called for; but as to one of the first class, | no right to retain his theism, if he rejects we can conceive nothing more calculated to Christianity upon difficulties to which naquiet his difficulties. He believes a God, tural religion is equally liable. If Chrisand he must therefore believe the character and existence of God to be reconcileable with all that he observes in the events and phenomena around him. He questions the claims of the New Testament to be a revelation from heaven, because he conceives, that it ascribes a plan and an economy to the Supreme Being, which are unworthy of his character. We offer no positive solution of this difficulty. We profess ourselves to be too little acquainted with the character of God; and that in this little corner of his works, we see not far enough to offer any decision on the merits of a government, which embraces worlds, and reaches eternity. We think we do enough, if we give a sufficiency of external proof for the New Testament being a true and authentic message from heaven; and that therefore nothing remains for us, but to attend and to submit to it. But the argument of Bishop Butler enables us to do still more than this. It enables us to say, that the very thing objected against in Christianity exists in nature; and that therefore the same God who is the author of nature, may be the author of Christianity. We do not say that any positive evidence can be founded upon this analogy. But in as far as it goes to repel the objection, it is triumphant. A man has

tianity tells us, that the guilt of a father has brought sufferings and vice upon his posterity, it is what we see exemplified in a thousand instances among the families around us. If it tells us, that the innocent have suffered for the guilty, it is nothing more than what all history and all observation have made perfectly familiar to us. If it tells us of one portion of the human race being distinguished by the sovereign will of the Almighty for superior knowledge, or superior privileges, it only adds one inequality more to the many inequalities which we perceive every day in the gifts of nature, of fortune, and of providence. In short, without entering into all the details of that argument, which Butler has brought forward in a way so masterly and decisive, there is not a single impeachment which can be offered against the God of Christianity, that may not, if consistently proceeded upon, be offered against the God of Nature itself; if the one be unworthy of God, the other is equally so; and if in spite of these difficulties, you still retain the conviction, that there is a God of Nature, it is not fair or rational to suffer them to outweigh all that positive evidence and testimony, which have been adduced for proving that the same God is the God of Christianity also.

CHAPTER IX.

On the Way of Proposing the Argument to Atheistical Infidels.

Ir Christianity be still resisted, it appears with pre-conceptions. It will not take what o us that the only consistent refuge is history offers to it. It puts itself into the Atheism. The very same peculiarities in same unphilosophical posture, in which the the dispensation of the Gospel, which lead mind of a prejudiced Cartesian opposed its the infidel to reject it as unworthy of God, theory of the heavens to the demonstration go to prove, that nature is unworthy of and measurment of Newton. The theory him, and land us in the melancholy confu- of the Deist upon a subject where truth is sion, that whatever theory can be afforded still more inaccessible, and speculation still as to the mysterious origin and existence more presumptuous, sets him to resist the of the things which be, they are not under only safe and competent evidence that can the dominion of a supreme and intelligent be appealed to. What was originally the mind. Nor do we look upon Atheism as a evidence of observation, and is now transmore hopeless species of infidelity than formed into the evidence of testimony, comes Deism, unless in so far as it proves a more down to us in a series of historical docustubborn disposition of the heart to resist ments, the closest and most consistent that every religious conviction. Viewed purely all antiquity can furnish. It is the unforas an intellectual subject, we look upon the tunate theory which forms the grand obmind of an Atheist, as in a better state of stacle to the admission of the Christian mipreparation for the proofs of Christianity racles, and which leads the Deist to an exthan the mind of the Deist. The one is a hibition of himself so unphilosophical, as blank surface, on which evidence may make that of trampling on the soundest laws of a fair impression, and where the finger of evidence, by bringing an historical fact history may inscribe its credible and well- under the tribunal of a theoretical princiattested information. The other is occupied ple. The Deistical speculation of Rousseau,

