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 eatin: 
 
IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 OR, 
 
 A ftlanual 
 
 OF 
 
 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE, 
 
 FOR 
 
 SCRIPTURE READERS, CITY MISSIONARIES, SUNDAY 
 SCHOOL TEACHERS, &c. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Me 
 REV. JOHN CUMMING, D.D. 
 
 MINISTER OF THE SCOTTISH NATIONAL CHURCH, CROWN COURT, 
 LITTLE RUSSELL STREET, COVENT GARDEN, 
 
 “Thy word is Truth.”—Joun xvii. 17. 
 
 w—hyyre—_~—ns P*IVV-V 9 ayy erv 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 
 
Stereotyped by 
 8. DOUGLAS WYETH, 
 
 No. 7 Pear St., Philadelphia, 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Is the Soul immaterial and immortal? - - - - - lJ] 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Does Creation prove the Existence of God? - - - 39 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Is a Revelation from God to Man probable and neces- 
 GASV Toe cee wie | st mire be re eaten aie PO 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Is the Bible genuine and authentic? - - - - - 101 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Is the Bible inspired? - - - + - - = « = = 121 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Is the Bible inspired? - - - - © - - © = - 133 
 ili 
 
iv 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 General Characteristics of the Bible - - - = 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Is the Bible contradictory or inconsistent? - - 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Is the Bible contradictory or inconsistent? - - 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Doctrinal Difficulties - - - - « « « « «= 
 
 Texts cavilled at - 
 
 Conclusion - - - 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 173 
 
 185 
 
 223 
 
 261 
 
 301 
 
 315 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Tue following pages are not meant for 
 learned theologians, who already know all 
 they contain, and a great deal more, but for 
 Scripture-readers, for City missionaries, Pa- 
 rochial and Sunday-school teachers, and 
 others, who ought to know something of the 
 outlines of Christian evidence. 
 
 Deeper solutions can be given of many of 
 the difficulties that are quoted in this work, 
 but such solutions would be inconvenient 
 alike to teachers and learners, in the circum- 
 stances to which I have referred. Simple 
 and short explanations are, therefore, far 
 preferable: these are more easily remem- 
 bered, and most thoroughly understood. In 
 the present age, a ready reply, like ready 
 money, is most valuable. The Author trusts 
 his readers will not suppose he has said all 
 that can be said on every point. He has 
 given the simplest, shortest, and most intelli- 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 gible outlines of the Christian evidence, rather 
 than the most powerful and conclusive. 
 
 Should it enable the teacher of others to 
 solve any perplexities with ease, which he 
 has heretofore failed to explain with satisfac- 
 tion to himself or conviction to the pupil; or 
 should it furnish any one with an aditional 
 reason for the faith that is in him, or in any 
 degree commend and vindicate the word of 
 God, the Author will be amply rewarded. 
 
 This the writer is truly convinced of, that 
 they that read the Bible oftenest, and most 
 attentively, will be most deeply persuaded 
 of its Divine origin. A self-evidencing vir- 
 tue goes forth from it; and they that thus 
 read it feel within them living proofs of its 
 divinity, and would rather part with all near 
 and dear things than surrender their belief in 
 the inspiration of a book which peoples hea- 
 ven with their departed relatives—opens to 
 them springs of real consolation upon earth 
 —and lifts the veil that conceals from their 
 eyes yet brighter and more glorious prospects 
 in eternity. The Saviour said, “Thy word 
 is truth ;’? and innumerable hearts from their 
 inmost depths answer, “ It is.” 
 
 There are many thousands who have never 
 examined, and therefore are not convinced 
 
PREFACE, Vii 
 
 by the evidences of Christianity. Perfect 
 masters in law, or in medicine, or in litera- 
 ture, or in science, they are utterly unin- 
 formed on that “one thing needful,”’ in com- 
 parison of which ail these things are as straws 
 floating on the surface of the current of life. 
 
 The most irrational persons upon earth are 
 surely those who will not investigate the 
 claims of a religion which, right or wrong, 
 declares itself to be the only communication 
 of the mind of God. Either the Bible is di- 
 vine, and justly demands supremacy in all 
 religious discussions, or it is a gross impos- 
 ture: any thing between it cannot be. The 
 most inexcusable and unjustifiable course 
 that any can pursue, is that of indifference or 
 ignorant contempt. 
 
 Scripture proclaims such to be fools, and 
 those only who read and understand to be 
 wise. The prodigal was not “come to him- 
 self,’ or, as we say, was beside himself, till 
 he was restored to his home. The insanity 
 of our asylums is that of the intellect. The 
 insanity of thoughtless millions is that of the 
 heart. There is a parallelism between the 
 two states. Let us look at it. A very com- 
 mon mark of insanity is insensibility to con- 
 clusive evidence. No weight of reasoning 
 
Vill PREFACE, 
 
 will sway the insane. But is not the unbe- 
 liever dead to the claims of truth, that are 
 bright with the signature of God, and re- 
 splendent with the glories of heaven? Does 
 not all creation, from the lowly violet in the 
 sequestered vale, to the vast orb in the firma- 
 ment, proclaim as one great choir, “the hand 
 that made us is Divine ?”’ and is not insensi- 
 bility to this, insanity? It is thus, then, that 
 the unbelieving spectator of creation, as well 
 as “the undevout astronomer, is mad.?’? Does 
 not Revelation give still more cogent proofs 
 of its authorship? Are not His foot-prints in 
 its every page? Is it not the record of Hig 
 ways? Is it not written in deeds of power, 
 and acts of beneficence and mercy? Has it 
 not survived all opposition, defied all pro- 
 Scription? Do not martyrs from their flame- 
 shrouds, and saints from their beds of glory, 
 declare, “Thy word is Truth?” Is not all 
 confusion without it? Yet the sceptic rejects 
 all, and would extinguish all. Surely his is 
 the insanity of the seaman who would cast 
 away his chart and compass in the storm, or 
 the raving, as it is the impotence, of him who 
 would blot out the sun, and moon, and stars, 
 ‘rom the dome of earth. 
 
 Indifference to momentous interests, visibly 
 
PREFACE. 1X 
 
 in peri, is strong evidence of insanity. Were 
 we to see a man perfectly indifferent in the 
 midst of the blazing rafters of his house, we 
 could not help concluding that the man was 
 deranged. Does he manifest greater sanity 
 who hears of a nearing hell and a departing 
 heaven, and yet remains in absolute apathy ? 
 Is it other than a maniac’s folly to be vexed 
 about toys, and to be careless of everlasting 
 realities? Shakspeare describes king Lear 
 as gathering straws with the hand which had 
 wielded a mighty sceptre; and a greater than 
 Shakspeare describes the king of Babylon as 
 herding with the beasts of the field, in order 
 that they may thus give vivid pictures of hu- 
 manity in its ruins. Have not these dis- 
 crowned kings a thousand living antitypes? 
 What Divine faculties do we see burrowing 
 in the earth! What mighty energies ex- 
 pending their strength in follies, indifferent 
 to eternal realities! What attention devoted 
 to fables, and denied to awful facts! How 
 many losing a soul for eternity, in settling a 
 date in time! 
 
 A man standing by the crater of the groan- 
 ing and heaving voleano—a woman holding 
 her babe, and laughing with maniac revelry 
 amid the converging flames of her furniture 
 
x PREFACE. 
 
 and spurning away the fire-escape—the sea 
 man catching fish, while his vessel sinks inch 
 by inch in the abyss of waters—are but faint 
 representations of the insanity of him who, 
 unconcerned about his soul, engages in all 
 pursuits and indulges in all pleasures, with 
 an eternity of responsibility rolling onward 
 on the spot on which he stands, like a vast 
 Atlantic sea. And since insanity ends in 
 suicide, what else is deliberate rejection of 
 life? ‘The unbelieving perish by their own 
 hands. Theirs, too, is insanity without its 
 irresponsibility. They show the folly of the 
 maniac, while they incur the guilt of the 
 criminal. : 
 
 Reader, review your state: consider your 
 ways: ponder the paths of your feet. Fully, 
 and fairly, and patiently weigh the facts, and 
 reasonings, and illustrations contained in the 
 following pages, and God himself direct you 
 toa just, a true, and unchangeable conviction. 
 
IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IS THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL ? 
 
 Tuts is a useful though not an essential pre- 
 liminary investigation. We therefore attempt 
 to throw a little light on it. Christianity is 
 the religion of inquiry, as well as the subject 
 of triumphant proof. It does not demand 
 our assent to propositions without any pre- 
 vious examination of their character and their 
 claims. Its language is—Search, examine, 
 judge ye, whether these things be so or not. 
 Our first is simply a preliminary inquiry— 
 it is the immortality, or after-existence, of the 
 soul of man. If there be no hereafter—no 
 reckoning at the judgment-morn—no destiny 
 in the future, dependent upon character cre- 
 ated in the present—then the claims of the 
 Gospel to be a revelation from God are of 
 comparatively trivial moment. If, when we 
 
 die, and the green turf is laid upon us, our 
 Ul 
 
12 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 eyes are destined to open on no hereafter. 
 nor our hearts to throb again, then the truth 
 or the falsity of Christianity, except so far as 
 it touches this, is an insignificant inquiry. 
 
 The materiality or immateriality of the 
 soul does not vitally affect the question of its 
 hereafter existence. J am convinced, and I 
 think I shall be able to convince the reader, 
 that the soul is immaterial; but if it were 
 shown satisfactorily by physiologists that the 
 soul of man is a material substance, that 
 would not prove that the soul is not immor- 
 tal. God might be pleased to endue matter 
 with the attributes of immortality. He might 
 be pleased to impress upon a material soul 
 the capacity for a never ending or eternal 
 hereafter. His fiat would be its inheritance 
 of a never-ending existence. But I think I 
 shall, be able to prove, by a few plain and 
 simple propositions, that the soul is not only 
 tmmortal, but that it is also zmmaterial— 
 that is, that it is not the same in substance as 
 the body. 
 
 The favourite position of materialists, that 
 is, those who deny its immateriality, is an 
 analogy. They say that the mind grows and 
 dies with the body—that the mind is infun- 
 tile with the infant body,—full grown in the 
 
THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL. 13 
 
 adult, —wasted by disease, debilitated by 
 age; and therefore, say they, it must be, as 
 the natural sequence, annihilated by death. 
 They maintain, that the analogy that subsists 
 between the body and the soul, or the inti- 
 macy between the one and the other, is so 
 entire, that we find at each step the mind 
 and body going hand in hand in a common 
 equi-progressive destiny, so that (I repeat the 
 words,) the mind is infantile with the infant 
 body, full grown in the adult, wasted by dis- 
 ease, debilitated by age ; and therefore, they 
 say, the presumption is, that it dies when the 
 body dies. 
 
 Now, if they could substantiate the first 
 four propositions, that the mind is always in- 
 fantile in the infant, and always full grown 
 in the adult, and always wasted by disease, 
 and always debilitated by age, then the pre- 
 sumption would be that most probably it 
 was always destroyed by death. But we 
 can prove from facts, that the analogy does 
 not hold good at every step; and one such 
 proof is fatal to the whole. We find that 
 the soul is not always wasted by disease. I 
 myself have seen the soul possessed of mas- 
 culine vigour, when the whole earthly tene- 
 ~ ment was on the verge of crumbling into 
 2 
 
14 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 
 
 ruins. It is not true, also, that the soul is 
 always debilitated by age. I have seen grey 
 hairs and gathering infirmities of body en- 
 casing and yet unfolding a soul vigorous as 
 in the meridian of life. Now if the analogy 
 fail in one step, then the consequence de- 
 duced must fail also; for if it be true that the 
 soul is only sometimes weakened by disease, 
 and sometimes debilitated by age, then the 
 only logical result they can reach by their 
 argument is, that it is sometimes mortal and 
 sometimes immortal, and therefore that there 
 are two sorts of men, one class mortal and 
 another immortal; which is what has been 
 called by logicians a reductio ad absurdum. 
 We therefore maintain, that this analogy, 
 which some materialists glory in as a demon- 
 stration that the soul perishes with the body, 
 does not hold good when we come fairly and 
 impartially to investigate it. 
 
 Mind and body do not always sympathize 
 together; that is, the one may be a sufferer, 
 and the other not. 
 
 It has been found that paralysis has un- 
 nerved and unstrung the whole system, and 
 yet the mind of man has remained unscathed. 
 I will quote a case; that of the celebrated, 
 the witty, and the clever diplomatist, Talley- 
 
THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL, 15 
 
 rand. His body was in the most wretched, 
 miserable, diseased and distressed condition 
 one can conceive; and yet the subtlety, and 
 the wisdom, and the skill, and the talent, 
 and the penetration of that diplomatist are 
 allowed to have remained to his last moments 
 unequalled. I may also refer to the cele- 
 brated Dean Swift. It was said, that before 
 he died his body was a moving tomb; and 
 yet his mind was as vigorous as in his earlier 
 years. It is stated, in the forty-third number 
 of the Quanterly Review, that Morgagni and 
 ‘\, Haller, distinguished continental. anatomists, 
 have ascertained that in one instance or an- 
 other every part of the brain has been found 
 destroyed or disorganized, and yet the indi- 
 viduals have none of them been deprived of 
 mind, or affected in what has been thought the 
 corresponding intellectual powers. I do not 
 say, that in any one case the whole of the 
 brain has been found disorganized or de- 
 stroyed, but in one instance or another they 
 have found it so with each part successively, 
 and yet none of those individuals had lost 
 any of their moral, intellectual, or mental 
 powers. And if it can thus be shown, that this 
 very organ, the brain, in which some crani- 
 ologists are pleased to lodge the mental facul- 
 
16 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 ties of man, has been more or less destroyed 
 without any of his affections or intellectual 
 energies being injured, it is proof positive 
 that something more than the mere brain is 
 that which constitutes his claim to be a men- 
 taland amoral being. But when anatomists 
 have analysed the brain, what have they 
 found? Let us hear. Some have said, that 
 they trace all mental phenomena to a portion 
 called the pingal gland. Now anatomists and 
 chemists have analysed it; and what do you 
 think is it made of? Phosphate of lime. And 
 will phosphate of lime originate the splendid 
 dramas of Shakspeare, or the epic poems of 
 Milton, or the Iliad of Homer, or the poems 
 of Virgil? Monstrous absurdity! It is quite 
 plain, that there-must be some agent prior 
 and extraneous to the brain, which acts upon 
 the brain, and thereby upon the physical sys- 
 tem of man. 
 
 I stated, at the outset of my remarks, that 
 the physiologist asserts that the mind is in- 
 fantile with the body in the child, vigorous 
 in the adult, weakened by disease, debilitated 
 by age, and therefore destroyed by death. 
 Now I would just invert this. 
 
 I would say that the Jody is infantile, not 
 the mind in the child. Have you not ob 
 
THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL. 17 
 
 served (what is a remarkable practical lesson) 
 that the child has thoughts and fears and feel- 
 ings which it is not able to express by its 
 bodily organs? Hence the remark made by 
 parents, that the child knows much more than 
 you suppose ; and when we look at the atten- 
 tion, the listening looks, and the rivetted notice 
 that a child gives to what is going on, we are 
 convinced that he knows a great deal more 
 than he generally gets credit for. Hence it 
 may be seen that children grow up with im- 
 pressions upon their minds that we cannot ac- 
 count for. The fact is, that at the time their 
 infant bodies gave no intimation of what was 
 going on in the inner sanctuary of the soul, 
 their maturer minds were drinking in the 
 habits and principles of those around them. 
 I maintain, therefore, that in the child the 
 mind is greater than the body—not that the 
 body is equal to or greater than the mind, 
 And I would therefore reverse the position 
 materialists glory in, and say that the body 
 of the child is infantile, while its mind is pos- 
 sessed of attributes far greater than is usually 
 thought. 
 
 We admit a close intimacy between mind. 
 and matter, between the soul and the body, 
 
18 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 ‘but we deny identity. And I think I can 
 prove this. 
 
 We shall find, for instance, that if we take 
 so much of opium or so much of alcohol into 
 the body, the mind, from its intimacy with 
 the body, will be affected by it; that is, by 
 sympathy. We shall find also, that if we 
 take into the mind so much anger, so much 
 jealousy, so much hatred, so much love, so 
 much passion, the body will, from its inti- 
 macy with the mind, be affected by it; and 
 this proves intimacy. But if the material 
 stimuli of opium or alcohol require a mate- 
 rial medium through which to act, surely 
 the moral stimuli of jealousy and love and 
 passion must, by parity of reasoning, require 
 a moral medium, the soul, through which 
 they can act upon the body. I do think that 
 this ‘position is positively irrefragable—viz. 
 that the fact that physical stimuli require a 
 physical agent through which to act upon 
 the mind, warrants us in concluding that 
 moral stimuli requird a moral agent through 
 which to act upon the body, and therefore 
 that there must be a part that is zzmaterial, 
 moral, and intellectual. 
 
 We do not deny, that if the brain become 
 greatly diseased, mania or madness has fre- 
 
THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL. 19 
 
 quently ensued; but this does not prove that 
 the brain is the soul. Suppose I single out 
 the best musician that ever touched an in- 
 strument, and take him to a piano, or an 
 organ, or a violin, or any other instrument 
 of music, out of tune, and bid him play. He 
 tries to produce the notes he knows, but 
 neither melody nor harmony is poured forth. 
 Why? Not because the musician’s mind 
 has lost its power, or the musician’s fingers 
 have lost their skill; but because the instru- 
 ment on which he acts is out of tune. Now 
 it is just so with the brain. When a man is 
 seized with mania or madness, it is not be- 
 cause the soul has become disorganized or 
 destroyed, but because the instrument is out 
 of tune and disarranged. In fact, the soul is 
 the master musician; and the brain is but 
 the instrument, through which that master 
 musician acts—in tones, in looks, in sympa- 
 thies, and by the senses—upon the world 
 that is around. 
 
 In the next place, it is said by physiolo- 
 gists—If there be a soul, we ought to be able 
 to detect and show it to all who choose to 
 look on it. 
 
 Now this seems to me a most extraordi- 
 nary conclusion. The very definition that 
 
20 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 we give of the soul (that it is immaterial) 
 would be sufficient reason why we should 
 not be able to detect it. The physiologist is 
 so accustomed to material anatomy, that he 
 always imagines that a thing does not exist, 
 unless he can show it on the point of his 
 lancet. But if this be his only criterion of 
 existence, he must be very sceptical in many 
 things. Can he show an idea upon the point 
 of his lancet? Can he show a thought on 
 the point of his scalpel? It can therefore be 
 no good reason for denying the existence of 
 the soul, that he cannot mechanically detect 
 it. | 
 
 But we allege that we have clearer evi- 
 dence of the existence of mind, than we 
 have of the existence of matter. This may 
 Seem strange; but it is true. Berkeley, the 
 bishop of Cloyne, a distinguished and excel- 
 lent man, maintained that there was no such 
 thing as matter—that there are merely cer- 
 tain sensations or impressions made by God 
 upon the brain, which give us the notion of 
 matter—and that we live in a world, not of 
 matter, but of universal idealism. Absurd 
 as it may appear, one must be surprised at 
 the ingenious arguments with which he con- 
 tends for the non-existence of matter. But 
 
THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL, 21 
 
 though he could reason away matter, he 
 could not thus reason himself out of the ex- 
 istence of mind. For the very fact that a 
 man doubts and reasons, is a proof that 
 there is a doubting and reasoning faculty. 
 The very doubt establishes our position, that 
 there is a mind, or a soul, or an immaterial 
 faculty, capable of doubting. 
 
 Physiologists or materialists (not all physi- 
 ologists, but those of them who are material- 
 ists) say that the brain is the mind—that it 
 alone is the soul—and that in fact they can 
 trace every thing to the brain as the ultima- 
 tum of sensation and thought, but no fur- 
 ther. 
 
 Now I admit the fact, that we can trace 
 Sensation and thought to the brain; but I 
 will show you that we can goa step further 
 and trace it beyond it. For instance; we 
 are in the habit of saying that the eye Sees ; 
 but ¢he eye cannot see; it is the mere istru- 
 ment of vision, it is no more to man than a 
 telescope or a microscope beautifully con- 
 structed, and if the eye is diseased, then 
 sight is destroyed. I take a step further ; 
 Tallege that if the optic nerve is diseased, 
 then though the eye may be as perfect as 
 God ever created it, yet ™ cannot see. I go 
 
22 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 still a step further; it has been found, that if 
 the brain be diseased or pressed upon ina 
 certain part, then though the optic nerve and 
 the eye remain sound, there is no sight. 
 But now I will go a step further. A letter 
 or newspaper is brought by the postman to 
 an individual; he reads it, and the result of 
 reading it has been that the man has dropped 
 down dead. Why this? No physical wea- 
 pon touched him. It was a purely mental 
 idea, that acted upon the brain, and the 
 brain acted upon the nervous system, 
 and the man died because the letter con- 
 tained some fearful or disastrous tidings, Or 
 again, one friend calls: upon another, and 
 says that some great catastrophe has hap- 
 pened to his nearest and dearest relative, 
 and we find that instances have occurred of 
 the man instantly losing his sight, or his 
 hearing, or being paralysed. Here it was a 
 moral fact, that struck the man with physical 
 effects. The mind or mental power acted 
 on the brain; that acted on the nerves; and 
 they acted on the senses. And thus while 
 the materialist traces all to the brain, we 
 show that we can go a step further—and 
 prove the existence of a being above the 
 brain, an agent that acts upon the brain, 
 
THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL. 23 
 
 and, in short, that the brain is the mere 
 agent of that being that dwells in the imma- 
 terial sanctuary, inviolate within. 
 Materialists have admitted (indeed all 
 must admit) that the body of man undergoes 
 a complete change, some say every seven, 
 Some every twelve, some every twenty 
 years, Suppose now, to avoid anything 
 like controversy, we say every twenty years 
 —that every particle in man’s physical sys- 
 tem is transferred and removed from him 
 every twenty years. Then if a man live to 
 the age of sixty, it can be demonstrated that 
 he has had actually three bodies in the 
 course of those sixty years. Every particle 
 in his body has been changed, and supplant- 
 ed by another particle. This is admitted. 
 Now if the mind of man is material, and be 
 the body, and of the body, then it must 
 have undergone corresponding changes; and 
 therefore in every twenty years a man’s con- 
 sciousness must have changed, and he must 
 have no recollection, or personal identity, no 
 conviction that at sixty years of age he is 
 the same person that he was forty years 
 ago. Now what an absurdity is this! We 
 know that the body has undergone this 
 transmutation of parts; but we have a feel- 
 
24 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 ing and consciousness of personal identity, 
 by which we are thoroughly convinced that 
 we are each the same person, that we have 
 each the same peculiarity of temper, of dis- 
 position, of feeling, of love, of hatred, of hap- 
 piness, that we are the same in all substantial 
 respects as we were twenty years ago. And 
 therefore we maintain, that as the materialist 
 cannot show that man’s mind changes every 
 twenty years, he cannot show that it is (as he 
 alleges) material. 
 
 It is admitted by materialists, that matter 
 is infinitely divisible, or at least that it is 
 divisible into parts. Thus you speak of a 
 foot of deal, or an inch.of oak, or a yard of 
 rope, or of cable, or of chain. Now if man’s 
 mind be material, the same as the body, as 
 the materialist alleges, then it ought to be 
 perfectly good sense and good grammar to 
 speak of an inch of anger, of a foot of 
 jealousy, or of yards of passion; the very 
 statement of which so revolts all men’s feel- 
 ings, and seems so ridiculous, that it needs 
 only to be mentioned, to provoke the refuta- 
 tion it deserves. 
 
 Materialists have said that we find this 
 fact illustrating their proposition—that the 
 mind seems to repose, and sleep, and enjoy 
 
THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL, 25 
 
 quiescence along with the body. They quote 
 the case of individuals sleeping at night. 
 “ We see,”’ they say, “that the mind is weary 
 and worn out with the brain, and that it 
 courts and enjoys repose along with the body ; 
 and therefore it is part and parcel of the 
 material frame.”’ 
 
 Now I rather question the ground of this 
 position. At all events one fact to the con- 
 trary would shake their argument that it is 
 always so. There is no individual in the 
 world, who has not been conscious of dream- 
 ing. That one fact shows, that the body 
 may be in a state of repose, while the mind 
 is in the exercise of unshackled activity. 
 And I am conscious that the mind is fre- 
 quently in a state of more active and vigor- 
 ous exercise during sleep, than it was in 
 waking hours. I believe that the mind never 
 sleeps, and that at every moment every indi- 
 vidual’s mind is active. 
 
 But the physiologist says, If the mind 
 never sleeps, why then do we not recollect in 
 the morning what we dreamed in the night ? 
 Now I ask, do you recollect, when you sit 
 down at night, all the thoughts that passed 
 through your mind in the day-time? Youdo 
 
 not. You know that ten thousand thoughts 
 3 
 
26 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD: 
 
 have passed through your mind this day, 
 which you cannot recollect and enumerate 
 this night. And may it not be—(nay, is it not 
 so?)—that ten thousand thoughts, brighter 
 and better than of earth, pass through your 
 mind in the hours of sleep, which you can- 
 not recollect in the morning? I am con- 
 scious that I have preached far better ser- 
 mons in sleep than ever I did in the pulpit; 
 and I have composed far better commen- 
 taries upon God’s word, and have been 
 conscious of it too, in my sleep, than when 
 sitting in my study. And I believe many an 
 individual has been conscious in sleep of bril- 
 liant thoughts, that would make his name 
 memorable as Milton’s if he could only em- 
 body and give utterance to them in his wak- 
 ing hours. This statement therefore that the 
 mind is invariably in a state of quiescence 
 and repose along with the body, is not borne 
 out by the general experience of mankind. 
 Let it be recollected that every thing which 
 the materialist or the physiologist has de- 
 tected in man, has been the subject of analy- 
 sis. Ihave said that one portion of man’s 
 brain has been analysed: but so has every 
 part. ‘The nerves in man’s system, the brain 
 in his head, have been subjected to the an- 
 
THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL, 27 
 
 alysis of the chemists; and they can tell you 
 of what they all are composed. ‘To explain 
 mind, it has been suggested, that galvanism 
 or electricity is the source of the nervous in- 
 fluence of the human system. Now if we 
 can thus find out all the component parts of 
 the human system, and ascertain the secrets 
 of nervous sensibility, then the question is, 
 are any of those parts, or is any collocation 
 or excitement of them, adequate to produce 
 thoughts? Would all the galvanism or elec- 
 tricity in the world produce a single book of 
 the Aneid of Virgil, or a single page of the 
 Paradise Lost of Milton? If mere galvanic 
 influence is the source of thought, then it 
 would follow, that if you could impart to a 
 brute animal a greater quantity of galvanic 
 power, you would raise him nearer to the 
 dignity of a man; and if you could impart 
 to the greatest fool or the veriest idiot, a 
 greater quantity of electricity, you would 
 raise him and might bring him to the height 
 of a Homer ora “Milton. But this is felt to 
 be absurd. And can we then suppose, that 
 a quantity of matter acted on by this gal- 
 vanic influence, is all that is meant by mind— 
 that that can regulate and produce the splen- 
 did discoveries of the age—that can construct 
 
28 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 a ship of war, a steam vessel, a railroad, or 
 any of those discoveries that stamp this as an 
 age of great and unparalleled progress in 
 human knowledge, and in physical science? 
 No, the very statement of the thing is enough 
 to demonstrate its absurdity and untenable- 
 ness. 
 
 It has been held by some materialists, that 
 the race is perpetual, but that the individuals 
 of the race are perishable ; that is, that while 
 the human race is perpetual, and having 
 begun in time, generation shall be perpetu- 
 ated after generation ad w&ternum, the indi- 
 viduals who make up the generations, or the 
 component parts, are all perishable, and dis- 
 appear. They quote, as instances and illus- 
 trations, the beasts of the field, and the trees 
 of the forest. Take a tree, they say, the 
 apple tree for instance; it grows up from 
 a little seed, it bears its leaves and blossoms, 
 and its fruit, and then it dies, and afterwards 
 other apple trees come up, and so each apple 
 tree perishes, but the genus or species of 
 apple trees is perpetual through all centuries. 
 
 Now, if there were a perfect parallel be- 
 tween the ¢ree and z¢s uses and z¢s destiny, 
 and man and his uses and Ais destiny, this 
 position would be tenable. But if we look 
 
THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL. 29 
 
 closer at the subject, we shall find there is no 
 parallel. In the first place, when the apple 
 tree has produced its blossoms, and borne its 
 fruit, and spread forth its boughs, it has done 
 all it was meant to accomplish, and then it 
 dies and disappears. But when man has 
 made his noblest steps in knowledge, in tri- 
 umph over sin, in victory over temptation, 
 instead of having achieved his end, he has 
 only risen one step higher, in order to pre- 
 pare him for rising to another—and when he 
 has reached that, for rising to another still. 
 In short, eternity, boundlessness and progres- 
 Sion are the elements of man; while time 
 and the material world are the elements of 
 the tree. Until man is perfect as God is per- 
 fect, acquainted with science, and wisdom, 
 and experience, even as God is, he has not 
 attained to the ultimatum of his power, and 
 the end of his being: and therefore the par- 
 allel does not hold good. Nor does it hold 
 good in another respect. For if the tree 
 were allowed infinite and boundless pro- 
 gress, it would rise so high, and spread its 
 branches so wide, that it would overshadow 
 too much of the world,—it would absorb all 
 the nutritious juices of the earth, and there 
 
 would be no space nor room for the growth 
 3 * 
 
30 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 and expansion of other trees quite as useful 
 and necessary to man ; and therefore its end- 
 less expansion and growth would be most 
 mischievous. But we find the reverse true 
 of man’s soul. The more he discovers, the 
 larger sphere he opens up for other discov- 
 eries to follow ; the more he masters in know- 
 ledge, in science, in virtue, in piety, in right- 
 eousness, instead of taking up the ground that 
 ought to be occupied by others, he strikes out 
 new spheres for others to occupy—new paths 
 for others to walk in—new room for the ex- 
 pansion of the intellectual and moral power of 
 those around him. So that while the tree, by 
 endless progression, would absolutely encum- 
 ber the system to which it belongs, man, by 
 endless progression, instead of overshadowing 
 and excluding, rather creates greater room 
 for others, and furnishes fresh scope for the 
 development of their intellectual powers and 
 moral grandeur; so that in this respect also 
 the comparison does not hold good between 
 man and the tree. It fails too in another 
 respect. With the brute of the field, the pre- 
 sent is every thing. If we take a dog, for 
 instance; he has no recollection—at least no 
 recollection of any of the facts, the transac- 
 tions, the principles, the doings, or the great 
 
THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL. 31 
 
 sensations of the past; nor has he any 
 anticipation of the future whatever. The 
 present is every thing with the dumb ani- 
 mals. But with man memory is the treasury 
 and the storehouse of ten thousand things 
 that are past; and he has within him a 
 power of anticipation, that still strives and 
 stretches onward and away to things that are 
 future. While the present makes up the en- 
 tire happiness of the dog, the mast and the 
 Juture are the great sources and fountains 
 of the happiness of man. Therefore the 
 destruction of the dog is no loss to him. The 
 present is all; and when he is extinguished he 
 loses nothing. But if man be annihilated, he 
 loses all the past treasures he has accumula- 
 ted, and he forgoes all the bright joys he anti- 
 cipates for the future. The annihilation of his 
 soul is a catastrophe too big for human imagi- 
 nation to conceive, too horrible for the human 
 mind to look to. When the apple tree has 
 withered, and all its branches and its boughs 
 have been dissolved, they do not perish; the 
 constituent parts of it, when reduced to pow- 
 der, are fertile nutriment to the earth, and are 
 absorbed into it, and are reproduced in other 
 shapes. It may appear in the share of an- 
 other apple-tree; it dies, it is cut down, and 
 
32 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 is resolved into dust; and in the next century 
 it may appear in the form of the blooming 
 rose, or in the shape of the fragrant violet. 
 It is not annihilated ; it merely experiences 
 a change of form and of development, a 
 transmigration of substance. But this will 
 not hold good of man. If man’s soul should 
 be thus reduced, it cannot become thus re- 
 vived. Why? Because my consciousness 
 never can be another man’s; my feelings, 
 my hopes, my prospects, my personal iden- 
 tity, never can be another man’s, I can give 
 away my money; I can give my knowledge; 
 I can give my very limbs, my life ; but I can- 
 not give away that consciousness of personal 
 identity, which constitutes me. It is inalien- 
 able from me; it must either be extinguished 
 altogether, or perpetuated in myself. So 
 that whilst the destruction of the tree is only 
 the preparation of that tree for other forms 
 of existence, and perhaps more beauteous 
 forms, the destruction of my soul must by 
 the necessity of the case be utter annihila- 
 tion. It never can be transmigration, or 
 transfer to any other. We say, therefore, that 
 the supposed analogy between the rational 
 and the animal or vegetable creation, in this, 
 that the race is perpetual, but that the indi- 
 
THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL. 33 
 
 viduals of the race perish, is a position that 
 cannot be held. 
 
 But I appeal for evidence to men’s inner- 
 most feelings. I have given many plain and 
 intelligible statements; but there are proofs 
 superior to the reasoning and the subtlety of 
 human logic. Reader, go to the grave of 
 a departed father or a friend. It will there 
 be seen, that man’s feelings and common 
 sense are mightier and more overwhelming 
 than any logic; and when you look on the 
 grave of the near and the dear, is there not 
 something that tells you that you are not 
 parted for ever? Is there not a wish spring- 
 ing up in your heart from mysterious depths, 
 that impresses on you the thought that you 
 shall meet again? Who implanted that 
 wish? Why are we capable of it? When 
 the dog sees a dog buried, he has no such 
 feeling; when the ox sees an ox slain, he has 
 no such expectancy. Why is it that man, 
 when he looks upon the pale face of departed 
 relationship, has a wish—and not only a 
 wish, an impression—nay, more, a conviction 
 that cannot be erased—that they shall meet 
 again? Has God implanted this lingering 
 longing after immortality, but implanted this 
 wish, and made us capable of this feeling 
 
84 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 only to tantalize and to taunt us? Impossi- 
 ble! This would be worse than the treat- 
 ment of the fabled Tantalus, of whom it is 
 alleged in mythology, that when the cup of 
 cooling water was placed near his lips, the 
 moment he tried to drink it, it departed, 
 aggravating his torment year after year. If 
 God has made us with this strong wish, this 
 yearning after immortality, only to tantalize 
 us, and to snatch from us the cup of life at 
 the moment we are about to drink of it, 
 surely that God cannot be the good, the kind, 
 the loving God, that even nature and nature’s 
 voice proclaim Him to be. 
 
 When man has overcome, and possessed, 
 and appropriated all that is in the universe, 
 there is yet something in man that will not 
 allow him to be satisfied. His soul’s vast 
 appetences are not met. It yearns for satis- 
 faction still. 
 
 I think Alexander the Great presents, in 
 one instance of his life, a most impressive 
 proof of the greatness, if not the immor- 
 tality of the soul. You are aware, that that 
 monarch overran the whole earth, and sub- 
 dued every nation; and at the conclusion of 
 universal victory, what did he say? “ Now 
 that I have gained the whole world, that 
 
THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL, 35 
 
 object of ten thousand individuals, that wish 
 of ten thousand hearts, I am satisfied ?”” No, 
 Alexander the Great had something more in 
 him, though he knew it not; he sat down, 
 that monarch, that mighty conqueror—and 
 wept like a child, because he had not another 
 world to conquer! ‘The world could not fill 
 his mind, nor would it fill a babe’s. We 
 read also of a Roman emperor, who had run 
 the round of all the pleasures of the world, 
 offering a rich reward to any one who should 
 discover a new pleasure; as if to teach us, 
 that when all the sweets of the world have 
 been tasted, and all the contents of the world 
 have been subdued and possessed, man’s 
 soul, unsatisfied with its material posses- 
 sions, thirsts and longs for something nobler 
 brighter, greater, and better, than the world 
 itself. 
 
 Again, if there be no hereafter, how are we 
 to account for those thoughts, vaster than the 
 earth, that spring up in every one’s mind, and 
 of which every one is more or less conscious? 
 
 Is it not true, that thoughts, more glorious 
 than any thing that the world can furnish, do 
 occasionally leap from our hearts, like angels 
 too bright and too beautiful for earth? Is it 
 not true, that we just catch from astronomy, 
 
36 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 what is sufficient to excite our curiosity, to 
 know more of its brilliant and ever burning 
 orbs, and the more we know, the more still 
 we strive and thirst to know? Isit not true, 
 that we form at times conceptions of human 
 excellence, ideas of loveliness and moral 
 worth, that never have been, and never can 
 be realized on earth? What are all these? 
 They are presentiments of heaven—harbin- 
 gers of immortality—voices, crying even “in 
 the wilderness”? of the materialist’s heart, 
 that man is not to perish with the brute. 
 They proclaim, in tones too distinct to be 
 misunderstood, that there will come a time, 
 when all those stars which he has imper- 
 fectly seen shall be stretched out before him, 
 like isles upon the ocean of infinitude—when 
 all those ideas of excellence—those thirstings 
 after perfection—those aspirations after joy 
 and peace, shall be satisfied from the river of 
 God, which flows from the throne of God, 
 and of the Lamb for ever and ever. 
 Progression is the order of all that we see 
 in the world; and this furnishes a presump- 
 tion of our immortality. 
 A striving after something that is above it, 
 is the order and the characteristic of every 
 created thing. ‘Take the lowest form of this; 
 
THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL. 37 
 
 take the metal in its ore. Look at those 
 crystals, that appear upon the copper or the 
 silver ore; they are just the striving of that 
 substance, to reach the next grade of excel- 
 lence, the vegetable product. If we turn to 
 the flower, the tree, and the fruit, as for in- 
 Stance the sensitive plant, we find vegetable 
 presenting the foreshadow and striving after 
 animal life. And if we go to animal life, we 
 find some creatures treading upon the very 
 heels of man, and striving to reach his dig- 
 nity and glory. And when we come to man, 
 is all this to be arrested? Is he to be an ex- 
 ception and an anomaly in the noblest analo- 
 gies of the universe? Is he to bea petri- 
 faction? We know that it is not‘so. We 
 know and feel, that from being mortal here, 
 he shall be immortal hereafter—his body 
 only dissolved in the dust, or laid in the silent 
 grave. He shall see another day, a day (to 
 leave the paths of human reasoning, and 
 have recourse to the inspiration of God,) 
 “when they that are in the graves shall hear 
 the voice of the Son of God, and shall come 
 forth, they that have done good unto the 
 resurrection of life, and they that have done 
 evil unto the resurrection of damnation.” 
 
 I have given you all the reasons I could 
 
 4 
 
88 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 collect. They are not wholly original; they 
 are gathered in the course of reading. ‘They 
 are facts and reasons which I submit to you; 
 and I conceive that, when we lay them to- 
 gether, and weigh and consider them, they 
 amount to a moral presumption the most 
 overwhelming, that man’s soul shall live 
 hereafter—that when God “ breathed into his 
 nostrils the breath of life,” He gave him an 
 immortal soul. 
 
 If we appeal to Revelation, the matter is 
 soon ended. There the intimations are plain. 
 But all that Ihave shown you is, how far 
 nature will go. And I trust I shall be able 
 to show, that we can prove from nature also, 
 that there is a God; and by and by, that the 
 Bible is a book sent from that God—the 
 intimations of which are the intimations of 
 truth. 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 39 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 DOES CREATION PROVE THE EXISTENCE OF Gop! 
 
 Does creation evidence a God? It does; but 
 on this subject I must make a preliminary 
 distinction. It is this; an atheist there may 
 be, but an anti-theist there cannot possibly 
 be. That is to say, a man may declare that 
 he does not find any evidence that satisfies 
 him of the existence of a God, but no man 
 may dare to say absolutely, there is not a 
 God. The former, is merely the expression 
 of that individual’s necessarily most limited, 
 imperfect, and restricted experience : but the 
 latter proposition would imply, that the indi- 
 vidual had soared among the stars, and ran- 
 sacked the contents of the worlds that are 
 there—that he had descended to the caves of 
 the ocean, and explored the unknown trea- 
 sures and stores that are there—that he had 
 travelled through the mines and strata of the 
 earth, and explored the hidden recesses, and 
 depths, and mysteries there—that, in short, 
 he had been in time past possessed of omni- 
 presence and of omniscience, and in the ex- 
 
 & 
 
40 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 ercise of two attributes of Deity, had not 
 discovered a God. The fact is, such an indi- 
 vidual must be himself God, in order to be 
 in a position to announce the proposition— 
 There is not a God. 
 
 This distinction is most important. All 
 which the atheist can say is, “I do not find 
 proofs of a God ;”” and this depends upon the 
 sagacity of his mind—upon the extent of his 
 survey—upon the honesty of his researches, 
 and the continuity of his application, and is 
 at the best a very venturous and precarious 
 announcement. But no man can declare, 
 “¢ There is not a God ;’? because such a decla- 
 ration would imply that the individual mak- 
 ing it is omniscient, for if there be one star 
 that studs the firmament unexplored by him, 
 that star may be the lesson-book that pro- 
 claims the existence of a God; and if there 
 be one corner in the boundlessness of infini- 
 tude, unexamined, it may disclose a God; 
 and therefore, until the individual has swept 
 the illimitable recesses of space, he cannot 
 sit down and declare there is not a God. 
 
 I may also observe that the atheist is not 
 to be blamed because he has not found out 
 the existence of God ; but he is to be blamed 
 if, having powers fitted to investigate—if, 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 41 
 
 having facts submitted for collocation—if, 
 having evidence pressed upon his judgment, 
 and his conscience—he refuses to examine, 
 and concludes in wilful and obstinate ignor- 
 ance that he cannot find a God. And the 
 charge that will be adduced against such a 
 man at the judgment bar will not be that he 
 was ignorant of God, but that he would not 
 give himself the trouble to examine whether 
 there was a God or not. 
 
 In the next place, the very fact that the 
 existence of a God is probable, or even pos- 
 sible, ought to awaken in every reflecting 
 being the most strenuous and the most perse- 
 vering efforts to know if there be that God. 
 Shall I every hour be the recipient of innu- 
 merable mercies—shall I every day enjoy 
 blessings countless as the sands upon the sea 
 ‘shore—and shall there never arise in my 
 mind one solitary question, if there be a 
 Fountain, and who is the Fountain of those 
 mercies? Shall I make no search after the 
 Hand that bestows them, nor try to reach the 
 ocean fulness from which they continually 
 emanate? Shall I take the gift, and live in 
 wilful ignorance of the good Giver? There 
 will, therefore, in the atheist, be not only the 
 
 great guilt of not having searched and ex- 
 4 * 
 
42 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 amined whether there be a God, but there 
 will be the great ingratitude of never having 
 tried to ascertain the fountain of those bles- 
 sings, that he reaps and realizes every day. 
 
 The first statement that has been made by 
 way of objection to the existence of a God, is 
 that adduced by Hume, Mirabeau, and Vol- 
 taire—that it is as rational to suppose that 
 the earth is eternal, as to suppose that there 
 is a Maker of it, who is eternal in its stead. 
 It is just as rational, say they, to presume 
 that the earth has the attribute of eternal 
 existence, as that there isa God who made 
 the earth, and who has that attribute. 
 
 Now we maintain, in opposition to this 
 most extravagant suggestion, that there are 
 very powerful proofs that the earth is not 
 eternal, but on the other hand, no proofs that 
 there is not an eternal God, who made it, 
 And the proofs that the earth is not eternal, 
 are very short and simple. 
 
 We do not deny that the raw material of 
 which the earth is formed may have existed 
 millions of years. We do not deny that the 
 rocks and the dust, of which the earth is 
 composed, may be ten, twenty, or thirty 
 thousand years old; but what we assert is, 
 that the present collocation, disposition and 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 43 
 
 arrangement of all that is upon the surface 
 and in the subsoil of the earth, bears most 
 decisive proof that the world as it is, is not 
 older than the Mosaic record declares it to 
 be.* 
 
 To prove this, we need only refer to the 
 limited range of history. Here is a fact we 
 can all examine. We have nothing like 
 authentic history older than four thousand 
 years. ‘The Chinese have their mythology, 
 and their wild and romantic legends; but it 
 can be shown by internal evidence, that the 
 documents of the Chinese are absurd and 
 contradictory, and that instead of that nation 
 being older than the age of the antediluvian 
 patriarchs, it is not older than 2,500 or 3,000 
 years at the utmost. 
 
 Another proof of the recent collocation 
 of the earth is deduced from a consideration 
 of the progress and the expansive force 
 of population. There are millions of miles 
 upon the surface of the earth not yet 
 peopled; but if the earth had been twenty 
 thousand years or thirty thousand years old, 
 the presumption is that it would have been 
 covered with a population which it would 
 
 _ *See Buckland’s Bridgewater Treatise. 
 
44 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 be scarcely adequate to maintain. Instead 
 of that, if the earth should last other five 
 thousand years, and the ratio of population 
 should proceed as it has done, it would still 
 be abundantly adequate to accommodate , 
 and support all its children upon its surface. 
 
 In the next place, the progress of science 
 seems presumptive evidence, that the earth 
 is not above four or five thousand years old. 
 It is only within the last three hundred 
 years, that the most brilliant discoveries in 
 science have been made—that the most im- 
 portant productions in poetry, history, and 
 chronology have been brought to light, or 
 created by the master-spirits of the world in 
 which we live. 
 
