Scriptures, instead of being diligently examined and compared, as so many phenomena, from which inferences are to be drawn with the care of the inductive philosophy-are hastily put together, reduced to a few rigid and unbending propositions, and are made the first principles of all subsequent advances. By these means the doctrine of the inspiration is overstrained and misapplied. The human method of writing is forgotten. Men pass over and obliterate all the finer traits, all the hidden and gentle whispers of truth, all the less obvious, and yet natural and affecting impres sions of character; all what Lord Bacon calls the "first flowings of the scriptures." We want," says that great author," short, sound, and judicious notes and observations on scripture, without running into common-places, pursuing controversies, or reducing those notes to artificial method; but leaving them quite loose and native. For certainly, as those wines which flow from the first treading of the grape, are sweeter and better than those forced out by the press, which gives them the roughness of the husk and the stone, so are those doctrines best and sweetest which flow from a gentle crush of the scriptures, and are not wrung into controversies and common-places.'

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. III. Such a pliant yielding to the natural impression of the language of scripture, connected with the firmest faith in all the parts of it, as infallibly inspired, is the main lesson to be derived from the doctrine we have been considering. Indeed, THE SPON

TANEOUS DICTATE OF THE HUMBLE AND TEACH

ABLE MIND, when it once understands these illustrations of the plan on which the divine inspiration proceeds, is to submit at once to the divine wisdom. The first dictate of a penitent's heart, when he receives a revelation from God, is to bow implicitly to the discovery, both as to the matter and the method of it. The same temper of docility, on which we have all

along insisted, will at once conduct him through the labyrinth which human pride and unbelief have contrived to throw around the doctrine of inspiration. Neither of the classes of error to which I have adverted, will occur to him. The whole question will be settled the moment he apprehends the nature of the case. If God has given a revelation of his will, and has consigned all the parts of that revelation to books, by the hands of apostles endowed with miraculous qualifications, those books are the infallible word of God himself. They can contain no mixture whatever of mistake or error. If God has further been pleased to permit the sacred writers to exercise their own faculties; to employ all their natural and acquired knowledge; and to leave throughout an impression of human feeling in their way of delivering this revelation, then their books are to be interpreted and understood according to the ordinary rules of common life-that awe only being preserved and that caution used in the application of those rules, which the solemnity of the occasion requires. Thus truth meets the mind, entire and simple in its own harmony and force. The human form of the writing lessens not the divine impress of the inspiration. Every part of the Bible is the unerring standard of religion. The main gift of God to man is this infallibly inspired rule. Its entire strength and inconceivable dignity remain. The whole scripture is divine. It resembles not the mystic image seen by the Babylonish monarch, the feet of which were partly of iron and partly of miry clay; and which, smitten at length, fell prostrate and helpless but it stands erect and secure. Its materials are all of heavenly origin; it rests in every part on the immediate support and power of God; and defies the violent assaults, and more secret aggressions of its foes.

But we have lingered too long on this particular

question. It has drawn us off insensibly from the grandeur of the Christian evidences. It ought never to have been raised. Inspiration is involved in every part of the argument we have already considered, and will appear yet more distinctly in those branches of the internal evidences, to which we shall soon call your attention. But the question having been once agitated, it required to be thoroughly examined. It is the grand means of evasion in a literary period like the present. Men will allow every thing except the inspiration; because, from every thing else they can escape, and frame a Christianity to their own taste. Inspiration-a full, unerring inspiration of every part of scripture, brings an obligation which no sophistry can elude; it leaves every part of truth in all its mighty energy; it makes its demands direct upon the conscience: whilst the human mould into which its language is cast, augments the guilt of unbelief and disobedience, because it renders the misunderstanding of the revelation impossible, except where the mind is dishonest to itself.

Let us now rapidly REVIEW THE COURSE OVER

WHICH WE HAVE PASSED IN THE PRESENT DIVI

SION OF OUR LECTURES, AND CONCLUDE THE CONSIDERATION OF THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCES of the Christian faith.

It will be recollected, that our design has been to enable the Christian, and especially the young Christian, "to give an answer to every man that asketh him a reason of the hope that is in him, with meekness and fear." With this view, we have endeavoured to combine the historical with the internal evidences, to give him such information as to the external proofs of Christianity, as may prepare him for those which spring from the intrinsic excellency of the gospel, and its holy effects on his heart and life. We have accordingly, not treated the argument abstractedly and

formally, but as a matter of immediate interest and feeling. We have appealed continually to the con science, and have enforced each topic with such prac tical addresses, as might, by God's blessing, imprint it on the inmost soul. We took up the argument on the admissions of natural religion; and have traced out, step by step, the evidences of the truth and importance of the Christian revelation, as they would be presented to the mind of a candid and sincere inquirer. We have not confined ourselves to a simple proof of each point, but have aimed at exhibiting the accumulated force of the respective testimonies, so as to augment and deepen the impression of the unutterable value of the Christian religion, and the immense obligation under which every one lies, to receive and obey it.

In the present series, we have gone through the proofs of the authenticity, credibility, divine authority, and complete inspiration of the sacred books; reserving the consideration of the internal evidence for the next volume.

Previously to our entering upon these topics, we considered THE TEMPER OF MIND in which the question should be studied; and showed that some measure of docility and willingness to examine the question with fairness; some measure of earnestness in the pursuit; of prayer to God; and of a practical obedience to truth, so far as it was known, were essentially necessary, and might be most reasonably required. It appeared, however, that in infidels, whether we looked at the literary, the careless, or the low and uneducated classes, this temper was so entirely wanting, that their impiety, mockery of all religion, debasing principles of morals, and general self-conceit and immorality, sufficiently proved the badness of their cause.

10

10 Lect. II.

The NECESSITIES of mankind next engaged our attention, and we found that the Heathen nations, before the coming of Christ, were plunged in a most fearful gulf of ignorance, idolatry, vice and misery, with nothing to recall them to the knowledge of the true religion-" without hope, and without God in the world." We saw, moreover, that the superior light of Deists in Christian countries, was borrowed from the very Christianity which they rejected-that the Pagan nations now are in precisely the same state of misery and darkness, as those before the coming of Christ; and that the condition of Christian countries, in proportion as the Christian religion is inadequately known and obeyed, confirms every other argument in favour of the indispensable necessity of a revelation from God, if man was ever to be raised from a state of hopeless degradation, blindness, and woe."1

These points, preliminary as they are, were suffi cient to settle the whole question with a sincere mind. The necessities of man addressed such a cry of misery to the Father of mercies; and the want of all religious feeling in the opponents of revelation, so betrayed the wretched motives of unbelief, that any one taking up the Bible, and seeing the adequate and complete remedy which it proposes for human guilt, might be convinced of its divine original; and would be led, from the very temper of piety and teachableness which we have supposed him to possess, to acquiesce at once in a revelation which meets all the wants of a ruined world.

But we proceeded, in the next place, to consider the arguments for the AUTHENTICITY of the books of the New Testament; and we first illustrated the manner in which ancient books are proved every day, to be the real and undoubted productions of their professed authors, namely, by testimony traced up from age to age, and recorded in undoubted memorials and

11 Lect. III.