by which he neutralized the testimony of | Christianity. We do not ask him to prethe first Christians, is as complete a trans-sume the existence of God. We ask him gression against the temper and principles to examine the miracles of the New Testaof true science, as a category of Aristotle ment merely as recorded events, and to adwhen employed to overrule an experiment mit no other principle into the investigain chemistry. But however this be, it is tion, than those which are held to be satisevident that Rousseau would have given a fying and decisive, on any other subject readier reception to the Gospel history, had of written testimony. The sweeping prinhis mind not been pre-occupied with the ciple upon which Rosseau, filled with his speculation; and the negative state of Athe- own assumptions, condemned the historical ism would have been more favourable to the evidence for the truth of the Gospel narraadmission of those facts which are connect- tive, can have no influence on the blank ed with the origin and establishment of our and unoccupied mind of an Atheist. He religion in the world. has no presumptions upon the subject; for to his eyes the phenomena of nature sit so loose and unconnected with that intelligent Being, to whom they have been referred as their origin, that he does not feel himself entitled, from the phenomena, to ascribe any existence, any character, any attributes, or any method of administration to such a Being. He is therefore in the best possible condition for submitting his understanding to the entire impression of the historical evidence. Those difficulties which perplex the Deist, who cannot recognize in the God of the New Testament the same features and the same principles in which they have invested the God of Nature, are no difficulties to him. He has no God of nature to confront with that real though invisible power which lay at the bottom of those astonishing miracles, on which history has stamped her most authentic characters. Though the power which presided there should be an arbitrary, an unjust, or a malignant being, all this may startle a Deist, but it will not prevent a consistent Atheist from acquiescing in any legitimate inference, to which the miracles of the Gospel, viewed in the simple light of historical facts, may chance to carry him. He cannot bring his antecedent information into play upon this question. He professes to have no antecedent information on the subject; and this sense of his entire ignorance, which lies at the bottom of his Atheism, would expunge from his mind all that is theoretical, and make it the passive recipient of every thing which observation offers to its notice, or which credible testimony has brought down to it of the history of past ages.

This suggests the way in which the evidence for Christianity should be carried home to the mind of an Atheist. He sees nothing in the phenomena around him, that can warrant him to believe in the existence of a living and intelligent principle, which gave birth and movement to all things. He does not say that he would refuse credit to the existence of God upon sufficient evidence, but he says that there are not such appearances of design in nature, as to supply him with that evidence. He does not deny the existence of God to be a possible truth; but he affirms, that while there is nothing before him but the consciousness of what passes within, and the observation of what passes without, it remains an assertion destitute of proof, and can have no more effect upon his conviction than any other nonentity of the imagination. There is a mighty difference between not proven and disproven. We see nothing in the argument of the Athiest which goes farther than to establish the former sentence upon the question of God's existence. It is altogether an argument ab ignorantia; and the same ignorance which restrains them from asserting in positive terms that God exists, equally restrains them from asserting in positive terms that God does not exist. The assertion may be offered, that, in some distant regions of the creation, there are tracts of space which, instead of being occupied like the tracts around us with suns and planetary systems, teem only with animated beings, who, without being supported like us on the firm surface of a world, have the power of spontaneous movements in free spaces. We cannot say that the assertion is not true, but we can say that it is not proven. It carries in it no positive character either of truth or falsehood, and may therefore be admitted on appropriate and satisfying evidence. But till that evidence comes, the mind is in a state entirely neutral; and such we conceive to be the neutral state of the Atheist, as to what he holds to be the unproved assertion of the existence of God.