 If we take these facts—the fact that we 
 have no authentic history older than three 
 or four thousand years—the fact that the 
 population of the earth has not yet’ covered 
 one-half of it—and the fact that science and 
 literature bear upon their brows the proofs 
 and demonstrations of childhood, I think the 
 presumption is overwhelming, that the earth 
 in its present collocation is not older than 
 the Mosaic record represents it to be. It is 
 contrary to reason to suppose the earth to be 
 eternal. It is rational to believe it the crea- 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 45 
 
 tion of God, and evidence, therefore, of his 
 existence. | 
 
 There is a fact that has been brought to 
 light by modern geologists, which demon- 
 strates the interposition, just as the earth 
 proves the existence, of ‘God. It has been 
 found that the ocean and the earth seem 
 (more or less) in various places to have 
 interchanged their localities ; and it has been 
 found moreover, on examining the successive 
 strata that appear in the once depths of the 
 ocean and beneath the surface of the present 
 dry land, that there are fossil remains of 
 whole races of animals that have become 
 extinct at once, and of new races of animals 
 that must have started or been called into 
 being. There are successive strata, in which 
 we shall find fossil remains of animals, to 
 which we have no successors in living crea- 
 tures at present upon the face of the earth; 
 and at the time those animals must have 
 been destroyed, new races, not one trace of 
 which is to be found in the previous strata, 
 must have started into being. Now the 
 question is, How did the new race come into 
 existence on the ruins of the old? It is clear 
 that the fossil races now found in the strata 
 of the earth were destroyed as by an instanta- 
 
46 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 neous stroke, and that the new races were 
 next and no less suddenly originated and 
 called into existence; this is perfectly ascer- 
 tained: then the question is, How did the 
 new races come into existence? In the first 
 place, naturalists admit, that no fermentation 
 or chemical process with which we are ac- 
 quainted, can originate organic and animal 
 life. In the second place, all are agreed that 
 there is no such thing as the running into 
 each other of different and distinct races of 
 animals. The mule, for instance, is the first 
 and last link of his race; he does not transmit 
 the same species. If there be no possibility 
 of life from chemical processes, if no blend- 
 ing and intermingling of races of animals, 
 then it follows that if whole races were over- 
 whelmed (the remains of which may now be 
 seen in the British Museum), and if new 
 races immediately afterwards started into 
 being, there was a fresh interposition of 
 almighty and creative power at the origina- 
 tion of a new race, and thus far a proof of a 
 God. And thus the facts that have been 
 discovered by modern geologists, and laid 
 down and expounded so perspicuously by 
 Dr. Buckland, prove in the simplest and 
 most satisfactory manner that there is a God 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 47 
 
 —a living and acting God, interposing at 
 successive periods of the world, to create and 
 originate new races of living and organized 
 beings. This proof of the existence of a 
 God alone has appeared to many most 
 decisive. 
 
 If we look at the present arrangement of 
 matter, we are constrained to confess the 
 presence of pEsign, and this would show 
 that a Designer exists. 
 
 For instance; if the stars had been placed 
 more distant from each other than they actu- 
 ally are, or if they were possessed of greater 
 density, or if they moved with greater veloc- 
 ity, there would be a jar and an interruption 
 in that glorious harmony which ancient poets 
 have noticed as the music of the spheres and 
 of the solemn heavens. Is there no design 
 or arrangement manifest in this? 
 
 If we look at the mechanism of man’s 
 body, we shall find it a perfect optimism ; that 
 is to say, nothing can be added to it, to ren- 
 der it more adapted to the sphere in which it 
 is to live, and nothing can be withdrawn 
 from it, without leaving it less fitted for the 
 uses for which it is required. If we look at 
 the five senses of man, we can see evident 
 tokens of design. In the order of the way 
 
48 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 in which he is led to his daily sustenance, 
 we see design. First of all, man looks at an 
 object; and by looking at a thing, no conta- 
 gion can pass from the object to the man; 
 after he has looked at it, and the eye has 
 pronounced it good, he then fouches it, and 
 the fingers are so formed that contagion is 
 not easily communicated through them; after 
 he has looked at it and touched it, he then 
 smells it; and after this last sense has pro- 
 nounced a favourable verdict, he then ¢astes it. 
 Thus you see, that the sense that is most re- 
 mote from risk is called into play in the first 
 instance; and the sense that is most easily 
 affected is brought into exercise when the 
 prior and less easily injured senses have all 
 been satisfied. Now I ask, if here are not 
 evident marks of design; and if of design, 
 of a living God, who so designed it ? 
 
 If it should be said, that all this, and all 
 the exquisite anatomy both of men and of 
 animals, is a fortuitous concourse of atoms, 
 and that it is by mere chance that either are 
 so constructed, then we ask—lIf it be true 
 that chance has originated all, how is that we 
 never find the presence of the blunders inci- 
 dent to chance? Do we ever find the horse 
 accidentally with wings? Do we ever find 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 49 
 
 the elephant with feathers? Do we ever 
 find the bird with four feet instead of two? 
 Do we ever find a centaur in fact as in 
 fable? Never. Yet if chance had origi- 
 nated all, there would surely have been occa- 
 sional deviations of this kind from the won- 
 derful adaptation and harmony which we 
 every where behold. In no instance do we 
 find such blunders, such proofs of fortuitous 
 concourse; in every instance all is beauti- 
 fully, skilfully, and regularly made. 
 
 If we refer to the eye of man, we shall 
 find in it one of the most beautiful proofs of 
 design one can possibly investigate. It is 
 well known, indeed, that the finest discove- 
 ries in optics are all approximations only to 
 the perfection that is already displayed in the 
 eye of man. By a power peculiar to itself, 
 the eye is at once a microscope capable of 
 examining the most minute things, and a 
 telescope capable of seeing the most distant 
 things; and this power of adaptation, by a 
 contractile and dilating energy peculiarly its 
 own, is given to no other material substance 
 in the universe. 
 
 If we examine the bones of the human 
 body, what striking proofs do they present 
 of design and o1 the existence of a God !— 
 
 5 
 
50 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 The spine, for instance, is so made, that while 
 it is the canal of life, itcan bend backward or 
 forward, and each bone will move to the right 
 or to the left upon its socket, without risk. 
 The head is so constructed that we can turn 
 it to the left or to the right, bend it forward 
 or bend it backward, almost move it round, 
 and yet the bones upon which it moves, with 
 their various joints, surrounding and encas- 
 ing a substance so delicate that to touch it 
 with a pin point would extinguish life, are so 
 strong, that they can bear three or four hun- 
 dred pounds weight. Strength, variety of use 
 and action, and elegance, are all concentrated 
 here. Can all this be the result of chance ? 
 Such chance would only be another name 
 for a wise and benevolent God. 
 
 If we examine a bird of the air, the traces 
 of design are no less obvious. The feathers 
 are most mathematically formed. Let me 
 illustrate this: a pound of iron may be 
 formed into a rod in two ways, Let us sup- 
 pose it is to be formed into a rod exactly 
 three feet in length. It may be either a solid 
 rod, or it may be a hollow cylinder, thicker, 
 though hollow, and still three feet long. Now 
 it is found by experience, that the hollow rod 
 is much stronger than the solid; this fact 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 51 
 
 enables us to combine lightness and strength. 
 Now the quill ends of the feathers of birds 
 are all made upon this principle. They 
 thus contain the maximum of strength with 
 the minimum of weight; and so admirably 
 adapted and adjusted to their purpose, that 
 none but a designing God could have made 
 them so. 
 
 Let me allude to another illustration of 
 design—the mole—a creature perhaps the 
 least known and the least examined, though 
 no creature gives more evidence of design in 
 its structure. If you examine its covering, 
 you find it has a fur, exceedingly short, but 
 so close that the dust through which it passes 
 cannot permeate it, and so dense and smooth, 
 as well as close, that the warmth which it 
 retains from flying off must be very great. 
 If you look to its head, you find a bony car- 
 tilage, evidently made for boring, and essen- 
 tial to its operations asa miner. You find 
 the eyes singularly small; so much so, that 
 the common saying is, that the mole has no 
 eyes at all, in order not to be inconvenienced 
 in its operations. It has a short and strong 
 neck, muscular and powerful fore feet. It is 
 adapted with infinite exactness to its work. 
 Now what does all this indicate? That it is 
 
52 IS.CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 unquestionably fitted and meant for subter- 
 raneous excavations—to be the miner in our 
 fields: the very creature and with the very 
 habits which all natural history ascribes to it. 
 Now I ask again, can all this be chance? 
 Can a fortuitous concourse of atoms have 
 originated such an exquisite piece of mechan- 
 ism—a creature so admirably adapted for all 
 the habits by which it was to be charac- 
 terized? Wisdom, and foresight, and design, 
 are transparent in all this. 
 
 If we refer to the tribes of the sea, we find 
 additional proofs of design. For instance, a 
 certain amount of warmth is requisite to pro- 
 duce fishes from the eggs that the parent fish 
 leaves on the ocean and on the rivers. Hence 
 we find, the fresh water fish deposits its eggs 
 at the margin of the river, where the tem- 
 perature is evidently warmest ; the salt water 
 fish deposits its eggs on the surface of the 
 ocean, where the sun’s rays most powerfully 
 act; the crocodile deposits its eggs upon the 
 warm sand, and buries them in it, in order to 
 be hatched. Now these creatures cannot 
 reason: they cannot enter into the mysteries 
 of chemistry; they cannot solve a problem 
 in mathematics ; they cannot explain the phe- 
 nomena of the material universe around 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 53 
 
 them; and yet they act with the skill and 
 foresight with which the chemist and the 
 naturalist would act, and embody in their 
 instincts all the experience and knowledge 
 attained by us during ten, twenty, or sd 
 years of study. 
 
 Let me quote another proof of design in 
 the atmosphere around us. If there had 
 been no atmosphere, man would have died 
 the very moment that he was born into the 
 world. If there had been no atmosphere, 
 there could have been no sound; the sweet 
 sounds of melody would be hushed—the 
 harmonies of music would not be, and man 
 would lose the exquisite joy that is to be 
 derived from this elegant and beautiful 
 accomplishment. If there had been no 
 atmosphere, again, there would be no per- 
 ceptible fragrance in the rose, nor sweetness 
 in the perfume of the violet; there would be 
 no possibility of escaping contagion through 
 the intimations of the sense of smell pointing 
 out its existence. Man’s sense of smell would 
 be a piece of useless apparatus, if there were 
 no air to be the vehicle of the particles, sweet 
 or otherwise, that act upon that sense. Not 
 only so, but if there were no atmosphere, 
 there could be scarcely any light. If the 
 
 5 
 
54 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 atmosphere and its refracting power were 
 utterly destroyed, we should then see the 
 sun to be a luminary possessed of tremen- 
 dous brilliancy, and pouring down his rays 
 direct upon the eyes of every one that looked 
 upon him, from a fountain focus. There - 
 would be no such thing as twilight in the 
 morning, or twilight in the evening; but the 
 brilliancy of meridian day would burst on 
 man’s eyes with dazzling and destructive 
 effect, the moment he opened them upon the 
 world. If there were no atmosphere to 
 refract and reflect the rays that come from 
 the sun, each ray of light would come with 
 such velocity that it would destroy the sight. 
 That effect is prevented only by the admirable 
 adjustment of forces with which God has in- 
 vested the sun and the atmosphere that we 
 breathe. 
 
 In consequence of the existence of the 
 atmosphere, there is a pressure upon a man’s 
 body of thousands of pounds weight; there 
 is a pressure equal to fifteen pounds weight 
 upon every square inch of the body of each 
 individual present. Now how is this to be 
 borne without the animal machine being 
 erushed to pieces? There is a previous ar- 
 rangement that there shall be small quanti- 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 55 
 
 ties of air in the internal parts of the body 
 of man, which shall withstand that pressure, 
 and make it to be unfelt and without pain. 
 Here also is proof of design. 
 
 In the next place, if we look to the compo- 
 sition of the atmosphere, we see further and 
 very striking proofs of design. The atmos- 
 phere is composed of two distinct gases, 
 called oxygen and nitrogen gas; and the 
 ratio of these is—twenty-one parts of oxygen 
 to seventy-nine parts of nitrogen. Now both 
 these gases are deleterious of themselves. 
 No man could breathe oxygen without being 
 rapidly destroyed; and no man could breathe 
 nitrogen without being instantly poisoned. 
 Moreover, if there were much more oxygen 
 in the. atmosphere than these twenty-one 
 parts to seventy-nine, the whole system of 
 man would be ina state of excitement that 
 would soon terminate in death; and if there 
 were a much greater proportion of nitrogen 
 than these seventy-nine parts, man would be 
 incapable of breathing the air. Then how is 
 it, that we find the atmosphere composed of 
 these two gases so exactly and exquisitely, 
 and so maintained, that it is just the very at- 
 mosphere made for man’s life, and man’s 
 lungs the very lungs that were made to 
 
56 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 breathe man’s atmosphere? A _ thousand 
 forces go to disturb these proportions. 
 Every creature that breathes the air ab- 
 sorbs the oxygen, and throws out at every 
 respiration nitrogen and carbonic acid gas; 
 and every fire that burns, and every lamp 
 that is lighted, consumes the oxygen and 
 gives out carbonic acid gas. How, then, 
 does it come to pass, that with fires and 
 lamps and millions of living creatures, men 
 and cattle on a thousand hills, consuming the 
 oxygen and pouring out carbonic acid gas in 
 its stead, the atmosphere in course of years 
 is not so deteriorated and vitiated that its 
 proportions are altered, and it becomes unfit 
 for man to respire? Why does not this very 
 likely result happen? The beautiful pro- 
 vision, the effect of wise design, to obviate 
 such a catastrophe, is this—whilst animals 
 absorb oxygen and give out carbonic acid 
 gas, all vegetable substances absorb carbonic 
 acid gas, and give out oxygen. And thus 
 we find the vegetable world and the animal 
 world exactly counterbalancing each other; 
 what is poison to the one, is the very nutri- 
 ment and life of the other. Can this be 
 chance? Must it not be the arrangement of 
 a wise and designing God ? 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF Gop. 57 
 
 I call your attention to another and familiar 
 proof of evident design, the home-born bee. 
 The moment that this insect comes into ex- 
 istence, in the month of April or May or 
 June (it may be), it begins to lay up a store, 
 providing for the winter. Now how does it 
 know that winter is to come? Who taught 
 the bee, that it was to provide its treasures 
 for a season when those treasures could not 
 be found? It is an instinct evidently im- 
 parted by God with this design. 
 
 It was necessary that the bee should trea- 
 sure up the greatest quantity of honey in the 
 least possible space. Now mark how this is 
 arranged. There are three bodies (and only 
 three) that can be placed close together 
 without leaving any interstices; these are 
 the perfect square, the equilateral triangle, 
 and the hexahedron, or six-sided figure. No 
 other forms can be placed together without 
 some interstices being left. And the third, 
 the hexahedron, is at once the Strongest and 
 the most capacious. Now how remarkable 
 it is, that the bee has chosen the hexahedron, 
 and that every comb in a hive of bees is that 
 which contains the greatest amount of honey 
 in the least possible space, and leaves no 
 interstices !—Kepler, the mathematician, cal- 
 
58 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 culated the angle that must be at the bottom 
 of the cell, in order to ascertain what would 
 be the best to form the base of a hexahedron 
 comb, the most capacious and most fitted for 
 juxta-position with others; and the very 
 demonstration which mathematical calcula- 
 tion proved, is exactly realized in every comb 
 we find in a bee-hive. We have therefore 
 in the bee and in the hive, and in all the ex- 
 quisite adjustments by which they are char- 
 acterized, the traces of palpable design—the 
 evidences of an existing and a wise God. 
 
 So then, if we look upward to the sky, 
 and behold the sun and moon and stars all 
 gloriously arranged and harmoniously mov- 
 ing together, we are constrained to exclaim 
 with the psalmist—“ The heavens declare the 
 glory of God, and the firmament showeth 
 His handywork.” If we look around us on 
 the earth—on its hills, its vales, its feathered, 
 its breathing, and its animated tenantry—we 
 are constrained to acknowledge that a wise, 
 an infinitely wise God must have planned 
 and originated all. If we look into the 
 ocean, which would instantly become stag- 
 nant were it not for its incessant tides—if 
 we look to the atmosphere, which would be 
 the fountain of pollution and the vehicle of 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 59 
 
 miasma, were it not for the air-currents 
 awakened by the sun—we are constrained 
 to confess, that ocean’s caves contain the 
 traces of a God, that the broad bosom of the 
 ground on which we tread bears all the traces 
 of the footsteps of a God, and that the blazing 
 sun and glorious stars, all in dumb but ex- 
 pressive eloquence, tell to us—There is a 
 God; and that God how wise, how great, 
 how good! 
 
 If, after we have looked at the exterior 
 world, and at man’s body, that microcosm of 
 wonders, we come to his mind, we shall find 
 the equal proofs of infinite wisdom and of 
 exquisite design, and therefore of aGod who 
 thus designed ; design necessarily implying a 
 designer. If man were only possessed of 
 the five senses to which we have referred, 
 but had no intellectual powers of recollection 
 and memory such as we now find, it would 
 come to pass that as long as the husband 
 beheld his wife, he would recognize her, but 
 would cease the instant she retired, to have 
 any recollection of her; and if the father had 
 nothing but his five senses, he would recognize 
 his children while they were present, but the 
 moment that distance, oceans and miles inter- 
 vened, he would wholly forget their appear- 
 
60 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 ance. But to obviate this, there is placed in 
 man’s bosom an intellectual faculty called 
 the memory, at once the most wonderful and 
 the most powerful. It can treasure in its 
 capacious cells the recollections of threescore 
 and ten, yea, of a thousand years; it can 
 bring before us at once, and with the magic 
 of a wish, paintings and persons, and scenes 
 and landscapes, which it would take a hun- 
 dred thousand square miles to contain, if 
 they were all laid down on paper before us. 
 The daguerreotype is but a faint approxima- 
 tion of this stupendous power, that can con- 
 jure up from the distance, at the moment it. 
 is desired, the scenes, the events, the persons 
 and the transactions of years and generations 
 past. We can deposit in its stupendous 
 depths countenances and landscapes, chrono- 
 logical events and facts and occurrences: 
 and they are so mysteriously laid up there, so 
 classified, that whenever we wish to make 
 use of them, we have only to will, and 
 memory pours forth spontaneously the trea- 
 sures we require, ready for the disposition 
 that we may have intended for them. We 
 may quote another faculty in man’s mind, 
 equally demonstrative of a designing, creative 
 God—Imagination. This power not only 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 61 
 
 bears the proofs of wisdom, but the traces of 
 vast benevolence. Take Scott, Milton, or 
 Shakspeare, (1 pass no judgment on their 
 writings or their character, I am speaking of 
 them as poets ;) Milton, for instance ;—shut 
 him up if you please in a gloomy cell, let the 
 light of heaven cease to reach him—let the 
 countenance of man cease to cheer him—yet 
 that great poet will irradiate his cell with intel- 
 lectual light—he will people it with ten thou- 
 sand illustrious characters—he will make in 
 it a spectacle more beauteous than land- 
 scapes, and from being a gloomy dungeon it 
 shall appear to his eye “in its fine frenzy 
 rolling’ a vast and glorious panorama. What 
 a stupendous power is this, that can give 
 delight to the prisoner in his cell—that can 
 people the gloomiest solitude with the recol- 
 lections of past and the foreshadows of future 
 years—that can originate dramatic sketches 
 and give birth to poems, as magnificent in 
 conception as they are interesting in perusal. 
 And if we examine minutely all the faculties 
 of man’s mind, we shall not only be struck 
 with the proofs of design in each faculty 
 apart, but with the evidences of benevolent 
 design and wisdom, in the admirable way in 
 which all those faculties are balanced. For 
 6 
 
62 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 instance ; it is known that the least disar- 
 rangement of the faculties of man’s mind 
 will produce a degree of mania or of mad- 
 
 ness ; if imagination be allowed to predomi- | 
 nate, it will produce hypochondriasis, and if 
 
 reason be allowed to predominate, it will pro- 
 duce excessive suspicion, doubt, perplexity, 
 difficulty ; if the exquisite harmony that sub- 
 sists in the mind of man is interfered with or 
 disturbed, madness in some or other of its 
 most hideous shapes is the natural and neces- 
 sary result. But so exquisitely balanced are 
 all these powerful faculties, that if treated 
 with ordinary care, they maintain their just 
 proportions, operate in their destined spheres, 
 and give happiness and pleasure to their pos- 
 sessor. And lastly, if we refer to that stu- 
 pendous power in man’s mind—Conscience 
 ~--we shall see not only a proof of design, 
 but of the existence of a just and holy God. 
 Judas, unable to bear the tortures of con- 
 science, went forth and committed suicide; 
 and the murderer has often been so harassed 
 by the fears and the spectres which con- 
 science has started into being, that he has 
 been fain to rush forward and proclaim his 
 guilt, and suffer the doom that justice awarded 
 him. What can this be but the echo of the 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 63 
 
 voice of God? We shall find no land and 
 no race of barbarous and uncivilized men, in 
 which the great landmarks of vice and vir- 
 tue, of righteousness and wrong doing, are 
 not more or less faintly recognised, felt, and 
 acted on. Conscience, therefore, not only 
 proclaims the existence of a God, but tells us 
 that God is a just and holy God, and that he 
 has appointed in man’s bosom, even in the 
 bosom of the guiltiest and the most depraved, 
 a monitor that even in its ruins and its degra- 
 dation will tell «of righteousness, of temper- 
 ance, and of judgment to come. 
 
 These, then, are some evidences, (and 
 others might be adduced)—or a few speci- 
 mens, rather, of the mode in which we can 
 demonstrate the existence of a God, even 
 from the open book of the world in which 
 we live, Itis therefore with exquisite beauty 
 that one of our own poets declares the plain- 
 ness and perspicuity with which nature tells 
 us of a God. Milton says— 
 
 “These are Thy glorious works, Parent of good, 
 
 Almighty! Thine this universal frame, 
 
 Thus wondrous fair. ‘Thyself how wondrous then! 
 
 Unspeakable ; who sitt’st above these heav’ns, 
 
 To us invisible or dimly seen 
 
 In these Thy lowest works; yet these declare 
 Thy goodness beyond thought, and power Divine,” 
 
§4 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 And another of our poets has said— — 
 
 “ These, as they change, Almighty Father! these 
 Are but the varied Gop, The rolling year 
 Is fult of Thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring 
 Thy beauty walks, Thy tenderness and love. 
 Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm; 
 Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles; 
 And every sense, and every heart is joy. 
 Then comes Thy glory in the Summer months, 
 With light and heat refulgent, Then thy sun 
 Shoots full perfection thro’ the swelling year ; 
 And oft Thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks ; 
 And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve, 
 By brooks and groves, in hollow-whispering gales, 
 Thy bounty shines in Autumn, unconfined, 
 And spreads a common feast for all that lives, 
 In Winter, awful Thou! with clouds and storms 
 Around Thee thrown, tempest o’er tempest roll’d, 
 Majestic darkness, on the whirlwind’s wing 
 Riding sublime, Thou bid’st the world adore, 
 And humblest nature with Thy northern blast. 
 
 Mysterious round! What skill, what force Divine 
 Deep-felt in these appear! A simple train, 
 
 Yet so delightful, mix’d with such kind art, 
 
 Such beauty and beneficence combined, 
 
 Shade unperceived so softening into shade, 
 
 And all so forming a harmonious whole, 
 
 That, as they still succeed, they ravish still, 
 
 But wandering oft, with brute unconscious gaze, 
 Man marks not Thee; marks not the mighty Hand, 
 That ever busy wheels the silent spheres, 
 
 Works in the secret deep, shoots streaming thence 
 The fair profusion that o’erspreads the Spring, 
 
altogether silent. 
 
 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 
 
 Flings from the sun direct the flaming day, 
 Feeds every creature, hurls the tempest forth, 
 And, as on earth this grateful change revolves, 
 With transport touches all the springs of life. 
 
 Should fate command me to the farthest verge 
 Of the green earth, to distant barbarous climes, 
 Rivers unknown to song, where first the sun 
 Gilds Indian mountains, or his setting beam 
 Flames on th’ Atlantic isles, ’t is nought to me; 
 Since God is ever present, ever felt, 
 
 In the void waste, as in the city full; 
 
 And where He vital breathes, there must be joy. 
 When even at last the solemn hour shall come 
 And wing my mystie flight to future worlds, 
 
 I cheerful will obey ; there, with new powers, 
 Will rising wonders sing. I cannot go 
 
 Where Universal Love smiles not around ; 
 Sustaining all yon orbs, and all their suns; 
 From seeming evil, still educing good, 
 
 And better thence again, and better still, 
 
 In infinite progression. But I lose 
 
 Myself in Him, in Light ineffable, » 
 
 Come then, expressive silence! muse His praise.” 
 
 65 
 
 Nature, however, we are constrained to 
 
 admit, proclaims the existence of a God; but 
 concerning what that God is to us, Nature. is 
 Nature tells us that there 
 
 is a God, possessed of boundless wisdom and 
 
 of vast benevolence ; but naiure’s oracles do 
 
 not announce that that God will pardon sin. 
 It gives us intimations from our conscience, 
 
 6* 
 
66 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 that He is just; it gives us intimations from 
 the mechanism of our frames, that He is infi- 
 nitely wise ; it whispers to us, from the broad 
 surface of the world we gaze on, that He is 
 a benevolent God; but conscience, while it 
 tells us that God is holy, tells us too, in the 
 tones of a despair that it cannot dissipate, 
 that man is a fallen, guilty, miserable sinner. 
 I ask philosophy, How shall God be just 
 while he justifies the ungodly? I ask of 
 physiology, with all its bright and its brilliant 
 announcements, Will God forgive me my 
 sins? J ask of astronomy, as it discloses 
 world piled on world, if amid the bright- 
 ness and glory of those stars, if amid the 
 splendour of those ten thousand lamps, it 
 has discovered that there is “a just God, 
 and yet a Saviour.” And all nature is 
 dumb. Astronomy is dumb; the mechan- 
 ism of a man’s frame is dumb, Still the 
 great proposition, that must be solved before 
 my dying pillow can be peace, remains un- 
 explicated, unreconciled, unknown. I feel 
 myself a sinner; my conscience tells me, my 
 memory tells me, my judgment tells me— 
 and you, my brethren, feed, each one within 
 himself—“I am a guilty sinner.”? I ask, 
 then, how will you bear the blaze of that in- 
 
 ea — of 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 67 
 
 effable light, in which the angels are stained 
 with folly, and the burning seraphim seem 
 touched with imperfection? I ask, «How 
 shall man be just with God?” No sweet 
 tones can come from the caves of the ocean, 
 from the mines of the earth, from the stars 
 in the firmament, from the discoveries of 
 philosophy, from propositions, from sciences ; 
 all there is dumb, hopelessly dumb. Where, 
 then, shall I find it? Go with me, reader, 
 to Him, whose dying cry is still heard, « My 
 God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken 
 Me ?”’—and after you have marked the rend- 
 ing rocks, and the mantled sun, and the 
 shrouded stars, and all nature convulsed 
 with horror at the greatness of man’s guilt 
 and the stupendousness of God’s love, then 
 hear whispered from Him who spake as 
 ‘‘never man spake,’? even from the crucified 
 Nazarene, “ Mercy and truth are in me met 
 together, righteousness and peace have kissed 
 each other.’’? Gaze into the face of nature, 
 and God is veiled in darkness, in obscurity, 
 in clouds; you cannot fully see Him. Gaze 
 upon the brow of conscience, and conscience 
 tells you that God is armed with ten thou- 
 sand terrors to destroy you. But gaze into 
 the countenance of Jesus, and He tells you, 
 
68 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 in His own thrilling and merciful tones, that 
 God “is a sust God and yet a Saviour.” 
 We discover God from nature by a process 
 of reasoning, much of which falls dull and 
 blunt upon the ordinary ear; but in the 
 countenance of Jesus we discover God by 
 testimony, which is the most impressive and 
 the most certain of all intimations. For one 
 witness to a fact is worth ten thousand syllo- 
 gisms for the independent establishment of 
 that fact. Hence in nature, God even at 
 the best is dimly and imperfectly descried. 
 But in the Gospel, the Lord of glory has 
 come forth from His bosom, the personifica- 
 tion of his love, the exemplar of His holi- 
 ness, the result of His wisdom; and on Cal- 
 vary, that sacred spot in the centre of God’s 
 universe where the epochal hour “It is 
 finished ”’ struck, God can come down to 
 me, and behold in me, sinner as I am, a 
 child, a son—“ and if a son, then an heir, an 
 heir of God, and joint heir with Christ ??— 
 and there I too can look up to God, and see 
 no longer the angry and offended Judge, but 
 recognize my Father and Christ’s Father, 
 my God and Christ’s God. When, there- 
 fore, we compare the uncertainties, clouds 
 and darkness, that brood upon God as He 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 69 
 
 is revealed in the book of nature—and when 
 we look at the plainness and the perspi- 
 cuity, with which Gop A Saviour is seen in 
 the book of revelation—are we not con- 
 strained to exclaim in the ecstasy of admira- 
 tion and of gratitude, “« Thanks be unto God 
 for His unspeakable gift,’ the Lord Jesus 
 Christ ? 
 
70 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 IS A REVELATION FROM GOD TO MAN PROBABLE 
 AND NECESSARY 
 
 TxHosE who are fully convinced of the great 
 truths of the Gospel—who have felt their 
 sanctifying power upon their hearts and their 
 peace upon their consciences, may say—such 
 discussions are not profitable to us; we want, 
 they say, living nutriment, not disquisitions 
 about the shell that contains it: 
 
 These essays are not meant for you, but 
 for others. Yet you may find some interest- 
 ing fact you have forgotten, or read some 
 illustrative truth that makes brighter, if it 
 does not make surer your faith. 
 
 But the “ body of Christ”? is made up of 
 several members, to each of whom a portion 
 must be given; and readers, like congrega- 
 tions, are composed of several sorts of indi- 
 viduals; and those therefore who are ad- 
 vanced in the Christian life must not grudge 
 if we try to meet those who are not advanced 
 (or probably opposed) on first principles, and 
 
REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 71 
 
 lead them step by step to this most important 
 conclusion—that the Bible has God for its 
 Author, truth without any admixture of 
 error for its matter, and salvation for its end. 
 If I were the means of reclaiming one infidel 
 to the knowledge and enjoyment of the Gos- 
 pel, or of strengthening the convictions of one 
 wavering mind, it would be worth while to 
 spend and be spent in pursuit of even such a 
 prize. I may not be the means of convincing 
 some of what they are already fully con- 
 vinced of; but this little work may be the 
 means of their being able to meet the sceptic, 
 and of their convincing him that our faith is 
 no unreasonable or improbable or extrava- 
 gant assumption. We live in times too 
 when such knowledge is absolutely necessa- 
 ry. Assertion, however eloquent or influen- 
 tial the asserter may be, is no longer regarded 
 as evidence—we must be able every one, 
 and they that labour among others specially, 
 to give to him that asketh them a reason of 
 the hope that is in them. Now are you sure, 
 reader, that you are able to give a reason, 
 that will satisfy, not a Christian, but a scep- 
 tic, that your faith has no frail foundation? 
 That writing cannot be utterly destitute of 
 good, which impresses upon our minds sub- 
 
72 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 stantial reasons for the faith that is in us, and 
 enables us, when cast unhappily and in the 
 course of this world’s business into the fel- 
 lowship of the unbelieving, to convince them 
 that we have not believed cunningly devised 
 fables. 
 + On the subject, however, of a Divine reve- 
 lation, our immediate topic, I will proceed, 
 first, to show that there is nothing tincon- 
 sistent with analogy and our experience in 
 the fact of a revelation; and secondly, that 
 there was great need for such a revelation. 
 It may here, however, be proper to remark 
 that by such revelation we mean pure, unde- 
 filed and scriptural religion. Many have 
 seen and rejected grievous corruptions bear- 
 ing the name of Christianity. They have 
 seen Christianity, not in its pure and unadul- 
 terated glories, but in some form in which 
 man has shaped it, or fresh from some of the 
 moulds in which superstition has cast it. 
 To reject Christianity in one of these, the 
 form of Roman Catholicism for instance, 
 indicates to my mind a greater degree of 
 attachment to truth and a nobler intellect, 
 than to embrace it. In that system, inqui- 
 sitions stained with blood, liberty perishing 
 in prison cells, literature pining away in 
 
REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 73 
 
 cloisters, and female chastity and loveliness 
 injured and destroyed in the abominable 
 nurseries of convents and of nunneries, are 
 proofs of the absence not of the presence of 
 Christianity. These are not the fruits, and 
 this system is not the product of the Gospel 
 of Jesus. For the infidel to say, «I reject 
 such a system,” is really to show that the 
 fall has left within him remnants of moral 
 sentiment not utterly extinguished, or oblite- 
 rated. I was once told, by a French Pastor, 
 that he himself had witnessed a statue of our 
 Lord in France decked out in the robes of a 
 Jesuit; on seeing which a Protestant minis- 
 ter most appropriately wrote below on the 
 pedestal—« Thus have they clothed Thee, 
 my Saviour, lest any one should love Thee.” 
 This is just the type of Christianity in the 
 form of Popery. Thus have priests and 
 popes contaminated and dismantled thee, O 
 blessed Gospel, lest any one should believe 
 and love and cherish thee. 
 
 Christianity is not_a Church, a sect, or a 
 shibboleth. It is the truth fresh from the 
 fountain of truth—the word of God sound- 
 ing forth from His own eternal oracles. 
 Churches, like earthen vessels, are frail and 
 liable to decay. Christianity, the revelation 
 
 7 
 
74 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 of Jesus Christ, endures for ever; forms are 
 mutable as the clouds; great truths are eter- 
 nal as the stars. The religion I attempt to 
 prove to be from God is the religion of the 
 New Testament, and that alone—not carved 
 into creeds, but pure and perfect as God has 
 created it. This alone is Christianity. 
 
 But I must here observe, that the infidel 
 meets us with a preliminary objection. A 
 revelation from God, he alleges, is contrary 
 to all experience and analogies. This is his 
 first objection; and some will not listen to 
 any other argument, until we convince them 
 that a revelation from God to man is not 
 contrary to experience and analogy. 
 
 A revelation is not contrary to experience. 
 For how was the first man instructed? He 
 must have come forth from the hands of his 
 Maker, perfectly able to discourse of flowers 
 and fruits and minerals and stars. Where 
 got he language? “Where got he names for 
 the animal creation? Where got he instruc- 
 tion and experience? God taught him. If 
 he had not been taught, the first evening that 
 the sun set he would have believed that the 
 whole world was come toanend. He would, 
 otherwise, have perished from inexperience. 
 It isa plain matter of fact—that God did at 
 
 a 
 
 - . 
 >. tt. =  —— oo ae 
 
REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 75 
 
 first teach man, and thus gave a revelation to 
 man. Whether it be admitted or decided 
 that the Mosaic record is true, there must 
 have been a commencement to the successive 
 links of humanity. The first man must 
 have been taught, and if the Mosaic record 
 be, as we believe, a true history, Adam was 
 instructed of God and created perfect in 
 knowledge, as well as perfect in all his 
 powers. 
 
 But apart from the Mosaic record, must 
 we not be satisfied that there are in man’s 
 mind and knowledge elements which must 
 have been instilled at the first? Who com- 
 municated them? Who gave man his first 
 lesson? Must not language have been taught 
 to man from heaven? It was alleged by 
 some sceptics, that if you placed man in a 
 savage wilderness he would instinctively 
 know how to express himself in words; 
 but the experiment was once made, and it 
 was found that he grew up dumb. An en- 
 thusiast, who went as far in the opposite 
 direction, expressed his belief that if you 
 were to isolate a man in a wilderness, he 
 would be found to express himself in He- 
 brew. The experiment was made and he 
 grew up dumb. Who taught man then? 
 
76 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 Perhaps you will say his fathers, and they 
 were taught by their forefathers. But who 
 taught them? There must have been a time 
 when the first man was taught. Surely 
 God must have taught him. 
 
 There is then, we allege, every probability 
 that God has given or will give a revelation 
 of His will. Can we believe that the God of 
 nature is good, benevolent, and merciful, and 
 yet that He will leave millions and millions 
 more of the family He fashioned to grope in 
 “darkness that may be felt?”? Is it at all 
 probable, that God would continue to leave 
 His dependent progeny to grope in thick 
 darkness, without sending one solitary ray 
 from the inaccessible light in which He lives, 
 to lead the ignorant to the knowledge of their 
 duty, their destiny, and their God? I say, 
 the surprise should not be that God has given 
 a revelation; the matter of surprise would 
 be, if He had not. And therefore instead 
 of it being improbable that He should give a 
 revelation, we ought to hold it to be ex- 
 tremely improbable that He should have left 
 mankind without one particle of light direct 
 as to their future destiny, hopes, and inheri- 
 tance. 
 
 All presumptions are in favour of the exist- 
 
REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 77 
 
 ence of a communication from Ged. Shall 
 the earthly father rarely fail to communicate 
 with his offspring, and will our Heavenly 
 Father leave His without a dim light and 
 audible voice—a suflicient directory amid the 
 darkness of sin—the din of conflict—and the 
 perplexities of the world ? 
 
 But such a revelation of God’s will is not 
 contrary but according to our experience of 
 nature, 
 
 The child is taught by its father; the 
 scholar is taught by his tutor; and the nez- 
 perienced is taught by the experienced. Now 
 what is a revelation but just the extension of 
 this plan, just the addition of another link? 
 If the young be taught by the aged, the 
 Stripling by the patriarch, the inexperienced 
 by the experienced, we have only to add 
 another link to the chain, and we come to 
 the natural presumption that the world may 
 be or has been taught by its Creator, the 
 human family by its Almighty Father. A 
 revelation, therefore, so far from being con- 
 trary to our experience or to the analogy of 
 nature, is positively in full and perfect ac- 
 cordance with all that we see and find in 
 the world around us. It is, in other words, 
 
 but the addition of another link to what we 
 1 
 
78 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 see to be the evident chain, along and through 
 which knowledge travels, What is the nine- 
 teenth century, but the product of the 
 eighteenth ? and what was the eighteenth, 
 but the product of the seventeenth ? and what 
 is all history, but the grey-haired fathers of 
 the past teaching the children of the present ? 
 and what is that present, but the inex- 
 perienced of to-day learning from their pre- 
 decessors the experience of yesterday ? And 
 what finally is revelation, but the great and 
 good Father bending the heavens and coming 
 down and teaching His large family what He 
 is and what they are? And if we wish to 
 behold revelation personified in its most 
 lovely form, we shall see it presented upon 
 that occasion when Jesus knelt upon a hill- 
 side in the midst of Palestine, with the 
 twelve disciples kneeling around Him, and 
 as their spokesman and their leader, said, 
 ‘Our Father, which art in heaven.”? It was 
 the loveliest picture that ever was presented ; 
 ‘a Raphael and a Poussin would fail to con- 
 vey by their expressive pencils the loveliness 
 of that picture—the great God of heaven 
 and of earth kneeling on the side of the bleak 
 mountain He had made, and teaching His 
 
 re 
 
REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 79 
 
 apostles gathered around Him, to pray, “Our 
 Father, which art in heaven ?” 
 
 In the next place, what is the nature of 
 the instruction that we derive, one from 
 another? Is it not of an experimental and a 
 moral kind? In other words, when we see 
 the patriarch or the aged individual teaching 
 the group that is around him, what is the 
 nature of his teaching? He is teaching them 
 all the dangers and the difficulties through 
 which he has come; he is telling them how 
 to withstand this peril, how to overcome 
 that trial, how to meet this emergency, how 
 to unravel that perplexity. In other words, 
 his instruction is moral and directive; he 
 teaches from the past how they are to com- 
 port themselves throughout the future. Is it 
 not kindred lessons when God teaches in 
 revelation how we are to meet the difficul- 
 ties, to overcome the trials, to vanquish the 
 foes, and to inherit the glory and the happi- 
 ness which lie before us? 
 
 Revelation, then, instead of being contréry | 
 
 to analogy and experience, is in full harmony 
 with all experience and analogy. 
 
 But a revelation was not only probable, 
 
 but it was absolutely demanded by the state 
 of the world previous to the advent of Christ. 
 
80 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 I might show that there_are wants in 
 ‘man’s heart, which all the philosophy | of a 
 Plato cannot satisfy ; and feelings a and per- 
 ~plexities in man’s moral constitution, which 
 _ “the prescriptions of moralists cannot meet. ob 
 ight show, that there is a consciousness of 
 sin, and a dread of punishment arising from 
 “it, which cannot be stilled unless by what is 
 Gaui in the oracles of God. But_I for- 
 bear; I will quote only facts. I will show, 
 first; from a view of the state of the ancient 
 heathen, secondly, of the modern heathen, 
 
 a and dastly, of infidels themselves, that a 
 
 ~~ revelation from God was absolutely necessary 
 _ to save the earth from utter corruption. Left 
 to itself, the population of the globe would 
 have perished from its face, some by the 
 hands of their enemies, others by their own. 
 Creation sent up its deepest groans after its 
 Creator. The human family unconsciously 
 cried aloud for a word of truth and peace 
 from Him that made them. Deplorable in- 
 deed were the views entertained of the 
 character of God in ancient heathen times. 
 By one party of heathen philosophers, God 
 was regarded merely as a great first Cause ; 
 in other words, as the first wheel in a series 
 of wheels, and not different from the rest of 
 
REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 8] 
 
 the links that succeeded Him. Others of the 
 heathen held that there was no God, but a 
 kind of fatalism pervading heaven and earth, 
 which necessitated fixed results, but that 
 there was no_ superintending intelligent 
 power. Another portion, the Epicureans, 
 held that God was a Being wrapt in selfish- 
 ness and self-complacency, and perfectly re- 
 gardless of all that was doing in the world 
 or transpiring amongst mankind. Another 
 portion held that there was a multiplicity of 
 gods—thousands, and thousands more, super- 
 intending the world; and in Athens, such 
 was the rage for gods, that the remark was 
 made, that it was “more easy to find a god 
 than a man;”’ and such was their rage for 
 idol gods, that at last, when that most expres- 
 sive language was exhausted and they could 
 find no more names for invented deities, they 
 raised an altar rw dyvword Oc, “to the un-) 
 known God,” the undeseribed ged. Some of 
 the gods which the heathen worshipped* 
 were among the greatest monsters that ever 
 walked the earth. Mereury was a thief; 
 and because he was an expert thief, he was 
 enrolled among the gods. Bacehus was a 
 mere sensualist and drunkard; and therefore 
 he was enrolled among the gods. Venus 
 
82 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 
 
 was a dissipated and abandoned courtezan; 
 » and therefore she was enrolled among the 
 goddesses. Mars was a savage, that gloried 
 in battle and in blood; and therefore he was 
 deified and enrolled among the gods. In 
 short, there is not one lust that nestles in the 
 human heart, nor one vice that deforms and 
 depraves human conduct, which was not 
 positively deified, and which did not more or 
 less characterize one of the gods in the Pan- 
 _ theon of antiquity. 
 
 Now if it be said, « Ah! but that was in 
 an age not enlightened as the nineteenth cen- 
 tury is’—lI answer, Are you aware that the 
 very country in which there were such gods 
 is the country in which, and in those very 
 days, were such men as a Homer, a Sopho- 
 cles, a Hesiod, a Euripides, a Plato, a Socra- 
 tes, a Theocritus—the most distinguished 
 philosophers and poets who ever adorned 
 the history of mankind? Are you aware, 
 that the gods I have here described were 
 worshipped in the very country where 
 Homer lived and Plato taught—in the very 
 land too, where the harp of Virgil resownded 
 its Meonian strains, and Cicero pleaded for 
 the liberties and the rights of mankind—in 
 the very country that gave birth to paintings 
 
 2 | De eM me: 
 
 ee ee eee ee ee ee 
 
 Y marta 
 
REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 83 
 
 which modern art cannot approach, and that 
 produced statues which are still the master- 
 pieces of the world? 
 
 But if we refer to modern heathens, we 
 find the very same, if not a worse theology. 
 If we turn to the Hindoos, we find they have 
 not less than three hundred and thirty mil- 
 lions of gods; if to the Chinese, they have 
 gods in every house and in every grove; and 
 the missionary traveller Gutglaff states, that ~ 
 he saw upon sign-boards in China,—* Gods 
 made and repaired in this house,’?—than > 
 which surely there cannot be a more de- 
 grading and horrible evidence of the fearful 
 idolatry and the wretched theology of that 
 empire. In some parts of those eastern 
 countries, they worship snakes and serpents 
 and lizards and crocodiles, and even produc- 
 tions of the vegetable kingdom; and such is 
 their superstition, that they pray by wind- 
 mills,and suppose that if the prayer is placed 
 in the sail of the mill, and turned round by 
 the wind, that prayer rises with singular 
 acceptance to God. But if again you say— 
 « This must be among a barbarous race ’’—I 
 answer, Not at all. The Hindoos are, in 
 mathematical science, among the most ac- 
 complished people in the world. They are 
 
84 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
  - supposed to be the first inventors of the 
 
 highest branch of it—the differential calcu- 
 lus. The discovery of the mariner’s compass 
 and of gunposvder are clearly and plainly 
 
 Attributable to the Chinese. Moreover the 
 ‘Hindoos have all the English literature; they 
 
 have our Shakspeare, and our Milton, and 
 
 \our Addison, and our Johnson, all translated 
 
 into Hindostanee—and even Hume’s Infidel 
 Essays; all of which they read with great 
 interest, and even with great admiration. 
 They are not like the people of Tahiti or the 
 South Sea Islands—a barbarous and uncivil- 
 ized race; but a scientific and enlightened 
 people. And yet such is the theology that 
 flourishes under the wing of high intellectual 
 knowledge! 
 
 _What now are the views of God enter-_ 
 
 " tained by modern infidels ? And let me 
 
 preface my remarks here, by stating that 
 whatever clear notions they have of God, 
 they have stolen from the Bible, labelling 
 their plagiarisms with the light of nature, 
 whilst in their wickedness they deny the 
 source from which they took them. But 
 we will take their own definitions. Lord 
 Bolingbroke says that power and wisdom 
 are the only attributes of God, and that a 
 
REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 85 
 
 superintending providence is an absurdity 
 too great to be imagined. David Hume 
 declares that it is unreasonable to believe in 
 a wise and a good God, and that the notion 
 of future rewards and punishments is a mere 
 piece of priestcraft. Hobbes said that vice 
 and virtue, Creator and creature, were all 
 terms invented by man, but not founded in 
 reality. If we pass from our own country- 
 men to French infidels, Voltaire, D? Alembert, 
 Mirabeau, and Diderot—they all deéclaré’that 
 thereis© ho God, that there is no responsi- 
 bility, that there are no rewards and no 
 punishments in the world to come. 
 
 Such are the views entertained respecting 
 uod, by the most enlightened and advanced 
 nations of antiquity—such the views of the 
 most intelligent among modern heathen na- 
 tions—and such the notions of three or four 
 of the leading infidels and sceptics of recent 
 times. They are all equally wretched be- 
 yond utterance. Take them all, and place 
 them, the best of them, beside the «I am 
 
 THAT I am” of the illiterate Jews. Listen, ' 
 after any or all of them, to the words, “ The * 
 
 Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, 
 long-suffering and abundant in goodness and 
 
 truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving 
 § 
 
 Ke 
 af ee 
 
86 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 iniquity and transgression and sin ;”’ and say 
 which is from above. 
 
 Having thus looked at the notions enter-_ 
 tained of God, we would next briefly review 
 the notions of morality entertained among 
 ~ the three classes referred to; first the views _ 
 of ancient heathens, next of modern heathens, 
 “and lastly of infidels. ‘ 
 
 One proof of the wretched views enter- 
 tained of morality among the ancient heathen, 
 is the notions they had of the nature of the 
 gods. I have stated that Mercury was a 
 thief, Bacchus a drunkard, and Jupiter a li- 
 centious and blood-thirsty sensualist. These 
 gods were all the creations of the people, and 
 the exponents of their highest belief. Now 
 if the heathen made gods of such characters, 
 this alone will show that their morality must 
 have been of a correspondingly wretched na- 
 ture. Again; cruelty was practised among 
 the ancients to an extent of which we have 
 no modern instances. The ancient Cartha- 
 ginians were in the habit of sacrificing chil- 
 dren to their gods. The ancient Germans 
 and Britons sacrificed human beings. The 
 ancient Egyptians offered up yearly so many 
 boys and girls to the Nile. The rites of 
 Moloch were sanguinary beyond expression. 
 
REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 87 
 
 Achilles, as related in Homer, immolated 
 twelve Trojans. Sons and daughters were 
 offered in sacrifice in the public markets, and 
 their parents accustomed to preside, and the 
 wretched Helots were occasionally destroyed 
 by thousands, in order to arrest the increase 
 of the slave population. A creditor, in an- 
 cient times, could seize a debtor after so 
 many days and sell him as a slave, or cut his 
 body in pieces and send it to his wife and 
 children. A father had the power of life and 
 death over his children. Need I refer to the 
 gladiatorial games, in which man fought 
 with man, or men with wild beasts, while 
 the ladies of the empire, the female aristocra- 
 cy, gazed upon man plunging the sword in 
 the breast of man, and then celebrated a feast 
 in honour of the conqueror on the field 
 whereon systematized murder had been com- 
 mitted? Who is ignorant also of the fact 
 that deformed children were legally de- 
 stroyed? If we look to the nature of their 
 worship of the ancient gods, we find that 
 murder and homicide were rites of peculiar 
 propitiatory value and of frequent practice. 
 Cruelty was canonized. Lust was holy. In 
 the temple of Venus a thousand prostitutes 
 were the priestesses, and the accepted wor- 
 
88 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 ship accordingly; in the temple of Bacchus, 
 sensualists and drunkards were believed to 
 be peculiarly welcome to that god. Need I 
 quote as proofs of the debasing immorality 
 of ancient heathenism, the Aphrodisia, the 
 ‘Ludi Floriales, and the Lupercalia? Crimes 
 not fit to be mentioned were common. 
 These were the scenes of profligacy and sen- 
 suality, and they disappeared or ceased to be 
 celebrated in open day only before the light 
 of Christianity. If we examine any or all 
 of their religious rites and practices, we shall 
 find that a foul and degrading immorality 
 was their universal characteristic, with scarce- 
 ly one ray of light or purity to alleviate the 
 gloom. I might also mention the treatment 
 of the female character in ancient nations. 
 Woman at the best was but a slave in an- 
 cient, Greece; she was no more than a slave 
 in imperial Rome. The laws of divorce 
 were such as would have gratified the most 
 devoted follower of Owen, or Socialist of the 
 present day. Ifa husband through passion 
 or caprice chose to divorce his wife, it could 
 be instantly done. She was regarded, not 
 as his companion and his equal, but his 
 slave. What is it, then, that has raised 
 woman to that just and lofty position, which 
 
REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 89 
 
 she now occupies in Christian lands? It is 
 the Gospel. And nothing has so much sur- 
 
 prised and startled me, as to hear of females » 
 
 listening to the miserable sophistry of the 
 lectures of the Socialist and Owenite schools. 
 They little know the debt of gratitude they 
 owe to the Gospel: they little know that it 
 is Christianity that has asserted for them the 
 right of being the equals and companions of 
 the rougher and the ruder sex. But in 
 ancient times there was no such equality. 
 It is also known, such was the state of female 
 education, that a learned lady was synony- 
 
 - 
 
 mous with a dissipated woman; a Corinthian, . 
 
 a female inhabitant of Corinth, was a name 
 that corresponded with courtezan. Aspasia, 
 the admired and caressed of philosophers, 
 would not now be admitted into decent so- 
 ciety. The great philosophers of Greece, 
 even those who rose highest in searching 
 after the knowledge of God, were most of 
 them gross sensualists. Such it is known 
 was Socrates, and such was Plato; even 
 those who taught a proud and vaunfing phi- 
 losophy on the banks of the Ilyssus and amid 
 the groves of Academus, were in their pri- 
 vate conduct licentious debauchees. | 
 Let us look next at_modern heathens, and 
 8* 
 
90 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 _we shall find proofs of the prevalence of a 
 _yet more miserable morality. Belzeni states 
 that the modern inhabitants of Gournoo live 
 in the tombs, the Tibboos live in caves, and 
 the Bornoos have no proper names. The 
 Caraibs are still cannibals. These enjoy the 
 light of nature. What has made us to dif- 
 fer? Can there be any doubt? In China 
 woman is a most degraded and miserable 
 being. Female infants are repeatedly destroy- 
 ed. Gutzlaff states in his journal, that in 
 walking the streets of Pekin he saw an in- 
 fant cast into a stream and just on the verge 
 of being drowned ; as there were five or six 
 individuals standing by, he asked them why 
 they suffered it to perish. “It is only a 
 female,’’? was their answer. From a calcu- 
 lation I have seen, I find that in Pekin alone 
 there’ are twenty-four female suicides every 
 day. The female character sickens at its op- 
 pression : “ the iron has entered their souls,?? 
 and taught them that life is but one scene of 
 torture and of shame, and anxious to escape 
 it, they are notorious for suicide. It is well 
 known, that among the Hindoos, up to a 
 very recent period (and the practice is only 
 now put a stop to in a measure by the ener- 
 getic efforts of the British Government) the 
 
REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY, 91 
 
 moment the husband dies, the widow must 
 lie down upon the funeral pyre, and be con-, 
 sumed to ashes with the dead body of her 
 husband. In Bengal alone fifteen thousand 
 widows were computed to have been burnt’ 
 every year, because their husbands had died. 
 This then, is the respect in which the female 
 sex is held in those countries where Chris- 
 tianity is unknown. Infanticide, especially 
 female infanticide, is so notorious in Hindos- 
 tan, as to be subject of remark in almost 
 every book that treats of the Hindoo charac- 
 ter. Mothers seem even in this to indicate 
 the unextinguished nobleness of their nature, 
 which a wretched superstition would try to 
 crush; rather than see their daughters treat- 
 ed in the way in which they will be in after 
 life, they are glad to throw them into the 
 nearest river to put an end to their wretched 
 existence. This is heathenism; this is 
 science-cultivating heathenism. Among the 
 modern Hindoos, lying, as testified by Sir 
 John Shore, Governor-general of Bengal, 
 and by many others, is almost reckoned a vir- 
 tue; a lie, which a Christian Sunday scholar 
 repudiates asa disgrace and ashame, is there 
 almost a virtue and an excellency: and, 
 though denied by some, it is too clearly 
 
92 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 proved to admit of dispute. In India there 
 is a class called Thugs, who fancy they shall 
 get an addition to their happiness hereafter 
 for every human being they murder ; so that 
 murder is not only their trade, but is actually 
 part and parcel of their daily worship. 
 
 _ And now what is the character of modern . 
 infidel morality ? Ancient and modern hea-_ 
 _then ethics are alike; let us see what_is the _ 
 morality of those men, who treat. with such_ 
 _ supercilious contempt the system of the Gos- _ 
 _pel, and profess to be in possession of a purer 
 and higher faith, 
 
 Let us take, for instance, infidelity upon a 
 large scale; let us go back to the year 1793. 
 In France at that day, Christianity was de- 
 throned ; the light of the Gospel, as far as the 
 outward exhibition and acknowledgment of 
 it were concerned, was almost quenched. The 
 followers of infidelity had complete ascend- 
 ency. The National Convention declared 
 that the creed of France was—« No God ;’’) 
 and they stood upon the graves of holy mar- 
 tyrs, and wrote “ Death an eternal sleep ;’’ 
 but with the marvellous inconsistency of poor 
 miserable man, as if they felt they could not 
 do without a God, they placed a harlot upon 
 the chief altar of France and worshipped her 
 
REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY, 93 
 
 as “ The goddess of reason ;’’ and yet these, 
 
 the harlot-worshippers, are the men, that de- . 
 
 Spise the attributes of God as revealed in 
 the Gospel of his Son. Robespierre, over- 
 whelmed by the growing disorganization, at 
 Jength admitted that it was impossible society 
 could hold together without a God, and that 
 it would be necessary to invent one. Lord 
 Herbert declares, that lust and passion are no 
 
 more blameworthy than thirst or hunger. ° 
 
 Hobbes, the celebrated infidel, maintained 
 that right and wrong are mere quibbles of 
 man’s imagination, and that there is no real 
 distinction between them. Lord Bolingbroke 
 asserted, that the chief end of man ‘was to 
 
 gratify his lusts and passions, that he was so. 
 
 made, and when he gratified these he got his 
 greatest happiness. Hume declared that 
 self-denial and humility were positive vices, 
 and that adultery rather elevated than degra- 
 ded the human character. Rousseau taught, 
 that whatever man feels, is righty Paine, the 
 gross blasphemer, died in drunkenness, Vol- 
 
 (taire advocated the very depths of the lowest : 
 
 possible sensuality. The morals of Blount 
 
 were execrable. Yet these are paragons of | 
 
 sceptical excellence. These are the exam- 
 ples, that are to be substituted (“ wonder, O 
 
 AM’. 
 
 + 
 
 Be 
 
f\ wh 
 
 +h 
 
 94 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 heavens! and be astonished, O earth !”’) for 
 the example of the meek and lowly Jesus. 
 These are the patterns we are to follow, for 
 which we are to part with Christianity : 
 these are the principles we are to imbibe at 
 the risk of being branded as bigots if we re- 
 ject them. What a contrast are they to those 
 glorious principles revealed in the sacred 
 page; that ennoble whilst they save and 
 cheer, whilst they sanctify the souls of the 
 sons of men. 
 
 I have thus touched upon the subject in 
 two points of view. I need not state, that 
 
 { almost all these sceptics were men of gross 
 
 and licentious lives. The only exception (if 
 it be one, but it has been disputed, and dis- 
 ane Puted with great probability)—the only ex- 
 
 ¢ ception is perhaps David Hume; the bulk of 
 ~ it _them were men of immoral and licentious 
 
 lives. 
 
 We have one striking exhibition of an in- 
 fidel’s brightest thoughts, in some lines writ- 
 ten in his dying moments by a man, gifted 
 with great genius, capable of prodigious in- 
 tellectual prowess, but of worthless principle, 
 and yet more worthless practice—I mean 
 the celebrated Lord Byron. He says— 
 
 1% 
 
REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 95 
 \ 
 
 Wa ‘“ Though gay companions o’er the bowl 
 
 bh 
 
 Dispel awhile the sense of ill, 
 Though pleasure fills the maddening. soul, 
 
 _The heart—the heart is lonely still, 
 
 “ Aye, but to die, and go, alas! 
 Where all have gone, and all must go; 
 To be the Nothing that I was, 
 
 Ere born to life and living woe! 
 
 ‘Count o’er the joys thine hours have seen, 
 Count o’er thy days from anguish free ; 
 And know, whatever thou hast been, 
 
 "Tis something better not to be, 
 
 “Nay, for myself, so dark my fate 
 ‘Througl every turn of life hath been, 
 Manand the world so much Thate, 
 mu care-not, when I quit the scene.” 
 
 Is this the fruit of infidelity ? Is this alla 
 _dying infidel’s rest and hope? Contrast it 
 
 with, the language of St. Paul—<I have 
 
 fought a good fight, I have finished my 
 course, I have kept the faith; henceforth 
 there is laid up for me a crown of righteous- 
 ness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, 
 shall give me at that day.’”’ How great the 
 contrast. This last is worthy of man; this 
 requiem ennobles even dying man; this looks 
 like the creed of veracity, of virtue, and of 
 God, 
 
 How did most of all these sceptics_ die? 
 
 “f 
 
96 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 ‘The facts are on record. Who has not read 
 the account of the death of Voltaire; who ad- 
 mitted the excellence of the religion he ridi- 
 culed, than which nothing can be more pain- 
 ful, and yet nothing else could be expected 
 from the creed in which he was educated. It 
 is said—“ During a long life he was con- 
 tinually insulting the Scriptures and dissemi- 
 nating moral poison. In his last illness he 
 sent for Dr. Tronchin, who, when he came, 
 found him in the greatest agonies, exclaiming 
 with the utmost horror, «IJ am abandoned by_ 
 God and _man.’”’ This is the man who ap- 
 plied the epithet, “'The wretch,” to our 
 blessed Lord, and the motto appénded.to all 
 his writings was “Crush the wretch.”? We 
 now hear what that man’s-death-bed was. 
 “He then said, «Oh !. doctor, I will give you, 
 half of what I am worth if you will give me_ 
 six months’ life.’. The doctor answered, ¢ Sir, 
 you cannot live six weeks.’ Voltaire replied, 
 ‘Then I shall go to hell.”?? Now I will 
 read you also the account of his death-bed 
 given ‘by Abbé Baruel. «In his last illness 
 he sent for Diderot, D’Alembert, and others 
 of his infidel companions, but they witnessed 
 only their own shame. Often he would curse 
 these men, and say—‘ Retire; it is you that. 
 
" REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 97 
 
 have brought me to my present state.. I could 
 have done without you all, but you could 
 not exist without me.’ They could hear him, 
 the prey of anguish and dread, alternately 
 
 _Supplicating and blaspheming God; and in 
 
 plaintive tones he would cry out, «O Jesus 
 _Christ !’—-and complain that ‘he was aban- 
 _doned by God and man.’”? And to crown 
 all, this hoary infidel, this boaster against 
 man and blasphemer of God, sent for a Ro- 
 
 man Catholic priest, the Abbé Gualtier, to 
 
 give him the sacrament!! Dr. Tronchin said, 
 that the furies of Orestes could give but a 
 faint idea of the state and conscience of Vol- 
 
 ~ .taire: 
 irabeaudied calling out, “« Give me mere 
 _laudanum, that I may not ae of eternity | 
 
 _and of what is to come.” W the vulgar 
 ‘infidel, died drunk and pr The atheist 
 
 ‘Hobbes said in his last hours, “I am now’ 
 
 about to take a leap in the dark.’ ‘The 
 
 “philosophic David Hume, who had the utmost 
 moral fortitude, : and the most of intellect and 
 
 the least of feeling, died jesting about the 
 
 boat of Charon, the fabled ferryman, and , 
 
 passing the river Styx. It is matter of record, 
 
 that Rousseau, a notorious debauchee, died 
 
 saying, “OQ God, I give Thee my soul pure 
 9 
 
 Cu 
 > 
 eet 
 
ay * , 
 
 98 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? ft 
 
 and untainted as it came from Thy hands.’’ g 
 
 . Rougseau was Protestant, Papist, Jansenist, — 
 by turns. He lived in concubinage and 
 adultery by turns, and consigned his illegiti- 
 
 mate children to the Foundling Hospital. 
 
 Behold, then, upon the one hand, the life 
 and the death of the most noted infidels of 
 modern times; and behold, upon the other 
 hand, to take another Scripture example, the 
 
 death of the martyr Stephen. Behold the | 
 » dying sceptic asking for opium to extinguish 
 sense and feeling and judgment—hear the 
 
 blaspheming and the cursing of one, the : 
 
 despair and cries for a few more minutes of | 
 
 existence that start from the lips of another; | 
 
 and, then listen to the dying accents of the 4 
 Christian martyr, while heaven burst upon : 
 his vision, “ Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ 
 I ask, Which is the death of the righteous? 
 which creed has power? which seems more 
 worthy of God ?—and I feel each that reads 
 will say, “ Let me die the death of the Chris- 
 
 . tian, and let my last end be like his.” 
 
 J ask now, after reading these facts, if there 
 isnot now made out a necessity for God some- 
 how and somewhere to interpose and speak, 
 in order that men may hear. The state of 
 ancient heathen theology shows there was a 
 
 4 
 
? 
 
 ha 
 
 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 99 
 
 strong necessity for a revelation ; the state of 
 modern heathen theology shows it; the best 
 views of infidels show it; the morality of all 
 of them, their life and their death, prove 
 man’s deep necessity of a revelation, to teach 
 him to live holy and to die happy. We 
 maintain that such a revelation has been 
 given, and is contained in this sacred volume. 
 To see what sin has made man, ard where 
 nature helplessly leaves him, read the first 
 chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. To 
 see what the Gospel makes man, to what 
 pitch of glory and excellence it exalts him, 
 read the eighth chapter of that same epistle. 
 
 Let me urge one point in conclusion—the 
 comparative condition of the Jews and the 
 
 Greeks. Here are the Jews, who never pro-. 
 
 duced a Homer in poetry, nor a Praxiteles 
 
 in statuary, nor an Apelles in painting; neither. 
 painter, nor pget, nor philosopher, worthy to. 
 live through future ages; an illiterate and un-\ 
 scientific nation. Here, on the other hand, are 
 
 the Greeks—the most enlightened, the most 
 cultivated, the most learned of nations. Among 
 the illiterate Jews we find so sublime a view 
 and knowledge of God, that all man’s efforts 
 cannot add to it; but among the Greeks we 
 find such wretched notions of God, that lan- 
 
 ") 
 
¥i 
 
 100 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 
 
 guage cannot depict the degradation of them. 
 
 Now I ask, how happens it that in the nation — 
 
 most distinguished for science there was the 
 most low and degrading theology, and in the 
 nation signalized by a total want of literature, 
 there was a simple, and sublime, and elevat- 
 ing theology? The answer is obvious. In 
 Greece, you have the result of man’s grop- 
 ing after God, man’s unaided discoveries 
 concerning God; in Judea, you have God’s 
 teaching and revelation of Himself—a proof 
 so plain that “« he who runs may read.” 
 
 The Bible alone has reclaimed the human 
 mind from darkness, and the human heart 
 from despair. Its truths are the strong pillars 
 on which the whole fabric of our personal 
 and social prosperity reposes; it has termi- 
 nated the direst woes, kindled the splendours 
 of heaven in the deepest darkness, and made 
 the wide wastes of moral desolation blossom 
 as the rose. 
 
THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC. IOL 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 IS THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC ? 
 
 It isa matter of fact, that Christianity has 
 come into the world some time, and some 
 where, and some how. Its influence, its 
 plastic power, are seen, heard, and felt. Evi- 
 dences of this crowd around us. The past 
 naturally gives its tone to the present, and 
 the present is more or less the offspring of 
 the past. The fall of Constantinople is at 
 this moment evident, for it exerted an influ- 
 ence on the literature of Europe, that is felt 
 at this day: the crusades, in the eleventh 
 and twelfth centuries, materially affected the 
 political condition of Europe; and by their 
 surviving traces, the existence of both is 
 proved. Christianity is no less demonstrably 
 a fact. It has left its tone also upon kings, 
 statutes, imperial rescripts, the literature, the 
 poetry, and the science of the world, as is 
 obvious to every reader or observer at this 
 hour. There is no dispute about the fact 
 
 of its existence. Its effects are visible; the 
 9 * 
 
102 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 trophies of its victories, the footprints of its 
 progress, are on the sands of time. No past 
 occurrence has left so powerful a posthu- 
 mous influence. The ceaseless waves of 
 time have swept away the traces of Alexan- 
 der’s battles, and Napoleon’s victories. They 
 have only cleared off the weeds that dimmed 
 the imperishable marks of Christianity. The 
 only question is—When was Christianity in- 
 troduced ? who are its authors? what are its 
 claims to our belief as a system of revelation 
 from God? 
 
 The first branch of the argument I shall 
 unfold, will be an effort to show, that the 
 Bible (or the book that contains Christianity) 
 is, genuine, and next, that it is authentic*— 
 that is, the production of the writers whose 
 names it bears, and that it has come down to 
 
 * Genuine means that a book is the production of the 
 writer whose name it bears. 
 
 There is a thousand times more evidence that the 
 Gospel of John was written by him, than there is that 
 the Avabacis was written by Xenophon, or the Ars 
 Poetica by Horace. The Jews hated the Christians ; 
 and if the Christians had forged a book in after years, 
 and ascribed it to a writer long since dead, the Jews 
 would have exposed the forgery. 
 
 Authentic means relating matters of fact as they 
 occurred, and entitled therefore to full credit. 
 
THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC. 103 
 
 us in its genuine and unadulterated form. 
 This will be our first (and a most important) 
 demonstration—that Christianity, as it is con- 
 tained in the Bible, and as we have it printed 
 before us, is precisely now as it was at first 
 revealed. It may, in fact, be very easily 
 shown that it is utterly impossible that the 
 Bible can be the «forgery of a period subse- 
 quent to the days in which it claims to have 
 been written. 
 
 Now, in the first place, the Jews were not 
 only opposed to the truths contained in the 
 New Testament, and to the whole of Chris- 
 tianity as a system, but wherever they were 
 able they imprisoned its apostolic preachers, 
 as they had put its great Founder to an igno- 
 minious death. If, therefore, at a period 
 long subsequent to the death of Christ, a 
 number of men had appeared in the world, 
 drawn up a book which they designated by 
 the name of Holy Scripture, and recorded 
 these things which appear in it as facts when 
 they were only the fancies of their own 
 imagination, surely the Jews would have in- 
 stantly reclaimed that no such events trans- 
 pired, that no such person as Jesus Christ ap- 
 peared in their capital, and that their cruci- 
 fixion of him, and their alleged evil treat- 
 
104 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 ment of his apostles were mere fictions. But 
 we read of no such objection recorded or at- 
 tempted. We find on all sides a concurrent 
 consent, among friends and foes, that the 
 Bible was composed by the persons whose 
 names it bears, under the circumstances and 
 in the age wherein it professes to have come 
 forth, and that its facts (whatever its doc- 
 trines be) are true. 
 
 In the next place, I have in my possession a 
 considerable portion, if not the whole of the 
 writings of three of those who are called the 
 five apostolic fathers—that is, men who 
 either talked with the apostles, or were per- 
 sonally acquainted with them, or lived con- 
 temporaneously with them. The five were 
 Barnabas, Clement, Hermas, Ignatius, and 
 Polycarp. The first and third are of little 
 value; the last is supposed to be addressed 
 in the book of Revelation as the minister or 
 “angel” of the church in Smyrna. Now, in 
 the writings of these fathers, from the year 
 100 to the year 160, we shall find passages 
 extracted from the writings of Paul, from 
 the writings of John and Peter, from the 
 Gospels of Matthew, of Mark, of Luke, 
 and of John; and these extracts have some- 
 times the names of the apostles by whom 
 
 ee 
 
THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC. 105 
 
 they were written attached to them, and 
 have also appended the declaration of these 
 apostolic writers, that the Scriptures thus 
 quoted were the inspiration of the Almighty. 
 This is most important testimony. In these 
 most early writers, with every opportunity 
 of conversing with the apostles, of proving 
 their statements and weighing their argu- 
 ments, we find whole passages of Sacred 
 Writ verbatim as we read them in the word 
 of God—extracted, quoted, approved, and 
 acknowledged as the inspiration of God, and 
 just as now printed in the Epistles and Gospels 
 of Paul, John, Mark, and so on. And not 
 only this; but we find in the post-apos- 
 tolic fathers, as they are called, namely, 
 Justin Martyr, Ireneus, Tertullian, and the 
 two Gregories, Augustine and Jerome, from 
 the year 160 to between 500 and 600, fre- 
 quent and large quotations from different 
 parts of the Bible, as books bearing the 
 names of the writers which we now find at- 
 tached to them in our Bible ; and also stating 
 that those writings were the inspiration of 
 God, composed under his guidance, by the 
 writers whose names they bear, And what 
 proves the purity of our Bible, there is no 
 real difference between the passages quotea 
 
106 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 from it in these writings of the first five cen- 
 turies, and those which we find in volumes 
 of sermons accurately extracted in the nine- 
 teenth century and in the authorized version. 
 During these five centuries, then—during the 
 earliest five centuries of the Christian Church 
 —we have writers quoting from the writings 
 contained in the Bible at great length, pas- 
 sages the same as we read them, ascribing 
 those writings to the authors whose names 
 are now attached to them, and proclaiming it 
 as a matter of universal admission among 
 Christians that they were the inspiration of 
 God. 
 
 This, however, will not perhaps satisfy 
 the sceptic. We therefore add that the 
 earliest rejecters of Christianity never dis- 
 puted, that the Gospels according to Mat- 
 thew, Luke, and John, and the Epis- 
 tles, were actually written by the persons 
 whose names they bear, and at their pro- 
 fessed date. For instance; the subtle infidel 
 Porphyry, who was born in the year 233, 
 and Julian the Apostate,* who lived in the 
 
 * Some of the most noted were, the Emperor Julian, 
 commonly called the Apostate, Celsus, Porphyry, Cerin- 
 thus, Marcian. 
 
THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC. 107 
 
 year 331, and Celsus, earlier than either, men 
 of acute minds, and who laboured night and 
 day to overturn the claims of the Bible, both 
 admitted that it was written by the persons 
 whose names are attached to it, and quote 
 long passages from the Bible as unquestioned 
 portions of its contents, and as written by 
 the men named as its writers. Thus these 
 men, who hated the Gospel, and were anxious 
 to overturn it, yet retain in their writings 
 portions of that Gospel, just as we now find 
 them in the Bible, and never think of disput- 
 ing their genuineness ; demonstrating thereby 
 that the Bible is unmutilated, and that we 
 have it now as it was in the first five centu- 
 ries of the Christian era.* 
 
 The next fact that I would adduce is, that 
 translations were made at a very early era 
 of almost the whole of Sacred Writ. For 
 instance; the Septuagint is a Greek transla- 
 tion of the Hebrew Bible made at least three 
 centuries before the birth of Christ, and re- 
 mains a proof that the Hebrew Bible as we 
 now have it, is substantially the same that was 
 used among the Jews three centuries before 
 
 * Chrysostom employs this reasoning in his Sixth 
 Homily, on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, vol. x. 
 p-. 47. 
 
108 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 the birth of Christ. That the Jews preserved 
 the Scriptures unmutilated is obvious from 
 this fact alone, that our Lord never charged 
 them with corrupting, though often with 
 neglecting, the sacred text. He said they 
 had “made void the word of God by theit 
 traditions ;’? yet never once did our Lord 
 charge them with mutilating or corrupting 
 the sacred volume. Nay, so scrupulously 
 particular were the Jews in preserving it, 
 that they have counted the number of words, 
 syllables, letters, and paragraphs, in every 
 book, and recorded also the middle word, 
 the middle chapter or paragraph, and how 
 many periods or sentences are contained in 
 each book. This was done long before the 
 Christian era; it arose no doubt from super- 
 stitious feelings, but still it has been over- 
 ruled to demonstrate the great veneration 
 which the Jews always cherished towards 
 the Scriptures, and the sacred watchfulness 
 with which they maintained the text of them 
 inviolate. There are extant nearly 1,200 
 manuscripts of the Old Testament, all agree- 
 ing each substantially with the other. The 
 festivals, too, observed by the Jews in the 
 days of our Lord, and observed to this day 
 by their descendants, can, as matters of fact, 
 
THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIc. 109 
 
 be traced up to their recorded institution, and 
 are thus voices descending from Horeb and 
 Sinai, and the Red Sea, attesting the truth 
 and reality of the Mosaic records. Hesiod’s 
 Theogony isa dim reflection of Genesis. The 
 golden age of the poets is the tradition of the 
 history of Eden. The division of time into 
 weeks among all nations refers to the account 
 of creation. In reference to the New Testa- 
 ment, I may observe, there was a translation 
 of it in the second century into the Syriac 
 tongue, in the third century into the Latin 
 tongue, and in subsequent centuries into a 
 variety of tongues, till ultimately it was 
 translated into almost every language under 
 heaven. Now, if there had been any depar- 
 ture in subsequent ages from the sacred text, 
 as it was inspired by the Spirit of God, and 
 originally recorded by the apostles, then, by 
 referring to the Syriac translation made in 
 the second, or the Latin in the third century, 
 we could discover the variance and expose 
 the corruption. But if we take the sacred 
 text as we now receive it, and compare it 
 with that and the other early translations, we 
 find that there is no contrariety, but on the 
 contrary the most complete demonstration of 
 : 10 
 
110 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 the unmutilated character of the word of 
 God as we now possess it. 
 
 It is here proper to state, that certain false 
 and forged documents were brought forward 
 in the third and fourth centuries, and were 
 quoted by certain parties as the inspired 
 word of God. Infidels too have said—The 
 four Gospels are but a selection from a num- 
 ber of Gospels, and it was merely a conclave 
 of bishops or a camarilla of priests that deter- 
 mined by a majority that the four Gospels 
 you place in the Bible were alone inspired, 
 and that the others were forgeries. Now, 
 when a document claims to be written ina 
 certain age and by a certain individual, if it 
 be a forged document, we shall generally 
 find in it internal disproofs so decided that 
 you can very easily reject it. This applies 
 to all the pseudo-Gospels which were con- 
 cocted by heretics, and which were brought 
 forward as written by the apostles. They 
 were found to contain allusions and refer- 
 ences to facts, customs, usages, and names, 
 which did not exist till the fourth century 
 of the Christian era. If those documents 
 nad been written by the apostles, how could 
 they speak about things as matters of present 
 occurrence, which did not occur till four or 
 
THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC. 111 
 
 five centuries after they were dead? To fur- 
 nish a specimen of the mode of detecting such 
 forgeries, I will refer to certain ancient litur- 
 gies, which the Roman Catholics allege were 
 drawn up by some of the apostles. In the 
 course of controversy with a talented Roman 
 Catholic on a late occasion, these liturgies 
 were put forward as the inspiration of God; 
 and one of them, in particular, was said to 
 be drawn up by the apostle James. Now 
 to show how satisfactorily we prove it to 
 be a forgery, I will appeal to the account 
 given of this liturgy by Dupin, the cele- 
 brated, and I may add, impartial Roman 
 Catholic historian. He says—“There re- 
 mains only the liturgy attributed to St. 
 James, which divers learned men have taken 
 much pains to vindicate, but to no purpose ; 
 for although it is more ancient than those 
 we have already examined, yet we ought 
 not to say that St. James was the author 
 thereof, or that it was composed in his time.” 
 Now hear his reasons; he examines the doc- 
 ument, and ascertains its internal, its post- 
 apostolical character, by evidence. “1: The 
 Virgin Mary is called in this liturgy ‘the 
 mother of God,’ and the Son and the Holy 
 Ghost are said to be ‘consubstantial with the 
 
112 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 _Father;’ terms altogether unknown in St. 
 James’s time,’’? and not known in the Chris- 
 tian Church till the third century. “2: We 
 find there the Trisagion and the Doxology 
 (that is to say, the Sanctus and Gloria 
 Patri), which were not generally recited in 
 the Church until the f/¢A century. 3: There 
 are collects for those shut up in monasteries ; 
 can atiy man say there were monasteries in 
 the time of James? 4: There is mention 
 made of ‘confessors;’ a term that was not 
 inserted in the Divine offices till a long time 
 after James, according to the confession of 
 Bellarmine. 5: In this liturgy there is men- 
 tion made of churches, incense, altars ;” 
 things, again, which did not exist till the 
 third century. “6: We find many citations 
 from the Epistles of St. Paul, the greater 
 part of which were written after St. James’s 
 death. Neither ought we to object, with the 
 cardinals Bona and Bellarmine, that these 
 things were afterwards inserted; because it 
 is not probable they should be added in so 
 many places; besides, the connexion and 
 ceremonies of the whole liturgy do not agree 
 with the time of the apostle.”? In this docu- 
 ment then we find so marked references to 
 events subsequent to the death of James, 
 
 ———————— 
 
THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC. 113 
 
 that no man can come to the conclusion that 
 it was written by that apostle. This is more 
 or less the case with every forged document, 
 and is true of all the pseudo-gospels; and if 
 the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testa- 
 ment had been composed in the third or 
 fourth century, we should have found allu- 
 sions to then existing customs or events, a 
 peculiar phraseology, all belonging, not to 
 the apostolic age, but to the age in which 
 the documents were forged, and these, as in 
 all similar instances, would have been so 
 abundant that acute and ingenious men 
 would long ere now have demonstrated the 
 fraud. This is a specimen of the process 
 that may be applied. The Epistles and the 
 Gospels of the New Testament will bear, as 
 they have already borne, the most sifting 
 inquiry, the most penetrating inspection, and 
 like gold tried in the furnace they will come 
 out purer, and radiant with a greater glory 
 than when they entered it. It may be useful 
 to give a modern illustration also of this. 
 The Wesleyan Methodists, not very long ago 
 commemorated the centenary of Methodism. 
 Suppose that on this occasion a book was 
 produced, declared to have been published 
 years ago, and to be the composition of Jonn 
 10* 
 
114 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 Wesley, and suppose there is found in it a 
 reference to the Roman Catholic Relief Bill 
 of 1829, another to the Reform Bill of 1832, 
 another to the equestrian statue just erected 
 to the illustrious Duke of Wellington; would 
 it not be objected, ‘ Here are references to 
 events that occurred near a hundred years 
 after the death of John Wesley, and these 
 references evidently prove that the document 
 cannot have been composed by him, It is 
 the forgery of one who seeks to palm it on 
 the world as the production of that cele- 
 brated man.’ So is it with the Bible. If 
 one could detect in it any reference to events 
 long subsequent as having then transpired, 
 we should have an internal proof of false- 
 hood. But the fact is, it carries upon its 
 brow the impressive demonstration of its 
 parentage—the signature of God—the proof 
 that it was composed by Matthew, and 
 Mark, and Luke, and John, and Paul, and 
 Peter, whose names are appended to their 
 respective books in the Bible. 
 
 The multiplicity of manuscripts is another 
 evidence, which proves that the sacred Book 
 has been handed down to us pure and una- 
 dulterated. There is at this moment existing 
 the Codex Bezex, or the Cambridge Manu- 
 
THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC. 115 
 
 script, as it is called, which one distinguished 
 editor, Dr. Kipling, almost proves to have 
 been written in the second century ; but the 
 most learned of modern analysts of the 
 claims of that manuscript admit that it was 
 written in the fourth or fifth century. We 
 have another composed in the fifth century ; 
 and hundreds of manuscripts written in the 
 sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth cen- 
 turies. These manuscripts were transcribed 
 by monks and other individuals in their 
 retirement ; and if any subsequent mutilation 
 had been introduced into the sacred volume, 
 these manuscripts drawn out by different 
 individuals and in different ages would make 
 apparent the corruptions that had crept in. 
 But the truth is, we find that the hundred 
 and fifty thousand different readings which 
 Mills and Griesbach and others have col- 
 lected, are most of them connected with 
 letters, with accents, with commas and stops, 
 and few of them with points of doctrine or 
 practices of morality. Their number, too, 
 proves the labour expended on this great 
 subject. They are collected from all the dif- 
 ferent manuscripts written long previous to 
 the discovery of printing ; and still the least 
 accurate manuscript of the New Testament 
 
116 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 
 
 we possess does not contain a single devia- 
 tion from the received text which would 
 vitiate one vital and essential truth, Where 
 an alteration occurs it is seen to be an error 
 in transcribing, by finding the point affected 
 by it distinctly recorded in other passages of 
 Scripture. This is plain, that were all Gries- 
 bach’s readings incorporated into the sacred 
 text, neither Infidelity, nor Socinianism, nor 
 Romanism, would derive the least advan- 
 tage. 
 
 But were the New Testament to disappear 
 from the earth, it has been ascertained that 
 nearly the whole of its contents could be 
 gathered from the writings of the controver- 
 sialists of the first five centuries. The very 
 disputes which we deplore in one respect are 
 thus the means not only of preserving the 
 sacred text, but of rendering its corruption 
 on either side impossible without detection. 
 
 All this is manifest proof, that a great pre- 
 siding Power must have superintended the 
 safety and transmission of the word of God ; 
 so that while it has passed through more 
 dangers, encountered more difficulties, been 
 scrutinized by more enemies, and more 
 keenly, than any other book‘ under heaven, 
 yet it is of all books the most perfect, of all 
 
 i El 
 
 A i ee et A 
 
THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC. 117 
 
 ancient productions the most unmutilated 
 and entire. 
 
 There is still another proof of Christianity 
 having begun at the period assigned to it; 
 that presented by the sacraments and institu- 
 tions recorded in the New Testament. Let 
 us refer to‘the Sabbath. As far back as the 
 seventh century, we find it observed all over 
 the Christian world. In the second century 
 it prevails over the Roman empire, is noticed 
 by Justin Martyr and others, as introduced 
 by Christ, and in consequence of the resur- 
 rection of Christ from the dead. Now if any 
 one had composed the New Testament at a 
 subsequent period, instituting at that period 
 the observance of the Sabbath as a duty, 
 would not thousands have protested against 
 the innovation? Would they not have said, 
 it isa novelty? But none say so; the son 
 received it from his father, and the father 
 from his sires, and they from the apostles, 
 who recorded as they received the sacred 
 institute. We cannot name a century in 
 which the sacraments were not publicly 
 solemnized ; and every time we now behold 
 baptism administered, or the Lord’s Supper 
 observed, we have dumb but expressive proof 
 
118 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 of the true original and date of our most holy 
 faith. 
 
 If we refer not merely to infidels, such as 
 Porphyry and Julian the Apostate—or to 
 Christian writers, such as the historians of 
 the Bible and the early fathers—but to 
 heathen writers—we shall find the most dis- 
 tinct and unqualified admission of the main 
 facts recorded in the Bible. For instance, 
 Tacitus,* Suetonius,t and Pliny, three Ro- 
 man writers, make (one or other) the most 
 distinct admission of the historical facts that 
 there was such a person as Christ, that he 
 was crucified by the Jews, and that it was 
 reported he rose again. If we refer to 
 Macrdbius, another Roman Writer, we find 
 
 * Tacitus, a.p. 110, in his Annals, B. xy. chap. 44, 
 thus writes, “ Auctor nominis ejus Christus, qui Tiberio 
 imperante per procuratorem, Pontium Pilatum sup- 
 plicio affectus erat.”—“The author of that name, or 
 party, was Christ, who was punished with death by the 
 Procurator, Pontius Pilate.” 
 
 t Suetonius, a.v. 116, chap. 25, on Claudius, writes, 
 “Judzeos impulsore Christo, assidue tumultuantes Roma 
 expulit.”—“ He expelled the Jews (or Christians, whose 
 origin was Judea,) from Rome, for their continual 
 tumults, instigated by Christ.” 
 
 t“Carmenque Christo quasi Deo dicere secum in- 
 vicem.”—“ That they sing together, by turns, a hymn 
 to Christ as to their God.” —Pliny, book x. page 97. 
 
THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC. 119 
 
 in him, as in Celsus, an account of the mur- 
 der of the infants by Herod; and in this 
 writer also we have an account of the great 
 gloom, or eclipse, that overspread all Pales- 
 tine at the hour of the crucifixion of the 
 Lord of glory. According to Eusebius, there 
 were in his day the records of the trial and 
 condemnation of Christ, in the archives of 
 Rome, and accessible to all. He appeals to 
 them as evidence. So likewise do Justin 
 A.D. 140; and Tertullian, a.p. 200. Celsus 
 and Porphyry, in the second and third centu- 
 ries, quote verbatim from the New Testa- 
 ment facts they dispute, and passages we 
 read in our churches Sabbath after Sabbath. 
 
 If then we take the testimony of Jewish, 
 Christian, heathen, or infidel writers—of 
 critics, or rites, as the observance of the Sab- 
 bath, and of the solemn sacraments; we see 
 that they simultaneously combine to demon- 
 strate that Christianity existed in the first 
 century as a matter of fact; that the sacred 
 books are in the present century verbatim as 
 in the first, and were composed by the very 
 men whose names are now appended to 
 them in the English Bible. We have, in 
 short, the whole Bible, Old and New Testa- 
 ment, precisely as it was composed by Moses, 
 
120 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 and the Prophets, the evangelists and apos- 
 tles, and all inspired of God; and the man 
 who disbelieves the genuineness and authen- 
 ticity and uncorrupted transmission of the 
 Scriptures, notwithstanding the evidence we 
 have given, must in consistency reject the 
 genuineness of all works except those he 
 Sees written, and the authenticity of all 
 records, except of facts he himself has wit- 
 nessed. 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 121 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 
 
 Havine shown that the Bible is genuine 
 and authentic, let me now try and ascertain 
 if there be reason for believing that it is in- 
 spired. 
 
 The writers themselves claim inspiration. 
 If they were not inspired, the Book is an 
 awful lie, and its destruction would be a 
 benefit. If they were not inspired, their 
 assumption of it is inexplicable. If the apos- 
 tles were bad men, it is quite clear they 
 never would have spent their lives in incul- 
 cating the purest morality. If they were 
 good men, they never would have palmed a 
 falsehood on the world. The evidence ig 
 irresistible that they were goou men; and if 
 they are proved to be so, then their own 
 declaration that they were inspired by the 
 Spirit of God, before any judge or jury in 
 the world, would be recognized as no mean 
 proof. It may be said, perhaps they were 
 
 deceived. But were they men likely to be 
 11 
 
122 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 deceived ? Were they fanatics? Were they 
 wild enthusiasts? Did their conduct show 
 that they were madmen? Do their writings 
 show it? The very reverse is the fact. 
 Nothing is more sensible, or more consistent, 
 or more composed than the conduct, speeches, 
 and writings of the apostles: and the argu- 
 ment that would prove they were mad- 
 men, or fanatics, would prove almost any 
 absurdity. 
 
 The most impartial, acute, and honest men 
 in all ages of the church have admitted the 
 inspiration of the Scriptures. The apostolic 
 fathers, the post-apostolic fathers, the ablest 
 writers on such topics in subsequent ages, 
 have with one consent held that this book 
 is inspired of God. They had examined 
 its credentials, they had heard from their 
 forefathers what was their judgment on its 
 claims, and the unanimous conclusion of suc- 
 cessive thousands is, that the apostles were 
 what they professed to be—inspired of the 
 Spirit of God. This surely is entitled to 
 some weight. 
 
 The morality of the Bible is so pure and 
 lofty, that nothing but inspiration can account 
 for it. Look at the wretched morality of 
 the heathen; look at the equally wretched 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 123 
 
 morality of the Rabbinical Jew; and then 
 mark the sublime and lofty morality of the 
 Gospel, and say then if its holy and enduring 
 and lofty ethics do not proclaim, trumpet- 
 tongued, that God alone, the Author of all 
 holiness, must have inspired and originated 
 it. In the Bible we shall find, that some of 
 the very words which the heathen employed 
 to denote vices, are used to denote virtues, 
 and admitted to be virtues by all sound 
 moralists. The word humble, for instance, 
 was the epithet of a coward among the 
 Romans. To say thata man was humilis, 
 was to say he was a craven and a coward, 
 But in the Bible, to say that a man is hum- 
 ble, is the highest commendation of him. 
 And every enlightened and righteous person 
 in subsequent ages has admitted, that the 
 Bible has redeemed the word from its gross 
 corruption among the heathen, and restored 
 it to its proper place in the temple of pure 
 and lofty morality. 
 
 The doctrines of the Bible are so grand, so 
 far above the reach of man’s mind, that they 
 alone proclaim the Bible inspired: It never 
 entered into the mind of the most gifted of 
 the heathen to conceive, stil less to define, 
 the doctrine of the Trinity. Such a doctrine 
 
124 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 would not be invented by any writer of that 
 age who designed to spread his name or tenets 
 among the Greeks and Romans. But apart 
 from this consideration, it does not look like 
 human invention; it indicates an origin from, 
 above. It never entered into man’s imagi- 
 nation to anticipate that God should be Man, 
 and Man should be God. The Trinity and 
 the Incarnation are doctrines which human 
 thought could never have invented, and if 
 dreamed of, never have hazarded. 
 
 The perfect harmony—harmony without 
 unison—evidencing not a transcribing one 
 from the other, but inspiration from a com- 
 mon source —existing among the sacred 
 evangelists, is another evidence that they 
 were inspired by the Spirit of God. They 
 
 were men of different habits, of different © 
 
 degrees of education, living in different parts 
 of the world, influenced by different circum- 
 stances, but all recording the same truths, 
 announcing the same doctrines, and varying 
 scarcely by a single jot or tittle. Infidels 
 have ransacked every page, to discover dis- 
 crepancies in the sacred volume; but each 
 alleged discrepancy, when it came to be ex- 
 amined, turned out to be not only harmoni- 
 ous with the whole, but also a new proof of 
 
 t 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 125 
 
 the inspiration of the Scriptures. For in- 
 Stance, some fancied they had discovered a 
 historical inaccuracy in the evangelist, when 
 he says, that the High Priest at the cruci- 
 fixion of our Lord was Caiaphas, for in the 
 Jewish historian, Josephus, it is stated that 
 the high priest that year was Joseph. Infi- 
 dels vauntingly said, “ Here is a declaration 
 on the part of those who profess to be in- 
 spired, that Caiaphas was the high priest ; 
 but here is a dispassionate, because, they say, 
 a disinterested historian, who says that it was 
 Joseph. It is evident that one or other must 
 be wrong ;” and with the natural bias of 
 scepticism, they determined that the evan- 
 gelist must be wrong. But they were no 
 less surprised than displeased, to find Josephus 
 in a subsequent page recording that Joseph 
 was also called Caiaphas; which evidently 
 shows that the evangelist gave the right 
 name, and that the difference was seeming, 
 but not real. This is a specimen of the sup- 
 posed discrepancies which the opponents of 
 revelation profess to have discovered. 
 
 But the greatest evidence of all, by which 
 the inspiration of the sacred penmen is 
 proved, is the stupendous miracles with 
 
 which their announcement of the Gospel 
 11* 
 
126 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 was universally attended. A miracle is 
 Divine power setting its seal to Divine reve- 
 lation. It is true, sceptics have exerted all 
 their powers, in order to demonstrate that 
 miracles are utterly impossible ; but not only , 
 have their demonstrations been completely 
 overturned by the writings of Reid, Butler, 
 Stewart, Campbell, Horsley, and others, but 
 still more triumphant evidences, if these 
 were’necessary, have been educed of the 
 reality of the miracles recorded in the Gos- 
 pel. It has been found that Celsus and 
 Porphyry, the sceptics, and even Mohammed, 
 admitted in their days that miracles were 
 performed by our Lord and his apostles. 
 They did not deny the miracles, they only 
 disputed the inferences drawn from them. 
 Such attestations are most weighty. In 
 more modern times, it has been said by infi- 
 dels, that nature is fixed, and that we have 
 no right to believe that miracles can have 
 ever occurred. But who, or what, fixed 
 nature? The will of God. And the same 
 will that fixed nature in its frame-work, may 
 transform, or change, or suspend the opera- 
 tions of nature when and where He pleases. 
 Hume argues that all our knowledge of the 
 phenomena of nature is derived from experi- 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 127 
 
 ence, and that our experience is uniformly 
 against any miraculous occurrence. Uni- 
 form experience must be the experience of 
 every individual of every age; but what we 
 allege is, that the experience of certain wit- 
 nesses in the apostolic age differed from ours, 
 in that they witnessed what we have not 
 witnessed—a miraculous interposition. And 
 what we maintain is, that there is sufficient 
 testimony in favour alike of the facts attested, 
 and the credibility of the attesters. We are 
 sometimes told that if we would show them 
 a miracle then they would believe one, but 
 that unless they actually see a miracle per- 
 formed, they cannot believe one. But how 
 absurd and inconsistent is such reasoning! 
 It is as much’as to say, show us Alexander 
 the Great, and we will believe that such a 
 monarch existed ; show us Julius Cesar, and 
 we will believe that there was such a person; 
 show us Bonaparte, and we will believe 
 that he lived, and overran Europe with his 
 victorious arms. We maintain that many 
 miracles have been performed, and that there 
 is ample and incontrovertible historical evi- 
 dence that they were performed; and we 
 call upon the-infidel not to demand the re- 
 performance of a miracle which could kad 
 
128 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 
 
 to no good results, but to search into that 
 historical evidence for miracles which does 
 already exist. And if we prove that miracles 
 were once performed, and performed in order 
 to constitute credentials of this book, then 
 there is plain evidence that God interposed, 
 and set the imprimatur of his approval, the 
 seal of his sanction, on the doctrines and pre- 
 cepts of the Bible. The wax attached to the 
 lease or document, on which is struck the 
 crest of the party, is valid at the end of cen- 
 turies, and need not be repeated. So with a 
 miracle. 
 
