Scotland were to assert the existence of some splendid monarchy in the centre of the African desert, as a fact which he had heard in Italy, from those who had travelled into Spain, and there met with some merchants of Tripoly who had received the accounts from several wandering Arabs, who declared that they had visited its metropolis, and beheld its greatness, my confidence in the existence of such a monarchy would be reduced in proportion to the credibility of the fact, the number of transmissions, and the pos sibility of deception or mistake. But if by travelling back in regular order through the several links in this chain of testimony; if by visiting Italy and Spain and Africa in person, and in succession, I could trace the report through all its steps (finding it always uniform), till I had arrived at the original propagators, the proba bility of the fact would be the same to me as to the very first individual to whom it was communicated. In this manner I should remove, as it were, the interposing pieces of glass, which prevented the transmission of the light of truth, one by one, and be enabled, at last, to perceive and to judge of the object presented to my mental eye with the same distinctness and certainty as the first hearer of the story.

Of a similar character, as I conceive, is the

my

historical evidence for the truth of those facts upon which Christianity is founded, with this only difference, that our distance from the original witnesses is that of centuries instead of countries, and that the testimony is consequently written and perpetuated instead of being oral and transitory. It is not merely that the writers of the present day assert that eighteen hundred years ago the Apostles and Evangelists bore a record to Jesus, which record is true; for, then, indeed, reliance would scarce arise to any high degree of evidence. But the real and correct statement of the question is this: I can begin with the writers of the present day, and tracing their evidence upwards in a regular and unbroken succession, and comparing and verifying it as I go along, can reach at length the testimony of those primitive Christians who heard the Apostles declare that they had seen the Lord and his works, and even of those Apostles themselves who have recorded the same. So far, therefore, as the credibility of those reporters may extend, so far does the credibility of the facts they have reported extend also, and is the same to us, as it was to those to whom it was originally given. The truth may not be so easily and immediately perceived in this case, as in those in which there are no intermediate witnesses, because the attention and labour of verifying the report through all its

G

stages is great and tedious. But when once the task has been accomplished, the conclusion is equally satisfactory and sure; and the fallacy of supposing otherwise seems to me to have arisen from the practice of considering the testimonies to the genuineness of the New Testament, that is, to the genuineness of the original records of the works and words of Jesus, in a descending instead of an ascending series. In descending from the age of the Apostles to the present time, we not only begin with a period in which, from the very nature of the case, the testimonies are more scanty and few; but we are obliged also to take for granted the age and genuineness of the works from which we quote, until the whole demonstration has been completed. On the other hand, in ascending upwards from the present writers, the whole line of our argument is natural and conclusive. We take for granted nothing but what is the subject of our own individual experience, the existence of certain books in which we read that their writers received the genuineness of the New Testament upon the authority of their predecessors for many generations. We turn to those predecessors in regular order, and find them constantly testifying the same, and thus at length, by regular gradation and infallible reasoning, we reach the source and fountain of the historical stream. It

has always, therefore, appeared to me, in my meditations upon the genuineness and credibility of the apostolic records, that the only, or, at least, the most judicious plan of treating the subject would be that which has so lately been pursued by a learned Prelate in his Lectures from this place, namely, to arrange the testimonies in a retrograde order, beginning from the present time, and going upwards to the apostolic days; and I doubt not but that the impression produced upon the reader's mind by such a method will, when properly managed, be found much more convincing than in the ordinary way.

From the preceding observations it appears that were there no more than one chain of testimony from the days of the Apostles to the present, were there no more than one witness in each succeeding age, we should have no more reason to refuse our assent than the first person to whom the Gospel history was recounted. But this is not a correct statement of the question. There are many chains of testimony from the days of the Apostles to the present. There are many witnesses in every succeeding age; and consequently, if we will deal technically with the subject, the probability or possibility that any single witness or chain of witnesses should deceive or be deceived, must be opposed by the im

probability or impossibility that so many witnesses or chains of witnesses should be deceived;: and the improbability of the latter would soon be found to be so great as to obliterate the former in the mind of every reflecting man.

It would seem, then, that the objection of Laplace which has been deemed so formidable by some, and which assumes a constantly increasing diminution of probability in the transmission of every historical fact, is not applicable to the evidence for the Christian history, because we are in possession of the testimonies of every successive age, and can identify and verify each. The true statement of the difficulty, if any there be, is this, that in consequence of the number of transmissions, the examination and verification of the evidence requires a much greater degree of impartiality and attention. But when once it has been thoroughly and fairly investigated, the probability, instead of being lessened, is perhaps increased by the number and uniformity of the witnesses, every one of whom may be supposed to have scrupulously weighed the matter, before he set his seal to its truth, and many of whom had prejudices which would have naturally inclined them to resist their convictions.

2. We have thus seen that, in all the ordinary