To the neutral mind of the Atheist, then, unfurnished as it is with any previous conception, we offer the historical evidence of H

What then, we ask, does the Atheist make of the miracles of the New Testament? If he questions their truth, he must do it upon grounds that are purely historical; he is precluded from every other ground by the very principle on which he has rested his Atheism; and we therefore, upon the strength of that testimony which has been already exhibited, press the admission of these miracles as facts. If there be nothing then, in the ordinary phenomena of nature, to infer a God, do these extraordinary phenomena supply him with no argument? Does a voice from heaven make no impression

upon him? And we have the best evidence demands our attention,—the testimony of a which history can furnish, that such a voice man who in addition to evidences of honesty was uttered; "This is my beloved Son in more varied and more satisfying than were whom I am well pleased." We have the evi- ever offered by a brother of the species, had dence of a fact for the existence of that very a voice from the clouds, and the power of Being from whom the voice proceeded, and working miracles, to vouch for him. We the evidence of a thousand facts, for a power do not think the account which this man superior to nature; because, on the impulse gives of himself can be viewed either with of a volition, it counteracted her laws and indifference or distrust, and the account is processes, it allayed the wind, it gave sight most satisfying. "I proceeded forth, and to the blind, health to the diseased, and, at came from God."-"He whom God hath the utterance of a voice, it gave life to the sent speaketh the words of God."—"Even dead. The ostensible agent in all these won-as the Father said unto me, so I speak." derful proceedings gave not only credentials He hath elsewhere said that God was his of his power, but he gave such credentials Father. The existence of God is here laid of his honesty, as dispose our understanding to receive his explanation of them. We do not avail ourselves of any other principle than what an Atheist will acknowledge. He understands as well as we do, the natural signs of veracity which lie in the tone, the manner, the countenance, the high moral expression of worth and benevolence, and, above all, in that firm and undaunted constancy, which neither contempt, nor poverty, nor death, could shift from any of its positions. All these claims upon our belief, were accumulated to an unexampled degree in the person of Jesus of Nazareth; and when we couple with them his undoubted miracles, The evidences of the Christian religion and the manner in which his own personal are suited to every species of infidelity. appearance was followed up by a host of We do not ask the Atheist to furnish himwitnesses, who, after a catastrophe which self with any previous conception. We ask would have proved a death-blow to any him to come as he is; and upon the strength cause of imposture, offered themselves to of his own favourite principle, viewing it as the eye of the public, with the same powers, a pure intellectual question, and abstracting the same evidence, and the same testimony, from the more unmanageable tendencies of it seems impossible to resist his account of the heart and temper, we conceive his unthe invisible principle, which gave birth and derstanding to be in a high state of preparamovement to the whole of this wonderful tion, for taking in Christianity in a far purer transaction. Whatever Atheism we may and more scriptural form, than can be expecthave founded on the common phenomena ed from those whose minds are tainted and around us, here is a new phenomena which pre-occupied with their former speculations.

before us, by an evidence altogether distinct from the natural argument of the schools; and it may therefore be admitted in spite of the deficiency of that argument. From the same pure and unquestionable source we gather our information of his attributes. "God is true."-" God is a spirit." He is omnipotent, " for with God all things are possible." He is intelligent, "for he knoweth what things we have need of." He sees all things, and he directs all things, "for the very hairs of our head are numbered," and "a sparrow falleth not to the ground without his permission."

CHAPTER X.

On the Supreme Authority of Revelation.

In the New Testament be a message from God, it behoves us to make an entire and unconditional surrender of our minds, to all the duty and to all the information which it sets before us.

rity of the New Testament, because the plan and the dispensation of the Almighty which is recorded there, is different from that plan and that dispensation which they have chosen to ascribe to him. We speak There is, perhaps, nothing more tho- of Christians, who profess to admit the roughly beyond the cognizance of the hu- authority of this record, but who have man faculties, than the truths of religion, tainted the purity of their profession by and the ways of that mighty and invisible not acting upon its exclusive authority Being who is the object of it; and yet who have mingled their own thoughts and nothing, we will venture to say, has been their own fancy with its information; who, made the subject of more hardy and adven- instead of repairing in every question, turous speculation. We make no allusion and in every difficulty, to the principle of at present to Deists, who reject the autho-"What readest thou," have abridged the

sovereignty of this principle, by appealing | to the capricious variations of this man's to others, of which we undertake to make taste, or of that man's fancy? Our maxim, out the incompetency; who, in addition to and our sentiment! God has put an authothe word of God, talk also of the reason of rative stop to all this. He has spoken, and the thing, or the standard of orthodoxy; the right or the liberty of speculation no and have in fact brought down the Bible longer remains to us. The question now from the high place which belongs to it, as is, not "What thinkest thou ?" In the days the only tribunal to which the appeal should of Pagan antiquity, no other question could be made, or from which the decision should be put; and to the wretched delusions and be looked for. idolatries of that period let us see what kind of answer the human mind is capable of making, when left to its own guidance, and its own authority. But we call ourselves Christians, and profess to receive the Bible as the directory of our faith; and the only question in which we are concerned, is, "What is written in the law? how readest thou?"

But it is not merely among partizans or the advocates of a system, that we meet with this indifference to the authority of what is written. It lies at the bottom of a great deal of that looseness, both in practice and speculation, which we meet with every day in society, and which we often hear expressed in familiar conversation. Whence that list of maxims which are so indolently conceived, but which, at the same time, are so faithfully proceeded upon? "We have all our passions and infirmities; but we have honest hearts, and that will make up for them. Men are not all cast in the same mould. God will not call us to task too rigidly for our foibles; at least this is our opinion, and God can never be so unmerciful, or so unjust, as to bring us to a severe and unforgiving tribunal for the mistakes of the understanding." Now it is not licentiousness in general, which we are speaking against. It is against that sanction which it appears to derive from the self-formed maxims of him who is guilty of it. It is against the principle, that either an error of doctrine, or an indulgence of passion, is to be exempted from condemnation, because it has an opinion of the mind to give it countenance and authority. What we complain of is, that a man no sooner sets himself forward and says, "this is my sentiment," than he conceives that all culpability is taken away from the error, either of practice or speculation, into which he has fallen. The carelessness with which the opinion has been formed, is of no account in the estimate. It is the mere existence of the opinion, which is pleaded in vindication; and under the authority of our marim, and our mode of thinking, every man conceives himself to have a right to his own way and his own peculiarity.

But there is a way of escaping from this conclusion. No man calling himself a Christian, will ever disown in words the authority of the Bible. Whatever be counted the genuine interpretation, it must be submitted to. But in the act of coming to this interpretation, it will be observed, there is room for the unwarrantable principles which we are attempting to expose. The business of a scripture critic is to give a fair representation of the sense of all its passages as they exist in the original. Now, this is a process which requires some investigation, and it is during the time that this process is carrying on, that the tendencies and antecedent opinions of the mind are suffered to mislead the inquirer from the true principles of the business in which he is employed. The mind and meaning of the author, who is translated, is purely a question of language, and should be decided upon no other principles than those of grammar or philology. Now, what we complain of is, that while this principle is recognized and acted upon in every other composition which has come down to us from antiquity, it has been most glaringly departed from in the case of the Bible; that the meaning of its author, instead of being made singly and entirely a question of grammar, has been made a question of metaphysics, or a question of sentiment; that instead of the argument resorted to being, "such must be the rendering from the strucNow this might be all very fair, were ture of the language, and the import and there no Bible and no revelation in exist- significancy of its phrases," it has been, ence. But it is not fair, that all this loose-"such must be the rendering from the ananess, and all this variety, should be still logy of the faith, the reason of the thing, the floating in the world, in the face of an character of the Divine mind, and the wisauthoritative communication from God him- dom of all his dispensations." And whether self. Had no messsage come to us from this argument be formally insisted upon or the Fountain-head of truth, it were natural not, we have still to complain, that in reality enough for every individual mind to betake it has a most decided influence on the unitself to its own speculation. But a mes-derstanding of many a Christian; and in sage has come to us, bearing on its fore- this way, the creed which exists in his mind, head every character of authenticity; and instead of being a fair transcript of the New is it right now, that the question of our Testament, is the result of a compromise faith, or of our duty, should be committed which has been made between its authori

unanimity among Christians, so long as the question of "What thinkest thou?" is made the principle of their creed, and, for the safe guidance of criticism, they have committed themselves to the endless caprices of the human intellect. Let the principle of "what thinkest thou" be exploded, and that of "what readest thou" be substituted in its place. Let us take our lesson as the Almighty places it before us, and, instead of being the judge of his conduct, be satisfied with the safer and humbler office of being the interpreter of his language.