 An objection frequently adduced by infi- 
 dels against miracles is, that there have been 
 many false miracles; and therefore they can- 
 not believe that there have been any true. 
 They quote the lying legends of the church 
 of Rome, and the ridiculous miracles, if mir- 
 acles they can be called, that heathens profess 
 to have seen or to have performed; and 
 with these they allege that they must class 
 the miracles of the New Testament. Surely 
 all must see the absurdity of this reasoning. 
 If, because there have been false miracles 
 there never have been true ones, then by the 
 same reasoning, because there have been 
 bad shillings there never have been good 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 129 
 
 ones, and because there have been forged 
 five-pound notes, there never have been real 
 ones. In my judgment, the fact that there 
 have been false miracles proves that there 
 must have been sometimes frwe ones. For- 
 gery always follows reality. But if the infi- 
 del say, that these miraculous pretensions in 
 the sacred writers arise from that longing 
 after the supernatural, which is found in man 
 in every age, then I ask, who implanted this 
 universal desire after the supernatural? If 
 God implanted this thirst, would it not seem 
 to imply that it was his design to gratify it 
 at some period of his intercourse with man? 
 We allege, however, that if we compare the 
 miracles recorded in the New Testament, 
 with the miracles recorded in the fables of 
 heathenism, we shall find the contrast so 
 decided, that no doubt will remain that the 
 latter bear the proofs of palpable imposition, 
 while about the former there are such tokens 
 of majesty, benevolence, and power, that 
 every dispassionate spectator must admit, 
 “ Truly this was the finger of God.’’ I have 
 in my hand at this moment a book contain- 
 ing an account of a number of ancient and 
 modern miracles, said to be performed by 
 priests in the dark ages; but they are so ab- 
 
130 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 surd, and most of them so utterly uncalled 
 for, and so unproductive of any good result, 
 that at the very first blush we must perceive 
 they are lying legends. Lord Shrewsbury’s 
 Adoloratas, and the effects of the miraculous 
 medal of Mary, which are recent pseudo- 
 miracles, are mere fanatical absurdities. But 
 in the miracles of the Scriptures, we see such 
 evidence of power, of noble and benevolent 
 design, such pure and superhuman doctrine 
 accompanying them, that we are constrained 
 to acknowledge, that these miracles denote 
 the interposition of Almighty power, as the 
 doctrine they attest implies the interposition 
 of sovereign and glorious grace. 
 
 If, in short, Christianity be not from God, 
 whence is it? This is a most important 
 question. If we compare the morality of the 
 Bible with that of the most celebrated pro- 
 ductions of heathen philosophers, we shall 
 find that the moral instructions of Jesus are 
 so different from the morality of Plato, the 
 precepts of the one so infinitely loftier than 
 all the maxims of the other, the views of God 
 enunciated by the Son of Mary so sublime 
 and magnificent, and the views broached 
 even by a Socrates so paltry and unworthy 
 in comparison, that we must come to the 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 131 
 
 conclusion that Christianity is not at least 
 an offshoot from heathenism. Can we trace 
 it, then, to Judaism? Did it evolve from it 
 merely? If we will compare the miserable 
 traditions of the Jews with the lofty and 
 pure statements of the New Testament—or 
 the most celebrated sayings of the most cele- 
 brated Rabbis with the simple and majestic 
 announcements of Jesus, or the ceremonial 
 and carnal administration of the Levitical 
 ages with the “life and immortality’’ that 
 are clearly brought to light through the Gos- 
 pel—we must come to the conclusion, that 
 Christianity zs not the offspring of mere 
 Judaism. ‘Then whence can this pure, this 
 exalted, this sanctifying system have origi- 
 nated? It came not from heathens; it is too 
 pure to have sprung from such an origin. It 
 came not from Judaism; it is too spiritual 
 and exalted to have emanated directly and 
 immediately thence. Then, whence came 
 it? I can see no other rational conclusion 
 than that Christianity came immediately from 
 God. 
 
 It was not a gradual introduction, progres- 
 sively ripened; but it shot up at once in all 
 the blossom of unprecedented loveliness—in 
 all the beauty and fertility of great and good 
 
132 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 fruit—in the midst of the surrounding blight- 
 ed and moral desert. It came into the world 
 amid the gloom of human apostasy, like the 
 sun bursting upon the darkness of midnight. 
 It presented itself in the majesty of perfect 
 manhood; a thing so utterly apart from the 
 world—so obviously superior to the world— 
 so evidently from above—that that mind 
 indicates the greatest rationality and the 
 least credulity, which believes the Scriptures 
 to be a revelation from God. 
 
 Rousseau was constrained to acknowledge, 
 “The majesty of Scripture strikes me with 
 admiration, as the purity of the Gospel has 
 its influence on my heart. Peruse the works 
 of our philosophers; with all their pomp of 
 diction, how mean, how contemptible are 
 they compared with the Scriptures. Is it 
 possible that a book at once so simple and 
 sublime should be merely the work of man? 
 The Jewish authors were incapable of the 
 diction, and strangers to the morality con- 
 tained in the Gospel, the marks of whose 
 truth are so striking and inimitable, that the 
 inventor would be a more astonishing char- 
 acter than the hero.”’— Works, vol. v. p. 215, 
 
 a a ee a ee 
 
Is THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 133 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 IS THE BIBLE INSPIBED 2? 
 
 Is the Bible inspired? is, perhaps, the most 
 important question that can be asked. What 
 is the Bible? That book which is no longer 
 the monopoly of a few, but the possession 
 and the privilege of the million. It begins 
 with Genesis and ends with Revelation. It 
 rejects the additions of the Romanist, and 
 refuses the subtractions of the Socinian. 
 Moses, Isaiah, John, Paul,and Peter, are but 
 the trumpets; God only is the speaker. It 
 has variety of style, but oneness of thought; 
 the varied inflexions of many voices, but the 
 one breath in all; the idiosyncrasies of men in 
 its outward manifestation, but the inspiration 
 of God in its inward vitality and substance. 
 It is so common, so wide spread, that the sun 
 never sets on its gleaming page. The east 
 is Opening it while the west is closing it. Its 
 words go round the world like sweet music, 
 and increasing generations, right or wrong 
 12 
 
134 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 believe it to be what they call it—the book 
 of God! 
 
 I have referred to the argument from mira- 
 cles. It alone is evidence of inspiration. We 
 have incontrovertible testimony to the occur- 
 rence of miracles. The wheels of creation 
 ceased their action that men might hear God. 
 The suspension of its laws was the evidence 
 of the interposition of God, and if such sus- 
 pension took place in order to call man’s at- 
 tention to what proclaims itself God’s word, 
 then is the Bible inspired. Omnipotent power 
 is the pedestal of inspired truth. The hand 
 of God visibly holds the lamp of life divine. 
 No need is there of repetition. The inces- 
 sant repetition of a miracle would destroy 
 its value. 
 
 A powerful proof of the inspiration of the 
 Bible cumulative with years, is prophecy. 
 Two objections, destructive of each other, are 
 adduced against it. 
 
 The first is, that all the prophecies of the 
 Old Testament are so obscure, that we can 
 make them speak any thing. 
 
 No honest man, who reads the predictions 
 recorded in the Psalms—in the prophets, in 
 the fifty-third of Isaiah, for instance, or those 
 
 contained in the prophet Malachi—and com-. 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 135 
 
 pares them with the fulfilment recorded in 
 the New Testament—can fairly say that they 
 are so obscure, as to be capable of being 
 tortured or twisted in any way. One re- 
 markable proof of this is the fact, that many 
 of the Jews are so conscious of the exact de- 
 lineation of Jesus of Nazareth in the fifty- 
 third of Isaiah, that they have strained every 
 nerve, and exerted every effort, and exhaust- 
 ed the resources of absurdity, to prove that 
 that chapter was not originally in the book 
 of Isaiah: an effort as hopeless as it is 
 wicked. 
 
 The next objection is of a very opposite 
 description.—That the prophecies respecting 
 the Messiah have evidently been foisted into 
 the Old Testament by Christians, subsequent 
 to the events. 
 
 Now we have seen that the translations 
 which have been made from the Scriptures 
 in every age, the Greek Septuagint for in- 
 stance, made at least three hundred years be- 
 fore the advent of Christ; the fact that our Lord 
 never charged the Jews with mutilating the 
 Old Testament—the extracts from the Sacred 
 Scriptures contained in a variety of books 
 and documents—the quotations embosomed 
 in the folios of the fathers, word for word as 
 
136 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 in our Bible—all go to prove, that the charge 
 that any book or chapter has been foisted in 
 is utterly untenable. 
 
 But is it not a most curious fact, that one 
 infidel says they are so obscure that we can- 
 
 not make any thing of them, and another in-. 
 
 fidel says that they are so plain and clear 
 that they must have been foisted in at a sub- 
 sequent period? May we not quote both 
 the objectors as auxiliaries in our defence ? 
 When one thus contradicts another, it shows 
 that the cause is not altogether of the most 
 tenable kind. 
 
 A prophecy was delivered two thousand 
 years before the advent of Christ, that the 
 descendants of Shem and of Japheth should 
 be civilized and enlightened, and that the de- 
 scendants of Ham should be servants of ser- 
 vants, or slaves to their latest posterity. All 
 this has been to the very letter fulfilled. We 
 find the descendants of Japheth in Europe, 
 and the descendants of Shem in Asia. Now 
 the Europeans, Asiatics, the Eastern and 
 Western Empires, or the Greeks and the Ro- 
 mans, are admitted by all to be, as they long 
 have been, the most enlightened nations of 
 mankind. But we find the descendants of 
 Ham at this moment slaves and bondmen; 
 
 ¥ 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 137 
 
 not merely in the West Indies, as recently, 
 but even now to a greater extent than ever 
 could have been believed, as has been too 
 truly and painfully proved by the late Mr. 
 Buxton, in his work written expressly upon 
 this subject. The descendants of Ham are 
 slaves up to the present period; thereby 
 giving at this day the most palpable and yet 
 unconscious fulfilment of a prediction deliver- 
 ed more than four thousand years ago. 
 
 It was said of Ishmael that his descendants 
 should be “ wild-ass men,” that their hand 
 should be against every man, and every 
 man’s hand against them, that they should 
 be unsettled and dwell in tents. Now any 
 traveller or historian will testify, that the de- 
 scendants of Ishmael at this moment are the 
 wandering Arabs; in whose case and con- 
 dition we have the literal and exact fulfil- 
 ment of an ancient prophecy, upwards of four 
 thousand years old. 
 
 If we take the predictions respecting 
 Babylon and Nineveh in Isaiah and Jeremiah 
 on the one hand, and what Infidel as well as 
 Christian travellers have described in their 
 writings on the other, we shall see that every 
 prophecy has been fulfilled, not merely in 
 
 12* 
 
138 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 the bulk, but even in its jots and tittles, in the 
 destruction of those cities. 
 
 Full four thousand years ago, and at sub- 
 sequent periods, prophecies were delivered 
 and are recorded in Scripture, respecting the 
 future condition of the Jews. It was said, 
 that they should be long “ without a sacrifice 
 and without an ephod and without an altar ;”’ 
 that they should be scattered, and yet dis- 
 tinct and separate, in all nations; that they 
 should be “a scoff and a by-word’’ amid 
 all the kingdoms of the earth. Is not this 
 fulfilled before our eyes? Is not every Jew 
 that walks the streets, a dumb and re- 
 luctant witness to the truth of the word of 
 God? 
 
 There is a prophecy respecting the Church 
 of Rome in the New Testament, of a most 
 minute character, uttered eighteen centuries 
 ago. Let us compare with it what are the 
 known and avowed doctrines of that awful 
 apostasy, and we shall see it exactly fulfilled. 
 «“ The mystery of iniquity doth already work ; 
 only he who now letteth will let, until he be 
 taken out of the way’’—(that is, the Roman 
 emperor will prevent its development, until 
 ne be overturned;) “and then shall that 
 Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 139 
 
 consume with the Spirit of his mouth, and 
 shall destroy with the brightness of his com- 
 ing: even him whose coming is after the 
 working of Satan, with all power and signs 
 and lying wonders, and with all deceivable- 
 ness and unrighteousness in them that 
 perish.” And again, in the first epistle 
 of Paul to Timothy :—« Now the Spirit 
 ‘speaketh expressly, that in the latter times 
 some shall depart from the faith’’ (implying 
 that they had formerly been of the faith ;) 
 “siving heed to seducing spirits and doc- 
 trines of devils’ (of demons, that is, of men 
 canonized ;) “speaking lies in hypocrisy ; 
 having their consciences seared with a hot 
 iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding 
 to abstain from meats, which God hath 
 created to be received with thanksgiving of 
 them which believe and know the truth.’’ 
 The Rev. Mr. Nangle, a Protestant minister 
 in the island of Achill, stated in his interest- 
 ing periodical, called The Achill Herald, 
 that on one of his fellow-labourers, a Christ- 
 lan minister, reading this passage to a num- 
 ber of Roman Catholics in that island, they 
 replied—“ This evidently describes our clergy, 
 but you have a printing-press in the island, 
 and you must have put this into the Bible in 
 
140 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 order to fasten it upon our clergy.’ Thisa 
 striking testimony to the fact, that the prophe- 
 cy is a true and natural delineation of that 
 dreadful and antichristian apostasy, of which 
 they were the victims. If we refer to the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth chapters of the 
 Apocalypse we shall find a still more ex- 
 panded description of that superstition. Each 
 prediction in which the apostle Paul and the 
 evangelist John so minutely described and 
 predicted that apostasy, proves they wrote 
 under the inspiration and guidance of Him 
 who saw the future as clearly as the pre- 
 sent. 
 
 I might also refer to the seven Churches 
 of Asia, which have been preserved or 
 destroyed, more or Jess perpetuated or swept 
 away, according to the extent of the promise 
 or the threatening contained in the second 
 and third chapters of the book of the Revela- 
 tion. Thus do Tyre from its bleak strand, 
 and Babylon from its molten masses, Sodom 
 and Gomorrah from their ashes, Nineveh 
 from its rocks, on which the fishermen now 
 bleach their nets, the Jew on our streets, the 
 African in his chains, the Cossack on his 
 steppes, and the Arab in his tent, the Church 
 of Rome in her apostasy, and the Church of 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 14] 
 
 Christ in her brightening glory, Judah deso- 
 late, and Israel scattered and peeled—al/, all, 
 proclaim with simultaneous and irresistible 
 force, that the Bible is the book of God— 
 that “holy men of old spake as they were 
 moved by the Holy Ghost’”’—that “Thy 
 word is truth.’’ 
 
 We must now specially turn, but as briefly 
 as the nature of the subject will allow, to the 
 predictions contained in the Old Testament 
 Scriptures in reference to the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. Every feature which was predicted 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ by ancient prophets 
 was realized and found in Him, and in Him 
 alone, when He appeared in the world. I 
 will merely state two or three points. The 
 first prophecy is, that the Messiah should 
 come. We find this in the promise that 
 “the woman’s seed should bruise the head. 
 of the serpent ;”’ that “the glory of the Lord 
 should be revealed ;’’ that “the desire of all 
 nations should come.” The fulfilment we 
 have in the New Testament. We read also, 
 in the forty-ninth of Genesis, the ¢?me when 
 He should come—* The sceptre shall not 
 depart out of Judah, nor a lawgiver from 
 between his feet, until Shiloh come;’’ and 
 also that He was to come at a time of uni- 
 
142 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 versal peace, and while the second temple 
 was standing, and 490 years after the re- 
 building of Jerusalem. All this, which was 
 matter of ancient prophecy, was literally ful- 
 filled. Again, it was predicted, that the 
 Messiah should be God and man together. 
 It was said to Him, “Thou art my Son,” 
 and the Jews showed that by the title, «Son 
 of God,” they understood essential Deity ; 
 and again, “ He shall come forth, whose go- 
 ings forth have been of old and for ever ;’’ 
 and also it was predicted, that He should be 
 descended from the woman, from Abraham, 
 from Jacob, from David. The fulfilment 
 was, when “in the fulness of time God sent 
 forth his Son, made of a woman, made under 
 the law, to redeem” us. It was predicted, 
 moreover, that He should be born of a virgin ; 
 “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a 
 son.”? And this was fulfilled. The place 
 where He was to be born was stated: * Thou 
 Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little 
 among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee 
 shall He come forth unto me, that is to be ruler 
 in Israel.”?, And this was exactly fulfilled. 
 A prophet, in the spirit and power of Elias, 
 was to precede Him; thus in Malachi— 
 “ Behold, I will send my messenger, and he 
 shall prepare the way before me.’? And 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 1438 
 
 this was claimed by Christ and the Baptist, 
 as a prediction and portrait of them. It was 
 predicted also, that the Messiah was to be a 
 prophet; “I will raise them up a prophet 
 from among their brethren, like unto thee,’’ 
 the Almighty said to Moses. And “the 
 woman said to Him, Sir, I perceive that 
 Thou art a prophet;” and again, in John, 
 «Of a truth this is that prophet;” and in 
 Matthew, “They took Him for a prophet; ”’ 
 all, fulfilments of the prediction. It was 
 predicted how He should make His public 
 entry into Jerusalem—“ riding upon an ass, 
 and upon a colt, the foal of an ass.”’? This 
 was verbatim fulfilled. It was predicted, 
 that the Messiah should be poor and de- 
 spised, and betrayed by one of His disciples 
 for thirty pieces of silver. This was literally 
 fulfilled. It was predicted, that Messiah 
 should suffer pain and death for the sins 
 of the world. This was literally fulfilled. 
 It was predicted, that vinegar and gall 
 should be offered to Him upon the cross, 
 and that His garments should be divided, 
 and lots cast whose they should be. This 
 was literally and exactly fulfilled. It was 
 predicted, that “not a bone” of the Mes- 
 siah should be broken. This was literally 
 and exactly fulfilled. It was predicted, that 
 
144 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 the Messiah should rise from the dead and 
 ascend into heaven. This was _ literally 
 fulfilled. That He was to enlighten men, 
 that He was called to be the anointed of 
 God, that He was to offer Himself a sacri- 
 fice for sin, that He was to be a Saviour, 
 that He was to be a Mediator, that He was 
 to be an Intercessor, that He was to be a 
 King, that He was to be the Head and Ruler 
 of the Church, that He was to be exalted 
 after his sufferings—all these things were 
 predicted, some of them 400 years, some 
 of them 2,000 years previous to the time 
 when they actually took place; and now, 
 when we recollect that these predictions 
 seemed to be contradictory of each other, 
 and when we see, nevertheless, that the 
 seeming contradictions all meet and are har- 
 monized in the person of the Lord of glory, 
 is it not a far greater task upon credulity to 
 suppose that the prophets wrote at random, 
 than it is to believe that they were inspired 
 by God, to whom past, present, and future 
 are transparent, and wrote under the influ- 
 ence of the Holy Ghost? Suppose that at 
 Berlin a man made a finger, that at St. 
 Petersburg another made a thumb, and a 
 third in another place an arm, a fourth in 
 London made a hand, that in Edinburgh a 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 145 
 
 fifth made a toe, that at Inverness a sixth 
 made a foot, that in Dublin a seventh made 
 a head, that every member of the human 
 body was made of marble in distant places, 
 in different and distant times, and that ata 
 certain period the sculptors assembled in 
 London, and that when they tried to put 
 together these different limbs, all made in 
 different places and at different times, and 
 without any communication, they formed 
 that masterpiece of genius, the Apollo Belvi- 
 dere, now seen on the Continent, what could 
 we infer? That they had a common arche- 
 type, that a great presiding architect must 
 have actuated every hand, guided every 
 chisel, instructed every sculptor. Now this 
 is literally realized in the predictions and 
 appearance of Jesus Christ. Prophets, at 
 different times, in different parts of the world, 
 described His various features in various 
 terms and various forms; and though they 
 seemed before the fulfilment to contradict 
 each other, yet when Christ comes it is found 
 that every feature is realized in Him; and 
 He is the only and exclusive being in whom 
 all can converge and be perfectly illustrated. 
 Is it possible to conceive that the prophets 
 
 wrote at random? is it possible to believe 
 13 
 
146 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 that it was by mere chance that they pictured 
 the future Christ? That man indicates the 
 greatest amount of common sense, as well as 
 the soundest philosophy, who concludes that 
 they spake and wrote as they were guided 
 and directed by the Spirit of God. 
 
 There was also a series of predictions de- 
 livered by our Lord himself. He gave a 
 most minute description of the fearful judg- 
 ments that were to overtake Jerusalem, and 
 the sad severities which were to be exercised 
 upon its doomed and guilty inhabitants, about 
 forty years before its downfall. This is 
 recorded in the twenty-fourth chapter of 
 the Gospel of Matthew. Our Lord’s first 
 prediction was, that when the time drew 
 near, “ many should come in His name, say- 
 ing, Iam Christ; and should deceive many.” 
 Now Josephus, who neither embraced the 
 Gospel, nor was favourable to Christianity, 
 relates that, prior to the capture of Jeru- 
 salem, “the land was overrun with magi- 
 cians, seducers, and apostates, who drew the 
 people after them in multitudes, into solitudes 
 and deserts to see signs and miracles. Among 
 these apostates were Dositheus the Sama- 
 ritan, who claimed to be Christ — Simon 
 Magus, who said he was the Son of God— 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 147 
 
 and Theudas, who pretended to be a pro- 
 phet.”” This prophecy of our Lord was, 
 therefore, literally fulfilled. The second pre- 
 dicted sign was, that wars and commotions 
 should precede the destruction of Jerusalem ; 
 aud these wars and commotions Josephus 
 states took place. Four emperors, Nero, 
 Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, suffered violent 
 deaths within the short space of eighteen 
 months; and the emperor Caligula com- 
 manded his statue to be set up in the temple, 
 and in consequence of the refusal of’ the 
 Jews, he threatened them with an invasion, 
 which was prevented by death. There was 
 also a prediction that “nation should rise up 
 against nation.’”? This took place in almost 
 every quarter of the Roman empire, and is 
 recorded by Josephus. At Alexandria the 
 old enmity was revived between the Jews 
 and the heathens, and the Jews perished by 
 thousands; the people of Damascus con- 
 spired against the Jews; the Jews who dwelt 
 at Perea against the people that dwelt at 
 Philadelphia, and the whole nation of the 
 Jews against the Romans. The third pro- 
 phecy of our Lord was, “famines and _ pesti- 
 lences”’? before the destruction of Jerusalem. 
 And Josephus, Suetonius, Tacitus, and Euse 
 
148 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 bius record, that famines and pestilences 
 occurred in divers places, and of a very fear- 
 ful character, precisely as we find it pre- 
 dicted. The fourth sign was, “ earthquakes.” 
 These literally took place before the destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem ; one in Crete in the reign 
 of Claudius, and others at Smyrna, Samos, 
 Miletus, and other places in which the Jews 
 were settled. Many cities were overthrown, 
 and among others the celebrated city of 
 Pompeii was almost demolished by an earth- 
 quake. These facts are recorded by heathen 
 historians. The fifth prophecy of our Lord 
 was, fearful sights and signs from heaven. 
 And Josephus says, “ There broke out a pro- 
 digious storm in the night with the utmost 
 violence — lightnings and rains; and these 
 things (adds Josephus) were a manifest indi- 
 cation that some destruction was coming 
 upon men, when the system of this world 
 was thrown into such disorder.”? The same 
 historian (not a Christian, but a Jew,) says, 
 that a star hung over the city like a sword, 
 and a comet continued over it for a whole 
 year; also that when the people were assem- 
 bled to celebrate the feast of unleavened 
 bread, so great a light shone round the altar 
 and the holy house that it appeared to be 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 149 
 
 bright day-time, and this continued for half 
 an hour. At the same feast the eastern gate 
 of the temple, which was of solid brass, and 
 was very heavy, and was scarcely shut in an 
 evening by twenty men, and had bolts fas- 
 tened very deep into the firm floor, was seen 
 to be opened of its own accord about mid- 
 night. Moreover, before the setting of the 
 sun, there were seen all over the sky chariots 
 and troops of soldiers in their armour fight- 
 ing in the clouds and surrounding cities ; also 
 at the feast of Pentecost, as the priests were 
 going into the inner temple, they heard a 
 voice as of a multitude crying, “ Let us 
 depart hence.’”’ And Josephus records it as 
 more terrible than all, that an ordinary coun- 
 try fellow went about the city day and night, 
 crying out, “ A voice from the east, a voice 
 from the west, a voice from the four winds, 
 a voice against Jerusalem and the temple.’’ 
 The magistrates endeavoured by stripes to 
 restrain him, but he still cried with a mourn- 
 ful voice, at every stroke of the whip, “ Woe, 
 woe to Jerusalem and the temple.’”? These 
 are some of the fearful signs and great sights 
 from heaven which our Lord had predicted. 
 Dr. Jortin remarks on these—“ If Christ had 
 not foretold this, many who give little need 
 13* 
 
150 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 to portents would have supposed that Jose- 
 phus exaggerated, and that Tacitus was mis- 
 informed; but as the testimonies of Josephus 
 and Tacitus confirm the predictions of Christ, 
 so the predictions of Christ confirm the won- 
 ders recorded by these historians.”? And 
 further; another sign predicted by our Lord 
 was the persecution of Christians; and this 
 we have recorded in the book of the Acts of 
 the Apostles. Another was, the preaching 
 of the Gospel throughout the world. This 
 fact is also recorded in the Acts of the Apos- 
 tles; and also by heathen historians. It is 
 supposed, upon very good evidence, that the 
 Apostle Paul visited England and Scotland, 
 and preached the Gospel there. The Chris- 
 tian fathers state that the ploughmen in the 
 fields in every land were found singing the 
 Psalms of David and the songs of the Gos- 
 pel. Again; it was predicted by our Lord 
 that Jerusalem should be besieged by the 
 Roman armies. “Ye shall see the abomina- 
 tion of desolation standing where it ought 
 not ;”’ “the days shall come upon thee, that 
 thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, 
 and compass thee round, and keep thee in on 
 every side.” “The abomination of desola- 
 tion’? was the Roman army; and Jose- 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 151 
 
 phus records, that those warriors brought the 
 Roman standard, the eagle, into the midst of 
 the temple and into the sacred place. A 
 trench, says Josephus, was dug round about 
 Jerusalem, and of it he gives a very minute 
 and particular account. In the next place, 
 Christ enjoined the Christians that should be 
 in Jerusalem to “flee into the mountains,” 
 and escape when they saw these things. And 
 accordingly it is recorded that Cestius Gailus 
 came against Jerusalem with a powerful 
 army, with which he might have taken it; 
 but, contrary to expectation, and without 
 reason, removed away from it, and immedi- 
 ately afterwards many of the principal Jewish 
 people left the city, like a sinking ship; and 
 afew years after, when Vespasian was draw- 
 ing near Jerusalem, great multitudes ran and 
 escaped for safety to the mountains and to 
 Pella. Our Lord also predicted, that false 
 Christs and false prophets should arise, and 
 should show great signs and wonders, and 
 this actually occurred. Moreover our Lord 
 described the miseries that should befall the 
 Jews at that time. He says—“ These are 
 the days of vengeance ; woe unto them that 
 are with child and to them that give suck in 
 those days, for there shall be great distress in 
 
152 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 the land, and wrath upon this people, and 
 they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and 
 shall be led away captive into all nations.” 
 Josephus says—“ All the calamities which 
 have befallen any nation from the beginning 
 of the world were but small in comparison 
 with those which befell the Jews ; within the 
 city, the fury was so great, that they filled 
 the temple itself with continual slaughter ; 
 nay, to such a height did their maduess rise, 
 that they destroyed the granaries of corn 
 which should have sustained them; all reve- 
 rence to age and the ties of parent and child 
 - were annihilated; children snatched the half- 
 baked morsels which the fathers were eating 
 out of their mouths, and mothers snatched 
 the morsels from their children also, and the 
 young men wandered about the market 
 places like shadows, and fell down dead 
 through hunger and famine.” At length 
 the famine became so extreme, that they 
 devoured what the most sordid animals re- 
 fused. A woman of distinguished rank, in 
 hunger and desperation, killed and roasted 
 her own babe from her breast, and had eaten 
 one half of it before the horrid deed was 
 detected. Others fell by the edge of the 
 sword. At Scythopolis and Cesarea above 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 153 
 
 50,000 fell; at another gate 2,000 fell, at 
 another gate 2,000 fell; at Ptolemais, 2,000; 
 at Damascus 10,000; and Josephus records, 
 that altogether, of different ages and sexes, 
 1,357,630 Jews were destroyed and _ but- 
 chered in various parts of Palestine and 
 about Jerusalem. Lastly, our Lord predicted 
 the total destruction of Jerusalem: “ Your 
 house shall be left unto you desolate; there 
 shall not be left one stone upon another, that 
 shall not be thrown down; Jerusalem shall 
 be trodden down of the Gentiles.” Now, 
 Josephus states the leading facts of the fulfil- 
 ment of this prophecy. Our Saviour’s words 
 were literally fulfilled, even when royalty 
 tried to prevent it. Titus was very desirous 
 of preserving the temple; he had expressed 
 the like desire of preserving the city too, and 
 repeatedly sent Josephus the historian and 
 other Jews to persuade them to surrender. 
 The Jews themselves set fire to the gates, 
 through which the Romans were endeavour- 
 ing to force an entrance, and one of the sol- 
 diers threw a burning brand into a window 
 of the temple; the flames soon spread, and 
 the people and the soldiers rushed to the 
 spot, shouting and fighting. Titus hastened 
 to the place, calling to the soldiers to quench 
 
154 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 the fire, but they either could not hear or 
 would not hear, and those behind encouraged 
 those before them to set other parts on fire. 
 Titus then, supposing that the interior might 
 yet be saved, ordered the crowd of soldiers 
 to be beaten back; but their anger and their 
 hatred of the Jews and a certain vehement ~ 
 fury overcame their reverence for their com- 
 mander, and one of them threw the fire 
 within, where the flames then burst forth, 
 and thus the whole temple was burnt down 
 even contrary to the will of Cesar® as if not 
 one jot or tittle of our Lord’s word should 
 pass away, until all should be fulfilled. 
 
 You have thus heard the prophecies of our 
 Lord upon the one hand, and the fulfilment 
 of them on the other—that fulfilment not 
 recorded by a Christian, whose testimony 
 might be suspected by the infidel, but by 
 Josephus, a Jew, a distinguished general in 
 the service of Titus and Vespasian, and one 
 of the most impartial and honest historians 
 that ever wrote at any period of time. We 
 here see one that was the poor son of a car- 
 penter, Jesus of Nazareth, without friends, 
 without rank, without human learning, with- 
 out aught of the advantages or accomplish- 
 ments of the world, standing up in the sight 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 155 
 
 of a most magnificent temple, a temple so 
 vast that Alexander the Great, it is said, im- 
 pressed with its magnificence, declared that it 
 must he the residence of a god, and _ pro- 
 claiming that in one generation, in thirty 
 years, “not one stone should be left upon 
 another,” and giving the minutiz of the 
 onset, the siege, and the slaughter ; and after 
 the interval of thirty years, all was literally 
 and exactly fulfilled. Must He not either 
 have been God, or have spoken under the 
 direction of the purpose and foreknow- 
 ledge of God? We established in a former 
 chapter that the books are genuine and 
 authentic; that is to say, that they were 
 written by those whose names they bear, and 
 that there has been no foisting of any one 
 passage into the sacred books, which was not 
 written by the sacred penman. It was one 
 of our proofs of this, that after they were 
 written they were translated into various 
 languages, into Syriac and Latin, and quoted 
 by the fathers; and never, let it be noted, 
 has the charge been made, that these prophe- 
 cles respecting Jerusalem were interpolated. 
 If there had been the shadow of a pretence 
 for it, the charge would have been reiterated 
 a thousand times Ido then assert that the 
 
156 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 predictions of the prophets respecting our 
 Lord, and the predictions of our Lord re- 
 specting the desolation of once proud and 
 glorious Jerusalem, have been so exactly and 
 literally fulfilled, even by the testimony of 
 disinterested parties, that there cannot bea 
 shadow of doubt, that God’s finger is there, 
 and that God’s sanction and seal lie upon the 
 face of the sacred volume. 
 
 Having looked at these prophecies, we 
 may ask again which is the most credulous 
 —the man who believes that all this was the 
 mere random and fortuitous result of chance 
 and sagacious conjecture? or the man who 
 holds that all these predictions were penned 
 by the inspiration of God? The infidel 
 pretends to be a freethinker; he boasts, that 
 while we are the mere slaves of education, 
 mere credulous fanatics, he is a freethinker. 
 He is not a freethinker; he is the victim of 
 gross credulity. I claim to be myself a free- 
 thinker; I think for myself, and read, and 
 infer from evidence. The infidel, instead of 
 being a freethinker, is a slave to his preju- 
 dices and passions. 
 
 “He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, 
 And all are slaves beside.” 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 157 
 
 In looking at the opposers of Christianity, 
 after all, it is natural to ask, What are the 
 attainments and what is the character of 
 those men, who (especially in these days) 
 make a parade of objections to the Scrip- 
 tures? Are they the Newtons, the Keplers, 
 the Stewarts, and the Lockes, and the Bacons 
 of the world? Not at all; but men who 
 have occasionally peeped through a tele- 
 Scope, and then have learned to tell us that 
 the stars contain no proof that there is a 
 God; men who have once in their life looked 
 through a microscope, and then come to tell 
 us that its revelations are not proofs of Deity 
 and design. Yet such are the men, that 
 stand up with an effrontery unparalleled, 
 and tell us that all evidence is useless, that 
 all claims are inadmissible, that Robert 
 Owen is a better man than the apostle Paul, 
 and the filthy abominations of Socialism 
 more worthy of the acceptance of sinners 
 than the inspiration of the holy and blessed 
 Jesus, A simple contrast between the writ- 
 ings of the one and the writings of the other, 
 between the men who lead the armies of in 
 fidelity and those who are the advocates of 
 our holy faith, will at once demonstrate 
 which has God upon its side, and which 
 
 14 
 
158 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 indicates the possession of the true knowledge 
 of His will. 
 
 There is still another decisive proof of the 
 divinity of the Gospel, worthy of our atten- 
 tion; viz. the character of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Suppose that the history of Christ had 
 been pressed upon our notice in the present 
 day for the first time in our life. After we 
 have read the characteristics of the age in 
 which He lived, the expectations of His 
 countrymen, the leading and popular theolo- 
 gy of the day, we read minutely and study 
 exactly the character of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. What do we find? We see a char- 
 acter utterly unlike the age, entirely above 
 and beyond it; evidently zm the world, but 
 palpably not ef the world, nor in any respect 
 the product of the world. We behold His 
 countrymen, the Jews, looking for a tem- 
 poral prince to sit upon a temporal throne, 
 and to sway a literal sceptre; and we hear 
 Christ telling them that all such expectations 
 are absurd—that “the pure in heart shall 
 see God,” that “the peace-makers shall be 
 called the children of God,’ that “they that 
 hunger and thirst after righteousness shall 
 be filled.”?. In the midst of a nation, that 
 believed that the Messiah should be restrict- 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 159 
 
 ed wholly to themselves, that His blessings 
 never should go beyond the hills of Carmel 
 or the banks of the Jordan, we hear Christ 
 stating, that all nations are ito taste of His 
 goodness—that “God so loved the world, 
 that He gave His only-begotten Son that 
 whosoever believeth in Him should not per- 
 ish, but have everlasting life.” We behold, 
 also, in the character of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, no assumption of any circumstantial 
 superiority to the rest of his countrymen. 
 He was born of a lowly woman, brought up 
 in the carpenter’s shop and by the carpen- 
 ter’s knee, and educated probably at the 
 village school. He walks with the rest of the 
 striplings of His day, having no university 
 education, having never sat at the feet ofa 
 learned Rabbi, possessing no noble, or royal, 
 or national patronage; and yet He promul- 
 gates doctrines, that the mightiest masters 
 among the prophets never even dreamed of. 
 He prescribes precepts so pure and exalted, 
 that the more they are analyzed and tested 
 the more do men become impressed with 
 their heavenly origin. He proclaims a faith 
 that was to embrace all nations, and a king- 
 dom “not meat and drink, but righteousness, 
 and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.”” We 
 
160 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 see in Christ nothing of the fanatic. Ifa fa- 
 natic, and impostor, He would have availed 
 Himself of the popular theology, and have 
 turned the notions of the Jews to account— 
 for this is the nearest way to rapid popu-. 
 larity ; but instead of this, He contradicts all 
 their notions, and sends His word like a 
 ploughshare through their most beloved 
 prejudices; every word He utters in the fifth 
 of John is a death-blow to their heart-woven 
 fancies. How was this character formed? 
 Whence came this most awful, and yet mag- 
 nificent specimen of “ whatsoever things are 
 just, pure, true, lovely,” sublime? Whence 
 his birth? Whence His origin? How will 
 you account for this upon any other repre- 
 sentations than those of the word of God? 
 There is nothing of the impostor about him. 
 A deceiver of the world, assuming to be some- 
 thing, puts ona peculiar dress; he affects cer- 
 tain eccentricities and oddities; he draws a line 
 between him and the vulgar; runs into his 
 palace, or his hall, or hovel, and assumes a 
 mysterious dignity, a significant silence. But 
 Christ puts on no such artificial assumptions. 
 He wears the fisherman’s dress. He sits 
 down at the table of Peter. He associates, 
 for holy ends, with publicans and sinners. 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 161 
 
 He reasons with them constantly, “here a 
 little and there a little.””, When the rich men 
 came and offered Him their riches, He re- 
 fused them; when He might have made 
 Himself a king, He would have nothing to 
 do with a crown; and if we desire to behold 
 the loveliness and glory of Christ’s charac- 
 ter concentrated into one bright spot, it was 
 upon that occasion when He took the 
 smiling babes from the mothers’ breasts, and 
 said, “ Suffer little children to come unto me, 
 and forbid them not, for of such is the king- 
 dom of heaven.”? How can we account for 
 such a character at such a period, and among 
 such a people, except upon the principles that 
 are asserted in the sacred volume? Must 
 we not conclude, in the words of unsophisti- 
 cated nature, as poured through the centu- 
 rion’s lips at the foot of the cross—“ Truly 
 this was the Son of God?” 
 
 There is one other fact, namely, the rapid 
 progress of Christianity throughout the world, 
 which is possessed of no little weight in this 
 discussion. 
 
 Here was a doctrine opposed to the preju- 
 dices of men—in the very teeth of the popu- 
 lar and prevailing morality. The very things 
 which the Romans had baptized as virtues, 
 
 14? 
 
162 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 Christianity denounced as vices. Here was 
 a system, preached not by those who walked 
 on the banks of the Ilissus, or by the academy, 
 or by the pioud philosophers of the Stoa ; but 
 by fishernen—by ministers, with two excep- 
 tions, iltiterate, untaught, and unpolished, 
 called the Apostles, It was a doctrine op- 
 posed to men’s darling lusts, and to their 
 dearest prejudices; propounded without elo- 
 quence, and carried forward without patron- 
 age. There was neither State connexion, nor 
 crown to irradiate them, no throne to back 
 them, nor magistracy to aid them. And yet 
 this doctrine, opposed to men’s popular feel- 
 ings, their prejudices, and their lusts, preach- 
 ed by fishermen without eloquence, without 
 countenance, without patronage, royal or 
 noble, so rapidly spread and so widely pre- 
 vailed, that the whole Roman empire came 
 to be leavened with it; and at length the 
 once degraded cross sparkled in the diadems 
 of emperors; and the name of Christian came 
 to be the ornament and the boast of grateful 
 millions. How shall we account for so rapid 
 a progress of so unpopular principles, preach- 
 ed by so unlikely instruments ? 
 
 Gibbon, the infidel, has tried, but most im- 
 potently tried, to account for its spread, upon 
 
Is THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 168 
 
 what he calls second causes, among which 
 he mentions the “inflexible and intolerant 
 zeal of the first Christians; derived (it is true) 
 from the Jewish religion, but purified from 
 the narrow and unsocial spirit, which instead 
 of inviting the Gentiles, had deterred them.” 
 But how was it intolerant? Did they use 
 the faggot? Gibbon dare not say it. Did 
 they have recourse to the sword? This was 
 never charged. Wherein did the intolerance 
 consist? It was in this; they would not 
 eonsent that Christ should be enrolled as one 
 of the Det minores in the Pantheon. They 
 required that He should either have the whole 
 temple or have none. What they asserted 
 was, that Christianity is either absolute and 
 all, or nothing ; that it must reign in supreme 
 and absolute monarchy, or its ministers must 
 die devoted martyrs. It is still the same; it 
 will have no compromise ; it admits of none. 
 But, says Gibbon, it spread by the inflexible 
 zeal of its advocates; but how came it to be 
 received at first? It spread by their zeal, it 
 is true; but mere zeal will never perma- 
 nently promote a religious system. Joanna 
 Southcote had abundance of zeal; but what 
 has been her success? Mere zeal never can 
 permanently sustain a system, unless there 
 
164 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 be some portion of truth in it; still less can 
 zeal invent a system that will hold together 
 for any length of time. Gibbon’s next secon- 
 dary cause of the progress of Christianity is 
 —<“ The doctrine of a future life improved by 
 every additional circumstance that can give 
 efficacy and importance to it.” Now how 
 would the doctrine of a future life promote a 
 system among those who did not believe it? 
 The Romans would say, when they heard 
 the doctrine of a future life—«It is very wel- 
 come, but what is the evidence of it??? The 
 Apostles, therefore, must have stated evi- 
 dence of the future life; else the fact itself or 
 the creed that embosomed it could not have 
 been received. His next cause is—* The 
 supernatural gifts they possessed, which must 
 have conduced to their own comfort, and the 
 comfort of those around them.’”? Superna- 
 tural gifts? Does the infidel admit that their 
 gifts were supernatural? He did so because 
 he could not do otherwise. If they were not 
 supernatural, how could they conduce to 
 “their own comfort?”’ If I am practising 
 conscious imposture, that can never conduce 
 to my comfort. But if the miracles had been 
 mere pieces of legerdemain, the Greeks and 
 Romans were too shrewd to be imposed upon 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 165 
 
 by them. Another cause, he says, was the 
 pure morality of those who preached these 
 doctrines. And was it merely the pure and 
 lofty morality of the teachers, that convinced 
 the mind of the truth of their doctrines? 
 How sublime must such morality be! An- 
 other cause was “ their preaching repentance 
 of past sins, and the laudable desire of sup- 
 porting the honour of the cause in which they 
 were engaged.”?’ Now how could this con- 
 vert Pagans? Would it not repel them? 
 One can see no connexion between the pre- 
 mises and the conclusion; but the very re- 
 verse. Surely the desire of supporting the 
 honour of a society must imply that that 
 society was founded on what is good; but 
 how such preaching of repentance, and the 
 desire of supporting the society with which 
 they were connected, could convert infidels— 
 is a deduction of inferences from premises, 
 such as we cannot admit to be warranted by 
 the ordinary laws of logic. 
 
 The miraculous preservation of the Bible 
 is no feeble proof of God being its author 
 and protector. 
 
 The ancient Greek and Latin classics, 
 which minister to man’s lusts, and chime in 
 with man’s fallen propensities, have all of 
 
166 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 them been more or less mutilated or lost. 
 But the Bible, which rebukes man in truth’s 
 own undaunted tones, which man hates be- 
 cause it “prophesies evil concerning him,” 
 if he continue in his sins, remains perfectly 
 whole and entire. Now how does it happen, 
 that the books which men cherished with 
 parental solicitude are mutilated or lost, and 
 that the book which men would have been 
 generally too glad to have exterminated and 
 destroyed is perfectly preserved? Were a 
 man to come into an assembly in 1847, who 
 had survived eighteen centuries of persecu- 
 tion, who had been cast into the seas, but 
 was not drowned, who had been thrown into 
 the fires, but was not burned, who had been 
 flung to wild beasts, but was not destroyed, 
 to whom prussic acid had been administered, 
 but he had not died, who had been buried, 
 and yet was not smothered; would you not 
 say, God must have sustained this man by a 
 continuous miracle? My dear reader, Tuts 
 BOOK IS THAT MAN. The power of kings, 
 the pride of nobles, the prejudices of priests, 
 whatever learning could snatch from the 
 arsenals of the past, or wit invent, or wicked- 
 ness wield, have been hurled against it, and 
 all have recoiled broken, and lie as trophies 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 167 
 
 at its feet. As soon may the cawing of the 
 sea-bird uproot the rocks of the sea, or a 
 swarm of wasps overturn the oak, as any 
 assaults overthrow Christianity. 
 
 “Truth crushed to earth will rise again, 
 The eternal years of God are hers ; 
 But Error wounded writhes with pain, 
 And dies amid her worshippers,” 
 
 It has been buried in the floods, and it is not 
 lost; it has been thrown into the fires, yet it 
 is not burned; it has been exposed to the 
 pestilential notes of a corrupt and supersti- 
 tious faith, and yet it is not poisoned; and 
 now, in the nineteenth century, does it come 
 forth from all the opposition and the per- 
 secution of eighteen centuries, to which it 
 has been subjected, in all its primitive in- 
 tegrity—as virgin gold cast into the furnace, 
 more bright and beautiful by far than when 
 it entered, 
 
 But perhaps after all the evidences we 
 have adduced, the most satisfactory is that 
 contained in the words—“ Come and see, and 
 taste ;” that is, the experimental evidence. 
 
 If we can only bring men to make trial of 
 the Gospel, they will soon feel its Divine 
 original. If we visit the hills and valleys, 
 
168 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 the glens and grey moors of Scotland, and 
 enter any of the cottages of her people, and 
 ask the pariarch of the village, “« How came 
 you to the belief that that book called the 
 Bible is the book of God? You never read 
 the Evidences of a Paley, or the Analogy of 
 a Butler, you never studied the Credibility of 
 a Lardner, you never followed the eloquent 
 demonstrations of a Chalmers; how came 
 you to believe it???“ Come to believe it !” 
 would the peasant say ; “I have /edé it in my 
 heart and conscience to be the book of God; 
 it has taught me truths I never knew before, 
 it has given me a peace the world could not 
 give, it has calmed my beating heart, it has 
 stanched my bleeding wounds when the 
 world was all bitterness and Marah, it has 
 made all things new. Not the book of God? 
 I have felt its power and tasted its sweet- 
 ness; I am as convinced of it, as that Iam 
 here a living, breathing man.” 
 
 To give in one illustration a summary of 
 all thisevidence. Suppose that an individual, 
 long an invalid, hasbeen restored to perfect 
 health and strength by means of a tonic pre- 
 scribed by some physician; and that tonic 
 port wine. A visitor comes to this recovered 
 man, and says, “It is not port wine that you 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 169 
 
 have been taking, it has been water from the 
 ditch.” What would be his probable reply ? 
 He might justly say, “I will convince you 
 from three distinct sources, that what I am 
 taking is port wine.” First, he brings the 
 Wine merchant; and the wine merchant 
 states, that he saw the grapes in the vine- 
 yard, he saw them prepared in the wine 
 press, the wine put into the cask, drawn off 
 into bottles, and placed in the chamber of 
 the invalid. That is external evidence. He 
 next calls the chemist; and the chemist says, 
 he has subjected the wine to the usual and 
 appropriate tests, and he is sure it is port 
 wine. That is internal evidence. But the 
 third witness is himself; and he says—«I 
 can add the experimental to these evidences ; 
 I was reduced to the verge of the grave by 
 debility, and this has raised me up, renewed 
 my vigour, imparted strength to my consti- 
 tution. Iam persuaded that it is not water, 
 but an efficacious tonic that I have taken.’’ 
 So can many say of the Gospel. The ex- 
 ternal and internal evidences are important ; 
 but I must say, the most triumphant evi- 
 dence is when one can declare—“« The book 
 must be the book of God, for I the widow 
 have found in it a glorious Husband, I the 
 15 
 
170 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 orphan have found in it an everlasting 
 Father, I the broken-hearted have found in 
 it a healing balm, I the guilty have found in 
 it forgiveness, I the distracted have found in 
 it peace, I the pilgrim and the stranger have 
 found in ita lamp to my feet, and a light to 
 my path. Thy word, O God, is truth.’ Can 
 a lie regenerate souls ? 
 
 Suffer me now to conclude by setting 
 before you two creeds, that have been pro- 
 mulgated and preached among mankind. 
 
 The first is The creed of the infidel :— 
 
 “J believe that there is no God, but that 
 matter is God, and God is matter; and that 
 it is no matter whether there is any God or 
 not. I believe also that the world was not 
 made, -but that the world made itself, or that 
 it had no beginning, and that it will last for 
 ever. I believe that man is a beast; that 
 the soul is the body, and that the body is the 
 soul; and that after death there is neither 
 body nor soul. I believe that there is no 
 religion, that natural religion is the only 
 religion, and all religion unnatural. I be- 
 lieve not in Moses; I believe in the first 
 philosophers. I believe not in the evange- 
 lists; I believe in Chubb, Collins, Toland, 
 Tindal, Hobbes. I believe in Lord Boling- 
 
IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 17} 
 
 broke, and I believe not in St. Paul. I be- 
 lieve not in revelation; I believe in tra- 
 dition. I believe in the Talmud; I believe 
 in the Koran; I believe not in the Bible. I 
 believe in Socrates; I believe in Confucius; I 
 believe in Mahomet; I believe not in Christ. 
 And lastly, I believe in all unbelief.”’ 
 
 Listen in the next place to the other creed, 
 human in its composition, but divine in its 
 substantial truths, as recorded in a simple 
 document of great antiquity :— 
 
 “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, 
 Maker of heaven and earth. And in Jesus 
 Christ, His only Son, our Lord; who was 
 conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the 
 Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, 
 was crucified, dead, and buried; He de- 
 scended into hell; the third day he rose 
 again from the dead; He ascended into 
 heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God, 
 the Father Almighty; from thence He shall 
 come to judge the quick and the dead. I 
 believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy Catholic 
 Church, the communion of saints, the for- 
 giveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, 
 and the life everlasting.” 
 
 Which indicates the truth of God? Weigh 
 the one, all contradictions and absurdities— 
 
172 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 weigh the other, all sublimity and truth— 
 and you will address the believer in the 
 latter, expressing your feelings in the lan- 
 guage of one of old, “« Where thou lodgest I 
 will lodge, where thou goest I will go; thy 
 people shall be my people, and thy God my 
 God.” 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BIBLE. 173 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BIBLE, 
 
 Tue history of the Bible is the history of a 
 perpetual miracle. It is legible in the light 
 it has diffused; we can trace its effects and 
 measure its progress by the blessings it has 
 deposited. A river springs up in a remote 
 and uncultivated desert; its fountain a hill; 
 its source the skies; it rolls onward, and 
 makes its channel a belt of verdure, and 
 every acre it touches it transforms into an 
 Eden, and every cottage in its course it fills 
 with contentment, and every palace with 
 wealth. 
 
 Such is the progress of the Bible. Those 
 hospitals for the sick are depositions from its 
 waters ; those merciful laws are the creations 
 of its power; that lofty civilization is the 
 golden sand that, more glorious than Pacto- 
 lus, it has taken from the Rock of ages, and 
 strewn as it swept along. It has entered 
 into all conflicts, and come forth refreshed 
 and radiant with terrible beauty. It has 
 spoken to fierce disputants, and breathed 
 
 15* 
 
174 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 into them a new spirit, and imparted a new 
 colouring to their debates. It has found ac- 
 cess to the cottage of the peasant and to the 
 palace of the king. Its holy words brighten 
 our joys and assuage our sorrows. It is the 
 light to our feet and the lamp to our path ; 
 the guide of the erring, the hope of the good, 
 the joy of the just. 
 
 Its first and primary description is a reve- 
 lation of and from God. ‘Truths veiled are 
 by it disclosed, and truths too remote to be 
 seen by human eye are brought within the 
 horizon of our view. It is the only likeness 
 of God on earth, and yet may not be wor- 
 shipped. It shows us God just while he jus- 
 tifies the guilty that believe in Jesus—mercy 
 pardoning; holiness acquitting ; sin punished, 
 and the sinner saved. We feel conscious of 
 sin, and fearful of merited judgment and 
 death. No hand seems able to help; no 
 door of deliverance appears to open. In 
 this paralysis of hope we hear sounding from 
 the throne of God, “If any man sin, we have 
 an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ 
 the righteous, and He is the propitiation for 
 our sins, and not for ours only, but for the 
 sins of the whole world.” 
 
 The Bible is inspired. This is a precious 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BIBLE. 175 
 
 attribute. All scripture is given by inspira- 
 tion of God.” “Holy men of old spake as 
 they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” 
 This gives us confidence in its disclosures, 
 and hope in its prospects; we read it as the 
 very word of God; the true and faithful ex- 
 ponent of His will and of our obligations. It 
 is because it is so, that we can lean on the 
 Omnipotence we cannot measure, and trust 
 the Wisdom we cannot comprehend. 
 
 It is written. This is no ordinary ground 
 of gratitude. Had the inspired truths of 
 Christianity been left to the transmission of 
 oral tradition, they had perished from our 
 earth long before they had reached us. The 
 perverting tendency of tradition is not only 
 traceable in history, but revealed in Scrip- 
 ture—John xxi. 21—« Peter seeing him, saith 
 to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? 
 Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry 
 till I come, what is that to thee? Follow 
 thou me. Then went this saying abroad,’ 
 this is the oral tradition, “among the breth- 
 ren, that that disciple should not die; yet 
 Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die, 
 but if I will that he tarry till I come, what is 
 that to thee?’’? Thus the written Scripture 
 corrects the unwritten tradition. No such 
 
176 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 calamity can befall the inspired truth of God. 
 They are in the shape of an indestructible 
 stereotype, an immutable fixture—proof alike 
 against the attacks of open foes, and the cor- 
 ruptions of pretended friends, 
 
 The comments may vary, like the clouds 
 of the sky—the truths remain, like the stars, 
 fixed for ever. 
 
 The Bible is translated. Written origi- 
 nally in Hebrew and Greek, it is now trans- 
 lated into almost every language under hea- 
 ven. It was translated into English by Tyn- 
 dal in 1530, by Coverdale in 1535, by Cran- 
 mer in 1539; at Geneva in 1560; by the 
 bishops in 1568; and by the accomplished 
 translators of our common and authorized 
 version in 1611. It isa translation of match- 
 less faithfulness and beauty, with few im- 
 perfections, and these of no vital impor- 
 tance. 
 
 The Bible is also inspired truth in the 
 varied forms of human speech, It is the 
 varied strain on one key-note ; it is God speak- 
 ing, not in the language of a sect, but of all 
 humanity. It is variety to prevent monotony, 
 and unity to prevent discord. Like the over- 
 shadowing cherubim, the Old and New Tes- 
 tament look at the same propitiatory; and, 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BIBLE. 177 
 
 like the lips of an oracle, give utterance to 
 the same blessed truths. 
 
 The Bible is a plain and intelligible book. 
 True it is not without mysteries, incompre- 
 hensible, because revelations of the Infinite, 
 and thus transcending the reach of finite 
 minds. Great truths, like very high moun- 
 tains, cast around them on earth very broad 
 shadows. But the saving truths of Chris- 
 tianity, that is, those which are essential to 
 the salvation of sinners—the nature and 
 effects of sin—the atonement—justification— 
 sanctification—privilege and duty are fully 
 and plainly revealed. 
 
 The people are invited and commanded to 
 read it. For them specially was it written ; 
 and for them it is preserved. “These words 
 which I command thee this day, shall be in 
 thy heart. And thou shalt teach them dili- 
 gently unto thy children, and shalt talk of 
 them when thou sittest in thine house, and 
 when thou walkest by the way, and when 
 thou liest down, and when thou risest up.” 
 (Deut. vi. 6.) “Search the Scriptures, for in 
 them ye think ye have eternal life, and these 
 are they which testify of me.’? (John v. 39.) 
 
 The prime minister of Candace read the 
 Scriptures on his journey, and an evangelist 
 
178 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 was sent to help him in understanding them. 
 The Bereans searched the Scriptures, whether 
 these things were so, and ‘therefore many 
 of them believed.” Timothy had “known 
 the Scriptures from a child.” 
 
 “It is written,’ is the perfect standard; 
 “To the law and to the testimony,” the final 
 appeal. Jesus so honoured his own written 
 word, that he preferred to quote from its 
 pages solutions of intricate questions to emit- 
 ting replies from the depths of his own infi- 
 nite mind. History may tell us of the fall 
 of kingdoms, and the erection of dynasties, 
 but it is silent on the introduction of sin, and 
 the provision of a Saviour. Geography de- 
 scribes isles, and continents, and rivers, and 
 seas; but it has no map of Eden, and no 
 chart of the way thither. Astronomy speaks 
 of suns, and stars, and systems; but it is 
 silent on the Sun of Righteousness. Geology 
 reveals strange petrifactions, and fossils, and 
 rocks, and precious stones; but it excavates 
 not the pearl of great price. Botany describes 
 the hyssop out of the wall, and the cedar 
 that crowns Mount Lebanon; but not the 
 Tree of Life. 
 
 These are all beautiful and useful in their 
 place, but they must neither supersede nor 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BIBLE. 179 
 
 be a substitute for the word of God. Before 
 its majesty science must bow, councils fall, 
 and fathers veil their heads, One text from 
 one Apostle outweighs all the opinions and 
 traditions of Christendom. 
 
 Every part of this blessed book is inlaid 
 with Christ. 
 
 The historical part is the record of the 
 scaffolding that preceded his advent, and of 
 the fabric that was carried on after his resur- 
 rection. 
 
 The prophetic part gives testimony to 
 Jesus—Moses to His advent—David to his 
 royalty—Isaiah to His priesthood—Micah to 
 His birth-place—and the Apocalypse to His 
 future glory, when His head shall wear many 
 crowns. “To Him gave all the prophets 
 Witness.” 
 
 The promissory part of Scripture is full 
 of Christ. The whole spiritual firmament 
 glows with promises, as with stars of varied 
 magnitude, but of enduring fixity. All their 
 force, and beauty, and sweetness, are from 
 Him. “In Him all the promises are yea 
 and amen.”’ 
 
 The ceremonial part derives all its mean- 
 ing and consistency from Him, He is the 
 high priest, and the refuge, and the temple 
 
180 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 the living water and the true bread, and the 
 rock of ages. He is the body, and these are 
 the figures. He is the truth, and these the 
 types. He is the substance, and these the 
 shadows. 
 
 The doctrinal part of Scripture is full of 
 Christ. His righteousness, His sacrifice, His 
 intercession, are among the leading and dis- 
 tinguishing truths of Christianity. Of all the 
 doctrines of the Gospel, it may be said, “ He 
 is all and in all.”? Heis the Lord our right- 
 eousness, the Lord our peace, the Lord our 
 healer—the alpha and omega, the first and 
 the last. | 
 
 The practical part is also replete with 
 Christ. He has “left us an example.” His 
 commandments are not grievous. His yoke 
 is'easy. His love is the inspiring motive, and 
 His law the regulating directory. Thus the 
 whole of Scripture is eloquent with the testi- 
 mony of Jesus. | 
 
 Let us then read the Bible as the very 
 word of God; let us approach it with solemn 
 and reverential feelings; let us read as if we 
 looked upon the glory between the cherubim, 
 or walked upon the floor of the Holy of 
 Holies. We need the Holy Spirit to help us 
 to understand it—not to alter, add to, or im- 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BIBLE. 181 
 
 prove the Bible, but to purify and enlighten 
 the minds of those that read it. We need an 
 “unction ”’ from on high—a spiritual mind— 
 a pure heart. For all this God will be in- 
 quired of. 
 
 We must not read in order to establish a 
 theory, but in order to discover truth. We 
 may not read one series of texts to the ex- 
 clusion of another. We must come as wil- 
 ling learners — obedient disciples — anxious 
 only to hear God speak, and to obey what 
 he enjoins. We must read doctrinal and 
 practical parts with equal and unswerving 
 impartiality. For this we need, and for this 
 we must seek the Holy Spirit of God. How 
 precious, then, is the Bible! It isa lamp to 
 our feet, and a light to our path. It discloses 
 the everlasting Husband—the eternal Father 
 —the destiny of the soul—the hopes of glory. 
 What ancient philosophers could not reach, 
 children, through it, can now learn. Hu- 
 manity is like a ship that has broken its 
 cable, and is drifting in unknown seas; and 
 the Bible is its only chart that can guide it to 
 a haven. 
 
 Great gift of God to mankind !—it re- 
 kindles in the heart extinguished love, and 
 relights the lamp of life, and restores the sab- 
 
 16 
 
182 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 bath of the soul. To the grandeur of the 
 wan it adds the glory of the saint. It over 
 arches the dreary caverns of despair with the 
 bow of promise; it sets duties in the bosom 
 of benedictions, and precepts in promises; it 
 offers pardon for the greatest sin, and gives 
 dignity to the humblest duty. Well did Sir 
 William Jones write--“I have regularly and 
 attentively read the Bible, and am of opinion 
 that this volume, independently of its divine 
 origin, contains more true sublimity, more 
 exquisite beauty, purer morality, more im- 
 partial history, and finer strains of poetry 
 and eloquence, than could be collected within 
 the same compass from all other books ever 
 composed in any age.” 
 
 «The fairest productions of human wit,” 
 writes Bishop Horne, “after a few perusals, 
 like gathered flowers, wither in our hands, 
 and lose their fragrancy ; but these unfading 
 plants of Paradise become, as we are accus- 
 tomed to them, still more and more beauti- 
 ful ; their bloom appears to be doubly height- 
 ened, fresh odours are emitted, and new 
 sweets extracted from them. He who hath 
 once tasted their excellences will desire to 
 taste them yet again ; and he who tastes them 
 oftenest will relish them best.’”’ 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BIBLE. 183 
 
 Even Rousseau made the remarkable ob- 
 servation :—“I will confess to you further, 
 that the majesty of the Scripture strikes me 
 with admiration as the purity of the gospel 
 has its influence on my heart. Peruse the 
 works of our philosophers, with all their 
 pomp of diction—how mean, how con- 
 temptible are they, when compared with 
 Scripture! Is it possible that a book, at once 
 so simple and sublime, should be merely the 
 work of man? Is it possible that the sacred 
 person, whose history it contains, should be 
 himself a mere man? What purity, what 
 sweetness in his manner! What an affect- 
 ing grace in his delivery! What sublimity 
 in his maxims! What profound wisdom in 
 his discourses! What presence of mind! 
 What truth in his replies! Where is the 
 man—where the philosopher—who could so 
 live and die, without weakness, and without 
 ostentation? Shall we suppose the evan- 
 gelic history a mere fiction? Indeed, my 
 friend, it bears not the marks of fiction. On 
 the contrary, the history of Socrates, which 
 nobody presumes to doubt, is not so well 
 attested as that of Jesus Christ. The Jewish 
 authors were incapable of the diction, and 
 strangers to the morality contained in the 
 
184 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 gospels; the marks of whose truths are so 
 striking and invincible, that the inventor 
 would be a more astonishing character than 
 the hero.’’* 
 
 In every respect the Bible is a wonderful 
 book. The impress of divinity is on all its 
 pages; every event is seen by its light linked 
 to God; its every doctrine tends to glorify 
 Him; and every precept to bless His crea- 
 tures. There is no trace of flattery of the 
 reader, nor vanity in the writers; no anxiety 
 to do justice to any fact by colouring it, or to 
 explain any circumstance that seems incon- 
 sistent. They wrote as those that felt they 
 were the amanuenses of God—the sworn 
 witnesses to facts. They concealed nothing 
 from fear—palliated nothing through shame. 
 Human nature, by the lips of the creature, 
 proclaimed the sufferer on the cross to be the 
 Son of God. Infidels, from Julian and Por- 
 phyry to Paine and Rousseau, have let out 
 admissions that might be advantageously 
 collected, that the Bible is the book of God. 
 
 * Rousseau’s Works, vol. v. p. 215. 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 185 
 
 CHAPTER VIII, 
 
 IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY OR INCONSISTENT ? 
 
 Berore entering on alleged doctrinal and 
 historical objections, I would reply to a state- 
 ment often adduced, not so much by the Tn- 
 fidel as by the Romanist, viz.—That we are 
 not possessed of the whole Bible; that there 
 are certain books, especially some connected 
 with the Old Testament, which ought to be 
 enrolled in the sacred canon, and which are 
 now wanting. These books are commonly 
 called the Apocrypha. What the Roman 
 Catholic alleges is, that we Protestants are 
 really destitute of a complete Bible; a hint 
 on which the Infidel has frequently laid hold, 
 in order to show that Christians,even among 
 themselves, are not agreed as to what is 
 Scripture and what is not. 
 
 There are reasons, the most decisive and 
 satisfactory, for believing that what is called 
 the Apocrypha never was intended to bea 
 part of the sacred volume—was not inspired 
 of God—and is justly rejected from the sacred 
 canon. This is an important subject, for 
 some of the objections _ which have been 
 
 16 
 
186 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 adduced against the claims of the Scriptures 
 to be the book of God have been deduced 
 from books which we Protestants universally 
 disclaim, as any portion of the revealed will 
 of God. 
 
 The Apocrypha, so called from a word 
 which means Hid—The hidden books— 
 books not read and perused publicly in the 
 congregations of Israel—was never written 
 in the Hebrew tongue, in which all the rest 
 of the Old Testament was written. It was 
 never received or admitted by the Jews, to 
 whom were divinely entrusted the Oracles 
 of God; it is not once quoted by our Lord, 
 nor by any of the apostles, as a portion of 
 the sacred volume. Josephus, the celebrated 
 Jewish historian, who ought to know what 
 books were recognized by his countrymen 
 and co-religionists, disclaims the Apocrypha 
 as part of the Old Testament Scriptures, 
 The Apocrypha was not recognised by any 
 of the ancient Christian fathers, who are 
 looked up to as being valuable historians, 
 however imperfect expositors of Divine truth. 
 I have in my possession the catalogues of the 
 Sacred Scriptures, or canon, as recorded by 
 the ancient fathers of the Christian church. 
 Athanasius, who lived in the year 340, 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 187 
 
 rejects the whole of the Apocrypha, except 
 one book, which he thinks may be inspired, 
 called the Book of Baruch. Hilary, who 
 lived in the year 354, rejects all the Apocry- 
 pha, Epiphanius, who lived in the year 
 368, rejects it all. The fathers in the council 
 of Laodicea, a. p. 367, reject all the Apocry- 
 pha. Gregory of Nazianzum, who lived in 
 370, rejects all. Amphilochius, who lived in 
 370, also rejects all. Jerome, who lived in 
 392, rejects it all. And lastly, Gregory the 
 Great, who is asserted by Romanists to have 
 been the first Pope, and who lived in 590, 
 rejects the two books of Maccabees, which 
 are at this day received by the Roman 
 Catholic church, and in this presents a useful 
 specimen of Papal harmony. But we have 
 decisive evidence that the Maccabees at least 
 is not part of the word of God, from the 
 simple fact, that the writer disclaims all pre- 
 tension to inspiration whatever. At the end 
 of the second book of Maccabees, which is 
 received by the Church of Rome as part of 
 the Sacred Scriptures, it is stated—* So these 
 things being by Nicanor, &c., I also will here 
 make an end of my narrative, which if I 
 have done well, it is what I desired; but if 
 not so perfectly, it must be pardoned me.” 
 
188 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 
 
 Can we conceive of an inspired penman beg- 
 ging pardon for the mistakes of his narrative ? 
 We find no parallel apology in the rest of 
 sacred writ; and this very closing statement 
 of the writer of the books of Maccabees, 
 would be sufficient to disprove all claim or 
 pretence to inspiration on his part. Jn the 
 last place, the Apocrypha contains doctrines 
 totally destructive of morality. For instance, 
 in the second book of Maccabees (xiv. 42,) 
 we read thus—“ Now as the multitude sought 
 to rush into his house, and to break open the 
 door, and to set fire to it, when he was ready 
 to be taken he struck-himself with his sword, 
 choosing ¢o die nobly rather than to fall into 
 the hands of the wicked, and to suffer abuses 
 unbecoming his noble birth.”’ In these words 
 there is a distinct eulogium upon suicide; it 
 is declared, that the man who rushed unbid- 
 den and unsent into the presence of his God, 
 «died nobly.” ‘To such morality as this, we 
 find no parallel or counterpart in the rest of 
 the sacred volume. And in the same second 
 book of Maccabees, we read that “it isa 
 holy and wholesome thought to pray for the 
 dead, that they may be loosed from their 
 sins.”? In other portions of the Apocrypha, 
 especially in the book of Tobit, which has 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY ? 189 
 
 been received as inspired, it is written «that 
 to depart from injustice is to offer a propitia- 
 tory sacrifice for injustice, and is the obtain- 
 ing of pardon for sins.’? These and other 
 doctrines that might be quoted from the 
 Apocrypha contradict the plain doctrines of 
 Scripture, and show distinctly that these 
 books are not to be confounded or identified 
 with the sacred volume; and that, whatever 
 objections may lie against the morality of the 
 Apocrypha, these do not militate one jot or 
 tittle against the morality of what is really 
 the word of God. 
 
 Some may be disposed to ask—“ Does not 
 the Church of England receive the Apocry- 
 pha?’? That church does not receive it as 
 sacred Scripture. She expressly states, that 
 parts of the Apocrypha may be read only as 
 containing moral lessons, but that no doc- 
 trine is to be proved thereby: in other words, 
 that the Apocrypha is not inspired, though 
 portions of it, of which some are good, may 
 be read, just as one of her homilies may be 
 read, to the congregation. This is decisive 
 as to the opinion of that church on the non- 
 inspiration of the Apocryphal books. Per- 
 haps, however, it is to be regretted that the 
 Apocrypha should be bound up with Holy 
 
190 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 Scripture at all. I have been also told by 
 ministers of the Church of England, that 
 when a lesson in the Apocrypha does occur, 
 they are at perfect liberty to read instead of 
 it a portion of inspired and sacred writ. 
 Having thus cleared the way so far as to 
 be able to see what is the sacred volume, the 
 next statement to which I proceed is, that 
 we are charged—and charged by two oppo- 
 site extremes, first by the Socinian, and next 
 by the Roman Catholic—with having a false 
 and inaccurate translation of Holy Writ. 
 These two systems are both opposed to the 
 truth. Socinianism is a system bereft of very 
 much that is divine; Romanism is a system 
 corrupted by very much that is human: 
 both are equally opposed to “the truth as it 
 is:in Jesus.”? But if we compare the trans- 
 lation of the Scriptures made in the year 
 1611, that is, cur authorized version, with 
 the version of the Socinians, or rather, the mu- 
 tilated document put forth by them as a ver- 
 sion, and on the other hand with the Roman 
 Catholic version, we shall find, that though 
 our translation might be improved, were it 
 revised, yet when all the improvements have 
 been introduced, they will only tell more 
 triumphantly in favour of the Deity of Christ, 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 19] 
 
 the personality of the Holy Spirit, and the 
 way of a sinner’s acceptance freely through 
 the blood and atonement of the Lord Jesus, 
 To give a specimen of this. In the book 
 of Jeremiah (xvii. 9) we find these words, 
 according to our authorized version—“ The 
 heart is deceitful above all things, and des- 
 perately wicked ; who can know it 2”? Both 
 the Socinian and the Romanist oppose this 
 translation, and say it is far too strong; and 
 { was quietly told, in a recent controversy 
 for “the faith once delivered to the saints,”’ 
 that we Protestants had wilfully and wick- 
 edly mistranslated this verse, in order to 
 make out the gloomy dogma of Calvinism, 
 called the total corruption of human nature. 
 The Roman Catholic version of the Scrip- 
 tures has this translation—“ The heart is per- 
 verse above all things, and unsearchable; 
 who can know it?” the expression “un- 
 searchable,” being meant to apply to its in- 
 tellectual, and not to its moral condition; 
 and the individual, who called my attention 
 to it, said that our translation was wilfully 
 corrupted into “ desperately wicked,” for the 
 mere purpose just mentioned. Now, in order 
 to ascertain which version is correct, I applied 
 to the Lexicon of Gesenius—the most distin- 
 
192 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 guished Hebrew lexicographer of this or any 
 other age, one also who is a Rationalist or 
 Neologian, and therefore not at all biassed 
 in favour of Calvinism. This eminent lexi- 
 cographer translates the Hebrew word—* so 
 malignant as to be incurable.’’ If his trans- 
 Jation be right, (and he speaks purely asa 
 linguist and a critic, and not asa theologian,) 
 our version is hardly strong enough. It ought 
 to be—“The heart is deceitful above all 
 things, and so malignant as to be utterly in- 
 curable by human art.’”’? But if we refer to 
 the Church of Rome herself, we find her 
 agreeing in our translation of this very word, 
 where she does not think any dogma of hers 
 is concerned. In this same book of Jere- 
 miah, (xv. 18,) there being no theological 
 motive to the contrary, she has translated the 
 word as she ought—“ Why is my sorrow be- 
 come perpetual, and my wound desperate so 
 as to refuse to be healed 2”? There she trans- 
 lates the word substantially the same as we 
 do; but when she has to deal with a doc- 
 trinal point, she perverts the word, and in 
 order to get rid of the doctrine that man’s 
 heart is desperately wicked, she softens and 
 explains the phrase, so as to make it mean 
 nothing at all. 1 might go over the whole 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 193 
 
 version, and show that when we compare 
 our translation with the Roman Catholic or 
 the Socinian, we shall find our own, in almost 
 every instance, triumphantly correct. Let us 
 take another instance from the Gospel of 
 John, in the Douay version, (ii. 4,) where our 
 Lord, when about'to transform the water 
 into wine, says to his mother, “ Woman, 
 what have I to do with thee??? The Church 
 of Rome felt this a sort of repulse to the 
 homage that she yields to the Virgin Mary, 
 and therefore translated it, “ What is it to me 
 and to thee ??,—-which makes nonsense, and 
 cannot be interpreted to mean either worship 
 or repulse, or any thing at all. But in the 
 Gospel of Mark (v. 7) the Church of Rome 
 translates the very same Greek words, 7 éuoi 
 xai ca, “ What have 1 to do with thee?’’ 
 Where no dogma of our faith is concerned, 
 she translates them exactly as we do; where 
 a dogma zs concerned, she mistranslates and 
 perverts the meaning of God’s word. 
 
 I admit, that our version is susceptible of 
 improvement; but of sucha nature, that if 
 all the words in our translation which might 
 be changed, were translated exactly as the 
 original warrants, those great truths which 
 
 are embodied in the standards of the Pro- 
 1 
 
194 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 testant churches, and which are proclaimed 
 from every evangelical pulpit, would shine 
 forth in yet more glorious and beautiful relief. 
 Let me give another instance or two. In 
 Paul’s Epistle to Titus (ii. 13) we find these 
 words: “ Looking for that blessed hope, and 
 the glorious appearing of the great God and 
 our Saviour Jesus Christ.” From reading 
 these words we might suppose the meaning 
 to be: “ Looking for the glorious appearing 
 of the great God,’’ (that is, God the Father,) 
 sand,’ secondly, ‘of our Saviour Jesus 
 Christ; but the literal translation of the 
 verse, as any classical scholar well knows, is 
 this: “ Looking for that blessed hope, and 
 the glorious appearing of Jesus Curisr, ouR 
 GREAT Gop anp Saviour.’’ Again; in the 
 Second Epistle of Peter (i. 1) we find these 
 words: “Simon Peter, a servant and an 
 apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have 
 obtained like precious faith with us, through 
 the righteousness of God and our Saviour 
 Jesus Christ.” From reading these words, 
 one would likewise suppose allusion to be 
 made to God the Father and to God the Son; 
 but the literal translation is, “through the 
 righteousness of Jesus Christ, our God and 
 Saviour.’ Along with these two, there are 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 195 
 
 other four passages to which I might refer, 
 did space permit—(namely, Eph. v. 5; 2 
 Thess. i. 12; 1 Tim. v. 21; and Jude 4)—in 
 all of which we find the very same phrase- 
 ology mistranslated in our version, as if two 
 persons of the Trinity were meant; but when 
 corrected according to exact and accurate 
 criticism, we have in these six passages most 
 decided and intelligible proof of the essential 
 Deity and Godhead of our Lord and Saviour 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 I may show, by reference to two or three 
 specimens of a different class, what would be 
 the result of such alterations of our author- 
 ized translation as would render it more 
 minutely literal. In the Gospel of John 
 (i. 14) it is said, that our Lord “was made 
 flesh, and dwelt among us.” ‘The literal 
 translation is, “dwelt as in a tent among us ;” 
 walked and lived among us as in a movable 
 tabernacle, into which He had come for a 
 season. Again; in the Gospel of Matthew 
 (ix. 36) we read that our Lord “ was moved 
 with compassion.” The literal translation of 
 that is: “ All his bowels were agitated and 
 trembled with sympathy and compassion.’’ 
 Theancients believed the bowels to be the seat 
 of sympathy, or mercy. The Greek word 
 
196 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 used there to denote compassion is the most 
 expressive that human language is capable 
 of employing, insomuch that our version 
 utterly fails to convey the vastness and ful- 
 ness of the meaning of the original. Again; 
 
 in the Epistle to the Hebrews (iv. 1) our © 
 
 translation is, “All things are naked and 
 open unto the eyes of Him with whom we 
 have to do.”? The Greek word here is taken 
 from the practices that accompanied the offer- 
 ing of animals in sacrifices. It is said, that 
 in ancient nations, when the animal that 
 was to be sacrificed had been killed, the 
 priest examined minutely all its entrails and 
 bowels, and watched certain spots or symp- 
 toms, from which he augured success or 
 misfortune in the enterprise in which the 
 offerer was embarked; and therefore the 
 apostle says, that all things are as clearly 
 noted by God, as the entrails of the victim 
 were laid bare and examined by the priest. 
 In the First Epistle to the Corinthians (iv. 13) 
 the apostle says, “ We are made as the. filth 
 of the world, and are the offscouring of all 
 things, unto this day.” The word in the 
 original here is amazingly expressive. When 
 a victim was slain for sacrifice, all the parts 
 that were not fit to be offered on the altar 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 197 
 
 were swept away from the floor of the tem- 
 ple, and cast out as pollution, and unfit to 
 remain in the temple. Now says the apostle, 
 “We are exactly like these parts of the sac- 
 rifice, which are cut off and cast away, and 
 treated as unfit to be either dedicated to God, 
 or employed in the service of man ;”’ a most 
 expressive phrase, to denote the utter con- 
 tempt in which the world held the apostles. 
 In the Epistle to the Ephesians, again (v. 27) 
 we read—“ That He might present it to Him- 
 self, a glorious church, not having spot or 
 wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should 
 be holy, and without blemish.”’ The Greek 
 word there is derived from the name of one 
 of the heathen gods, Momus, who was sup- 
 posed to be the god of laughter; and the 
 apostle’s assertion is, that we are to be pre- 
 sented so spotless, that one disposed te 
 ridicule would be unable to detect cause ot 
 derision or scorn in us. 
 
 Now what is the result of these altera- 
 tions? Not that the doctrines we preach aro 
 impugned, not that the theology we hear 
 from every evangelical pulpit is affected ; 
 but that the great truths of Christianity are 
 brought forth in more brilliant and promi- 
 nent glare. 
 
 pe ii 
 
198 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 Let us now turn our attention to some of 
 the objections that have been urged against 
 certain statements, doctrines, and declarations 
 in the word of God. 
 
 The first which I shall mention, is the 
 curse pronounced upon the serpent. Many 
 infidels have said—“< Does it not seem a sort 
 of paltry revenge on the part of God, to 
 have cursed the serpent when he pronounced 
 acurse upon guilty and offending man ? 
 Why punish the irresponsible? Now our 
 reply to this is: Do we not find the very 
 same fact occur in creation and in provi- 
 dence? The ocean engulfs the mother and the 
 helpless babe without distinction. The earth- 
 quake overturns churches as well as theatres; 
 and saints and sinners perish in the catastro- 
 phe. The objection of the infidel is, that it 
 was unjust in God to make the dumb crea- 
 ture suffer in consequence of the guilt of 
 man; but if this be an argument against the 
 God of revelation, will it not tell with equal 
 strength against the God of creation? Sup- 
 pose an incendiary sets fire to a stable, and 
 ten or twenty horses are destroyed, is not 
 the rery same apparent injustice suffered to 
 take place in the providence of God? Sup- 
 pose a war begins between two nations, and 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 199 
 
 the noble horse is destroyed in battle; do we 
 not see the brutes there suffering in conse- 
 quence of man’s passion and revenge? Why 
 has not a benevolent Being so arranged what 
 Infinite Wisdom could have arranged, that 
 man’s evil passions should not go beyond 
 the bosom of the sinner, and that innocence 
 Should be impervious to injury from guilt? 
 It is thus that creation, providence, and reve- 
 lation all coincide, and indicate a common 
 parentage. If, then, it be an argument against 
 the Bible being a revelation from God, that 
 it states the brutes to have been sentenced to 
 suffer in consequence of man’s apostasy, it 
 must be an argument against the creation 
 being the work of God, that we find animals 
 there suffering in consequence of the guilt of 
 man, 
 
 The next objection we refer to is: That 
 certain passions are in Scripture ascribed 
 to God; as, for instance, jealousy, hatred, 
 anger, repentance, and such like. Now, our 
 reply to this is, that all the truths in the word 
 of God are conveyed, more or less, in figura- 
 tive language. Heaven is set forth by a 
 glorious land, and a beauteous temple; its 
 access, by gates of pearl; its bliss, by fruits 
 that grow, and streams that roll, harps of 
 
200 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 
 
 sweet sound, with minstrels that play upon 
 them. All this every one understands to be 
 figurative language, needful to convey to 
 man some idea of the exalted glory and 
 felicity of that better land. In the same 
 way, God represents himself to man under 
 the figures or symbols of human passions ; 
 not that man may believe God to be like 
 himself, a creature liable to anger and to 
 change, but that man may have a clearer con- 
 ception of God’s feelings towards sin and 
 holiness, towards injustice and crime. Hence, 
 when it is said God is angry with the sinner, 
 it simply denotes that He disapproves, by 
 His very nature, of sin. When it is said 
 that God is jealous, it simply denotes that 
 He will bear with no rival in His worship, 
 no claimant of His glory. When it is said 
 that he repents, it simply denotes that He 
 alters the course He formerly pursued, not in 
 respect to His purposes, but to our percep- 
 tions. We must not blame God’s words, but 
 our own weakness. Revelation is the infi- 
 nite within the limitations of our humanity. 
 If God had left these expressions on record 
 without any explanation, there might be 
 some pretence for this objection ; but in 
 order to guard against any misconception, 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 20] 
 
 we read: “My thoughts are not your 
 thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, 
 saith the Lord; for as the heavens are 
 higher than the earth, so are my ways 
 higher than your ways, and my thoughts 
 than your thoughts;”? and again, He has 
 represented Himself “the same yesterday, 
 and to-day, and for ever? “God is not 
 man, that He should repent.”? The objec- 
 tion, therefore, that God is represented as 
 literally possessed of human passions is at 
 once disposed of. 
 
 Another objection is drawn from the text, 
 wherein it is said that God hardened the 
 heart of Pharaoh. Infidels say: “Is it rea- 
 sonable or just, that God should condemn 
 that man to everlasting destruction, whose 
 heart He himself hardened??? Now, we 
 may observe here, in the first place, that it 
 has been noticed more than two hundred 
 years ago, that the literal rendering of the 
 phrase in several instances may justly be: 
 the Lord permitted, or suffered, Pharaoh’s 
 heart to be hardened; the same mood of the 
 Hebrew verb which means to cause, signify- 
 ing also to permit. And if it be an objection 
 against revelation being the inspiration of 
 God that He permitted Pharaoh’s heart to 
 
202 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 be hardened, there is the same objection 
 against creation being the work of God. 
 Does He not suffer men to be born blind? 
 Does He not suffer men to come into the 
 world deformed? Does He not suffer inju- 
 ries and casualties to destroy hundreds? 
 You will not say, that this proves creation 
 not to be the work of God. In the same 
 way, if He suffers the passions of men to 
 work their natural evil results, and their 
 hearts to be hardened, it does not prove that 
 the book which records such things is not 
 the word of God. But 1 would not shrink 
 from the strongest view of this matter. I 
 take the words as they are in our version: 
 «The Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart ;”? and 
 I say, there was nothing in that, inconsistent 
 with the attributes of a wise, and just, and 
 merciful, and gracious God. For all the offers 
 of the Gospel, all the motives and opportuni- 
 ties and means that could possibly be presented 
 are presented to the sinner ; and if he rejects 
 them all, sins against the clearest light, tram- 
 ples on the kindest love, and nothing more 
 can be done for him than has been done, 
 then there are remaining just two ways in 
 which that man may be punished. Either 
 he may be cut off, and soul and body both 
 
Is THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 203 
 
 cast ino hell; or his physical life may be 
 spared, while his moral and spiritual life 
 may be extinguished. In either case, the 
 punishment is the same. Pharaoh, instead 
 of having his heart hardened, might justly 
 have been cut off at that moment, and cast 
 out from the presence of God; but instead 
 of this, God suffered his physical existence to 
 be protracted, and put an end to his moral 
 and spiritual existence, and therefore while 
 on earth he was in effect in that place where 
 mercy never comes. You would not have 
 objected, if God had cut off his natural life, 
 and given him no more means of repentance, 
 for this is done every day. Then you ought 
 not to object to God’s cutting off His moral 
 and spiritual life, after every thing had been 
 done for him that could be done. 
 
 The next doctrine objected to, is that con- 
 tained in the words, God “ wistts the sins of 
 the fathers upon the children.’ Do we not 
 find this illustrated in ordinary life? <A 
 nobleman rebels against his prince; he loses 
 his coronet, and his family suffer for centu- 
 ries afterwards. A king commits some great 
 crime; .and the whole country is thrown 
 into rebellion and war A father, through 
 gambling, loses all his property ; and his chil- 
 
204 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD ?. 
 
 dren, and his children’s children suffer. A 
 parent becomes a drunkard and a debauchee, 
 wastes his health and injures his constitu- 
 tion; and his offspring are diseased, to the 
 third and fourth generation, Now, what is 
 all this, but the sins of the fathers visited 
 upon the children in the arrangements of a 
 Providence we can see, and in the occur- 
 rences of daily life? If therefore the record 
 of this fact in the Bible, proves the book not 
 to be the inspiration of God, then would the 
 happening of this fact every day before our 
 eyes prove creation and Providence not to be 
 the workmanship of God. Moreover, when 
 God states that He visits the iniquities of the 
 fathers upon the children, He does noé refer 
 to their after existence. In Ezekiel (xvii. 
 19) we read: “Yet say ye, Why? doth 
 not the son bear the iniquity of the father ? 
 When the son hath done that which is law- 
 ful and right, and hath kept all my statutes, 
 and hath done them, he shall surely live. 
 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son 
 shall not bear the iniquity of the father, 
 neither shall the father bear the iniquity of 
 the son. The righteousness of the righteous 
 shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the 
 wicked shall be upon him.” This chapter 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 205 
 
 refers to the after existence of the soul. The 
 Jews construed the statement in Exodus 
 falsely, and understood it to refer to God’s 
 arrangements in eternity, as well as to His 
 dealings in time: but heie by the mouth of 
 His prophet He distinctly contradicts this. 
 He shows, that “visiting the iniquities of 
 the fathers upon the children”? has reference 
 purely to man’s temporal condition, and has 
 no direct bearing whatever on the destinies 
 of his immortal soul. 
 
 A passage objected to by infidels as incon- 
 sistent with the idea of the moral character 
 of God, is in Joshua (xii. 7,) where we read 
 that God commanded all the Canaanitish 
 nations to be extirpated. They say, that 
 it seems wholly inconsistent with what we 
 should suppose to be the merciful character 
 of God, that He should thus command whole 
 nations to be destroyed by the sword. But 
 when we hear that pestilence has depopu- 
 Jated crowded cities, or that Napoleon has 
 swept the continent of Europe, and left but 
 the wrecks of smoking homes and the bones 
 of slaughtered citizens to be the mementos 
 of his march, we do not say that this isa 
 proof that there is no God in heaven, nor 
 
 any moral government of the inhabitants of 
 18 . 
 
206 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 the earth; and yet, if the destruction of the 
 nations of the Canaanites zmmediately by 
 God is a proof that the Bible which records 
 it is not the inspiration of God, then the 
 destruction of nations by the sword of the 
 conqueror, or by the breath of pestilence, 
 must be a proof that there is no God, or that 
 creation is not the work of God, nor provi- 
 dence a part of the general government of 
 God. When we see juries in our own coun- 
 try bringing in a verdict of Guilty, the judge 
 pronouncing sentence of death, and that sen- 
 tence executed, we do not complain that 
 there is any thing wrong or unjust in the 
 act. Now these Canaanites are declared and 
 proved to have polluted and stained the land 
 with abominable crimes: they had time and 
 were urged to repent of them, and thus 
 escape destruction; and when they were cut 
 off by the sword of Heaven, it was merely 
 the holy judge pronouncing sentence on fla- 
 grant criminals, and the righteous governor 
 executing that sentence to the letter. We 
 are not to regard the extirpation of the Ca- 
 naanites as an act of arbitrary or private 
 revenge, but as the execution of the sentence 
 of retributive justice, and’ such as had per- 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 207 
 
 haps as great mercy to the innocent, as equity 
 to the guilty. 
 
