source, and making every gift, every invention, to show forth God's glory.

Within the last century, as well as in the present, many are the powerful intellectual energies which have been exercised in delivering science from the thraldom of infidelity. Many have come forward as champions in this good cause; and many a gauntlet has been thrown down by the heroes of truth, which, as yet, no sceptic warrior has attempted triumphantly to raise. Need I instance a Butler, a Watson, a Paley, a Sherlock, a Lyttelton, a Wardlaw, a Haldane; men, who have made history, natural philosophy, and every branch of metaphysical science, so far as consistent with truth, speak to the honour and glory of the God of nature and of grace? And, among the many labourers in the vineyard of late years, in which it may truly be said "the harvest is plenteous," Dick and Douglas hold preeminent places; the former having shown how all true science leads to its Author;

the latter, how every species of knowledge may be made to bear upon the diffusion of the true knowledge of God.

Many of the names mentioned will be recognised as those of men who have exercised their faculties in one of the most important directions, namely, in demonstrating the evidences of Christianity. Butler has shown the folly of disbelieving facts and doctrines stated in Scripture, on the account that we cannot understand them, by proving that many of the commonest things in nature, perpetually presented to our view, and others constantly recognised by consciousness, are not known, and imperfectly, if at all, understood, even by the wisest. Chalmers has given us a view of the stable foundations on which Christianity, as it regards its external evidences, rests; and, amongst the others, Erskine has opened up a new field of investigation, and has attempted to demonstrate the truth of Christianity by He has, in his own

its internal evidences.

words, "analysed the component parts of the Christian scheme of doctrine with reference to its bearings both on the character of God and on the character of man ;" and this, in order to demonstrate, "that its facts not only present an expressive exhibition of all the moral qualities which can be conceived to reside in the divine mind, but also contain all those objects which have a natural tendency to excite and suggest in the human mind that combination of moral feelings called moral perfection; and that as this object is one suited to the character of God, the system having this tendency must be of divine origin."

When reading Erskine, the author of the following argument was induced to conclude that another illustrative view of the internal evidences of Christianity might be founded upon the constitution of the human mind. The train of thought leading to this conclusion was the following. It is with man that religion has to do. All

the rest of animals, as well as all the other parts of creation, show forth, by a kind of necessity, the glory of God: their uses, wonderful contrivances, grandeur, variety, changes, the peculiar adaptations in their constitution to their particular habits, speak a silent language of praise to the Creator. But man is endowed with a principle, concerning the nature of which there has been much useless dispute, but which instead of going downwards, like that of a beast, rises upwards, and finds as its resting-place no other than the Lord God, the Creator of heaven and earth. Man has a mind, and this has been so constituted, that God requires its willing and joyful exercise in offering to Him a rational worship. We find that when man was first created, this was the case. Adam's happiness in Eden consisted in the enjoyment of God's presence, and his pleasure was found in showing forth his Creator's glory. But this happy scene of things soon changed: Man fell;-his mind became enmity

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against God; and instead of being directed into the channel of showing forth his Maker's glory, ran in the polluted stream of evil imaginations, and that only, and that continually. But God took pity upon his miserable subject, and in the midst of wrath at the violation of his covenant by his creature, the Creator remembered mercy, and taught the rebel man the way of obtaining favour. This was gradually unveiled, until the fulness of time came, when God sent his Son, made of a woman, who delivered to his disciples precepts durable for ever, and dictated to his apostles those doctrines, exhortations, and admonitions, all of which are collected in the New Testament, and all the preceding circumstances in the Old; both being comprised in the book called, by way of eminence, "The Bible." The Bible, then, it appears, contains the way by which man can show forth the glory of God, by performing with acceptance those duties which he owes to his Maker; and provides means