tative decisions and the speculations of his | to know the mind of the Spirit, the commuown fancy. nications of the Spirit, and the expression What is the reason why there is so much of these communications in written lanmore unanimity among critics and gram- guage, should be consulted. These are the marians about the sense of any ancient only data upon which the inquiry should author, than about the sense of the New be instituted. But, no. Instead of learning Testament? Because the one is made purely the designs and character of the Almighty a question of criticism: the other has been from his own mouth, we sit in judgment complicated with the uncertain fancies of a upon them, and make our conjecture of daring and presumptuous theology. Could what they should be, take the precedency we only dismiss these fancies, sit down like of his revelation of what they are. We do a school-boy to his task, and look upon the him the same injustice that we do to an acstudy of divinity as a mere work of transla-quaintance, whose proceedings and whose tion, then we would expect the same una- intentions we venture to pronounce upon, nimity among Christians that we meet with while we refuse him a hearing, or turn among scholars and literati, about the sys-away from the letter in which he explains tem of Epicurus or the philosophy of Aris- himself. No wonder, then, at the want of totle. But here lies the distinction between the two cases. When we make out, by a critical examination of the Greek of Aristotle, that such was his meaning, and such his philosophy, the result carries no authority with it, and our mind retains the congenial liberty of its own speculations. But if we make out by a critical examination of the Greek of St. Paul, that such is the theology of the New Testament, we are bound to submit to this theology; and our minds must surrender every opinion, however dear to it. It is quite in vain to talk of the mysteriousness of the subject, as being the cause Now this principle is not exclusively apof the want of unanimity among Christians.plicable to the learned. The great bulk of It may be mysterious, in reference to our Christians have no access to the Bible in its former conceptions. It may be mysterious original languages; but they have access to in the utter impossibility of reconciling it the common translation, and they may be with our own assumed fancies and self-satisfied by the concurrent testimony of the formed principles. It may be mysterious learned among the different sectaries of this in the difficulty which we feel in compre- country, that the translation is a good one. hending the manner of the doctrine, when We do not confine the principle to critics we ought to be satisfied with the authorita-and translators; we press it upon all. We tive revelation which has been made to us call upon them not to form their divinity by of its existence and its truth. But if we independent thinking, but to receive it by could only abandon all our former concep- obedient reading; to take the words as they tions, if we felt that our business was to stand, and submit to the plain English of submit to the oracles of God, and that we the Scriptures which lie before them. It is are not called upon to effect a reconciliation the office of a translator to give a faithful between a revealed doctrine of the Bible, representation of the original. Now that and an assumed or excogitated principle of this faithful representation has been given, our own ;-then we are satisfied, that we it is our part to peruse it with care, and to would find the language of the Testament take a fair and a faithful impression of it. to have as much clear, and precise, and di- It is our part to purify our understanding dactic simplicity, as the language of any of all its previous conceptions. We must sage or philosopher that has come down bring a free and unoccupied mind to the exercise. It must not be the pride or the obstinacy of self-formed opinions, or the haughty independence of him who thinks he has reached the manhood of his understanding. We must bring with us the docility of a child, if we want to gain the kingdom of heaven. It must not be a partial, but an entire and unexcepted obedience. There must be no garbling of that which is entire, no darkening of that which is luminous, no softening down of that which is authoritative or severe. The Bible will allow of no compromise. It professes to be the

to us.

Could we only get it reduced to a mere question of language, we should look, at no distant period, for the establishment of a pure and unanimous Christianity in the world. But, no. While the mind and the meaning of any philosopher is collected from his words, and these words tried, as to their import and significancy, upon the appropriate principles of criticism, the mind and the meaning of the Spirit of God is not collected upon the same pure and competent principles of investigation. In order