and intentions for the good and happiness of His creatures. The difficulty then is plainly in the facts themselves, not created by the statements of Scripture. But the writer adds this explication of those statements, that "the evil spirit succeeded in frustrating the designs of the Almighty," that the "sweeping purification of the world by the Flood was as futile as the original design." "We are asked to believe in the frustration of the Divine design in Creation, and the fall of man into a state of wickedness hateful to God, requiring and justifying the Divine design of a revelation, and such a revelation as this, as preliminary to the proposition, that on the supposition of such a design, miracles would not be contrary to reason.' ." "Nothing," it is said, can be more absolutely incredible or contrary to reason than these statements, or the supposition of such a design." P. 48. Dr Mozley is quoted as admitting that "as human announcements the doctrines of Christianity would be the wildest delusions, which we should not be justified in believing." He sums up in the words "incredible assumptions cannot give probability to incredible evidence;" and concludes, "the whole theory of this abortive design of creation with such impotent efforts to amend it, is emphatically contradicted by the glorious perfection and invariability of Nature; it is difficult to say whether the details of the scheme, or the circumstances which are supposed to have led to its adoption, are the more shocking to reason and to moral sense.' P. 49. These additions of the author to the doctrines and teaching of the Bible, are in flagrant opposition to its own express and repeated statements. The whole scheme of redemption, instead of being a mere afterthought, a patchwork addition to a baffled scheme of creation, is expressly declared to have been "foreordained from before the foundation of the world." The fact is repeatedly proclaimed that unto God are "known all His works from the beginning of the creation;" that the mystery of redemption from the beginning of the world had been "hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ;" and that what this writer blasphemously calls, "incredible folly," is a declaration of "the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." The Scripture does indeed announce a power, inveteracy, and wide diffusion of moral evil among both men and angels, the rational and responsible creatures of God, which constitute a "mystery of iniquity," a kind of dark and malignant shadow and opposite of that great "mystery of godliness," the mystery of God the Father and of Christ, wherein are "hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." When these great and solemn mysteries are approached in the spirit of unbelief and of pride, the result is a most "dangerous downfall," as the Article says. For a time at least the same sentence lights upon such inquirers which fell once in Cyprus on Elymas in his laborious opposition to the Gospel message, "there fell upon him a mist and darkness, and he went about seeking for some one to lead him by the hand." May there be an opposite issue in the present case. May the unhappy man who sets out in his professed search for truth as a Sadducean Atheist, and ends almost exactly where he began-yet receive from God "repentance to the acknowledgment of the truth." The words of Dr Mozley are quoted to convey a meaning almost the exact reverse of what he himself designed. Dr Mozley (p. 13) puts the case of a person of eminent integrity and loftiness of character, but unattested by any miracle, or similar guarantee beyond the statement itself, affirming that He had existed before His natural birth from all eternity, and that the world itself had been made by Him. He says that no rational being could accept a just, benevolent life alone as proof of such astonishing announcements. The words of Dr Mozley, so strangely torn from their context, are merely the statement of our Lord Himself, cast into a different form; that a naked assertion of the possession of Divine attributes, or of being the promised Redeemer of the world, disjoined from acts of Divine power, and a fulfilment of predictions shewing the presence of superhuman wisdom, would have been undeserving of credence. Such would exactly be the contrast between the true Christ and a false antichrist. "I am come in my Father's name and ye receive me not; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive." Naked self-assertion, unsustained by the testimonies and evidences which should fitly attend it and confirm its truth, would be the characteristic of antichrist, and not of the true Christ. It is in the harmony of words of surpassing wisdom, purity and grace, of works surpassing the power of common men, and even the gifts of the old Prophets, and these works themselves marked by features of surpassing bounty and grace; and the fulfilment of manifold predictions, all centering in the world's promised Redeemer, from the days of Paradise to Malachi, John the Baptist and Caiaphas, and the Evangelists, and express and repeated claims to be that Messiah of whom Moses and the Prophets did write; It is in the consilience of these various inductions, these converging streams of evidence, into one glorious and luminous centre, that the Christian faith is really founded. This threefold cord of superhuman power, superhuman knowledge and superhuman goodness, has its strands so wonderfully and mysteriously interwoven, that no art of man, though they may be distinguished in thought, can practically sunder them from each other. The miracles are evidences of Divine grace and mercy as well as of Divine power; the fulfilled prophecies are not only marks of superhuman wisdom but of Divine condescension and grace. The three glorious perfections of the Godhead all co-exist and must co-exist in every work of power, wisdom or goodness, by which the Godhead is revealed, yet each attribute in turn may have a special prominence. The Trinity in Unity of the Divine Persons has its counterpart in the mysterious triunity of the Divine perfections. In a miracle, the Divine power of the Son of God is especially manifested; in the fulfilment of the earlier prophecies, and their completion by His own prophecy on the Mount, and announcement of His own resurrection, and the future resurrection of all men, the attribute of Divine Foreknowledge is specially revealed. In the rest of His discourses, through the Gospels, in the Sermon on the Mount, in the parables of the Prodigal Son and of the lost sheep and the lost piece of money, in the washing of the feet of the disciples, the discourses at the Last Supper, and in all the words full of grace and truth throughout the Gospels, such as the words spoken to the woman who was a sinner, the promises to Martha and her sister Mary, and the precedence given to Mary Magdalene among the witnesses of His resurrection, we have manifold and overflowing tokens of Divine goodness, grace and compassion. Well did He say to His Apostle, "Have I been so long time. with you, and hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me, hath seen the Father." "I and my Father are one." And very solemn is His comment upon the sin of the Jews, and the equal or greater sin of those, who having received the full message of His love in the Gospels, and seen it confirmed and unfolded by the whole course of the world's history for 1800 years, can still shut their eyes to the light of His Divine glory, and strive to persuade their fellow-men to put |