 It is urged, that the command given to 
 Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, is alto- 
 gether inconsistent with all right concep. 
 tions of the justice and the mercy of God. 
 First, the apparently intended act was sym- 
 bolical; it was meant to represent the sacri- 
 fice of Christ, the Son of God, as a propitia- 
 tion for the sins of the world. In the second 
 place, God has a sovereign and indisputable 
 claim to the life of His creature, when, where, 
 and how He pleases; so much so, that if 
 Abraham had actually plunged the knife into 
 the bosom of Isaac at the command of God, 
 it would have been right in Abraham, and 
 just in God. He has a right to summon the 
 soul to his presence through any avenue, in 
 any circumstances, and by any instrument- 
 ality that to Him may seem meet. In the 
 last place, Abraham did nof¢ kill Isaac, and 
 this alone extinguishes all objections, 
 
 In the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy 
 and in some parts of Ezekiel, there are 
 passages, it is alleged, so indecicate, as to 
 be unfit- for general perusal; and _ infidels 
 have urged this as a reason for disbelieving 
 the Bible to be the inspiration of God, and 
 
208 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 Romanists, as an argument against its general 
 perusal. In the first place, we have no fact 
 recorded in Scripture which does not actually 
 occur in creation and in providence; and if 
 therefore the record of that which to us seems , 
 indelicate is an argument that God did not 
 write the book, then the actual occurrence in 
 creation and in providence of these same in- 
 delicacies must be an argument that God did 
 not create the world, and that he does not 
 rule it by his providence. In courts of justice, 
 and in professional and medical communi- 
 cations, circumstances transpire which may 
 seem indelicate to us, but of which we never 
 complain, because we know that such com- 
 munications are essential to the good and 
 well-being of mankind; and may not these 
 communications of the great Physician and 
 the moral Restorer of the world, notwith- 
 standing their apparent indelicacy, be essen- 
 tial for the moral restoration of the world ? 
 The Scripture is an exact portrait of man ; 
 if it shows the bright in his character, it also 
 records the black; if it proclaims that which 
 ennobles and exalts him, it discloses that 
 which tends to depress and humble him. 
 This book would not be, as it professes to be, 
 a full length portraiture, not merely of man’s 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 209 
 
 restoration, but of man’s ruin, and wretched- 
 ness, and guilt, if it did not record fully and 
 fairly the sins, as well as the virtues, of 
 human kind. There is also, in the present 
 day, what is thought delicacy of language, 
 which was unknown, even two or three cen- 
 turies ago, and still more so in the day when 
 the Bible was written. In ancient times, 
 and especially in Eastern countries, men and 
 women never mingled together in society, 
 but kept perfectly distinct and separate ; and 
 allusions might be made, in such circum- 
 stances, by no means indelicate. Ina recent 
 work, written, I believe, by an Arab, it is 
 Stated as a most revolting circumstance, that 
 in England the ladies walk the streets with- 
 out being veiled, and openly mingle with 
 men in society and in the churches. For 
 this, the foreigner charges us with a want of 
 delicacy, just as we charge some thing else 
 as indelicate against a past generation. But 
 the question may well be mooted, whether 
 there was not more real delicacy in days 
 when these very expressions were employed, 
 than there is in the age in which we live, 
 with all its supposed perfection and fastidi- 
 ous refinement. There is here also a distinc- 
 tion worth recollection. When we read of 
 18* 
 
210 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 
 
 that which is immoral and indelicate in the 
 novel or romance, it is recorded in such a 
 way as to excite corresponding emotions in 
 the mind of the reader; but when we read 
 what are called the most indelicate records 
 in the word of God, they are recorded in 
 tones of holy and righteous severity, and in- 
 stead of being calculated to excite one unhal- 
 lowed emotion, they are calculated to make 
 us abhor, and abstain from what is foul, 
 and love whatsoever is just, and pure, and of 
 good report. And for all these reasons we 
 say, that those parts of Holy Writ which 
 appear to us indelicate may be vindicated 
 on the strictest principles, and shown to be 
 neither inconsistent with the moral character 
 of God, nor calculated to contaminate the 
 feelings and affections of mankind. 
 Polygamy, it is objected, was suffered to 
 exist among the Hebrews and in other East- 
 ern nations. We read of the number of wives 
 of David, and of the concubines of Solomon ; 
 and the infidel immediately starts the objec- 
 tion—Can this have been permitted by the 
 same God who again and again forbids it? 
 Now, the laws which may be suited to one 
 age of the world may not be suited to 
 another age; the laws which may be most 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 211 
 
 essential in one stage of the world’s history 
 may be the reverse in another stage. Our Lord 
 gives the reason of the change. Polygamy 
 was suffered “because of the hardness of the 
 people’s hearts.”’ It was a practice tolerated 
 in the circumstances of the age, admitted to 
 be a corruption of the primeval law, not a 
 perpetual moral maxim intended to regulate 
 the intercourse and conduct of mankind in 
 after times. Is it not the fact, that there are 
 different laws, not only for different ages, 
 but for different states of the same commu- 
 nity? The same laws would not do for the 
 prison which are required for upright and 
 polished men; the same laws do not prevail 
 in a penal colony that are in force in the free 
 mother country; the same laws will not do 
 for Otaheite that are proper for Britain. 
 There exists in the usages of men a certain 
 accommodation of the laws to the country 
 they are intended to regulate. We have 
 something like this illustrated in the present 
 day, in the conduct, for instance, of medical 
 men. Suppose a person is seized with a 
 dangerous disease, and is placed under a 
 physician; suppose he is a person who has 
 been accustomed to drink a considerable 
 quantity of alcoholevery day. Tle physician, 
 
212 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 though he will reprehend the use of alcohol, 
 will allow that person a certain quantity of 
 it every day, and will decrease it gradually, 
 until the patient is able to abstain from it 
 wholly. Now it may have been, that God 
 allowed, in the circumstances of other times, 
 the gradual diminution of a practice, which 
 now, when “life and immortality are brought 
 to light,’’ is utterly interdicted. Polygamy, 
 too, like many other things, is not sinful ex- 
 cept by the interdict of God. Without God’s 
 law upon the subject, there is no more guilt 
 in polygamy, than there would be in vio- 
 Jating the seventh day while God had not 
 commanded it to be kept holy. It is His 
 command that makes it sinful. Polygamy is 
 not essentially sinful, like murder or theft; 
 but is now become sinful, because the com- 
 mand of God forbids it. Cain, in the infancy 
 of the world, married his sister, and it was 
 not then sinful; but now it would be most 
 sinful. So that there must be some adapta- 
 tion between the age and condition of the 
 individuals, and the laws employed to govern 
 and restrain them. 
 
 It has been contended, contradictory as it 
 may appear to the former objection, that the 
 morality of the New Testament is too strict 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 2183 
 
 and severe. The young man, for instance, 
 says—* It cannot be sin for me to gratify the 
 passions and propensities of my nature. I 
 am constituted so, and God has made me so, 
 and surely it cannot be sin in me to do what 
 God has made me disposed to.”” Now we 
 shall find, that the brother, who will plead 
 for the gratification of certain passions in 
 himself, will reprobate the indulgence of 
 those passions in a Sister or some one near 
 and dear to him. This very circumstance 
 shows that there is in such a one’s heart, if 
 his lusts and passions would allow it to be 
 felt, a conviction that he is acting contrary to 
 the will of God, and inconsistently with the 
 welfare of society. The lofty holiness re- 
 quired in the gospel, is merely the highest 
 happiness required in man. The highest 
 morality is the highest joy. God did not 
 constitute man necessarily a sinner The 
 whole guilt and responsibility are ours if we 
 sin, while all the glory must be God’s if we 
 are reclaimed from the practice of vice to the 
 practice of virtue and piety. 
 
 It is said that the murder of Jephthah’s 
 daughter by Jephthah seems inconsistent 
 with the views we form of the mercy and 
 justice of God. If we peruse the chapter 
 
214 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 in which this is recorded (Judges xi), we 
 shall come to the conclusion that Jephthah 
 did not destroy his daughter, and that the 
 common and popular impression is wholly 
 unwarranted by the sacred narrative. It is 
 stated, first of all, that Jephthah promised. 
 that the first thing that met him, if he re- 
 turned victorious and in peace, “should 
 surely be the Lord’s, and he would offer it 
 up for a burnt offering.””? Now, if we refer 
 to the marginal reading (which is generally 
 the most correct), we shall find it run— It 
 shall surely be the Lord’s, or I will offer up 
 a burnt-offering ;”’ in.the original there is no 
 word for “zt”? (I will offer 7¢ up”’), but the 
 literal reading is—“ Whatsoever cometh forth 
 of the door of my house to meet me, shall 
 sutely be the Lord’s, or” (if I do not devote 
 that object to Him) “[ will offer up a burnt- 
 offering.”? In the next place, Jephthah the 
 father was not at liberty to kill his daughter 
 by any law; much less on any vow made in 
 haste. Human sacrifices were interdicted 
 under all circumstances. And further; in 
 order to offer up a sacrifice, there must have 
 been a priest to do it. Jephthah was nota 
 priest; he was a soldier, and no priest of the 
 tribe of Aaron dare offer up a human victim’ 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 215 
 
 mm sacrifice to God. In the next place, it is 
 stated in the thirty-eighth verse, that “she 
 went with her companions for two months, 
 and bewailed her virginity upon the moun- 
 tains.” She was secluded and separated 
 from the world, and devoted to a sort of mo- 
 nastic life. If she had been slain by her 
 father and offered up as a sacrifice or burnt- 
 offering, how could this have been recorded ? 
 _And in the last verses it is said, that “her 
 father did with her according to his vow’? 
 (not “he slaughtered her’’), “and she knew 
 no man ; and it was a custom in Israel, that 
 the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament 
 the daughter of Jephthah four days in a 
 year.”’ The literal rendering of that last ex- 
 pression is, that “the daughters of Israel 
 went yearly to lament with the daughter of 
 Jephthah.” Any one who will refer to the 
 original, will see that the preposition “ with” 
 is there. If we take all these circumstances 
 into consideration, it will appear that the 
 objection, that Jephthah, with the command 
 or permission of God, sacrificed his own 
 daughter as a burnt-offering, falls to the 
 ground, because no such thing occurred, and 
 all that did happen was, that she was devoted 
 
216 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 
 
 to the immediate service and worship of God 
 in a state of perpetual virginity. 
 
 Another passage objected to as inconsistent 
 with the character of God, is found in the 
 second book of Samuel (xii. 31) where it is 
 said of David, when he had taken the city of 
 Rabbah—« And he brought forth the people 
 that were therein, and put them under saws, 
 and under harrows of iron, and under axes 
 of iron, and made them pass through the 
 brick-kiln : and thus did he unto all the cities 
 of the children of Ammon. So David and 
 all the people returned unto J erusalem.”’ 
 This is recorded in another passage of sacred 
 writ in still ampler and stronger terms; and 
 Paine, especially, has boasted and said—* Is 
 this the inspiration of God? was David act- 
 ing according to the suggestions of Him, who 
 is supposed to be wise and merciful, when he 
 thus tortured and destroyed hundreds of hu- 
 man beings?”? Now some will be surprised 
 when I inform them, that the Hebrew word 
 beth, which is here translated “ under,” does 
 not mean wnder, (that is, placed beneath,) 
 but means fo (in the sense in which we say, 
 in ordinary language, “I put him to the 
 plough”); the literal meaning is, that he put 
 them ¢o saws and fo harrows and fo axes 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 217 
 
 and ¢o the making of bricks—that is, he made 
 them perpetual working slaves. There is no 
 warrant whatever for the construction that 
 he destroyed them by saws and harrows and 
 axes, or inhumanly forced them into the 
 furnace of the brick-kiln. He simply set 
 them to a laborious drudgery. 
 
 Another passage adduced as a disproof of 
 Christianity being from God, is the statement 
 that some “little children’? mocked Elisha, 
 and said to him, “Go up, thou bald-head,’’ 
 and that for this, forty-two of them were 
 instantly, by the command of God, torn to 
 pieces by bears that came forth from the 
 wood. Now the Hebrew word, here trans- 
 lated “little children,”’ is in various parts of 
 the word of God translated “young men.”’ 
 Isaac, at the age of twenty, is called by this 
 very Hebrew noun. Joseph, at the age of 
 thirty, is called by the same word—a young 
 man. The real rendering of the passage 
 therefore is, that forty-two young men (who 
 may have been twenty or thirty years of 
 age) came forth from the city of Bethel, 
 which had been devoted to the worship of 
 an idol, and blasphemed the living God, and 
 mocked his prophet; and in just judgment 
 for their conduct, the bears, the executioners 
 
 19 
 
218 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 simply, came forth, at the bidding of the 
 Most High, from the forest, and destroyed 
 them. 
 
 The next objection which I notice, against 
 the Scriptures being the inspiration of God, 
 rests on whut are called its curses ; those, 
 for instance, recorded in the fifty-fifth Psalm, 
 and in the book of Deuteronomy—* Cursed 
 shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt 
 thou be in the field; cursed shall be thy bas- 
 ket and thy store; cursed shall be the fruit 
 of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, the in- 
 crease of thy kine, and the flocks of thy 
 sheep; cursed shalt thou be when thou com- 
 
 est in, and cursed shalt thou be when thou 
 goest out.” Now, in reply to this, I observe, 
 that the future tense and the imperative 
 mood of the Hebrew verb are in certain per- 
 sons precisely the same, and that it was en- 
 tirely in the option of our translators to ren- 
 der every one of these passages “ Thou wilt” 
 or “Thou shalt,” as “ Shalt thou be” or “ Be 
 thou.”? And since this liberty was left us, it 
 might seem more consistent with the char- 
 acter of God, that these passages should be 
 rendered, “ Thou wilt be cursed ;” and in the 
 fifty-fifth Psalm, “Death will seize upon 
 them, and they will go down quick into 
 
_ IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 219 
 
 hell.” Generally, wherever the expression is 
 put in the imperative mood, it might be ren- 
 dered in the future tense; and thereby made 
 a prediction of what will surely betide the 
 sinner, and not an imprecation of what is 
 deserved. But suppose that these passages 
 are rightly rendered in the imperative mood, 
 and not in the future tense, I do not hesitate 
 to defend them; still they do not militate 
 against the character of God. God has a 
 right to send forth His servants as judges, 
 to pronounce His sentence upon those that 
 rebel against Him and disobey His laws. 
 And bear in mind, that when Moses or David 
 used these imprecations (if we call them so,) 
 they did so, not as private individuals, grati- 
 fying personal feelings, but as judges acting 
 by the authority and clothed with the com- 
 mission of their Lord and Master in heaven. 
 
 The next objection adduced against Scrip- 
 ture, to which I shall refer, zs everlasting 
 punishment. The infidel says, it seems 
 wholly inconsistent with the mercy and good- 
 ness of God, that His creatures should be 
 doomed to everlasting suffering, and thata 
 punishment should be inflicted so dispropor- 
 tionate to the sins of which they have been 
 guilty. Ido not agrée with those who have 
 
220 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 tried to explain away this awful truth; they 
 seem to me to torture Scripture. But if I 
 can show, that there are punishments even 
 in this world which seem in their measure 
 disproportionate to the offence, it will not do 
 
 to plead against the revelation of God because - 
 
 there is a punishment declared in it which 
 seems to us disproportionate to the offence. 
 Now suppose a man commits one single sin ; 
 how often is it found, that he incurs a life- 
 time of shame, and suffering, and sorrow ! 
 Does it not seem a punishment totally dispro- 
 portionate to the offence of which he has been 
 guilty, that through a whole life he should 
 suffer shame and sorrow for one single viola- 
 tion of the laws of his country, or the re- 
 scripts of his God? And again, in the world 
 in which we live, we can show even now, 
 the infliction of a perpetual punishment. We 
 find that some are suffering punishment every 
 week, every day, every hour, every moment ; 
 and though it be in different individuals, yet 
 that a large portion of the race as a whole 
 is undergoing perpetual punitive treatment. 
 And therefore it may not be inconsistent with 
 the character of God, that the individual who 
 has broken His laws and rebelled against 
 His offers of mercy, should be consigned to 
 
 » 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 22] 
 
 a place where mercy is no longer offered. 
 But do we object to everlasting happiness ? 
 The infidel speaks of desert ; he thinks moral 
 conduct is entitled to reward, and immoral 
 conduct deserves punishment, and he admits 
 that everlasting happiness may justly be con- 
 ferred on what is pleasing to God, and com- 
 mendable. Then why should he object to 
 everlasting punishment being decreed for im- 
 moral conduct, that is displeasing to God, 
 and blameworthy ? But I add, the punish- 
 ment of the lost is of that kind, that it must 
 be perpetual by the very necessity of the 
 thing. What is hell? It is not a place of 
 literal flames and literal fire. I need not tell 
 you that the language employed is symboli- 
 cal and figurative. Hell is moral aberration 
 from God, just as heaven is moral approxi- 
 mation to God. At every step the lost recede 
 from God, their horror and remorse and 
 misery must be augmented, and the possi- 
 bility of return diminished, just as at every 
 Step the saint approximates to God, his joy 
 and peace and happiness must be increased, 
 And therefore the sentence pronounced upon 
 the ungodly is merely—“ He that is unjust, let 
 him be unjust still ; and he which is filthy, let 
 him be filthy still;?’? and the sentence pro- 
 8: Yo 
 
992 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 nounced upon the righteous is just—“< He 
 that is righteous, let him be righteous still ; 
 and he that is holy, let him be holy still.” 
 Hell is just the impress of a centrifugal 
 power on man’s soul, that carries him fur- 
 ther and further from God and from happi- 
 ness; and Heaven is a centripetal power 
 imparted to man’s soul, that draws him 
 nearer and nearer to God and to joy. The 
 one begins with “ Depart,” and the other with 
 “Come.’’ And therefore, from the very na- 
 ture of the thing, and from parity of reason- 
 ing upon eternal blessedness, eternal punish- 
 ment does not seem at all inconsistent with 
 the character of God, or contrary to what 
 we should believe to be His dealings here- 
 after. 
 
 Such are some of the objections urged 
 against the word of God. When fairly ex- 
 amined, they do not tell in favour of infi- 
 delity ; but the contrary. May the Spirit of 
 God bring home his truth to our hearts and 
 consciences; and convince us, that though 
 there are in the word of God “some things 
 hard to be understood,” it is only “ they that 
 are unlearned and unstable’? who “ wrest 
 them to their own destruction.” 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 223 
 
 CHAPTER IX, 
 I3 THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY AND INCONSISTENT ! 
 
 One of the first objections which have been 
 adduced against the statements of the word 
 of God, is, that the whole story of Paradise 
 lost, with its happy pair, its tree of life and 
 its tree of knowledge, is a tale altogether un- 
 worthy of God. Now if there were another 
 account of the origin of evil of a more phi- 
 losophic character, if there were any other 
 tale or story that could be substantiated, or 
 that bore upon its face the impress of a purer 
 and a nobler author, then indeed we might 
 peradventure reject the sacred narrative. 
 But when we turn to the stories recorded in 
 the heathen poets, in Hesiod, and Virgil, and 
 Ovid, and Lucretius—when we read of their 
 golden age, of the golden apple and the Hes- 
 perides, of the results of Pandora’s box and 
 Prometheus’ theft, and kindred tales—we 
 see at once the anile and puerile statements 
 of a wild and exuberant imagination, but 
 yet at the same time they are confirmatory 
 of the inspired record, by their being evi- 
 
224 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 dently taken from it; and if we proceed to 
 compare the simple and noble narrative of 
 Genesis with the fancies and figments of the 
 poets, we are constrained to acknowledge 
 that the first is the truth, bearing upon its 
 brow the imprimatur of God, and the last the 
 fables of driveling ignorance. 
 
 But it is further objected, that the subject- 
 ing of our first parents to a test, by observ- 
 ance of which they should stand, and by 
 disobedience to which they should fall, seems 
 to have been an unnecessary and uncalled- 
 for obligation imposed on them by God. It 
 was not so. Man was by his very being a 
 creature, and God the Creator. It was es- 
 sentially necessary, therefore, that the crea- 
 ture should be placed under law; that 
 there should be in the creature, and about 
 the creature, the traces of a _ creature’s 
 origin, and of a creature’s dependence and 
 allegiance to his Maker. Every orb and 
 intelligence must stand thus. Now what 
 could be more just, simple, or easy to 
 be observed, than the arrangement of 
 Eden; as if God, by it, proclaimed—« In 
 order to show that thou, Adam, art a 
 creature, and in duty bound to recognize and 
 obey me, thy Creator, I lay upon thy shoul- 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 225 
 
 der no harder burden than this, that thou 
 mayest eat of every fruit-tree that waves its 
 branches in broad and beauteous Eden, save 
 only of one single tree, of which thou mayest 
 not eat; for if thou dost eat, death, with all 
 its woe, must follow as the necessary conse- 
 quence?” Ifthe temptation had been great 
 to eat of this tree, one might have said that 
 Adam was placed in trying circumstances; 
 but when the temptation to eat was the least 
 possible, and when the punishment in case 
 of eating was the greatest possible, we can 
 see in these the arrangement and the require- 
 ments of heavenly order, the love of God, 
 and the inexcusable heinousness of the guilt 
 that was involved in that crime, when Adam 
 took of the forbidden tree, and— 
 
 “ Brought death into all the world, and all our woe.” 
 
 But were we to reject the Mosaic account 
 of the introduction of evil, we do not get rid 
 of the difficulty. We see sin and suffering 
 naked and grim in the world. How do you 
 reconcile the existence of these, and the 
 existence of a benevolent God? What bet- 
 ter solution than that of Christianity can you 
 give? I therefore assert, that whether we 
 compare the record of Meses with the legen- 
 
226 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 dary fables of the heathen poets, or with the 
 ablest and brightest conjectures of mind or 
 suggestions of philosophy, or whether we 
 analyze and examine all the circumstances 
 of the case, we shall be constrained to ac- 
 knowledge that the whole thing was worthy 
 of God, and that in making this arrangement 
 God not only acted mercifully, but justly, 
 wisely, and well. 
 
 The Mosaic record is wholly disbelieved 
 by some. Its credibility must rest on evi- 
 dence. To confirm its antiquity and truth 
 in its merely historical aspect, I would refer 
 to the division of time, which prevails in 
 almost every country in the world; a division 
 traceable to the books of Moses. For in- 
 stance ; the division of the year into 365 days 
 and a fraction is the natural result of observing 
 the earth’s motion about the sun; the division 
 of time into months is a very natural conse- 
 quence of observing the phases of the moon; 
 and the division of time into day and night is 
 obviously forced on us. But how can we ac- 
 count for the fact, that in Europe, in Asia, in 
 Africa, and in America, time is divided into 
 periods of seven days,commonly called weeks ? 
 No physical observation will account for this. 
 No inference from sun, moon, or stars, will 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 227 
 
 account for it. Obviously, therefore, the only 
 conclusion we can arrive at is, that it was 
 either a tradition handed down from the first 
 fathers of the human race, and preserved 
 among them, though scattered to the utmost 
 bounds of the habitable globe, or that it was 
 directly copied from the writings of Moses, and 
 incorporated in the laws and habits of the 
 nations. So tied, moreover, does man seem 
 to be to this division of time into seven days, 
 or into weeks, that when French philosophy, 
 in its frenzy and infatuation, tried to abolish 
 it, and instead of weeks to establish decades, 
 the whole nation soon revolted against the 
 change, and returned, as from some. mysteri- 
 ous instinct, to the old division into seven 
 days, or weeks, as they now observe it. 
 Another proof of the antiquity of the Mo- 
 saic record, is found in the language of almost 
 every country in the world. Words such as 
 Adam and Eve, all indicate the Hebrew to 
 have been the language of Eden. Every 
 one acquainted with the Hebrew tongue, 
 and with the Greek and Latin and modern 
 languages, will see that most of them can 
 more or less plainly be traced back to the 
 Hebrew. The very letters of the Hebrew 
 alphabet—aleph, beth, gimel, daleth, &c., are 
 exactly parallel with the Greek—alpha, beta, 
 
228 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 gamma, delta, &c.; and if we refer to the 
 English alphabet, or the Italian, French, 
 Spanish, German, we find nearly the same 
 forms given to the letters, and almost the 
 same sounds, and al] corresponding strikingly 
 with the Hebrew; while in the Welsh, the 
 Gaelic, and the Celtic, we find many words 
 plainly of Hebrew origin. What does this 
 prove, but that languages look backward to 
 the first, the Hebrew; that the language of 
 every nation owns the East as its parent? 
 In one word, the languages of the earth are 
 vocal with attestations to the truth of the 
 Mosaic record. And so the structure of lan- 
 guage, as well as the epochs of chronology, 
 proclaims in impressive accents—* God’s 
 word is Truth.” 
 
 Some philosophers have tried to prove, 
 from certain Hindoo and Chinese calcula- 
 tions of eclipses, that the earth is very much 
 older than the Mosaic record represents it to 
 be. The Chinese have one table, in which 
 they calculate eclipses that happened many 
 thousand years before the earth was created, 
 
 according to the Mosaic history. But the ° 
 
 celebrated La Place has demonstrated, that 
 these tables of the Chinese are downright for- 
 geries, and that nota single particle of de- 
 pendence is to be placed upon them. 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 229 
 
 The same celebrated astronomer has de- 
 monstrated a most important fact. The earth 
 moves round the sun in an oval line; anda 
 line passing from one end of that oval to the 
 other, is called, in astronomical language, the 
 line of the apsides. Now it has been found, 
 that this line rises at a certain angle from 
 what is called the line of the equinoxes, and 
 proceeds in its own direction in a given ratio 
 so accurate and constant, that in twenty-five 
 thousand years it would perform a perfect 
 revolution, and meet the equinox again. 
 But La Place, having demonstrated that this 
 line proceeds a certain distance in a given 
 time, has calculated the precession of this 
 line from the line of the equinoxes, and 
 found it to amount to such a number of de- 
 grees, as proves that it has been proceeding 
 about 5,800 years; exactly agreeing with the 
 account found in the Mosaic record in the 
 word of God. 
 
 There is another proof of the recency of 
 the earth’s formation that has been suggested. 
 It is ascertained, that by the action of the 
 winds, rains, and frosts, every mountain is 
 undergoing a gradual decomposition ; so that 
 Ben Lomond and Ben Nevis are so many 
 feet lower than they were two or three thou- 
 
 20 
 
230 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 sand years ago, and if they had been in ex 
 istence ten or twenty thousand years, these 
 mountains, it is thought, would have become 
 levelled, and the whole earth would have 
 been now a plain spheroid. Now the very 
 fact, that the mountains are not yet levelled, 
 and the valleys are not yet filled up with the 
 débris proceeding from them, some think a 
 proof that the world is not eternal, and is 
 probably but about the age the Mosaic record 
 announces it to be. 
 
 Another infidel objection is, that the lan- 
 guage and ideas of the books of Moses are 
 inconsistent with the discoveries of modern 
 science. For instance: Moses states that the 
 light was created and shone upon the world 
 prior to the fourth day, on which the sun 
 and moon were created ; and infidel philoso- 
 phers ask, How can we find light without 
 the sun? Our reply is this; it is true, we 
 cannot now find day-light without the sun 
 having risen to disseminate that light, but 
 this does not prove that hght may not have 
 existed before the fourth day of creation 
 without the sun to disseminate it. We have 
 a parallel case in the waters. It is recorded 
 that the earth and the water were so inti- 
 mately mingled together, that they formed 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 231 
 
 one vast chaos, and God separated the earth 
 from the water, and made the ocean to be 
 that great reservoir which sends its waters 
 thoughout the arteries, veins, and fountains 
 of the earth. In the same manner He col- 
 lected the particles of light into the sun, and 
 made it to be the source whence that light 
 should be shed forth over the globe. We 
 read, “God made two great lights,”? but the 
 literal translation is, He “made two great 
 light-bearers.’ The sun and the moon may 
 have existed millions of years before this. 
 What God did upon the fourth day, was to 
 consolidate the scattered rays of light in that 
 body called the sun, and to make him to be 
 the great and glorious luminary to light the 
 world that rolls around him, and on which 
 we dwell. So that the language of Moses, 
 we observe, is the language of the New- 
 tonian philosopher, when he says, not that 
 the sun and moon were created at that time, 
 but that they were then made to sustain a 
 relationship to the world, which they had 
 not sustained before, that of lighting it by 
 their rays. 
 
 Another objection to the Mosaic record, 
 urged with apparent triumph, is, that the 
 human race is plainly not sprung from one 
 
232 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 common parent. The infidel craniologist— 
 though all craniologists are not infidels—the 
 infidel craniologist will show you the shape 
 of the head of a European, of an African, of 
 an Asiatic, of an American; he will show 
 you the colours of their skins—the white, the 
 jet black, and the copper coloured ; and he 
 will insist on the inference that they are not 
 all sprung from one common parent. Now 
 our reply to this is to be found in the pages 
 of Buffon, who was a man not disposed to 
 favour or help Christianity, who affirms that 
 man, though white in Europe, yellow in 
 Asia, and black in Africa, yet is one race, 
 and must evidently have come from the same 
 original. One fact will demonstrate the truth 
 of this. At this moment on the coast of 
 India there is found a colony of Jews, who 
 were originally of a comparatively fair com- 
 plexion, and who of course have not been 
 permitted to intermarry with others of a 
 different race, and yet they are now as black 
 as the inhabitants of Guinea, or the swarthy 
 sons of Africa; a demonstration that climate, 
 and sun, and food, are sufficient to account 
 for diversities of colour in the human race. 
 The darkness of the complexion too is directly 
 the effect of climate. In Guinea man is jet 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 233 
 
 black; in Abyssinia, less hot, he is less dark ; 
 in Asia he is still less so; and in Europe he 
 is white. It is monstrous to depreciate the 
 African asa lower race. Some of the noblest 
 men that have shed the triumphs of their 
 genius upon the world in which we live 
 were black as the blackest slaves of Africa. 
 Hannibal, the Wellington of ancient days, 
 the man that shook Rome with his name, 
 was black, probably, as the blackest slave 
 at this moment toiling in the West Indies. 
 Another objection urged by the infidel has 
 been, that the Mosaic record cannot be true, 
 because it does not account for the peopling 
 of America. America was unknown, they 
 say, till Columbus discovered it, and there- 
 fore cannot have been peopled from the 
 same common parent with Asia, Europe, and 
 Africa. Now this has been admirably settled 
 by the voyages of Captain Cook. He has 
 shown that the coast of Tartary on the Asiatic 
 side, and the coast of America on the oppo- 
 site side, indicate, like the cliffs of Dover and 
 Calais, that they were originally one conti 
 nent, that they are separated only by a very 
 narrow sea, and that between these .wo con- 
 tinents there are two islands, from either of 
 which we may see either vast continent. It 
 20* 
 
234 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 may be seen too, that the geological pheno- 
 mena presented on the Asiatic side and on 
 American side are precisely similar. It is on 
 record that the natives of the Society Isles 
 have been drifted in their boats six hundred 
 miles from their home; and therefore the 
 presumption is strong that the inhabitants of 
 Asia sailed to America, and that by them 
 aboriginal America was peopled with its 
 teeming thousands. It has been shown, also, 
 that the waters of the intervening sea are 
 frequently frozen over in the winter; and 
 therefore, without the use of boats at all, we 
 can account for the peopling of America. 
 The inhabitants of the new world are, in 
 short, the children and grandchildren of the 
 inhabitants of the old. 
 
 One fact that I would here adduce, is in 
 no slight degree demonstrative of the truth 
 of the Mosaic record ; it is, the remnant of 
 that supremacy which Moses states to have 
 been originally bestowed on man, still pos- 
 sessed by man wherever we find him. All 
 animals—the mole, or the owl, or the lamb— 
 exert their strength and develope their pecu- 
 ilarities, simply to supply themselves with 
 food and to perpetuate their species. But 
 not so with man; we find him mastering the 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 235 
 
 energies of brutes, and subduing them to his 
 will; bringing the element of steam, ‘and of 
 water, and of fire, to subserve his interests, 
 manufacture and carry his goods, and exe- 
 cute his designs; and in the shepherd or in 
 the king, in the mechanic or in the merchant, 
 in the sailor or in the soldier, developing 
 bright and still surviving evidences of his 
 primeval lordship. Even in ruins he main- 
 tains a fragment of the sceptre of the lord of 
 the world, with the investiture of which he 
 was formed. ‘This fact is a strong confirma- 
 tion of the Mosaic record, which says that 
 man was made to have dominion over the 
 creatures. 
 
 Infidels object to the longevity of the ante- 
 diluvian patriarchs. They classify this state- 
 ment with the fabulous legends of Greece 
 and of Rome; and they say, that all present 
 experience proves it absurd to imagine that 
 there was a race of men who lived nine hun- 
 dred or a thousand years. The ancient hea- 
 then, Greeks and Latins, record the tradition, 
 that men before the flood, with which they 
 connect the name of Deucalion, lived to a 
 much more protracted age than at present ; 
 thus indicating the remains of a truth bor- 
 rowed from the Jews. There is also a rea- 
 
236 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 son for it. Longevity was necessary to per- 
 petuate and maintain revelation in the world ; 
 there being no written revelation, it was 
 necessary that the living witnesses of the 
 word spoken by God should have many years 
 added to their biography. Hence Adam, 
 Methuselah, and Noah, were three links, 
 that outlasted two thousand years. Methu- 
 selah spake with Adam, and heard from him 
 the story of his fall and restoration; and 
 Noah conversed with Methuselah, and re- 
 ceived from him the narrative which he had 
 received from Adam. The longevity of the 
 antediluvians was thus necessary to maintain 
 the purity and perpetuate the progress of 
 Divine truth in the world. There is nothing 
 to disprove it; it rests on the credibility of 
 the record, while it is also reasonable to 
 expect it to have been so. 
 
 ‘The next objection is made to the occur- 
 rence of what in the Mosaic record is called 
 the Flood. Infidels say, that there is no 
 satisfactory evidence whatever that such a 
 catastrophe befell our world. But we find 
 scientific men, without reference to revela- 
 tion, bringing out results that substantiate 
 the truth of the Bible. For instance; one 
 very celebrated physiologist has shown that 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 237 
 
 our earth must within five thousand years 
 have been subjected to some dreadful and 
 disturbing catastrophe, the evidence of which 
 is to be found in all nations. On the tops of 
 the Alps and the Apennines we find marine 
 shells, skeletons of fishes, and of creatures 
 whose native element is the ocean. How 
 were they brought to that lofty summit? If 
 we go into some inland districts of England, 
 we shall find marine shells upon the chalk 
 cliffs by hundreds and thousands. They stare 
 the infidel in the face as he rides by them, 
 and tell him that God’s word is true. We 
 find the deer, which is a native of America, 
 buried in Ireland; the elephant of India, a 
 native of the torrid zone, in parts of Germa- 
 ny; skeletons of whales in various parts of 
 England; bones of extinct races in the Cor- 
 dilleras, 7,000 feet high. How came these 
 creatures from the very ends of the earth, to 
 be located in soils so distant from their na- 
 tive and congenial homes? How were they 
 raised to such heights? The answer is pro- 
 bable, reasonable, and true, that they were 
 deposited there by a great flood that over- 
 flowed the world; and they now remain, 
 dumb, but expressive monuments that God’s 
 word is true. There is also evidence in the 
 
288 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 state of the earth of a disruptive torrent hav- 
 ing rolled from the south. 
 
 Infidels have objected to the account of 
 the ark, and have asserted that it it is quite 
 absurd to suppose that ever there could be a 
 vessel constructed large enough to hold all the 
 creatures that must have been placed in it, 
 together with sufficient food (it may be, for 
 six or twelve months)—water for the fishes, 
 corn for the four-footed animals, seeds for 
 the birds, and so on. Now we will take the 
 dimensions of the ark from the record of 
 Moses, and calculate them on the lowest 
 possible scale. There are two definitions 
 given of a cubit—one that it is eighteen 
 inches, or a foot and a half, the other that it 
 is one foot and eight inches; we will take it 
 only at the lowest. Moses states that the 
 ark was 300 cubits long; this would make it 
 450 feet long, or about the length of St, 
 Paul’s Cathedral. The breadth of it he 
 states to be 50 cubits; we have it then 75 
 feet in breadth. He states it to be 30 cubits 
 high; so that it was 45 feet in height. In 
 other words, it was long as St. Paul’s Cathe- 
 dral, nearly as broad, and about half as high. 
 The tonnage of the ark, according to the cal- 
 culation of modern carpenters, must have 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 239 
 
 been about 32,000 tons. The largest ship 
 of war—the St. Vincent, for instance, which 
 is of a size altogether unimaginable to those 
 who have never seen it—is 2,500 tons bur- 
 den; so that the ark must have been equal 
 to seventeen first-rate ships of war, and if 
 armed as such ships are, it would have con- 
 tained much beyond 18,000 men, and _ pro- 
 visions for them for eighteen months. Now 
 Buffon has stated, that all the four-footed 
 animals may be reduced to 250 pairs, and the 
 birds toa still smaller number. On calculation, 
 therefore, we shall find, that the ark would 
 have held more than five times the necessary 
 number of creatures, and more than five 
 times the required quantity of food to main- 
 tain them for twelve months. Fair and 
 indisputable arithmetic adds its testimony to 
 inspiration, and proves that God’s word is 
 true. 
 
 Another objection adduced against the 
 truth of the sacred narrative, is found in the 
 statements put forth by infidels respecting 
 the rainbow. Our translation states, that 
 when Noah stepped forth from the ark, God 
 said, “I do set my bow in the cloud,” asa 
 symbol that the waters of the ocean should 
 never again overflow so as to depopulate the 
 
240 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 globe. Now the literal rendering is, «I do 
 appoint my bow in the cloud;’’ and the 
 very expression shows that the rainbow 
 must have existed prior to the flood, though 
 it was subsequent to the flood that it became 
 a symbol or sacramental sign, to denote that 
 the world should never again be overflowed. 
 If there were rain-drops and sun-beams be- 
 fore the flood, there must have been rain- 
 bows; because the rainbow is produced by 
 the refraction of the rays of light from the 
 drops of water which fall in a shower. But 
 the Bible does not assert that God created the 
 rainbow immediately after the flood, but that 
 He then applied it to this special use, just as 
 He applied the twelve stones set up after the 
 children of Israel had crossed the Jordan, as 
 He still applies bread and wine in the Lord’s 
 Supper, and water in baptism—namely, old 
 things for new uses, sacred symbols to give 
 consolation and peace to true believers. 
 Another objection adduced by infidels 
 against the statements of the Mosaic record, 
 is, that the whole story of the buzlding of the 
 tower of Babel seems absurd. Now we 
 reply, that unless they can show evidence 
 demonstrative of its absurdity, we are not 
 prepared to reject a historical fact, because to 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 24] 
 
 the squeamish taste of the infidel it appears 
 to convey notions of absurdity. But to con- 
 firm the statement of Sacred Writ, we may 
 State (as infidels would generally believe any 
 body sooner than Moses and Paul), that 
 Herodotus and Strabo, two ancient histo- 
 rians, both assert, that there was a tower 
 built in Chaldea, called the tower of Belus, 
 and that there were walks upon it, along 
 which two chariots could drive abreast. 
 And the remains discovered of it, as related 
 by modern travellers, prove, that the account 
 of the tower of Babel, declared to be absurd 
 by infidels, is seen to be a fact by the re- 
 searches of travellers, as well as the records 
 of heathen historians. 
 
 Another objection is, that the narrative of 
 the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is 
 absurd, and not founded in fact. Heathen 
 writers refer to the very same thing; and 
 that, moreover, on the soil on which those 
 guilty capitals once stood, there are at this 
 moment, as travellers have shown, distinct 
 traces of such an overthrow as that recorded 
 in the word of God. Modern travellers de- 
 clare, that the Dead Sea, on the site of which 
 those cities stood, is so filled with saline and 
 bituminous matter, that the moment fish are 
 
 21 
 
242 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 carried down the clear waters of the Jordan 
 into it they perish. It is not true that birds 
 cannot fly across it; but still it is of a very 
 deleterious character, and the whole country 
 around it presents the bleakest and most un- 
 inviting prospects that man can imagine. 
 The downfall of Sodom and Gomorrah, there- 
 fore, is still indicated by their sites, and is 
 historically true. 
 
 Another objection is, the notion of Lo?’s 
 wife being turned into a pillar of salt, 
 which is so ridiculous (it is said) as to be 
 absolutely improbable. I think, on the con- 
 trary, when you consider the circumstances 
 of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, 
 it is highly probable. Lot’s wife was com- 
 manded not to look back upon burning 
 Sodom. She disobeyed; out of the same 
 curiosity that prompted Eve to eat of the 
 forbidden fruit, she disobeyed the command 
 of God. Instantly she was arrested (it is 
 true, by a miracle, but a miracle that used 
 the very circumstances in which she was 
 placed), and became a salso-bituminous mass ; 
 the sulphur and fire that were falling upon 
 Sodom and Gomorrah, were made, by a 
 righteous and offended God, to fall upon 
 her, and petrify her into a monument of the 
 
 \ 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 243 
 
 Divine judgments. The statement may not, 
 however, of necessity mean, what we have 
 supposed, that she was changed into muriate 
 of soda, or what we call strictly salt; but, as 
 «J will make with you a covenant of salt,’ 
 means “a perpetual covenant,’ so “ Lot’s 
 wife looked back from behind him, and she 
 became a pillar of salt,’”? may mean that she 
 was there petrified, and stood a lasting mon- 
 ument of God’s judgment on disobedience to 
 his righteous will. 
 
 Again; it has been objected, that in the 
 account which we have of the miracles of 
 Moses performed in Egypt, and of the coun- 
 ter-miracles performed by the Egyptian magi- 
 cians, we see so slight a difference that we 
 must believe that the magicians evidently 
 did miracles as real and as good as those 
 of Moses. They build this statement upon 
 the fact recorded in the eighth chapter of Ex- 
 odus, where it is added, when Moses perform- 
 ed miracles, “ And the magicians did so with 
 their enchantments ;’’ and allege this to be a 
 proof that the miracles of Moses were not be- 
 yond human power, since what he did, his ri- 
 vals copied and performed also. It is not so 
 clear that they did so. The context proves, 
 that the words “they did so,” mean, “ they 
 
244 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 attempted to do so;” and we shall find the 
 proof of this in the very facts of the case, 
 For instance; when Moses turned into blood 
 all the waters of the river, the streams from 
 every fountain, all that was in pail, or pitcher, 
 or vessel of any kind, it is added, “ And the 
 magicians did so with their enchantments ;7 
 but if Moses had turned a// the water into 
 blood, they could only attempt to do some- 
 thing like it, because, in reality, no water 
 was left to be turned into blood. When 
 Moses, again, by the command of God evoked 
 frogs, and covered the whole land with these 
 noxious animals, and the frogs were “ in their 
 houses, and in their chambers, in their ovens 
 and in their kneading troughs,” alike in the 
 cottage and in the palace, it is added, “ The 
 magicians did so with their enchantments ;”’ 
 but if the whole land was already covered, it 
 is,clear that they could not visibly create and 
 call forth more; they could only attempt to 
 do it. Moreover, if the magicians had been 
 possessed of miraculous power, when the 
 Ikgyptians wished to banish the frogs from 
 the land, here was an opportunity for the ex- 
 ercise of their power; but they were unable 
 todoso. And in the eighth chapter we have 
 a most decisive proof that “did so” simply 
 
 / 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 245 
 
 means “attempted to do so; for when 
 Aaron brought lice upon man and upon 
 beast, it is added (verse 18,) “ and the magi- 
 cians did so with their enchantments to bring 
 forth lice, but they could not;’’ and they 
 themselves acknowledged, « This is the finger 
 of God.” They were conscious, that what 
 they did before was merely a sort of leger- 
 demain, or sleight-of-hand work. They at- 
 tempted this as they did the rest; but when 
 they saw that they could not mimic, with 
 any visible success, this miracle of Heaven, 
 or deceive the senses any more, they con- 
 fesssed, “ This is the finger of God.” We 
 may give the same explanation of their turn- 
 ing their rods into serpents ; the Hindoos and 
 Chinese at this day profess to do this, as well 
 as to swallow swords; and from habit they 
 are so expert at these feats, that they can 
 make persons believe that they swallow the 
 sword which is in their right hand, and that 
 they turn the rod in their left hand into a ser- 
 pent. The ancient magicians were no doubt 
 masters of this art. 
 
 Some one perhaps will say, “But why 
 perform these miracles at all? what was the 
 necessity or meaning of it??? The answer 
 is, the first design was to convince the har- 
 
 72) Bhs 
 
246 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 dened Pharaoh that God’s power was on the 
 side of Israel. And if it be asked why so 
 pecuiiar, and, to us, repulsive miracles were 
 adopted, I answer, for great ends. The Nile, 
 for instance, was the very God the Egyptians 
 worshipped, and the turning its waters into 
 blood was a powerful rebuke to their idol- 
 atry. The serpent they also worshipped, as 
 ancient inscriptions still show, and the turn- 
 ing of the rod of Aaron into a serpent, and 
 causing it to swallow up the rest, was also a 
 no less expressive demonstration against their 
 idolatry. The whole of these miracles were 
 not merely arbitrary exhibitions and expres- 
 sions of power, but also great and signifi- 
 cant punishments of the gross and debasing 
 idolatry which the Egyptians universally 
 practised. 
 
 Another objection, worthy of notice, is that 
 made to the genealogies of our Lord, re- 
 corded, the one by Matthew, and the other 
 by Luke. But by referring to these genealo- 
 gies, we shall see at once that there is not a 
 particle of contradiction between them. Mat- 
 thew, in giving his genealogy of our Lord, 
 writes for the Jews, and gives the genealogy 
 of Joseph, the reputed or legal father of our 
 Lord. The name of every child of Israe} 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 247 
 
 was entered in the public records, and his 
 father’s and mother’s name, in order to be 
 standing memorials of their descent; and 
 Matthew, in the first chapter, begins with 
 “Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat 
 Jacob,’’ and so on, until in the sixteenth 
 verse we read, “ And Matthan begat Jacob, 
 and Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of 
 Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is 
 called Christ.2? The evidence, then, is deci- 
 sive, that Matthew gives the genealogy of 
 Joseph. Now let us refer to the Gospel of 
 Luke; Matthew traces the genealogy from 
 Abraham to Joseph, but Luke traces the 
 genealogy from Christ to Abraham, and 
 thence to Adam. Accordingly, we read in 
 the third chapter of Luke—*“And Jesus 
 Himself began to be about thirty years of 
 age, being (as was supposed) the son of 
 Joseph, which was the son of Heli, which 
 was the son of Matthat,’? and so on—son 
 evidently meaning son-in-law. The infidel 
 says, “ How can this be true? According to 
 Matthew, we find Joseph represented as the 
 son of Jacob, who was the son of Matthan; 
 but according to Luke, we find Joseph repre- 
 sented as the son of Heli, who was the son 
 of Matthat. How can both be correct?’ 
 The answer is this: in Matthew, there is 
 
248 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 traced the genealogy of Joseph, and it is 
 thereby proved that the reputed father of 
 Christ was of the seed of Abraham and 
 David; in Luke, the genealogy of Mary, the 
 mother of Christ, is traced, and it is thereby 
 shown that by the mother’s side he was of 
 the seed of David and the son of Abraham. 
 In Luke, be it observed, the words “the 
 son” are in italics; that is, they are not in 
 the original; and the literal rendering is— 
 “ Being, as was supposed”? (or reputed in 
 the public tablets,) «the son,’’ but, in reality, 
 the son-in-law, “of Heli,’ and so on. In 
 the one, you have the genealogy of Joseph; 
 in the other, the genealogy of Mary; and 
 instead of any collision between the two, 
 there is ample proof of that unintended and 
 natural harmony, which shows that they 
 wrote as they were inspired by the Spirit 
 of, God. 
 
 A question has been asked by objectors to 
 revelation—“ If Christianity be the boon that 
 you represent, why was God so long in dis- 
 closing this unsearchable and saving bles- 
 sing to the mass of lost mankind?’ Now 
 I answer this by asking a few other ques- 
 tions; and when the objector has answered 
 my questions, it will be time for me to reply 
 to his. I ask, Why did the Providence of 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 249 
 
 God allow so many years to transpire, before 
 a Howard was found to visit the cells and 
 the dungeons of Europe, to lighten and re- 
 lieve their miseries? Why did the Provi- 
 dence of God allow so long time to elapse, 
 before the tongue of a Wilberforce was heard 
 within the walls of the senate of England, 
 pleading for the African slave? Why did 
 Providence suffer so long a period to pass, 
 before the West Indian slavery was utterly 
 destroyed forever by the senate and the laws 
 of Great Britain? Why was vaccination, 
 that great discovery of modern times, so long 
 in being found out, seeing it is such an alle- 
 viation of human disease and such an admir- 
 able source of human health? Why were 
 so many years allowed to transpire before 
 the secret powers of'steam were discovered, 
 and man thereby enabled to travel as philan- 
 thropists or missionaries, at a velocity, of 
 which our forefathers never dreamed? Now 
 when the objector has answered all my ques- 
 tions, which involve the providence of God, 
 then I will answer his question, which seems 
 to him to involve the revelation of God.* 
 
 [* Nothing was lost by the delay. The Mediation was 
 retrospective in its influence, as well as prospective. ] 
 Enrror Pres. Boarp or Pus. 
 
