of its parts to each other may be discerned and pointed out, but the plan of God's moral government stretches too far into futurity and invisibility for reason to form even a slight outline of it, and there is much that tends to perplex amid the notices with which we are surrounded respecting our origin and end. We are made acquainted with our Creator, but not with his will and his intentions; we learn our immortality, but not its nature and occupations. We are warned of future judgment, but not of the rule by which we shall be tried; in vain should we search through all nature for facts upon which to build a perfect scheme of natural religion. These facts are still future; they will be learned by experience at the day of final retribution, but that experience will come too late. There is no similarly situated race of beings placed within our knowledge, from whose history we might learn what is to befal ourselves.

It is only from a disclosure of the Divine mind that we can obtain the knowledge of which we stand in need, and it requires revelation to lift up the veil, and present the future and the invisible to the mind. A single sentence inspired by God is of more avail than the conjectures of the highest understandings for thousands of years; and the pre-intimations of conscience, though vague and uncertain, as referring to an unknown Judge and Tribunal, assume shape and certainty from revelation. Hence no system of natural theology has ever prevailed, or ever been practised entirely separated from revelation, either real or pretended. Men have never thought of reasoning out a religion solely by the strength of their own faculties; the theists of antiquity appealed to tradition; and the world in general, receiving with small interest the conjectures of philosophy and the researches of reason, but listening with credulous respect to every pretender to revelation, have always looked to some system which was

supposed to be of Divine origin, well knowing that it was from God alone that they could expect light in the midst of their palpable darkness.

V. It was an objection frequently brought forward by infidels, that amid so many pretences to revelation, it was difficult to discover the true one. But the contrary is the fact. Christianity, without offering any one of its innumerable proofs, might be shown to be true by the method of exhaustion. It is proved that God exists; and that he calls upon man to be attentive to his existence; that this call has reference not merely to the present state, but far more to the unseen world, where the soul shall live for ever in the more manifest presence of his Creator. But though the knowledge of God and of immortality be of all others the most important and imperative, yet it is the subject on which nature and reason furnish us with the fewest data, applicable to our actual condition. It might be shown at length, that though the largest and most powerful minds of the human race have exhausted themselves on this subject, they have come to no stable conclusion, but have added the utmost perplexity to our previous uncertainty, and that the philosophy of Greece, unable to discover a true principle, and inextricably involved in a false one, strove in vain to disentangle itself from the meshes which itself had woven, and left religion in a more deplorable state than it had found it. Again, it might be shown that.if reason had done little for mankind; excepting Christianity, all professed revelations had done still less; that they rested upon no evidence whatever, and that far from distracting the attention, they could not bring forward any claim to the consideration of reason. That all the ancient religions had their beginning concealed in the darkness of antiquity; that their votaries founded their belief solely on the previous belief of others. That far from resting on any argument, they included in

themselves the history of their origin, and could be traced without difficulty to the workings of imagination, gradually shaping out a visionary world, and adding the reveries of one generation to those of another. Farther, that the religions of Boudh and of Zoroaster, though of later origin, could not designate and ascertain their founders; and that Mohammedanism, which was borrowed entirely, in its leading doctrines, from the Jews, was ignorant of the sacred books of which it professed itself to be a supplement, and that Mohammed had no other pretensions to inspiration, for arguments they cannot be called, than the beauty of his style, and the sharpness of his sword.

Hence Christianity is without a rival, and the often reiterated infidel objection, from the number of conflicting religions in the world, comes to nothing. It is not here as among the shields of Numa, where that which was said to be derived from heaven was undistinguishable from those which were fabricated upon earth. Christianity alone is founded upon argument, it is the only rest for the mind, which alone can dispel its darkness, quiet its fears, and satisfy its longings, nor is there any choice between it, and the most absolute skepticism. All other creeds but the Koran, rest merely upon their antiquity; and the Koran, upon the purity of its Arabic, and the victories of its champions.

Nor is modern infidelity better furnished with rival claims to Christianity. The ancients had their systems of philosophy however erroneous, and the old religions had their discoveries of futurity however visionary, but the skepticism of our days has neither system nor discovery; it is too feeble to be prolific even in error, and has too little of imagination to be visionary; its whole being consists in negation. What single tenet could the whole host of the infidel writers be brought to maintain?—their only aim is to destroy. But skepticism itself is not a permanent

state of mind; it can only be preserved by immersing the soul in sensual pursuits, and leaving inert its higher powers, or, by keeping it in perpetual agitation, blunting its perception of the force of evidence, and directing its attention unceasingly to the dark and doubtful side of things. Skepticism too is a state not only uneasy but unsafe; allowing to it the utmost which it claims, it cannot prove Christianity untrue: its doubts and its difficulties may all exist, as other difficulties do, while the facts to which they are opposed exist likewise, in all their reality, and with all the danger with which they are invested; and a deeper view into the nature of things might cause the unbeliever to regard his doubts with as much wonder and contempt as we look back upon the errors and difficulties of earlier ages; those morning clouds of the human mind which a single breath was able to disperse.

VI. As into whatever part of nature we look, we find arguments for the existence of a Deity, arguments ever multiplying in proportion as they are closely examined; so on all sides we are furnished with accumulating proofs for Christianity; from nature and from miracles, from history and from futurity, from the perfections of God, and from the mind of man. For every truth is in relation with all other truths, and the more widely and minutely all and each are examined, the more numerous are the arguments which present themselves; and it is the limi tation of our faculties, not the limitation of the subject, which closes any series of reasoning.

To a mind so vast as to take in a large field of intellectual vision, undazzled, and untroubled with the extent of the view, it would matter little in what order those stores of evidence were spread out before it; but with the weak and narrow mind of man, increase of evidence does not always produce increase of conviction. The mental eye is confused by the multiplicity of proof, and is apt to

attribute that confusion not to itself, but to the evidence which is laid before it. Hence evidence is often strengthened by judicious omission; and a happier arrangement of facts, without any additional proof being afforded, will strengthen conviction to a wonderful degree. Hence the merit of the immortal work of Paley.

-Tantum series juncturaque pollet;

Tantum de medio sumtis accedit honoris !

The Evidences of Christianity are, for the sake of distinctness, properly and naturally divided into the external, the prophetical, and the internal; while the internal again, owing to their multiplicity and variety, may be subdivided into those which are strictly called internal, and those which may be termed miscellaneous. It has been the unhappy mistake of many defenders of Christianity, to depreciate some of these divisions of evidence, in order to exalt that kind of which they themselves were treating; but there is, in reality, no opposition among them; while each is peculiarly fitted for its intended purpose, they all reflect mutual light, and unite with a perfect harmony. The external evidence is adapted to meet the case of unbelievers; the prophetic evidences, to such as have some acquaintance with the Scriptures; and the internal evidences are adapted to every conscientious inquirer who is earnest in his search after the way of life.

This division, and this adaptation, are pointed out by the Author of the Christian religion himself, when he declared, in general, "The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me;" and to the Jews, to whom the oracles of God were committed, "Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of me;" and, for the encouragement of conscientious inquirers, "If any man will do the will of God, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself."