after immortality," than almost any express language which philosophy has recorded.

"Learn of me" would have been thought a dignified exordium for the founder of a new religion by the masters of the Grecian schools. But when they came to the humbling motive of the injunction, "for I am meek and lowly in heart," how would their expectations have been damped? They would have thought it an abject declaration from the lips of a great teacher, unless they had understood that grand paradox of Christianity, that lowliness of heart was among the highest attainments to be made by a rational creature. When they had heard the beginning of that animating interrogation, Where is the wise? Where is the disputer of this world? methinks I behold the whole portico and academy emulously rush forward at an invitation so alluring, at a challenge so personal; but how instinctively would they have shrunk back at the repulsive question which succeeds; -Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? Yet would not Christianity, well understood and faithfully received, have taught these exalted spirits, that, to look down upon what is humanly great, is a loftier attainment than to look up to it?

Would it not have carried a sentiment to the heart of Alexander, a system to the mind of Aristotle, which their respective, though differently pursued, careers of ambition, utterly failed of furnishing to either?

دو

Reason, even by those who possessed it in the highest perfection, as it gave no adequate view even of natural religion, so it made no adequate provision for correct morals. The attempt appears to have been above the reach of human powers. "God manifested in the flesh,"-He who was not only true, but THE TRUTH, and who taught the truth as one having authority, -was alone competent to this great work. The duty of submission to divine power was to the multitude more intelligible, than the intricate deductions of reason. That God is, and is a rewarder of them that seek him; that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, make a compendious summary both of natural and revealed religion; they are propositions which carry their own explanation, disentangled from those trains of argument, which, as few could have been brought to comprehend, perhaps it was the greatest wisdom in the philosopher never to have proposed them.

The most skilful dialectician could only reason on known principles; but without the superinduction of revealed religion, he could only, with all his efforts, and they have been

prodigious, furnish "rules," but not "arms." Logic is indeed a powerful weapon to fence, but not to fight with; that which is a conqueror in the schools is impotent in the field. It is powerful to refute a sophism, but weak to repel a temptation. It may defeat an opponent made up like itself of pure intellect; but is no match for so substantial an assailant as moral evil. It yields to the onset, when the antagonists are furious passions and headstrong appetites. It can make a successful thrust against an opinion, but is too feeble to 'pull down the strong holds of sin and Satan."

If, through the strength of human corruption, the restraining power of divine grace is still too frequently resisted,if the offered light of the Holy Spirit is still too frequently quenched, what must have been the state of mankind, when that grace was not made known, when that light was not fully revealed, when "darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the people?" But under the clear illumination of evangelical truth, every precept becomes a principle, every argument a motive, every direction a duty, every doctrine a law; and why? Because thus saith the Lord.

Christianity, however, is not merely a religion of authority; the soundest reason embraces most confidently what the most explicit revelation has taught, and the deepest inquirer is usually the most convinced Christian. The reason of philosophy, is a disputing reason, that of Christianity, an obeying reason. The glory of the pagan religion consisted in virtuous sentiments, the glory of the Christian in the pardon and the subjugation of sin. The humble Christian may say with one of the ancient fathers,-I will not glory because I am righteous, but because I am redeemed.

CHAP. II.

On the Historical writers of the New Testament.

AMONG the innumerable evidences of the truth of Christianity, there is one of so rare and extraordinary a nature, as might of itself suffice to carry conviction to the mind of every unprejudiced inquirer, even if this proof were not accompanied by such a cloud of concurring testimonies.

The sacred volume is composed by a vast variety of writers, men of every different rank and condition, of every diversity of character and turn of mind: the monarch and

the plebeian, the illiterate and the learned, the foremost in talent and the moderately gifted in natural advantages, the historian and the legislator, the orator and the poet,—each had his immediate vocation, each his peculiar province: some prophets, some apostles, some evangelists, living in ages remote from each other, under different modes of civil government, under different dispensations of the divine economy, filling a period of time which reached from the first dawn of heavenly light to its meridian radiance. The Old Testament and the New, the law and the gospel; the prophets predicting events, and the evangelists recording them; the doctrinal yet didactic epistolary writers, and he who closed the sacred canon in the apocalyptic vision;—all these furnished their respective portions, and yet all tally with a dove-tailed correspondence; all the different materials are joined with a completeness the most satisfactory, with an agreement the most incontrovertible.

This instance of uniformity without design, of agreement without contrivance; this consistency maintained through a long series of ages, without a possibility of the ordinary methods for conducting such a plan; these unparalleled congruities, these unexampled coincidences, form altogether a species of evidence, of which there is no other instance in the history of all the other books in the world.

All these variously gifted writers here enumerated, concur in this grand peculiarity, that all have the same end in view, all are pointing to the same object, all, without any projected collusion, are advancing the same scheme; each brings in his several contingent, without any apparent consideration how it may unite with the portions brought by other contributors, without any spirit of accommodation, without any visible intention to make out a case, without indeed any actual resemblance, more than that every separate portion being derived from the same spring, each must be governed by one common principle, and that principle being truth itself, must naturally and consentaneously produce assimilation, conformity, agreement. What can we conclude from all this, but what is indeed the inevitable conclusion, -a conclusion which forces itself on the mind, and compels the submission of the understanding; that all this, under differences of administration, is the work of one and the same great, omniscient, and eternal spirit.

If, however, from the general uniformity of plan visible, throughout the whole sacred canon, results one of the most cogent and complete arguments for its divine original, others will also rise from its mode of execution, its peculiar

diversities, and some other circumstances attending it, not so easily brought under one single point of view.-Does it not look as if almighty wisdom refused to divide the glory of his revelation with man, when, passing by the shining lights of the pagan world, He chose, in the promulgation of the Gospel, to make use of men of ordinary endowments, men possessing the usual defects and prejudices of persons so educated and so circumstanced? Not only the other immediate followers, but even the biographers of Christ, were persons of no distinguished abilities. Integrity was almost their sole, as it were the most requisite qualification. On this point it is not too much to maintain, that the writings of each of these men are not only so consistent with each other, but also with themselves, as to offer, individually, as well as aggregately, a proof of their own veracity, as well as of the truth itself.

Had they, however, all recorded uniformly the same more inconsiderable particulars; had there not been that natural diversity, that incidental variation, observable in all other historians;-had not one preserved passages which the others overlooked, some recording more of the actions of Jesus, others treasuring up more of his discourses; some particularizing the circumstances of his birth; others only referring to it as a fact not requiring fresh authentication; another again plainly adverting to it by "the WORD that was made flesh, and dwelt among us;" and adding a new circumstance by citing the testimony of the Baptist to "the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world;”—in short, had there been in the several relations not mere consistency, but positive identity, then, not only the fidelity of the writers would have been questionable, and concert and design justly have been suspected, but we should in effect have had only the testimony of one Gospel instead of four.

But to pass to other evidences of truth.-The manner in which these writers speak of themselves, is at once a proof of their humility and of their veracity. The conversion of St. Matthew is slightly related by himself and in the most modest terms. He simply says, speaking in the third person; "Jesus saw a man named Matthew, and saith unto him, Follow me: and he arose and followed him: and as Jesus sat at meat in the house, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him."* Not a word is said of a sacrifice so honorable to himself, and so generously recorded by St. Luke in those words, he left all, and followed him; not a word of the situation he renounced at the first call of the * Matthew, ch. 9.

Master, and which appears to have been lucrative from "the great feast he made for him in his own house, and the great company of publicans and others who sat down with him."* St. Luke relates only his hospitality; St. Matthew, as if to abase himself the more, describes only the sinners which made up his society previous to his conversion.

These sober recorders of events the most astonishing, are never carried away, by the circumstances they relate, into any pomp of diction, into any use of superlatives. There is not, perhaps, in the whole Gospel a single interjection, nor an exclamation, not any artifice to call the reader's attention to the marvels of which the relaters were the witnesses. Absorbed in their holy task, no alien idea presents itself to their mind: the object before them fills it. They never digress, are never called away by the solicitations of vanity, or the suggestions of curiosity. No image starts up to divert their attention. There is indeed, in the Gospels, much imagery, much allusion, much allegory, but they proceed from their Lord, and are recorded as his. The writers never fill up the intervals between events. They leave circumstances to make their own impression, instead of helping out the reader by any reflections of their own. They always feel the holy ground on which they stand. They preserve the gravity of history and the severity of truth, without enlarging the outline or swelling the expression.

The evangelists all agree in this most unequivocal_character of veracity, that of criminating themselves. They record their own errors and offences with the same simplicity with which they relate the miracles and sufferings of their Lord. Indeed their dulness, mistakes and failings are so intimately blended with his history, by their continual demands upon his patience and forbearance, as to make no inconsiderable or unimportant part of it.

This fidelity is equally amiable both in the composition, and in the preservation of the Old Testament, a book which every where testifies against those whose history it contains, and not seldom against the relators themselves. The author of the Pentateuch proclaims, in the most pointed terms, the ingratitude of the chosen people towards God. He prophesies that they will go on filling up the measure of their offences, calls heaven and earth to witness against them that he has delivered his own soul, declares that as they have worshipped gods which were no gods, God will punish them by calling a people who were no people. Yet this book, so disgraceful to their national character, this * St. Luke, ch. 5.