250 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 Another objection has been drawn from 
 the limited spread of Christianity. It is said 
 —“<If Christianity be so transcendent a bles- 
 sing, why is not the whole world brought un- 
 der its saving and its sanctifying power 2” 
 Do we not find it to be matter-of-fact in 
 almost every other province, and in respect 
 to almost every other benefit, that the great- 
 est blessings are enjoyed by the few? Do 
 we nat find, that literature, which has arisen 
 to great height and perfection in England, is 
 not known in large portions of Asia and 
 Africa? Are not civilization—freedom—the 
 national, social, and moral blessings enjoyed, 
 and gratefully enjoyed, in England—stran- 
 gers to Spain, Italy, and Africa? So that 
 when the objector has explained why some 
 of our greatest national and social blessings 
 are restricted to the few, and not distributed 
 among the many, in the providence of God, 
 it will be the time for us to explain why 
 Christianity is restricted to the few, and not 
 extended to the many, in the dispensation of 
 the grace of God. The God of Providence 
 is chargeable with the results of the first—if 
 the God of Grace be with those of the last. 
 [I may add, however, that the Gospel pro- 
 motes its triumph by moral and spiritual 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 251 
 
 weapons; it appeals to men as possessed of 
 judgment, of conscience, and of responsi- 
 bility ; and rather than use one weapon in- 
 terdicted in the sacred pages, it will wait 
 patiently at the door of man’s obdurate heart, 
 knocking for admission still, and promising 
 still, if he will open the door, the Saviour 
 “will come in to him, and will sup with 
 him.” 
 
 “ How comes it to pass, if the Bible be a 
 revelation of God’s mind, that there are so 
 many varieties of opinion about it? The 
 Independent draws one conclusion, the Bap- 
 tist another, the Presbyterian a third, the 
 Episcopalian a fourth, the Socinian a fifth, 
 the Roman Catholic a sixth; and why all 
 this? If it be a revelation of God’s mind, 
 why such varieties of opinion?” Some of 
 these are but circumstantial differences. But 
 may we not ask why such variety of opinion 
 on every subject that comes under the cog- 
 nizance of man? If variety of interpreta- 
 tion be admitted as a disproof of the excel- 
 lence of a document, it will land us in results 
 we little expect. Take an Act of Parlia- 
 ment, when the House of Commons and the 
 House of Lords have successively expended 
 their wisdom and their eloquence in discussing 
 
252 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 it, and the queen has inspected and approved 
 it, and set her seal to it; wait for twelve 
 months, and we shall find that Chancery is 
 full of litigation as to the meaning of that very 
 Act of Parliament. And what does this de- 
 monstrate? That itis impossible in imperfect 
 language to convey ideas so fully, that man’s 
 frail judgment may not mistake them, and, 
 above all, that man’s guilty heart will not dis- 
 tort them. The cause of the litigation is not 
 so much that men really experience a diffi. 
 culty in forming a right interpretation of the 
 Act of Parliament, but that A. wants this 
 property or that advantage, and B. also wants 
 it; and therefore, pulling in the line of self, 
 each will contend for an interpretation favour- 
 able to self. 
 
 It is said—*“ But ministers of the Gospel 
 do not always live as the Bible prescribes ; 
 and if they present not patterns of its pure 
 and lofty morality, is it not an evidence that 
 they are not in earnest, and that they do not 
 believe the Bible?’? But does this disprove 
 the Gospel? The minister who preaches in 
 the pulpit like an angel, and lives in the 
 world like a devil, is the guiltiest man that 
 the sun shines upon, or that treads the sur- 
 face of the earth. That minister’s preaching, 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 253 
 
 if he preach God’s word, is to be revered, 
 but that minister himself is to be shunned if 
 he lives in the practice of gross and open 
 sin, though he should preach in strains a 
 Demosthenes could not rival, or with elo- 
 quence an Apollos never reached. But I 
 can never allow that the unholy life of any 
 minister is a proof that Christianity is not 
 right and good. You go to a physician, and 
 he writes out a prescription for you, and 
 gives you regulation as to diet and regimen 
 and habits, as to what you are to eat and 
 what you are to drink, and what course is 
 the most healthy and most conducive to long 
 life. You follow that physician to the dinner 
 table or into society, and you find that he 
 does not live according to the prescriptions 
 and restrictions he has laid upon you; do 
 you therefore say, that his prescription is 
 wrong? Not at all; you try the prescription 
 notwithstanding, and you find it is right, 
 though he does not live according to it. So 
 say I here; the prescription is good, the 
 ‘balm in Gilead” is precious, the blood of 
 Jesus is worthy to be made known and 
 believed holy and free as the air, though all 
 the physicians that declare its virtue should 
 22 
 
254 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 lie against it by their lives. Judge the man 
 by the word, not the word by the man. 
 
 It is objected that the Gospel has led to 
 wars, to impostures, to crimes, and to innu- 
 merable mischiefs. Christianity is not justly 
 to be charged with the deeds that have been 
 done in its sacred, but injured name. Chris- 
 tianity is not to be made responsible for the 
 fearful deeds of the Inquisition, of Smithfield, 
 of the Bartholomew massacre, and of the Si- 
 cilian Vespers, all of which it rebukes. These 
 sprang from the wickedness of man’s heart, 
 and not from Christianity. Nor is it to be 
 charged with the wild and extravagant fa- 
 naticism of Joanna Southcote and others. 
 These were the corrupters and abusers of the 
 truth, not its legitimate exponents. The very 
 best blessings we possess may be abused. 
 Men may blaspheme in their prayers, or talk 
 treason in their ordinary conversation, or 
 poison each other in their meals; but do we 
 therefore infer, that we are not to pray, nor to 
 talk, nor to eat? No; we are all too “ wise 
 in our generation,” in the things of this 
 world. Why, then, so inconsistent in regard 
 to the things of a brighter and better world ? 
 Why quote man’s abuse as disproof of the 
 excellence of God’s gifts? The abuse of any 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 255 
 
 blessing by man is no proof that the blessing 
 is not of God. 
 
 It is said, there are mysteries in the sacred 
 volume which we cannot understand, and 
 therefore it cannot be a revelation from God 
 to us. 
 
 True, there are mysteries in the sacred 
 volume; but if there had been no mysteries 
 in it, the infidel would have said, “ This can- 
 not be the inspiration of God; it wants those 
 mysterious and incomprehensible features we 
 might have expected from a revelation of the 
 Infinite.” 
 
 The fact is, that a revelation of the incom- 
 prehensible God must contain some mysteries 
 not comprehensible by man. The exhibition 
 of that which is infinite, unsearchable, and 
 immeasurable, must surely be beyond the 
 finite and puny understanding of man to ap- 
 preciate or comprehend fully. Its mysteries 
 are presumptions in its favour. But what 
 would you think of a school-boy, if he were 
 to say that the Newtonian philosophy is false 
 because he cannot comprehend it? Your 
 reply would be—“ That philosophy is de- 
 monstrated to be true, whether you can 
 comprehend it or not, and your present com- 
 prehension is no test of its truth or the 
 
256 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 reverse.” The fault is in the mind, not in 
 the subject. Does the infidel meet with no 
 mysteries in the world around him? Let 
 him explain to me the courses of the stars; 
 or in language I can understand, the circula- 
 tion of the blood, the pulsation of the heart, 
 the effects of volition, or the union that knits 
 the soul to its earthly and perishable taber- 
 nacle. After he has explained the mysteries 
 of a blade of grass or a grain of dust, the 
 mysteries of the earth on which he treads, 
 the mysteries of the ocean on which he sails, 
 the mysteries of the sky on which he looks, 
 the mysteries which his own body and his 
 own soul contain, it will be time for us to 
 explain to him the mysteries of the word of 
 God. But if mysteries in creation be no 
 proof that God did not make the world, so 
 mysteries in revelation can be no proof that 
 God did not inspire the Bible. On the con- 
 trary, the fact that there are mysteries in it is 
 presumptive evidence that it has God for its 
 author, as it has truth for its matter and sal- 
 vation for its glorious end. Every new truth 
 we see come within the horizon is intimately 
 related to another, and the more we see the 
 more we find remains to be seen. ‘Truth is 
 infinite, and our progress will be infinite also. 
 
 | a ee 
 
 oe es 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 257 
 
 You will find, however, that while the 
 language that describes and the similes that 
 portray the character of God are mysterious 
 and inscrutable, the plan and the mode of 
 salvation, all that is essential to our salvation, 
 are so clear, that the “ wayfaring man’? may 
 understand and appreciate them. And if I 
 address a reader who objects to Scripture, 
 and says he does not relish and understand 
 it, let me tell him there was a day when I 
 also did not relish the Scripture—when I sat 
 down to peruse it because my father and my 
 mother told me, but I was weary of it and 
 wished it done; nay, there was a day when 
 I doubted of its heavenly origin, and it was 
 not till I had read treatise after treatise, that 
 I came to the conviction, a conviction as 
 strong as that there is a God in heaven, that 
 this book is the book of God. Our taste 
 will be gradually raised to its height by 
 perusing it. Untutored taste often fails to 
 appreciate first-rate excellence. Blessed, 
 blessed be the God who gave such a book to 
 poor lapsed and erring man. 
 
 I have no doubt of the conclusion to which 
 any man will come, if he will pursue the 
 course, first of inquiring,—and it is great 
 
 guilt to decline the trouble of examining a 
 22° 
 
258 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 book which professes to be the book of 
 God; It is telling the Almighty that the 
 knowledge of Him and the matters of eter- 
 nity and the interests of souls are not worthy 
 of a moment’s thought,—next going to it in 
 the spirit of prayer, saying with David, 
 “Oh! send out thy light and thy truth, let 
 them lead me and guide me”’—bending your 
 knee, proud infidel, in the presence of the 
 Searcher of hearts, bowing your spirit before 
 Him, asking Him to show you “the way 
 and the truth and the life.”? Suppose that 
 in some part of this little work you should 
 meet with a sentence you do not understand; 
 you might apply to some gifted minister or 
 critic for an explanation of it, but on failing 
 to get satisfaction, you hear that the author 
 is living, and is accessible. Would you not 
 resolve to apply to Am for a satisfactory ex- 
 planation? Now do treat God’s word as 
 fairly as you would treat man’s book; go to 
 the ever present Author, who “hears in 
 heaven His dwelling place;’’? ask Him in 
 prayer to teach you the meaning of the 
 sacred volume, and He will irradiate that 
 volume with noon-day splendor and fill your 
 mind with noon-day light. 
 
 The true way of understanding Scripture 
 
IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 259 
 
 is comparing passage with passage, text with 
 text. As a diamond can be cut best by 
 another diamond, so will one text resolve 
 and explain another. Bishop Horsley, one 
 of the greatest of critics, has said—“ It were 
 to be wished that no Bibles were printed 
 without references. Particular diligence 
 should be used in comparing the parallel 
 texts of the Old and New Testament. It is 
 incredible how much scriptural knowledge 
 one may acquire without any other commen- 
 tary or exposition, than what the different 
 parts of the sacred volume mutually furnish 
 to each other. Let the most illiterate Chris- 
 tian study Scripture in this way, comparing 
 text with text, and the whole compass of ab- 
 struse philosophy and recondite history shall 
 furnish no argument with which the perverse 
 will of man shall be able to shake this plain 
 Christian’s faith’? You will find this arrange- 
 ment admirably executed in Bagster’s Bible. 
 
 There are, however, two lights in which a 
 man may read the Scriptures; the light of 
 reason, and the light of the Spirit of God. 
 Critics and scholars have read them in the 
 former light, and passed to that place where— 
 
 “Hope withering flees, and Mercy sighs Farewell.” 
 But the illiterate man, who has read them in 
 
260 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 the light of God’s Spirit, has found in them 
 the way to everlasting life. Suppose I were 
 to go forth to some lovely landscape in some 
 of the most beauteous parts of Scotland, and 
 were to look upon it at the hour of midnight, 
 while the moon shone full around me, I 
 should find it dim and obscure; I could not 
 trace the windings of the streamlet, nor dis- 
 cern the delicate loveliness of the panorama ; 
 not from any defects in the landscape, but 
 from defects in the medium through which I 
 viewed it. But let me visit it the next day 
 at noon, and I shall see every flower with its 
 beauteous tints, every streamlet meandering 
 towards the ocean, every field in its verdure, 
 every forest in its thick and majestic foliage. 
 The whole landscape is changed. And why ? 
 Because in the hazy light of the moon it 
 could not be distinctly seen, but in the full 
 light of the sun. everything is clear and visi- 
 ble. So it is with this book. Read the 
 Bible by the dusky light of reason, and it is 
 covered with a film; clouds and darkness 
 rest upon it. But bring it with bent knee 
 and with broken heart, and place it beneath 
 the rays of the Sun of Righteousness; and 
 in the clear light of Christ you will clearly 
 “ see light.” 
 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 261 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 In the former chapter I explained, and tried 
 to neutralize the objections which the im- 
 pugners of Revelation urge against some of 
 the facts and characteristic features of Chris- 
 tianity. In this chapter I will endeavour to 
 vindicate the peculiar and characteristic doc- 
 trines of the Gospel from those objections 
 which have been alleged to be fatal to the 
 claims of Christianity. 
 
 We admit there are difficulties in some 
 parts of sacred writ; but we must not fail to 
 recollect, that there is no one science within 
 the range of the cognizance of man, in which 
 difficulties, and great difficulties, are not 
 found; some inexplicable on any known 
 principles, and incomprehensible by human 
 intellect. Are there no difficulties in medi- 
 cine? are there no difficulties in law ? are there 
 no perplexities in the occurrences and em- 
 ployments of ordinary life? And yet no man 
 is so irrational as to infer that there can be 
 
262 TS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 no truth in medicine, nor in law, nor in history, 
 philosophy, or science, because there are 
 depths that the plumb line of man’s judgment 
 is unable to fathom, and difficulties man’s 
 mind cannot explain. There are difficulties, 
 we again assert, in sacred writ: and if there 
 were no such difficulties there, so vast that 
 my puny mind must fail and sink when it tries 
 to grasp and comprehend them, I should say 
 there was a strong a@ priori presumption that 
 the book was not from God. I must believe, 
 a priori that a revelation from God will con- 
 tain depths that we cannot fathom, heights 
 that we cannot climb, intimations and thoughts 
 from afar we are unable to bring clearly with- 
 in the horizon of our minds; that it will be 
 like the waters seen by Ezekiel—in some 
 parts reaching to the ancles, in some parts to 
 the knees, in some parts to the middle, and 
 in others “waters to swim in, a river that 
 could not be passed over.” In the language 
 of one who has well described the sacred 
 volume, “There are shallows in it where 
 lambs may wade, and depths in it where 
 elephants may swim.”’ 
 
 One of the doctrines of sacred writ fre- 
 quently cavilled at, is the doctrine of the 
 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES, 263 
 
 Trinity. We hold—and all who are worthy 
 of the name of Christian hold—that there is 
 one living and true God, and yet that there 
 is what is called in the language of theology 
 the Trinity—that is, three persons, (the word 
 person is perhaps the fullest English render- 
 ing of the Greek trocrac;) though but one 
 God. 
 
 Now if it be asked, Can you explain this? 
 —l answer, No. Can you comprehend this? 
 —I answer, No. But if you add, Do you 
 not then reject this?—I answer, No. Such 
 an inference must lead to universal Pyrrhon- 
 ism. ‘There are mysteries in every beating 
 heart, mysteries in every blade of grass; but 
 if the incomprehensible nature of facts in any 
 history, or science, or providence, be admitted 
 as arguments against the science to which 
 they severally belong, we must necessarily 
 be plunged in universal scepticism, as well as 
 hurried into an abyss of downright absurdity. 
 The Bible asserts plainly that the Father is 
 God; it asserts as plainly that the Son is 
 God; it asserts as plainly that the Holy 
 Spirit is God; and yet it repeats and reite- 
 rates at the very same moment, and with the 
 implied clear recollection of all its separate 
 announcements, that there is but one living 
 
264 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 and true God, to whom the name of Triune 
 Jehovah is exclusively applicable. The Scrip- 
 ture announces it asa truth, just as nature 
 evolves a fact; a truth interwoven with our 
 salvation, but inexplicable to our judgment. 
 But let me ask the mere theist, the man 
 who merely admits the existence of a God, 
 will he escape in his supposed simplicity of 
 creed all such inexplicable mysteries? He 
 will not. What can he make of omnipo- 
 tence ? what can he understand of omnipre- 
 sence? what can he grasp of omniscience ? 
 We cannot understand or comprehend these 
 attributes. It is very well to talk of omni- 
 presence as an axiom; but what can we 
 conceive of a Being here and yet there, in 
 England and yet in India, present in every 
 spot through the vast infinitude of space? 
 What can we comprehend of a Being eter- 
 nally existent ; so that when he have added 
 millions and millions upon millions more of 
 years, we have not reached His age, nor 
 measured the duration of His being, nor 
 arrived nearer the end, nor remoter from the 
 beginning? What can we know of eternity ? 
 Literally nothing ; it is perfectly incompre- 
 hensible ; it isan unsearchable depth. And 
 if the fact that the Trinity is incomprehen- 
 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES, 265 
 
 sible leads you to reject revelation, the fact 
 that eternity, omniscience, omnipresence, attri- 
 butes you must clothe your God withal, are 
 also incomprehensible, will lead you to deny 
 the existence of a God; and the deist will 
 land at last in the extreme where difficulties 
 are multiplied, not diminished, the monstrous 
 extreme at which all nature shudders—that 
 We are a family without a father, and in- 
 habit a world without a Creator. 
 
 The Trinity is not a contradiction, but a 
 truth partly luminous—as luminous as our 
 vision can bear, and as largely so as our com- 
 prehension can grasp. It is a truth dis- 
 tinctly told, but not explained—it is a reve- 
 lation, but not an analysis. It is so plainly 
 declared that we can easily see what it is, 
 but not how itis. There is enough told for 
 our salvation, and none for our curiosity— 
 enough for Christians in the closet, the sanc- 
 tuary, and the death-bed; but none for phi- 
 losophers in the Stoa, the Lyceum, or the 
 schools. 
 
 There is another doctrine, which has been 
 the subject of the scorn of the infidel; name- 
 ly, predestination, or election. The Scrip- 
 tures assert, in the plainest terms, that 
 “whom God did foreknow, He also did 
 
 23 
 
266 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 predestinate to be conformed to the image 
 of His Son;” and again, “He hath chosen 
 us before the foundation of the world,” not 
 because we were holy, but “that we should be 
 holy.’ If these passages are admitted to be 
 in the Bible (and I might quote many such), 
 there can be no question that predestination 
 is a Scripture doctrine. 
 
 Now it is delightful to every dispassionate 
 inquirer, that here the theology of the Bible 
 and the findings of the highest metaphysics 
 exactly coincide. In that great work, the 
 treatise on the Freedom of the Will, by Jona- 
 than Edwards, the most acute of metaphy- 
 sicians, we see it proved by principles of pure 
 philosophical investigation, that predestina- 
 tion or moral necessity is a truth. 
 
 But, with mystery yet without contrariety, 
 the Scriptures assert, that we are free agents ; 
 that we are responsible for our belief, our 
 practice, our reception or rejection of the 
 ‘claims and tenets of Christianity. But the 
 infidel asks—How do you reconcile these? 
 You say that we are predestinated, or elect, 
 and yet you say that we are free agents. I 
 do assert both; and why ?—because the Bible 
 distinctly reveals both. On one page it pro- 
 claims, “No man can come to me, unless the 
 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 267 
 
 Father which hath sent me draw him;” 
 here is God’s sovereignty. On another page 
 “Ye will not come to me, that ye might 
 have life ;”? here is man’s responsibility. If 
 you ask me, How do you reconcile these >— 
 I answer, That is not my province. I am 
 not called upon to reconcile, but to receive, 
 revealed truths. The two truths are dis- 
 tinctly announced. In their contact only 
 does mystery evolve. The one teaches me 
 my responsibility, and the other the necessity 
 of Divine help. I can act, and look, and 
 learn, where I cannot reconcile. I have 
 proved this book to be an emanation from 
 God, and this book asserts alike the election 
 of God and the responsibility of man How 
 they are reconciled, I cannot demonstrate, but 
 that they are reconcilavle, I have not a doubt 
 the light of another world will clearly dis- 
 close. The defect is not in these truths, but 
 in my understanding. A true philosopher 
 will never reject facts and phenomena in the - 
 natural world because he cannot reconcile 
 them; and a true Christian will not reject 
 doctrines revealed in the Bible for the same 
 reason. Let a person discover one fact in 
 science, and then a second fact, which he 
 cannot harmonize or reconcile or explain 
 
268 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 consistently with the first; he does not say, 
 «‘T will now reject or disbelieve one or both 
 of these facts;’? but he says, “I will lay 
 them up in my memory, and subsequent 
 light and maturer investigation may lead me 
 to detect harmony, where at present I dis- 
 cover only discord”? Now let us treat the 
 Bible in the same way. Receive facts and 
 doctrines as they are here declared. Let the 
 first and great question be, whether these 
 doctrines be in the Bible; if they are, we are 
 to wait till time shall harmonize those that 
 seemingly differ—not to reject one or both 
 because we cannot at present explain or 
 comprehend them. 
 
 I see the two ends of the chain near and 
 luminous, each indicating a plain and obvi- 
 ous duty. Let me not forget these duties in 
 unprofitable attempts to trace out the myste- 
 rious intermediate links that connect them. 
 
 Another proposition in the Scriptures fre- 
 “quently objected to, is the incarnation of 
 Christ. The infidel asks, How can you sup- 
 pose that we rational beings will believe that 
 God was man, and yet that man was God; 
 or that God came into our nature and suf- 
 fered death upon the cross, was crucified as 
 a malefactor, and buried as a criminal? We 
 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 269 
 
 answer, the true question is first, Is God’s 
 word truth; and next, are these things 
 asserted in it? If they are plainly revealed 
 there, it is not our province, as it may not be 
 In our power, to harmonize or reconcile 
 them. It is our duty, as it is also our 
 privilege, to receive, to believe, to rest upon 
 them. 
 
 In the Bible this great doctrine is plainly 
 stated; to our minds it is as plainly incom- 
 prehensible how the finite and infinite could 
 coalesce—how Deity and humanity could be 
 in his sufferings, how the deepest capacity 
 of temptation and entire impossibility of 
 being overcome—how want and_ fulness, 
 Strength and weakness, ignorance of “that 
 day and hour” and yet omniscience, could 
 be together. The great fact is clearly written 
 —the mode of its existence is all mystery. 
 
 But the idea of the incarnation is not so 
 unnatural and unanticipated by man as_ 
 many are disposed to think. The ancient 
 heathen entertained a kindred notion. Many 
 of their philosophers believed that God was 
 the soul of the world, and the universe the 
 visible incarnation of God. They believed in 
 what we might call the materialization of 
 God. The Hindoos at this moment enter- 
 
 23 * 
 
270 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 tain an idea that approximates most closely 
 to this, viz.—the incarnation of their Vishnu, 
 or deity. Thus reason in its progress has 
 touched the skirts and caught some beam of 
 the glory of revelation, and risen unaided to 
 some notion very much akin to the incarnation. 
 This great doctrine of the Scriptures is there- 
 by proved to be not so unlikely or so con- 
 trary to man’s notions that it ought to be 
 rejected at the first blush. True, no logic of 
 “man can reconcile the fact, that He who 
 wept on Olivet, was He also who reigned in 
 heaven; that He whe bled upon the cross, 
 was He who sat upon the throne; that He 
 who cried, “My God, my God, why hast 
 thou forsaken me?”?—was He who “said, 
 Let there be light, and there was light;’’ 
 that the infant sleeping in the manger was 
 “the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the 
 Prince of peace.”? But though we cannot 
 harmonize these infinite facts, yet we can re- 
 ceive them as the most glorious truths that 
 were ever breathed into the ear or poured 
 into the heart of poor humanity. For what 
 is Christ? He is just the meeting-place—or, 
 as the old Scottish writers would have called 
 it, the ¢rysting place—between heaven and 
 earth; he is the filler up of the tremendous 
 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES, 271 
 
 chasm that sin made between God and man 
 —the sacred and holy spot, where man can 
 meet God notwithstanding all his sins, and 
 where God can meet man and yet be a holy 
 and righteous God; He is that sacred isth- 
 mus between eternity and time, washed by 
 the one and unwasted by the other, within 
 the precincts of which heaven and earth coa- 
 lesce in glorious and indissoluble harmony, 
 and over which God appears “just and yet 
 the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.’’ 
 Though we cannot descend to the fathomless 
 glory of this great truth, yet we can see the 
 practical and precious results that flow from 
 the admission of it. 
 
 The idolatry of ancient nations was just 
 man’s mind struggling after something like 
 the incarnation. Man had lost God in con- 
 sequence of sin, and he so felt it. It then 
 became his effort to bring God down to him, 
 seeing he could not rise to God; and in order 
 to do so, he represented Him by stones, by 
 wood, by gold and silver, and such like cor- 
 ruptible things; making the imaginary like- 
 ness a substitute for the original. This was 
 man’s anticipation, as it were, of an incarna- 
 tion—it was nature’s rude presentiment of 
 Christianity—creation’s throes and groans for 
 
272 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 the manifestation of God. And when Christ 
 came, He abolished for ever the necessity 
 and made more obvious the guilt of all 
 material personations of God, by presenting 
 in Himself “the brightness of the Father’s 
 glory and the express image of His person.” 
 
 Again; it has been contended, that the 
 idea of satisfaction made to God for sin, or 
 the necessity of Christ’s dying in order that 
 God might forgive sinners, is contrary to the 
 reason and understanding of man, and incon- 
 sistent with such notions of the true God as 
 we are able by nature to attain. Now, the 
 first question upon this, as upon every other 
 doctrine, is—Is the doctrine revealed in 
 Scripture? All revelation distinctly testifies, 
 that Christ died “the just in the room of the 
 unjust, that He might bring us to God ”— 
 that we are “redeemed by the blood of the 
 Lamb ;’’ in fact, all the phraseology that 
 was applied to the sacrificial offerings of the 
 Jews, is distinctly and emphatically applied 
 to the perfect atonement and the sacrifice of 
 Christ Jesus. 
 
 God demanded this satisfaction, not be- 
 cause He had any pleasure in suffering, or 
 any delight in death; the very reverse. It 
 was not the atonement that was the cause of 
 
 a 
 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 278 
 
 God’s love, but God’s love that was the cause 
 of the atonement. We can perceive no other 
 way according to which God could be true 
 and just and holy, and yet save the chiefest 
 of sinners. If God had relaxed all the penal- 
 ties of His law, that law which is not a mere 
 arbitrary enactment, but the essential, ever 
 obligatory, and eternal expression of His 
 mind, and will, and nature—if He had admit- 
 ted sinners into heaven without any satisfac- 
 tion, or atonement, or visible vindication of 
 His character—then Satan’s word would have 
 been true; Satan’s policy would have tri- 
 umphed; God’s word would have been prov- 
 ed false, and omnipotence overcome. God’s 
 assertion was—“In the day that thou eatest 
 thereof, thou shalt surely die ;” Satan’s asser- 
 tion was—“ Ye shall not surely die.” Which 
 was to be proved true? If God had admit- 
 ted to the blessings of His glory the men that 
 broke the rescripts of His law, Satan’s pre- 
 diction would have been proved to be true, 
 and God’s proclamation would have been 
 proved to be false. It therefore became 
 necessary, as far as we can see, that God 
 should save sinners in such a way as would 
 show Him the same just, the same holy, the 
 same true God, as if all sinners had been 
 
274 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 eternally banished from his presence; and 
 yet the same merciful and loving God, as if 
 all creatures had been universally reclaimed. 
 We therefore see a moral necessity for the 
 atonement of Christ. We cannot see how 
 God could have been enthroned in the supre- 
 macy of holy and universal empire, unless 
 by such a process as that which is revealed 
 in the Scriptures 
 
 Moreover, if God had admitted sinners 
 into heaven without any exhibition of His 
 hatred of sin, what would other worlds or 
 created intelligences probably have con- 
 cluded? What would the inhabitants of 
 other stars have said? They must have con- 
 cluded—*“ This God is not the holy God we 
 imagined; He winks at sin; He pronounces 
 threats merely as make-believes ; He has in- 
 deed a law, but it is a law which we may 
 break with impunity.”” The universe would 
 have been disorganized; God would have 
 been virtually dethroned. Such a God could 
 not have been the God revealed in the Bible. 
 He cannot thus let down His law, and be in- 
 dulgent, that is, unjust and unholy, in deal- 
 ing with the sins of mankind. The idea of 
 a God without an atonement pardoning sin- 
 ners, suggests such perplexities as these. 
 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 275 
 
 Will God equally pardon all sinners? The 
 mere theist must answer, No. Will He then 
 equally punish all sinners? The theist must 
 also answer, No. How low will His justice 
 descend in punishing, and how high will His 
 love rise in rewarding? Without the light 
 of revelation we are driven to form an idea 
 of Deity which implies a composite of im- 
 perfections; a God imperfectly just in order 
 to be benevolent, and imperfectly benevolent 
 in order to be just. 
 
 But, say some, would it not have been 
 better if God had prevented sin altogether, 
 instead of permitting it, and then taking this 
 seemingly round-about way to annihilate and 
 forgive it? We might answer, in the first 
 place—If the fact be plainly revealed in God’s 
 book, “who art thou that repliest against 
 God ?”’ 
 
 But the very same objection that is thus 
 made to the introduction of sin and sin’s 
 curse, may be made with equal force to all 
 that occurs in the world around us. Is not 
 the whole system of the world a system of 
 permitted wrong-doing and of merciful re- 
 pairing ; a system of disease and of cure; a 
 system of suffering and of amendment; a 
 system of pain and of subsequent pleasure ? 
 
276 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 If the suffered introduction of evil tells 
 against God’s book of revelation, will not the 
 suffered action of it tell against God’s provi- 
 dence? Why has God permitted disease 
 and pain, and suffering and distress, instead 
 of preventing them? Why allow them to 
 be, and then take a round-about way to 
 repair and amend them ? 
 
 In what way could God have prevented 
 sin from coming into the world? Man was 
 made a free agent—responsible—without any 
 bias to sin or to wickedness. If God had 
 restrained Adam by physical coercion, man 
 would not have been a free and responsible 
 being. He was left to the freedom of his 
 own will, with a bias to holiness, and yet he 
 rebelled and revolted against God. 
 
 An archangel fell. Could man stand? 
 May it not be true that in Christ only can 
 the universe stand? that redemption, not cre- 
 ation, is the only platform on which man or 
 seraph can abide in holiness? May not the 
 permitted fall have been only a preliminary 
 to the perfect redemption ? 
 
 It has been asserted, in the next place, that 
 the system of mediation and of a Mediator 
 revolts against all ourexperience. This is but 
 the following out of the same objection. But 
 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 277 
 
 is the system of a Mediator between God 
 and man not in accordance with the findings 
 of human experience, and the analogies of 
 human nature? We believe it is in beauti- 
 ful harmony with the works and ways of 
 God, discoverable elsewhere, that the provi- 
 sion of a Mediator between God and man is 
 only the addition of a kindred link to the 
 chain of mediation that girds the world and 
 upholds creation around us. For instance ; 
 when the mother brings her infant into the 
 world, and nurses and tends it at her breast, 
 what is that mother, but, in a sense, a media- 
 trix towards that infant? When a man by 
 accident, or in the practice of sin, breaks a 
 bone of his body, we find that nature gives 
 out at the fractured part a substance (the 
 name of which I know not,) and commences 
 a process of mediation, by which the loss is 
 supplied, the fracture healed, and the limb 
 restored. Or if a sinew in the human frame 
 is cut, nature begins immediately a process 
 of mediation at the divided part, repairs the 
 breach, and heals the wound. What is this, 
 but mediation in our families and mediation 
 in our corruptible bodies? We thus see 
 mediation going on in nature ; and if nature 
 mediates in man’s body, shall God be forbid- 
 24 
 
278 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 den to mediate in man’s soul? If nature 
 heals the wounds that take place in the one, 
 by a mediatory process, shall it be thought 
 incongruous in God to restore that union 
 between the soul and God, which has been 
 broken and interrupted by sin, by the inter- 
 position of a Mediator who shall lay one 
 hand on the throne of God, and the other on 
 the crushed, broken, and guilty heart of man, 
 and bind both into one? ‘Thus creation 
 bears aflinities to revelation, and both indi- 
 cate a common Author so truly, that he who 
 admits the one, cannot, without inconsistency, 
 reject the other. 
 
 Do we not see the very same process illus- 
 trated in providence? What is an asylum, 
 provided by the benevolence of the charita- 
 ble for the relief and healing of the wounded 
 and the sick, but a sort of mediatorial in- 
 stitution? What was the apostle, but a 
 sort of mediator in his place? What is 
 the missionary, but a sort of mediator in 
 his toils? And what has been the history 
 of the world, but a history of mediation— 
 the “father sowing in tears,’ the “children 
 reaping in joy’’—the forefathers bearing 
 the brunt of battle, the tumult of the storm, 
 and we, the children, reaping the laurels 
 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 279 
 
 of peace, the sunshine, and the calm? Thus 
 every man is in one sense a mediator; 
 and all that we have to admit, in order to 
 admit the mediation of the gospel, is, that 
 there is the addition of a new and more glo- 
 rious link to this chain which wraps the 
 world and connects together all its tenantry 
 —a link that binds the sinner to his Saviour, 
 the creature to his Creator, lost man to his 
 reconciled God. 
 
 In the next place, it has been objected by 
 the infidel, that if there be, as astronomy 
 teaches us, thousands and thousands more 
 of worlds, it seems altogether inconsistent 
 with just views of the character of God and 
 of the vastness of His empire, that He should 
 be so much interested in this petty world, 
 which is but as a grain of sand in comparison 
 with the thousands that fill infinite space; 
 that He should be so taken up with it, that 
 He should come and be incarnate and die in 
 it, when there are thousands of orbs a thou- 
 sand times bigger and more worthy of and 
 entitled to our Creator’s care. To this I re- 
 ply as before, that the same Bible which 
 gives the clearest proofs of the moral glory 
 of God, declares it to have been so; were 
 there no explanations satisfactory to our 
 
280 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 minds, the simple announcement of the fact 
 on God’s authority would be enough. 
 
 But do we not find, in this world, that a 
 king selects a particular spot, it may be but 
 a little corner of his empire, to be the lesson- 
 book in which all the rest of his subjects 
 may read political, moral, and social lessons? 
 And may not this earth, minute as it may be, 
 amid the countless orbs that fill the infinitude 
 of space, be that consecrated corner, in which 
 the King eternal has engraven in characters 
 that shall live for ever the lessons of His ho- 
 liness, His justice, His mercy, and His truth? 
 May not this earth be that living and legible 
 tablet, from which there beams forth “ Glory 
 to God in the highest, and on earth peace,’’ 
 in important and precious lessons to thou- 
 sands and thousands more of worlds that are 
 around it? As there are worlds beyond 
 worlds infinitely, may not scenes visible on 
 earth reach these worlds in succession? 
 Light would travel from the earth to the 
 sun in four minutes. There may be worlds 
 so much more remote from the sun, that — 
 Calvary may just now be visible to their in- 
 habitants, whose organs see as many millions 
 of miles as we do inches, : | 
 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES, 281 
 
 The analogies of our experience in another 
 way bear out the proposition, that God should 
 thus have regard to this little world amid the 
 thousands that are around it. Ifa shepherd 
 have lost one sheep, doth he not, in the beau- 
 tiful words of our Lord, “leave the ninety 
 and nine, and go after that which is lost until 
 he find it?’??—and when he has found it, he 
 rejoices over it with more joy than over the 
 ninety and nine that remained in their fold. 
 Or, to vary the lesson, if a mother has a 
 family of many children, and if one has gone 
 astray—if he has gone to distant lands, or is 
 on the far-off bosom of the deep—is it not 
 true, that every gale that blows, every surge 
 that dashes, every messenger that comes 
 from abroad, awakens more anxiety in that 
 mother’s heart, than all her children that 
 never wandered or strayed from home? and 
 does she not exert more efforts to restore and 
 expend more anxieties upon the safety of 
 that one wandering child, than upon all the 
 rest who have been ever with her at her fire- 
 side? Thus do we find the analogies of our 
 experience in perfect consonance with the 
 disclosures of sacred writ. This world is the 
 strayed star, that has gone far away from the 
 Sun of Righteousness ; and God has come 
 
 24 
 
282 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 after it, in the mightiness of His mercy, to 
 reclaim and to restore it. Man is the prodi- 
 gal child, that has left his Father’s house, and 
 wasted his substance in riotous living; and 
 God has gone after him, to recover him and 
 to bring him home; and the accents of joy 
 have filled high heaven, because the lost one 
 is found, the dead at length is once more 
 alive. 
 
 _ It is in vain for infidels and others to bring 
 objections against the Gospel from the disclo- 
 sures of astronomy; for the more we examine 
 the facts of this science, the more do we find 
 it bear out the great truths contained in the 
 Gospel. Not only do its facts confirm, but 
 its disclosures illustrate the truths of Chris- 
 tianity. Sir Isaac Newton, the wisest of hu- 
 man philosophers and the greatest of human 
 intellects, discovered that the same law of 
 gravitation keeps a planet in its orbit and 
 regulates the pendulum of a common clock; 
 that the same law that determines the path 
 of a planet, determines the fall of a feather or 
 a leaf also. Now may not this show a new 
 analogy between astronomy and revelation? 
 There is that in the Gospel, which corres- 
 ponds to gravitation. It is the love of God. 
 It is the gravitation of Christianity. This 
 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 283 
 
 love of God retains the orphan in his allegi- 
 ance, the saint in his attachment, the angel 
 in his place, aud the hierarch in his holiness 
 before and around the throne. The same 
 principle that binds the sinner to his God, 
 binds also the archangel to his Creator. 
 Gravitation is in the material world, what 
 love to God is in the moral and spiritual 
 world. It may be found by yet deeper dis- 
 coveries, that astronomy, instead of impugn- 
 ing revelation, will peal from star to star that 
 Christianity is truth, and all true science, like 
 all redeemed things, shall eventually bow 
 the knee to Jesus and acknowledge Him; 
 and its Newtons and its Laplaces, reluc- 
 tantly or willingly, do homage to the Lamb 
 that sitteth on the throne. 
 
 It has been said by objectors to revelation, 
 that all the experience of man is against the 
 idea of a resurrection of the body. We 
 maintain, on the contrary, that all experience 
 is decidedly in favour of such a hereafter 
 existence to man. Look, for instance, at the 
 unattractive insect that lies upon the blade 
 of grass or upon the cabbage leaf; and ina 
 few short days you find that insect floating 
 in the air, in all the beauteous colours of the 
 rainbow. Look at the dry root in the 
 
284 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 gloomy season of winter; and when spring 
 comes forth, you find that root bloom into a 
 beauteous rose. Look at the egg-shell; in 
 that there is the eagle, that is to wing its 
 flight above all other birds, and rivet its eye 
 upon the meridian sun. The doctrine of the 
 resurrection is not inconsistent with the analo- 
 gies of nature or the experience of our com- 
 mon history. 
 
 It has been alleged, that it is contrary to 
 our experience that the soul should live 
 separate from the body. We say, on the 
 other hand, that it is consonant, not contrary 
 to it. As well might you say, when you see 
 the candle burning in the lantern, that be- 
 cause you see that candle in the lantern only, 
 therefore it cannot burn out of it. Because 
 you see the chicken in the egg-shell, would 
 you say it cannot live out of the egg-shell ? 
 Would you say, because the child must be 
 in continuity with its mother before it is born, 
 therefore after it is born it cannot live sepa- 
 rate from its mother? Such is the reasoning 
 of the man who would say, because he 
 knows of the soul in the body only, there- 
 fore there is a presumption that the soul will 
 never live out of the body. 
 
 It is said, again, by those who impugn 
 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 285 
 
 revelation, that all Divine influence from 
 above exerted on man, or the residence of 
 the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers, is 
 incredible. Kirby, in his Bridgewater Trea- 
 tise, has asserted, that instinct even in ani- 
 mals is a direct emanation from the Deity ; 
 and if this should be so, is it not proof that 
 Divine influence is not contrary to our expe- 
 rience or impossible? What does the load- 
 stone teach? what enables it to direct the 
 mariner upon the stormy deep, and to guide 
 him in his course by pointing towards the 
 pole? An influence given it from above. 
 Study the hop-plant; if there is no pole to 
 support it when it springs up, it spreads 
 along the ground as if in search of one, and 
 on a pole being placed near it, it moves 
 more rapidly in that direction, clings to it as 
 in ecstasy, and grows with double speed, as 
 if to reimburse itself for delay, and rejoice 
 that it has found its support. Is not this an 
 influence given it for its preservation? Or I 
 take you to the sunflower, that inclines its 
 -plossom ever to the sun in his daily course. 
 What is this but a sort of Divine influence 
 imparted even to the vegetables? And if the 
 hop is thus enabled by some mysterious im- 
 pulse to cling to the pole that supports it, 
 
286 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 shall it be thought inconsistent with our 
 experience, that man’s sinking soul shall be 
 taught and drawn by the Spirit of God to 
 cling to the Rock of ages, the Rod of Jesse, 
 the Lord Jesus Christ ? 
 
 It has been objected, that there appears in 
 the revelations of Scripture a disproportion 
 between sin and the punishment of sin here- 
 after, and that this disproportion is so palpa- 
 ble that it revolts against all the experience 
 and the analogies of nature. It is not in our 
 judgment contrary to the experience and 
 the analogies of nature. Sin against God is 
 of infinite demerit. For instance; if an equal 
 strike an equal, it is a great offence; if a sol- 
 dier strike his superior officer, it is a greater 
 offence ; if a subject strike his king, it is held 
 in human law to bea still greater offence ; 
 so that the principle is in our experience 
 admitted, that the offence rises in aggrava- 
 tion according to the dignity of the person 
 against whom it is perpetrated. Who, then, 
 is prepared to deny, that man’s sin against 
 an infinite God may not rise to the amount 
 of an infinite offence? Who shall determine 
 the extent and measure of the analogy you 
 sanction? Who is prepared to prove, since 
 sin rises in aggravation according to the dig- 
 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 287 
 
 nity of him against whom it is committed, 
 that it may not rise to an infinite turpitude 
 when committed against an infinite God, and 
 thus justly merit infinite retribution ? 
 Moreover we see even a small offence 
 actually lead to a very heavy punishment. 
 A single rash or false word may lead to mis- 
 chiefs, that centuries cannot repair; and here 
 is surely a disproportion between the offence 
 and the penalty, even in the dealings of Pro- 
 vidence, and in our experience in this world. 
 A sober man begins to drink, and to indulge 
 in habits of intoxication; and the conse- 
 quence of the apparently trifling act, his tak- 
 ing so many glasses of alcohol, are, that his 
 family are starving, his character is blasted, 
 his body is diseased, and his soul probably 
 lost. So that we see, in this world, what 
 seems to be a trivial offence followed by a 
 punishment to us apparently disproportioned. 
 In the next place, it has been contended, that 
 Christianity itself states, that the learned, and 
 the wise, and the great, are not generally pro- 
 fessors of its faith, and do not admit its truth 
 and its inspiration of God. We answer, that 
 it does indeed say that “not many wise men 
 are called,’ but it is men “wise in their 
 own conceit ;”? “not.many mighty, not many 
 
288 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 noble,” if this passage refer to private be- 
 lievers—but it is chiefly those who believe 
 themselves so. And the experience of its 
 truths in the heart, is different from believing 
 them in the mind. It is fact, however, that 
 the very élite of human intellect, the lights 
 and the ornaments of the human race, have 
 been devout and faithful followers of the 
 Lamb of God. Need I tell you, that New- 
 ton, the first genius in astronomy, was a 
 devout and a praying Christian ? that Milton, 
 whose name ranks highest in the fields of 
 poesy, was a humble Christian? that Locke, 
 the greatest of metaphysicians, was a most 
 devoted Christian? that Euler and Kepler, 
 and other most distinguished names, that 
 have shed a halo upon the world through 
 which they passed by their vast and splendid 
 discoveries, were devout and sincere Chris- 
 tians? And though it be true that we are 
 not to believe Christianity because great 
 men have believed it, though it be true that 
 we are “not to call any man Master,’’ yet 
 may we rest assured, when such men, after 
 patient research, come to the conclusion that 
 the Bible is the word of God, it becomes us 
 moderate men at most to pause before we 
 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES, 289 
 
 reject what their gifted minds received on 
 their competent and sufficient investigation. 
 It has been asserted, further, that the lead- 
 ing doctrine of Christianity—justification by 
 faith alone-—leads to immorality. This is an 
 objection of the infidel and Roman Catholic 
 together. Our reply to it is, that the same 
 Bible, which tells us that we are “justified 
 by faith without the deeds of the law,” tells 
 us also that “ without holiness no man shall 
 see the Lord ;” the same book that declares 
 that morality is useless as a plea, tells us it is 
 essential as an evidence; that same book that 
 tells us that morality cannot be admitted to 
 constitute our right to heaven, yet declares 
 that morality is essential to constitute our 
 qualification for heaven; the same book 
 that tells us that we are justified freely 
 through the death of Christ Jesus, tells us 
 also that this grace “teaches us to deny 
 ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live 
 soberly, righteously, and godly in this present 
 world.”? And the man, be he minister or be 
 he hearer, who does not adorn, in his life, in 
 his practice, in his conduct, in his intercourse 
 in the world, the gospel he professes, knows 
 nothing about justification by Christ in his 
 25 
 
290 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 heart, whatever he may know about it in his 
 head. 
 
 But we contend that this doctrine is pre- 
 eminently calculated to produce morality. 
 Man, it is universally admitted, is a sinner ; 
 he hates God, and breaks his law. Now 
 what does this book declare to be the fulfill- 
 ing of the law, or the very essence of obedi- 
 ence? Love. If I love my queen, it neces- 
 sarily prompts me to be loyal to her; if I 
 Jove my parents, that sustains filial duty ; and 
 if I love my God, I have in that love the 
 very essence and element of obedience to his 
 commands. “Love is the fulfilling of the 
 law.’? The question, then, is, Does this doc- 
 trine of free acceptance through the blood of 
 Christ, produce love in man’s heart to God? 
 If it does, obedience is eminently secured. 
 We answer, it does. If some individual 
 hated me, and I were to command that indi- 
 vidual to love me, he would not love me 
 because I commanded him; or if I were to 
 promise him rank and wealth he would not 
 Jove me; or if I were to threaten him with 
 all sorts of tortures at my service he would 
 not love me. Love, in the human heart, 
 cannot be created by threatenings, it scorns 
 promises, and laughs at all commands. How, 
 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 291 
 
 then, am I to make that man love me? IfI 
 were to make some extraordinary sacrifice, 
 risk my property or my life for that man, that 
 would draw him irresistibly to forego his 
 hatred and to love me. My manifested love 
 to him would create returning love to me. 
 Now just so here. God may command, 
 threaten, or promise, but the sinner will not 
 love Him; He, therefore, according to what 
 we find to be the soundest philosophy, as 
 well as scriptural divinity, has evoked our 
 love by the surest process—“God so loved 
 the world that He gave his only-begotten 
 Son,” who came into our world, and died 
 upon the cross for us, and now with His 
 pierced and outstretched hands He asks, Sin- 
 ner, sinner dost thou not love Me? There 
 is in that demonstration a power to melt 
 man’s hard heart that has been felt by mil- 
 lions; and “we love Him because He first 
 loved us.’’ 
 
