm is there in the New Testament Greek to transform the sense it conveys, or to paralyze the mind that would fix a natural sense upon it?

But a permission to read the Bible "like any other book" with a view to finding exactly what it contains, is a permission to judge like any other book, and say whether what it contains is correct in fact, just in sentiment, right in principle. A foregone conclusion.in regard to its wisdom is fatal to a fair construction of its text: and a fair construction of its text compels a verdict on its wisdom. If the Bible be the product of the human mind, the human mind must pronounce on its contents, as well as declare them. They who the Bible is not say to be read like other books, deny that it contains unworthy representations of deity, and work a powerful exegesis to expel all such unworthy representations from the text. They who say the Bible is to be read like other books, find such unworthy representations there, and charge the text with them. Dr. Cheever, an abolitionist, assum