serve our people in the faith, unless we teach them the grounds of that faith? Can we expect them to pass unhurt through the hosts of enemies, if we give them no shield to protect their breasts? Why do our population so soon fall away from Christianity; but because conscience was never fairly informed of the grounds of belief? Let us, then, instruct them in the foundations of Christianity; and let us unite, in doing so, the internal with the external evidences; let us make the historical the introduction to the inward proofs. Thus may we hope that our youth, wellestablished in their faith, tenderly, watched over by their pastors, inflamed with a spirit of charity, and growing more and more in the knowledge and obedience of the peculiarities of Revelation, will be a seed to serve our God, and hand down to the next age the truth which we deliver to them in this. III. TO THE HUMBLE AND TEACHABLE, and esPECIALLY THE YOUNG amongst his readers, let the author be, finally, allowed to address himself. I have in these Lectures been endeavouring to urge on you the importance of cordially obeying the Christian Revelation. Let me affectionately intreat you to enter into the great subject. Let it penetrate your soul. Let its authority entrench itself in your understanding, and its holy and elevated truths in your inmost conscience and heart. Turn a deaf ear to the voice of scorn, and the temptations of sensuality. Remember, nothing is more easy than to inject doubts into the fallen heart of man, which it may take much argument to eradicate; just as it is easy to kindle, by a single spark, a conflagration, which it may take infinite labour to extinguish, and much time expense to repair. My aim has been to furnish you with a protection against the mazes and artifices of infidels, by exposing the miserable sophistry of their reasoning, and the awful vices of their conduct. and 6 Keep close, then, to the Christian faith. Refresh your memory, from time to time, with a review of its chief evidences. If any violent temptation assault you, meet the shock by falling back, first on the practical holiness of Christianity, and then on the general mass of proofs of every kind, by which your faith is sustained. Act as one who was told that his house was falling; that the arches on which it was reared were giving way; and that his continuance in it was perilous: ask, Who is it tells me this; what grounds have I for crediting his information; how does his own house stand; what are his own foundations?' If you find every thing about him in ruins; you need not much perplex yourself with alarms which proceed from folly or ignorance. However, you may examine once again. Descend to the basements of your abode; search if there are any marks of decay. You are surprised at the strength of the arches; you observe no giving way, no one sign of weakness: rather, every part seems to have settled by time into a firmer and more compact state. Resume, then, your tranquillity, and employ the blessing of a secure abode to its proper uses. Thus will renewed examination conevery firm your faith in the Christian Revelation. But remember that, in order to this, you must continue in a practical and heartfelt obedience to the blessed Saviour who is the centre of divine truth; in whose doctrine, example, grace, all Christianity is comprised and who with the Spirit of God is the divine agent in redemption. So will you have the witness in yourself. If you use Revelation, the evidence will break in upon your mind more and more; if you are not using it, nothing can render it clear: objections will arise, as noxious vapours, from a stagnant mass of notions and prejudices in your mind. God keeps things in his own hand. Truth, to be strongly seized, and fully understood, must be obeyed, loved, carried out into practice. And be assured, that the highest effort of the human intellect, is to bow to the divine; the noblest exercise of the human powers, is to glorify God, and aspire after his favour; the truest liberty of man is a subjection to his all-perfect Creator and Lord; the only genuine source of human happiness, is the acquiescence of our will in the will of God. All other advice is poison; all other means of elevation or happiness, are the swellings of disease, and the perverse dictates of a rebellious nature. Man's probation consists in this one point; Will he humble his reason before God's all-comprehending knowledge, and his heart and affections before God's all-holy and perfect commands? Christianity is the highest reason; the purest morals; the only sound philosophy; the truest happiness of man. All the discoveries in science illustrate the divine glory in creation; as all the researches of history, and all the testimony of experience, display the divine grace in Revelation. Each new discovery adds something to the impression, though little to the obligation under which we lie to obey and love God; for this obligation is so deep-rests on so firm a foundationextends to so many points, and converges into so bright and luminous a centre, as to be little affected by a single argument, more or less clearly stated, or adequately perceived. Soon will truth shine out without a cloud; soon will the folly of unbelief, and the wisdom of faith, be seen in other proportions than at present; soon will the moral obligation of obedience to such a Revelation as Christianity, and the unutterable guilt of rejecting it, appear in their just characters; soon will all the passing objections and cavils of men be dispersed as the early dew; soon will the day of probation be terminated for ever; this world, and all its occupations fade away; and an end be imposed on the present scene of things. Yes, "the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth, also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up.' "21 Then SHALL THE RIGHTEOUS SHINE FORTH AS THE SUN IN THE KINGDOM OF THEIR FATHER." 22 It is with the purpose of preparing your inquiring minds for this sublime and awful consummation, that I have addressed you in these Lectures; which, undertaken with great apprehension and self-distrust, I would desire to lay, as an offering, on the altar of the Christian faith, humbly beseeching the God of all mercy to pardon the defects of the writer, and to bless and prosper what there is of truth in his statements and representations; and imploring that both author and readers may "find mercy of the Lord in THAT DAY.""23 And now, after the example of my most revered predecessors in this argument, I would desire to conclude this my attempt, not in words merely, but from the sentiment of my heart, with that ascription of praise which the illuminating Spirit has himself left for our use: Τῷ δὲ δυναμένῳ φυλάξαι αὐτοὺς ἀπταιστους, καὶ στῆσαι κατενώπιον τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ αμώμους ἐν αγαλλιάσει, ΜΟΝΩ ΣΟΦΩ ΘΕΩ σωτῆρι ἡμῶν, δόξα καὶ μεγαλωσύνη, κράτος καὶ ἐξουσία καὶ νῦν καὶ εἰς πάντας τοὺς αἰῶνας. Αμήν. ΙΟΥΔΑ, 24, 25. 21 2 Pet. iii. 10-12. 22 Matt. xiii. 43. 23 2 Tim. i. 18. INDEX TO THE WHOLE WORK. Adaptation of Christianity to man. See Suitableness. Address to the docile and sincere student, i. 176. Rulers and Advantages, which each individual has respectively enjoyed in Alaric, soldiers under, a wonderful example of the power of Apocryphul books of New Testament are destitute of the external Authenticity of writings defined, note 1, 70; discovered by Authenticity of the Old Testament, connected with that of the VOL. II. FF |