 To produce the intensest love is to secure 
 the highest obedience. “Eye-service”’ will 
 create a partial obedience, interest will secure 
 a temporary obedience, but love will secure 
 perfect and unvaried obedience—an obedi- 
 ence that shrinks from no difficulties, that 
 pauses at no duties, that overcomes all threats, 
 
292 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 and triumphs over all opposition. Such is 
 the force of love. We have heard of a 
 Codrus, whose love to his country led him to 
 die for it. We have heard of a Romulus, 
 and a Quintus Curtius, who prompted by this 
 mighty impulse, could brave death in its 
 most appalling shapes. We have heard of 
 parents who encountered the wild billow and 
 the dread storm to save their children. Love 
 in one cherished to another, will accomplish 
 what no principle or power can prompt to. 
 In Scotland a peasant woman had a child a 
 few weeks old, which was seized by one of 
 the golden eagles, the largest in the country, 
 and borne away in its talons to its lofty eyrie 
 on one of the most inaccessible cliffs of Scot- 
 land’s bleak hills. The mother, perceiving her 
 loss, hurried in alarm to its rescue, and the pea- 
 santry, among whom the alarm spread, rushed 
 out to her aid. They all came to the foot of 
 the tremendous precipice; the peasants were 
 anxious to risk their lives in order to re- 
 cover the little infant; but how was the crag 
 to be reached? One peasant tried to climb, 
 but was obliged to return; another tried, and 
 came down injured; a third tried, and one 
 after another failed, till a universal feeling of 
 despair and deep sorrow fell upon the crowd 
 as they gazed upon the eyrie where the 
 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 293 
 
 infant lay. At last a woman was seen, 
 climbing first one part, and then another, 
 getting over one rock, and then another; and 
 while every heart trembled with alarm, to 
 the amazement of all they saw her reach the 
 loftiest crag, and clasp the infant rejoicingly 
 in her bosom. This heroic female began to 
 descend the perilous steep with the child; 
 moving from point to point; and while every 
 one thought that her next step would pre- 
 cipitate her and dash her to pieces, they saw 
 her at length reach the ground with the child 
 safe in her arms. Who was this female ? 
 why did she succeed when others failed? It 
 Was THE MOTHER Of the child. And what 
 made her overcome every obstacle? There 
 was a tie between that mother’s heart and 
 the infant, that drew her to its place, and 
 nerved her to brave every difficulty, and to 
 succeed where all beside had failed. It was 
 love. The fact is a proof of its might and 
 its capabilities. Implant love to God in the 
 sinner’s heart, and it will bind him with fer- 
 vour to His laws, and its possessor will obey 
 all righteousness, love every holy precept, 
 overcome every difficulty, and brave all dan- 
 gers, It is the tie that binds him to his 
 Saviour, and draws him irresistibly to His 
 
 service. Are not they the holiest who trust 
 25* 
 
 P 
 
294 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 least in the merit of their works? Is not 
 that country most moral where justification 
 by faith is proclaimed most freely ? 
 It has been alleged by infidels, that Chris- 
 tianity as a whole is one great system of 
 priestcraft, and gain, and priestly domination. 
 This is one of the favourite charges of the 
 more vulgar infidels. We are to take our 
 conception of the Christian priesthood, not 
 from what we see in the world, but from 
 God’s inspired word. If this book says, that 
 ministers are to prey on the property of their 
 flocks, or to indulge in carnal pleasures, or 
 to be “lords over God’s heritage,” then the 
 objection may be fatal; but if this sacred 
 book proclaims the very reverse, then such 
 objection is, not to Christianity as it is found 
 in its recognized standard, but to Christianity 
 as it has been diluted and corrupted by man. 
 I look, then, for the delineation of a minister 
 as it is drawn in the word of God. Here it 
 is:—“Flee also youthful lusts, but follow 
 righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them 
 that call on the Lord out ofa pure heart; but 
 foolish and unlearned questions avoid, know- 
 ing that they do gender strifes, and the ser- 
 vant of the Lord must not strive, but be 
 gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in 
 meekness instructing those that oppose them- 
 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 295 
 
 selves, if God peradventure will give them re- 
 pentance to the acknowledging of the truth.” 
 And again; “A bishop”? (and the word is 
 used convertibly with “presbyter,” the two 
 words being synonymous in the usages of 
 the New Testament,)—“A bishop then must 
 be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigi- 
 lant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospi- 
 tality, apt to teach; not given to wine, no 
 striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but pa- 
 tient; not a brawler, not covetous: one that 
 ruleth well his own house, having his chil- 
 dren in subjection with all gravity. More- 
 over he must have a good report of them 
 which are without; lest he fall into reproach 
 and the snare of the devil. Likewise must 
 the deacons be grave, not double-tongued, 
 not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy 
 lucre; holding the mystery of the faith in 
 a pure conscience.”” These are not descrip- 
 tions of a system of priestcraft; these verses 
 do not say that Christian ministers are to be 
 greedy and domineering. 
 
 Let me add, that the very men who would 
 keep back every thing approaching pecuniary 
 competency to the clergy, are the men who 
 do not object to extravagance in other things, 
 They will expend ten times as much upon 
 an article of furniture, or pleasure, or dress, as 
 
296 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 they pay for a pew in the house of God for 
 twice twelve months; they will give freely 
 as much for a box at the opera for a single 
 night, as for a seat at a hundred sermons and 
 services. Nota fiftieth part of what is ex- 
 pended on unnecessary luxuries and mere 
 amusements is given to the missionary box, 
 or to the cause of Christ. 
 
 And now, in concluding these replies to 
 objections urged against Christianity, let me 
 state what in my conscience I believe, as 
 well as what in my experience I have found, 
 to be the cause, I do not say of ad/, but cer- 
 tainly of most men’s infidelity :—their infi- 
 delity is the offspring of the heart, not of the 
 head.* No jury ata trial, no judge examin- 
 ing the merits of a case and finding it proved, 
 has such overwhelming evidence for the ver- 
 dict of the one, or the sentence of the other, 
 as we have for the truth of the word of God. 
 Of all evidence it is the most accumulated 
 and powerful; and the man who rejects the 
 Bible, not only shuts his eyes to noon-day 
 brightness, but to be consistent, ought to 
 reject almost every thing that constitutes the 
 sum of human knowledge, and every fact 
 
 * [See a little book, published by the Pres. Board of 
 Publication, entitled “The Causes and Cure of Scep- 
 ticism.”] EpITor. 
 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES, 297 
 
 that enters into the world’s history. Infi- 
 delity, I feel sure, is more in the heart than 
 in the head; the affections, not the faculties, 
 cradle it; sin, not reason, nurses it. And if 
 it thus nestles in the heart, thence man can- 
 not remove it. If it existed in the head only, 
 Tteason might be able to overcome it; but if 
 it be intertwined with the heart, God’s Holy 
 Spirit can alone change the heart, and expel 
 its unbelief. I once met with an acute and 
 enlightened infidel, with whom I reasoned 
 day after day, and for hours together. I sub- 
 mitted to him the internal, the external, and 
 the experimental evidences, but made no 
 impression on his scorn and unbelief. At 
 length I entertained a Suspicion that there 
 was something morally, rather than intellec- 
 tually wrong, and that the bias was not in 
 the intellect, but in the heart. One day there- 
 fore I said to him—«I must now state my 
 conviction, and you may call me uncharita- 
 ble, but duty compels me ; you are living in 
 some known and gross sin.”? The man’s 
 countenance became pale; he bowed and 
 left me, and I never again met with him to 
 discuss the evidences of Christianity. I after- 
 wards learned that what I suspected was the 
 fact; the man could not embrace sin and the 
 
298 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD ? 
 
 Gospel simultaneously, and was therefore 
 trying to crush the Gospel, because he wished 
 to keep his sin. 
 
 I may mention another instance of an indi- 
 vidual, whose name is very notorious, and 
 who has been long propagating infidelity 
 among the lower ranks with fearful success. 
 This miserable man had an only daughter 
 lying upon a sick-bed. His wife, I may 
 observe, who had died, was in her life-time a 
 devoted, spiritual-minded, and praying Chris- 
 tian. When the daughter’s death was very 
 near, and all hope of restoration was utterly 
 dissipated, she called her father to her bed- 
 side, and said—* My mother died a Chris- 
 tian some years ago, rejoicing in Jesus, and 
 assured of heaven; yow are a disbeliever in 
 Christianity. I am going to make the last 
 venture; am I to die in my mother’s faith, 
 or'in yours?” “I beseech you to advise 
 me,” she said with earnestness and fervour, 
 “whether I am to die in my mother’s faith, 
 or in yours.” The father’s struggle between 
 affection to his only child and the pride of 
 devotedness to his principles was tremen- 
 dous; but at last, amid a burst of tears and 
 in an agony of feeling, the hardened, yet 
 melting infidel said, « Die in your mother’s 
 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 299 
 
 faith.’ And she did die in her mother’s 
 faith. And yet the man, who gave that 
 advice, lives to propagate infidelity in the 
 world, and labours with all the energy he has 
 to make men as contaminated as himself. 
 But were the mysteries contained in the 
 Bible darker, and the difficulties greater than 
 they are, we are not to wait till all are re- 
 moved before we embrace the gospel. It is 
 increase of intellectual light that reveals be- 
 yond it increase of intellectual darkness; 
 mysteries multiply with discoveries. The 
 astronomer does not reject what he knows 
 because there is much beyond he cannot see. 
 He looks upward on a star-lit evening, and 
 views with wonder those countless altar-fires 
 that burn incense in perpetual silence. He 
 borrows the aid of the telescope, and while 
 it Increases the range and clearness of his 
 vision, it discloses greater and more impene- 
 trable clusters of worlds beyond. Dim and 
 distant spots of light are seen to be solar sys- 
 tems, revolving around a central sun, and 
 that central sun with his revolving systems 
 but another cluster rolling around another 
 central sun ;—and this is but a faint view of 
 the thin suburbs of the heavenly Jerusalem, 
 —a dim sight of the mere sentinels and out- 
 
300 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 posts of that innumerable host spread and 
 srouped in the fields of immensity. Let us 
 embrace the gospel heartily—the known,— 
 and wait patiently for the unknown; let us 
 not lose saving truth in prying into hidden 
 mysteries; let us not spend time in inquisi- 
 tive speculations, and peril eternity by reject- 
 ing or neglecting great vital doctrines. 
 
 Thousands feel and witness there is re- 
 vealed more than enough to save them. 
 Christianity has done for them what nothing 
 else could do; it has regained Paradise for 
 them, and fitted them for Paradise; it has 
 spread over them the peace of God; it has 
 erected in their conscience the sceptre of 
 righteousness and the standard of truth. 
 
 Nothing can bring a soul zo God but a 
 religion that came from God. A lie never 
 regenerated a soul or sanctified a heart. The 
 greatest mystery in the Bible carries in ita 
 saving truth Accept the mystery, not as sav- 
 ing you, but as containing the truth that 
 saves you,—not as the healing and restorative 
 wine, but as the cup that contains it. Try 
 not to separate. You cannot throw away 
 the mystery without throwing away the truth 
 it. contains, 
 
TEXTS CAVILLED AT. 301 
 
 CHAPTER XI, 
 
 TEXTS CAVILLED AT. 
 
 GENESIS vi. 6, “It repented the Lord that he 
 had made man.’?—God the unchangeable 
 cannot repent,—that is, alter his mind, from 
 the occurrence of unforeseen events. This 
 language must be figurative, and meant for 
 our capacity, because the same book declares, 
 “God is not the son of man that he should 
 repent.”? God takes his stand within the 
 limits of humanity, and makes use, not only 
 of its language, but of its feelings also. 
 Thus he asks, “ How shall I give thee up, 
 Ephraim ? how shall I deliver thee, Israel ? 
 mine heart is turned within me ; my repent- 
 ings are kindled together.’’? ‘These are the 
 adaptations of heavenly things to human 
 capacities, — great truths darkened by the 
 medium through which they must pass, in 
 order to suit our weak sight. These, too, 
 were perhaps rough drafts of the incarnation, 
 —anthropomorphic appearances of Deity,— 
 to prepare men’s minds for God manifest in 
 26 
 
302 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 the flesh. The complex ritual of the Jews 
 too,—its minute prescriptions about the kill- 
 ing and offering of animals,—have been 
 objected to as unworthy of God. Is it not 
 the fact, that in a tree, a flower, a pebble, 
 there are innumerable minute fibres, grains, 
 or crystals, which seem to us to have been 
 uncalled for? In insects, fishes, and birds, is 
 there not what seems needless variety, divi- 
 sion, and subdivision? In short, is there 
 not evidence of the same presence in the 
 works of creation and in the laws of Levi? 
 Are not acts of parliament, decisions of 
 judges, definitions of crime, excessively and 
 wearisomely minute? But all these Leviti- 
 cal laws were partly.to serve as a perpetual 
 hedge to preserve the Jews from the univer- 
 sal, contiguous, and imminent idolatry, and 
 to prefigure Him for whose advent they were 
 taught to wait and pray. Their burden- 
 someness was perhaps appointed of God to 
 lead the Jews to long for a deliverer. 
 
 Ps. cxl. 10; Ps. cxxix. 6; Ps. cxli. 12; 
 Ps. lviii.; Ps. lix.—These are instances of 
 what are called imprecations in Scripture. | 
 might show that some of these expressions 
 might be rendered with equal correctness 
 predictions of what shall be. But I take the 
 
TEXTS CAVILLED AT. 303 
 
 severest sense, and in this light I hesitate not 
 to say they are right. David wrote these, 
 not as a private man venting his personal 
 feelings, but as a judge pronouncing what 
 God had authorized. Their crimes justly 
 deserved these penalties, and David, as the 
 mouthpiece of God, faithfully pronounced 
 them. We find the heathen writers fre- 
 quently imprecating vengeance on public in- 
 famy, and those very persons who object to 
 those judgments in the word of God—so 
 easily vindicated—are not the last to invoke 
 judgments on the heads of those against 
 whom they have private animosity. 
 
 Jer. xvii. 9, “ The heart is deceitful above 
 all things and desperately wicked: who can 
 know it ???——Many have alleged that this is 
 an exaggerated and over-coloured charge— 
 that we are not such as we are here described 
 to be. Now it is very remarkable that hea- 
 then writers use language yet stronger in the 
 same direction. ‘ As soon as we are born,’’ 
 says Cicero, (Tusc. Quest. iii. 2,) “and receive 
 the care of our parents, we engage in all 
 kinds of depravity, so much that we seem to 
 suck in error almost with our nurse’s milk.”’ 
 Horace (Sat. i. 3) says, “ No one is born with- 
 out iniquities,’ (Vitiis.) Propertius writes, 
 
304 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 
 
 ll, 22, “ Nature has given man his wicked- 
 ness.” Our own experience is perhaps the 
 best commentary on the words of Jeremiah; 
 Christians admit it—feel it. If it be said it is 
 the example of others, not a taint in the 
 nature, whence I ask, came that example ? 
 A was corrupted by the example of B, and 
 B by C, but whose example corrupted the 
 first of the series, whose only example was 
 himself ? 
 
 Matt. vii. 13, 14, “ Wide is the gate and 
 broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, 
 and many there be that go in thereat: be- 
 cause strait is the gate and narrow is the 
 way which leadeth unto life, and few there 
 be that find it.”’—-This has been thought an 
 over severe estimate, but its accuracy is mat- 
 ter of fact and is confirmed by heathen 
 observers. Horace (Sat. i. 4) writes,— 
 
 » “Take me a man at venture from the crowd, 
 And he’s ambitious, covetous, or proud.” 
 
 Juvenal (Sat. xiii. 26),— 
 
 “Rare are the good, more scarce their number seems 
 Than Thebes’ famed gates or Niles’ disparted streams; 
 Worse than the iron is the present race; 
 
 Nature with our corruptions keeps no pace; 
 Her plastic skill can no vile metal frame 
 That’s base enough to give the age a name.” 
 
TEXTS CAVILLED AT. 805 
 
 Homer (Odyssey ii. 276)—* Few sons are like 
 the father, the majority are worse, few are 
 better.”’ These, the testimonies of observ- 
 ant nature, proclaim the truth of the picture 
 sketched in revelation. We know the word 
 of God contains no exaggerations, but it may 
 silence the caviller if we show that the expe- 
 rience of mankind undesignedly confirms the 
 testimonies of the word of God. 
 
 John v. 40, “ Ye will not come to me that 
 ye may have life;”? Ezek. xviii. 31, « Why 
 will ye die ?””?—-Why, it has been asked, does 
 God not do what He seems in these and 
 similar texts so desirous of doing? Is He 
 not omnipotent? Can He not save all, with- 
 out exception? God does not extinguish 
 human nature, in order to destroy its sinful- 
 ness, Were He, in the exercise of omnipo- 
 tent power, to save mankind, or drag them 
 to heaven against their wills, and in spite of 
 their protests and preferences, He would 
 treat men as dead machines, or as irrational 
 and irresponsible creatures. God reverences, 
 if we may so speak, the noblest workmau- 
 ship of His hands. He will not drive by 
 force. He draws with cords of love, and 
 with bands ofa man. “ Behold, I stand at 
 
 the door and knock; if any man will open, I 
 26° 
 
806 ‘IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 will come in and sup with him and he with 
 me.’’? Rather than do violence to the free- 
 dom and responsibility of man, he will wait 
 outside a suppliant for admission. He will 
 conciliate where he might coerce and com- 
 mand. But if the God of grace is blamed 
 for not accomplishing by force what He de- 
 sires to do by motives, hopes, and menaced 
 penalties, may not the God of providence be - 
 equally complained of p—Why has He erect- 
 ed in man’s bosom a beseeching, alarming, 
 threatening, and promising power called con- 
 science, leaving those that disregard it to 
 suffer, and giving to those that listen to it 
 peace, instead of directly compelling men to 
 be holy and therefore happy? If God’s 
 unsuccessful appeals to man through the 
 medium of revelation disprove either the 
 benevolence or power of the God of Chris- 
 tianity, then God’s unsuccessful appeals 
 through the medium of conscience must 
 disprove the benevolence or power of the 
 God of nature and providence. Grace and 
 Providence are streams from the same foun- 
 tain. There is no objection to the one that 
 does not lie against the other also. The 
 rejecter of the former must, to be consistent, 
 reject the latter also, and thus plunge into 
 
TEXTS CAVILLED AT. | OF 
 
 the most revolting of all inconsistencies, 
 atheism. itself. . 
 
 Matt. v. 28, “Whosoever looketh on a 
 woman to lust after her hath committed 
 adultery with her already in his heart.’?— 
 This has been pronounced severe morality ; 
 yet there are testimonies from the writings 
 of the highest heathen moralists that show 
 that man, in his best moments, feels it to be 
 just and true. 
 
 Seneca writes: “The vestal virgin, who 
 desires to commit fornication, is guilty, even 
 though she commit it not.’? Cicero writes: 
 « A good man will not only not dare to do, 
 but he will not even dare to think, what he 
 cannot speak of in public.’?/ Juvenal writes: 
 
 “ Thus but intended mischief stayed in time, 
 Has all the moral guilt of finished crime.” 
 
 These, and kindred sentiments in heathen 
 writers, are fragments of our aboriginal 
 purity in Paradise, and show that the con- 
 science of humanity, even its wreck, emits 
 - at times attestations to the truth of God’s 
 word. 
 
 Matt. x. 34,—« Think not that Iam come 
 to send peace on earth: I came not to send 
 peace, but a sword.”’ Startling expressions 
 
308 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 like this prove rather the reality and truth 
 of Scripture. Impostors, desirous of popu- 
 larity and progress, would not have hazarded 
 statements so likely to injure a present popu- 
 larity, the only object of their efforts. Does 
 it however contradict those passages that 
 announce the Saviour as the Prince of 
 Peace ?—that declare one of the essential 
 elements of his kingdom to be peace? We 
 answer, No. The Gospel may be the occa- 
 sion of war, but in itself it is the eause of 
 peace. Its holiness coming into collision with 
 men’s sins—its denunciations of iniquity fall- 
 ing on those that love it—its rebuke of the 
 most plausible hypocrisy, and its recognition 
 of the least heartfelt desire “to do justly and 
 love mercy’’—its enshrining the least seed of 
 truth, and its indifference to the largest husk 
 of ceremony, are calculated as soon as intro- 
 duced into a fallen world, to rouse the resist- 
 ance of wicked men. But such resistance is 
 not the fruit of Christianity, but of corrupt 
 human nature, hating and seeking to repel 
 the approach of truth. Does not every 
 attempt to enfranchise the enslaved, to vindi- 
 cate the oppressed, create around it and in 
 its train the same opposition? Have not 
 the greatest benefactors of the world been 
 
TEXTS CAVILLED AT. 309 
 
 obliged, as they dared, to despise the oppo- 
 sition because they loved the happiness of 
 mankind? The world’s scorn was aroused 
 by their lofty contrast to the world’s selfish- 
 ness; and that scorn was an augury of their 
 future success. 
 
 Prejudices that have struck their roots into 
 the heart of nations, and twined their fibres 
 around the habits and associations of men, 
 are not easily or gently uprooted. What are 
 all the collisions of society but the results of 
 evil rising to put down righteousness, and of 
 righteousness rising to put down oppression 
 and injustice? Were the introduction of the 
 Gospel followed by no opposition, there 
 would be wanting one of the highest indica- 
 tions of its heavenly origin. While it is true 
 that the “world lieth in wickedness,” and 
 “the carnal heart is enmity to God,’ so long 
 the truth will not want a shadow, nor holi- 
 ness an opponent. 
 
 Luke xiv. 26,—“If any man come to me, 
 and hate not his father and mother, and wife, 
 and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, 
 and his own life also, he cannot be my dis- 
 ciple?” This has been quoted as a specimen 
 of a severe and cynic morality. It is plain 
 that Scripture invariably enjoins love from 
 
310 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 man to man, and still more love from child 
 to parent. This runs through all revelation ; 
 of this there can be no reasonable doubt. It 
 is therefore the right way to interpret the 
 solitary, seemingly contradictory text, by the 
 many plain and obvious ones. The word 
 ‘hate’? is used in Scripture comparatively 
 with love. Thus it is stated, in Gen. xxix. 
 31,—“ When the Lord saw that Leah was 
 hated ;’’ but this is explained in the preceding 
 verse, (verse 30, ) “he loved Rachel more 
 than Leah ;’’—*hated,’’ in verse 31, is the 
 “less loved ”’ in verse 30. So, “If any man 
 hate not his father,’ &c., must mean, “ If any 
 man love his father above me, serve, or sacri- 
 fice, or suffer for an earthly relationship more 
 than for me.” 
 
 In the Gospel of Matthew, however, we 
 have the parallel passage, and the meaning 
 of this thereby fixed, (Matt. x. 37;) “He 
 that loveth father or mother more than me is 
 not worthy of me.’’ It is not uncommon to 
 find a relative obligation couched in absolute 
 terms; thus: “Set your affections on things 
 above, not on things on the earth ;’? that is— 
 love things on earth in subordination to things 
 in heaven. | 
 
 Such phraseology, however, is not pecu- 
 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 311 
 
 liar to the Bible; it occurs in heathen wri- 
 Lers 
 
 Cicero De Officiis iii. 5: “To despise plea- 
 sures, riches, and even life itself, and to 
 regard them as nothing when they come to 
 be compared with the public interest, is the 
 duty of a brave and heroic spirit.” 
 
 Tyrteeus, Ode iv. 13—18, “Let us fight 
 with spirit for our country and our children, 
 no longer sparing our souls;” lil. 3, “ count- 
 ing his soul as odious, but death dear as the 
 sun.” 
 
 Thus the language of the sacred penman 
 is not without precedent, and therefore any 
 opposition to it, because of its form, cannot 
 stop there. 
 
 James ii. 10, “He that offendeth in one 
 point is guilty of all.”—This has been asserted 
 as hyper-rigid morality; yet it is not really 
 so. If a man steal, he is laid hold on by the 
 law of the land, and punished as guilty. The 
 law does not connive at his conduct till he 
 has murdered, and forged, and libelled. It 
 regards one crime as a violation of it, and 
 holds the criminal guilty. To be guilty of 
 murder, it is not required that the crime be 
 committed in all the forms in which it is pos- 
 sible to do so: the extinction of the life of 
 
312 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 
 
 another in revenge, or for plunder, is equally 
 murder. The apostle explains the reason 
 when he adds, “for He that said, Do not 
 commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now, 
 if thou commit no adultery, yet, if thou kill, 
 thou art become a transgressor of the law.’ 
 
 Rom. v. 9, “Justified by Christ.” 
 
 Rom. v. 1, “ Justified by faith.’ 
 
 James ii. 24, “ By works a man is justi- 
 fied.”” These seem contradictory each to the 
 other; but they are not so. We are justified 
 by Christ meritoriously ; by faith, instru- 
 mentally ; by works, declaratively. Christ’s 
 righteousness is the ground and title of our 
 admission to the hopes and certainty of hap- 
 piness. Faith is the instrument, or hand, 
 by which we lay hold on that title, as the 
 hand of a drowning man grasps the rope 
 flung out to him. A holy life is the visible 
 evidence of that state of acceptance which 
 invariably gives birth to all the fruits of the 
 Spirit. 
 
 Gen. ii. 2, “And on the seventh day God 
 ended his work, and he rested on the seventh 
 day from all his work which he had made.” 
 
 John v. 17, “My Father worketh hitherto, 
 and I work,’’ 
 
 There is no contradiction between these 
 
TEXTS CAVILLED AT, , 313 
 
 texts. The one refers to creation, and the 
 other to providence. The former describes 
 God’s completion of the successive strata and 
 races consummated by man; the latter de- 
 notes God’s preserving, regulating, and main- 
 taining, all things animate and inanimate. 
 
 Acts vii. 48, “The Most High dwelleth 
 not in temples made with hands,” 
 
 Exod. xxv. 8, “ Let them make me a sanc- 
 tuary, that I may dwell among them.’ 
 
 The former text describes the majesty of 
 God, the latter his grace. The one is his 
 absolute dwelling, “light, inaccessible, and 
 full of glory ;’’ the other is his special and 
 gracious presence, “ wheresoever two or three 
 are met together in my name, there am I in 
 the midst of them.’’ 
 
 Ieph. v. 29, « No man ever yet hated his 
 own flesh.”” Matt. v. 29, “If thy right eye 
 offend thee, pluck it out.”,—-The first text is 
 literally true; it is human nature, and every 
 man’s experience responds to it: the second 
 is obviously figurative, and denotes that sins 
 as dear from preference, and as near from as- 
 sociation, as a right eye, must be renounced 
 and put away at any sacrifice or pain. 
 
 Luke i. 33, “ Of his kingdem there shall be 
 no end.” 1 Cor. xv. 24, “Then cometh the 
 
 27 
 
314 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 end when he shall have delivered up the 
 kingdom to God.”—The first text refers to 
 that kingdom which is righteousness and 
 peace and joy; of this there shall be no end. 
 The second text relates to the mode of ad- 
 ministering his kingdom, which mode will 
 cease when all the objects of his love have 
 been gathered into the region of the full en- 
 joyment of it. 
 
 I give these as specimens merely of what 
 are denounced as contradictions. All the 
 seeming contradictions of Scripture can be 
 easily and satisfactorily explained. The har- 
 mony that really exists under the discrepancy 
 that appears, is only additional proof of the 
 reality and truthfulness of the Scriptures. 
 When Moses saw an Egyptian fighting with 
 an Israelite and trying to destroy him, he 
 slew the Egyptian and let the Israelite go. 
 When he saw an Israelite fighting with an 
 Israelite, he separated them and made them 
 
 friends. Even so, when we see an error. 
 
 assaulting or overlaying a truth, let us destroy 
 the error and emancipate the truth; but when 
 we see a truth seemingly in conflict witha 
 truth, let us reconcile them, and show them 
 thus reconciled to all. | 
 
 a Se 
 
CONCLUSION. 315 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 « For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory 
 of man as the flower of the grass. The 
 grass withereth, and the flower thereof fadeth 
 away, but the word of the Lord endureth for 
 ever. And this is the word which by the 
 Gospel is preached unto you.’’ These, the 
 words of Peter, are not the original. They 
 are only the echo. Isaiah had uttered them 
 before him. ‘The first half of the sentence is 
 the untiring chant of nature, the last the un- 
 changing voice of God. The peasant looks 
 on his fields, and the pent up citizen on his 
 sickly plant in his flower-pot, and both feel, 
 « the grass withereth, and the flower thereof 
 fadeth away.’’ On the other hand, the hum- 
 blest believer on earth and the highest saint 
 beside God’s throne, alike proclaim, ‘the 
 word of God endureth for ever.” The wind 
 that sighs as it sweeps through the trees of 
 the forest in fitful and freezing gusts—the 
 showers of dead leaves that fall at their roots 
 
$16 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 —and the naked skeleton branches that shiver 
 in the blast, are the solemn and pathetic trum- 
 pets that convey to the listening ear the dirge 
 of things seen. 
 
 David gave utterance to this truth in his 
 days, “ As for man, his days are as grass, as 
 a flower of the field so he flourisheth, for the 
 wind passeth over it and it is gone, and the 
 place thereof shall know it no more.” Nearly 
 three hundred years after David, Isaiah pro- 
 claimed the same analogy, “All flesh is grass, 
 and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower 
 of the field—the grass withereth, the flower 
 fadeth :’? and seven hundred years subse- 
 quent to Isaiah, Peter records the same sen- 
 timent in nearly the same words. The out- 
 ward laws and movements of nature thus 
 continue from the beginning. The same sun 
 that shone on Abel and Noah and Abraham 
 shines on us. These same stars that sparkle 
 over our houses, looked upon the fall and the 
 flood, on Marathon and Thermopyle, Water- 
 loo, Nineveh, Constantinople and London, 
 on Noah and Napoleon. The grass grew 
 and withered under the footsteps of Jacob as 
 under ours; “ All things continue as they 
 were from the beginning of the creation.’ 
 But this, instead of being ground of atheistic 
 
CONCLUSION. 317 
 
 presumption, is really evidence of the un- 
 changeableness of God. 
 
 One lesson taught us in these words is the 
 truth and reality of a brotherhood between 
 us and flowers and trees, between the green 
 things that wither, and the bright and beauti- 
 ful ones that die. The dead violet is the fra- 
 grant memorial of the infant that drooped 
 and died. The still unscattered dust of the 
 flower that fades in June brings to our re- 
 membrance the fair form that was suddenly 
 breathed on by some mysterious emissary, 
 and passed away inher noon. Another falls 
 from the tree of life like that sere leaf. In 
 the woods in winter we cannot be long 
 alone ; visions and associations will gather 
 around us—departed forms and almost for- 
 gotten faces will rise like thin shadows from 
 the grave, and almost forgotten faces will 
 come forth from the past and bear witness to 
 the words which, like monumental inscrip- 
 tions on the pavement, the feet of traffic are 
 continually defacing, but which the sweep of 
 years renders again clear and legible. « All 
 flesh is as grass; the grass withereth, and 
 the flower fadeth.” 
 
 Mortality is the universal attribute. Man 
 has his autumn as well as buds or flowers, 
 
 aay 
 
818 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 
 
 and the same casualties too; a frost nips the 
 flowers—a worm gnaws the root of the grass, 
 or a blight falls on it from the air, and it 
 withers. The great majority of the human 
 family perishes in the mid-time of its days, 
 and though some sheltered plant may retain 
 its beauty and its fragrance amid the wreck of 
 its faded sisterhood, it also must droop and 
 die. God has written it, and no prescriptions 
 or balms or care can reverse it, « All flesh is 
 as grass; the grass withereth ; ”’ and lest it 
 should be supposed that aristocracy and 
 wealth and beauty may possibly be ex- 
 empted from the common lot, it is added, 
 “ And the flower,” that is, the chief portions 
 of humanity, “ fadeth.” 
 
 But the universal fact of death is not the 
 only lesson taught by the withering grass. 
 It seems to teach us how to die. The pro- 
 ductions of nature die as if they felt full con- 
 fidence in Him that made and summons them. 
 The leaf drops gently from the tree with- 
 out a murmur—the flower welcomes the 
 death-frost as a messenger from its Maker, 
 bows its head upon its stalk, and yields its 
 richest perfume as it dies. From the heath- 
 vell on the common to the oak in the forest, 
 all die softly; God says to each, “Return,” 
 
CONCLUSION. 319 
 
 and they answer in music, “ We return.” 
 Why should not Christians equally trust! 
 Why should not they yield themselves as gen- 
 tly and willingly to God! Does God care 
 for flowers and grass? “Are not we much 
 better than they ?” 
 
 Nature also, as she dies, looks most beau- 
 tiful. The trees in autumn seem to put on their 
 coronation robes. Their leaves assume their 
 most gorgeous tints; and when all these leaves 
 fall in the forest, it is only to remove the inter- 
 cepting screen, and let the sunbeam and star- 
 light shine with unobstructed effulgence, 
 May not our sun be fairest at setting ! May 
 not we, like flowers and trees, go down to the 
 grave in joy? May not we, like Simeon, de- 
 part in peace? Should not our death be an 
 euthanasia! Death is but the removal of the 
 broad shadow of mortality, the emancipation 
 of the spirit,—the porch of life,—the vesti- 
 bule of glory. These reflections, however, all 
 assume that this life is not our all. Were there 
 no destiny beyond it, within the reach of all 
 that will, man’s lot would be worse a thou- 
 sand fold than that of the dumb universe 
 around him; and if there be a life beyond 
 this, the nature of which is contingent on 
 what we become in the present, how great is 
 
320 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 the folly of that man who fits himself for 
 every office upon earth, but takes no thought 
 and makes no preparation for eternity; who 
 Strives to be everything except a Christian ; 
 who cares much about many things, but 
 nothing about his soul! 
 
 All that man admires and pursues on earth, 
 nevertheless, must perish as the grass, and as 
 the flower of the grass. Is it personal beauty 
 we glory in? It has all the prominence, 
 but all the evanescence also, of “the flower 
 of the grass.”” Like the bloom ona plum or 
 peach, touch it, and it is gone! Is it intel- 
 lectual wisdom? Is not the wisdom of yes- 
 terday the folly of to-day? Have not 
 theories once deemed perfect, canonized by 
 infallible Popes and sung by great poets, 
 been afterwards dismissed as puerile, or re- 
 jected as untrue? If future centuries are 
 yet to follow that which is already half-spent, 
 they may look back on our railroads, and 
 steamers, and electric telegraphs, and laws, 
 and literature, and pity or smile amid their 
 brilliant discoveries, and repeat then as we 
 do now, “The grass withereth and the 
 flower fadeth.” 
 
 Is it the productions of genius that we 
 cherish! Where are the wonders of our 
 
CONCLUSION, 321 
 
 Athenian pencil? Where are the all but 
 livinz creations of the Corinthian chisel ? 
 Where are the gates of Thebes—the temple 
 of Diana—the columns of the Parthenon, the 
 Pantheon? 
 
 Is it wealth in which we trust? Of all 
 earthly possessions it is the most precarious. 
 In all its shapes, and formulas, and repre- 
 sentatives, it perishes. It melts in our hands; 
 We spend it most profusely in youth, when it 
 would be most desirable to save it, and we 
 hoard it most penuriously in old age, just 
 when we must be taken from it. It is liable 
 to take wings and flee away. Kingdoms, 
 empires, colleges, fortunes, daily fade like the 
 flower. The crash of one throne mingles 
 with the echoes of a former; and the débris 
 of one party forms the foundation of another. 
 Our ships founder at sea, and rich argosies 
 perish; our splendid mansicns and public 
 edifices are consumed by the flame that 
 revels amid their glory, and leaves behind 
 but its black footprints to tell the tidings of its 
 havoc, Your fealth withers as the grass, 
 and your renown as “the flower of the grass,”’ 
 
 Languages change, ceremonies vary, sacra- 
 ments are temporary; Sabbaths exist like 
 little ponds, till the ocean of eternity over- 
 
322 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 flows them; prayer continues only while 
 there are wants, and a ministry while there 
 is ignorance; but around this dissolving 
 world one thing abides—the word of the 
 Lord endureth for ever. 
 
 Aggressions have only served to vindicate 
 its truth, and reveal its lustre. The theories 
 of former geologists have withered like the 
 grass, Genesis endureth for ever. The gar- 
 nets of Falhun, the crystals of the Alps, 
 emeralds from Brazil, spars from Derbyshire, 
 and rubies from Ceylon, all cast illustrative 
 light on the word of the Lord. 
 
 The theories of speculative minds, the 
 badges of sects, the shibboleths of parties, 
 the opinions of schoolmen, and the decrees 
 of synods, have withered like the grass; but 
 “the word of the Lord endureth for ever ;”’ 
 and “this is the word which by the gospel 
 is preached unto you.’ What? Let us 
 read, “The soul that sins shall die;” “the 
 wages of sin is death.’’ These propositions 
 are as true to-day as they were five thousand 
 years ago. Sin and suffering are cause and 
 effect. Penalty follows crime here and here- 
 after; God says so. It is in vain that any 
 attempt, practically or speculatively, to dis- 
 prove the connexion. The last fire shall not 
 
CONCLUSION. 323 
 
 dissolve or exhaust it. Let us not shut our 
 eyes to it, and. try to reason ourselves into a 
 disbelief of its reality. 
 
 2. «All have sinned;” “there is none 
 righteous, no, not one;””? “God hath con- 
 cluded (shut up) all under sin.””? This also 
 endureth for ever. They that are saints in 
 heaven were once sinners upon earth. All 
 now on earth are shut up in this condemna- 
 tion; there is no exception; we who read 
 these lines are inmates of this great prison. 
 We fancy there is no prison because we do 
 not see the bars, and chains, and locks, and 
 each seems to do as he pleases. But this is 
 Satan’s delusion; he wishes you to think 
 you are free while you are in chains—that 
 you see while you are blind, and are the in- 
 mates of a palace though in reality captives 
 ina prison. It is of no use to oppose this 
 truth ; it is neither the withering grass nor 
 the fading flower, but the “ Word of the 
 Lord which endureth for ever.’ They alone 
 whose eyes have been opened, and who have 
 been emancipated by the Spirit of God, now 
 see that the iron had entered into their souls, 
 and that the sophisms of Satan, and the sug- 
 gestions of flesh and blood were but the in- 
 
3824 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 toxicating drugs that stupefied their sense of 
 the reality of their state. 
 
 3, «Christ died for our sins.” < This is a 
 faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, » 
 that Christ Jesus came into the world to save 
 sinners.” “God hath made Him who knew 
 no sin to be sin for us, that we might be 
 made the righteousness of God.’ “ God so 
 loved the world, that He gave His only-be- 
 gotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him 
 might not perish, but have eternal life.”’ 
 
 This is the word we preach, neither spent 
 in its descent from heaven, nor wasted in its 
 transmission through ages; fresh, and beau- 
 tiful, and holy as at first; repeated every 
 Sabbath, read in every Bible—the eloquence 
 of many thousand pulpits, and the music of 
 many tongues. It is heaven’s jubilee, sound- 
 ing in the cells of the great prison ; it is the 
 light of eternal day, shining through its grat- 
 ings; Christ crucified is the commencement, 
 the core, and the coronal of Christianity, 
 The Gospel is not a mere directory, or 4 lof- 
 tier law than Sinai’s, but a medicine, a sys- 
 tem of restoration; and the great and only 
 medium of that restoration is the vicarious 
 death and atoning sacrifice of the Son of God. 
 
CONCLUSION. 325 
 
 This truth endureth for ever; it is enshrined 
 in glory. The Lamb is seen amid the splen- 
 dour of the throne; “God manifest in the 
 flesh,’’ is the peculiarity, the glory, the sub- 
 stance of the Gospel. 
 
 “This is life eternal, to know thee the 
 only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou 
 hast sent.”? Other knowledge may be orna- 
 mental, but this is essential—vital. All other 
 wisdom may wither as the grass, but this 
 endureth for ever. All else may be “meat 
 or drink,’ or form, or ceremony; but this 
 is “righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy 
 Ghost.’’ 
 
 4. “Except a man be born again, he can- 
 not see the kingdom of heaven.” This, too, 
 is an eternal truth—an irreversible decision. 
 It admits of no exception; no privileges 
 exempt from it; kings and subjects must 
 equally undergo it before they can enter the 
 kingdom of heaven. Nor is this a super- 
 ficial or mere extrinsic change; it is not the 
 surrender of one theory at the bidding of an- 
 other ; nor is it the expulsion from the mind 
 of one system of opinions to make way for 
 the introduction of another; it is not becom- 
 ing a Calvinist, or an Arminian, or an Epis- 
 copalian, or a Presbyterian. It is being 
 
 28 
 
326 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 made a new creature, an anointed Chris- 
 tian—“ turned from darkness to light, and 
 from the power of Satan to God.” It is “a 
 new heart;’’ it is life within and light with- 
 out. The experience of this change is the 
 highest evidence in the subject of it, that 
 Christianity is from God. He sees and feels, 
 and therefore believes. He has seen enough 
 —a Saviour’s blood, and a Saviour’s cross. 
 He sees heaven prepared for him, and feels 
 his heart prepared for it. A lie cannot do 
 this; a falsehood has no power to create a 
 moral revolution. He has a new object of 
 worship; no longer vain-glory, riches, self; 
 but God; and this not the absolute God, but 
 God in Christ a Father; a new object of pur- 
 suit; not what to eat and drink; not the 
 care of self, or the concerns of earth, but the 
 glory of God: whether “he eats or drinks, or 
 whatsoever he does, he does all to the glory 
 of God.’’ | 
 
 5. “Come unto me, all ye that are weary 
 and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’’ 
 “Took unto me, all ends of the earth, and be 
 ye saved.” “Come, let us reason together ; 
 though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be 
 white as snow, though they be red like crim- 
 son, they shall be as wool.’? “The Spirit 
 
CONCLUSION. 327 
 
 and the bride say, Come, and let him that is 
 athirst come, and take of the water of life 
 freely.” 
 
 Such is the free and unrestricted invitation 
 of God to all the purchased and promised 
 blessings of the gospel. There is not a re- 
 sponsible creature on the frozen ledges of 
 Greenland, or on the scorched and burning 
 sands of Sierra Leone, to whom we are not 
 commissioned to address these words. The 
 great complaint of the waiting Saviour is not 
 that too many or too great sinners come to 
 Him. It is, “ Ye will not come to me that 
 ye may have life.” No one need wait for 
 what will not be,—greater worthiness before 
 he close with the offers of the Saviour—nor 
 need any wait for deeper conviction of sin; 
 for it is not the degree, but the fact of convic- 
 tion Christ meets and ministers to. The 
 everlasting arms are now outstretched. God’s 
 mercy will never be ampler—nor the blood 
 of Jesus more efficacious—nor the gates of 
 heaven wider—nor the way of life smoother. 
 Our responsibilities deepen and multiply 
 every day. The hour of mercy is not a fix- 
 ture and long as a thousand years, but per- 
 petually on the wing. Each of us has his 
 day. How dreadful must be the retrospect 
 
328 IS CHRISTIANITY FRom GoD? 
 
 from a judgment seat, with nothing but tram- 
 pled privileges for it to fix on !—how terrible 
 to remember that from the cradle to the grave 
 the voice of mercy was addressed to us in 
 vain !—how overwhelming to hear the “ De- 
 part ye,” that we must obey, uttered by the 
 same lips which so often cried, “Come ye,” 
 and which we would not obey ! 
 
 How deep a hell must their prison be, who 
 scorned the beseeching voice and the atoning 
 blood of the Son of God! 
 
 Our sun is not yet set, nor our privileges 
 perished. The word of the Lord endures, 
 and we hear it: how long we shall be spared 
 to hear it, God only knows, for we know not 
 what a day may bring forth. Whatever 
 opposes this word must perish, whatever 
 contends against it must be crushed. Infi- 
 delity—the word of man—however musical 
 its utterances, will be hushed—its airy frost- 
 work, however glittering in the sunbeams, 
 will be dissolved. It is a system of nega- 
 tions—it has no nutriment for man’s soul. It 
 has the withering without the reality of the 
 erass. The Bible it will yet see is not a 
 fiction —nor real religion fanaticism — nor 
 anxiety about the soul madness—nor adher- 
 ence to vital truth bigotry. Superstition, too, 
 
CONCLUSION. 329 
 
 in all its shapes will be dissipated. It comes 
 from beneath, and it returns again to its level. 
 No patronage can prevent it, no persecution 
 shield it; but God’s word will endure for 
 ever. This gospel is divine in its birth, and 
 eternal in its destiny. Christianity enunci- 
 ates truths that are above the tide-mark of 
 time, and rooted in the attributes of God. It 
 cannot be extinguished, for God is its might 
 —it cannot die, for God is its life. Perfect 
 holiness is of itself perpetuity. It is the 
 answer to our most anxious inquiries, the solu- 
 tion of our greatest perplexities. It appeals 
 to what is deepest and dearest in the heart 
 of humanity, and therefore every regenerated 
 heart is ready to protest against every attempt 
 to rob us of jewels of inestimable price. 
 
 Even in this world, humility is triumphing 
 over pride, and love over hatred, and gentle- 
 ness over wrath, and these alone are auguries 
 of what must be. 
 
 “Truth crushed to earth will rise again, 
 The eternal years of God are hers: 
 But error wounded writhes with pain, 
 And dies amid her worshippers,” 
 
 Ancient dynasties may fall, and popular 
 governments explode, but Christ “ shall reign 
 
330 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 
 
 over the house of David forever, and of his 
 kingdom there shall be no end.” 
 
 Thrones may totter, and powerful sceptres 
 be shivered, but “thy throne, O God, is for 
 ever and ever.” 
 
 We necd no more fear that the Sun of 
 Righteousness will set in clouds, than that the 
 burning centre of our system shall fall from 
 his socket. Christianity will appear most 
 beautiful when marble statues are defaced, and 
 monuments of bronze are blended with the 
 dust. Eternity itself will attest how perish- 
 ing is all that the world calls beautiful or 
 great, and how lasting is all which God pro- 
 nounces true. 
 
 Christianity is from God! 
 
 THE END. 
 
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