Page images
PDF
EPUB

2. There may, indeed, be danger of our acting presumptuously in the exercise of this faculty,-of our abusing instead of legitimately using it. There is no inconsiderable risk of resting in erroneous conclusions in religion,— in arresting further inquiry by the hasty inference, that because superstition and hypocrisy have abounded in the world, true religion has no existence,-that all pretensions to it have originated with priests and impostors, who, for sordid purposes, have always operated on the weaknesses of human nature. It is not uncommon for men who profess to take reason for their guide, and who admit the importance of religion, to be the slaves of their own evil passions, in fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. Can such persons be supposed capable of examining with impartiality the evidences of a religion which condemns them, and declares that they who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Is it probable that they will calmly listen to the voice of reason and of conscience, when it points out the duty of ascertaining whether the book which claims to be from God is really a communication of the mind and will of the Creator?

3. Nor are they more likely to use aright in religion the noble faculty of reason, who are cold and speculative sceptics,-who, from vanity and the love of distinction, broach and advocate opinions which are opposed to doctrines commonly received. What avails their glorying in the strength of their reason, and in their superior illumination? Esteeming themselves wise, have they not become fools? And what shall we say of those who, while they profess to receive the Bible as a revelation from God, bring its doctrines to the test of human opinion, and reject its great and characteristic truths, because they do not accord with this standard? Is not this procedure in a high degree irrational? Reason does not teach me to renounce the principles of natural religion because they involve results which surpass the comprehension of my understanding; neither does it authorize me to reject any part

of a revelation, which, upon mature examination, I am convinced is from God, because it contradicts preconceived opinions, and opposes my inclination. On the contrary, its resting on the testimony of God is a sufficient proof of its accordancy with the highest reason, and furnishes the ground on which I am bound to receive it.

4. Men are called upon to believe this testimony on the ground of the evidence addressed to their reason, which proves it to be the testimony of God. If they believed only what they comprehended, their belief would not be so much an act of faith, rendering homage to the authority of the testifier, as an act of confidence in their own powers of comprehension.* That which is incomprehensible to their faculties is as conformable to reason as that which they fully understand; but in the one case it surpasses their powers, in the other it is level with them. If they are assured that God is the speaker, there is no renunciation of reason in receiving, on his authority, that which they do not fully comprehend; on the contrary, the circumstance that God is the revealer and the testifier is the highest reason for the implicit reception of his communication. Hence the false and pernicious character of the favourite affirmation of Bolingbroke, Voltaire, and Hume," that our holy religion is founded on faith, not on reason, and that it is a sure method of exposing it to put it to a test which it is by no means fitted to endure."

5. False religion, no less than false philosophy, requires an imbecility or perversion of understanding; it reaps its triumphs, not from the progress of reason, but from the moral and intellectual degradation of the race, and, in place of raising man higher in the scale of being, by giving scope and elevation to the better powers and principles of his nature, its influence is exerted in darkening the lights of the human understanding. The communication of his counsel and will, which the Almighty has given to mankind, cannot demand the disuse of any of the faculties

* Fletcher's Discourses on the Mysteries of Revelation.

of the mind, and far less of that which characterizes it as a thinking and intelligent principle. It does inculcate diffidence in ourselves when engaged in examining the counsels and operations of the High and Lofty One; it reminds us of the immeasurable distance which separates the offspring of yesterday from Him whose habitation is eternity; and while it calls us to the performance of a reasonable service, it presses on our attention the danger of trusting to our own wisdom, or of leaning to our own understanding; but so far is it from claiming an implicit acquiescence in its authority, previous to the most rigorous investigation of the evidence on which that authority rests, that it expressly assures us that the Creator is only to be worshipped in spirit and in truth,-that His oracles are to be searched with humility and perseverance, -that it is our duty to judge, according to the evidence submitted to us, "what is right;" and that we may ascertain the truth of its doctrines by weighing their moral tendencies. While man is thus required to exercise his understanding in religion, are we not authorized to say, that he has never offered a greater insult to his nature, and in that nature to the God that made him, than when he began to depreciate and neglect the powers of his reason, and to consider their use in the service of his Creator as unnecessary or forbidden?

6. It has long been the endeavour of infidels to strengthen the prejudice against which I am now contending, to give to Christianity all the scorn of a kindred alliance with the narrow and degrading superstitions that have covered the face of the earth, and to represent it as placed beyond the limits of that field from which may be gathered the fruits of wisdom and knowledge. It is owing to this prejudice that we sometimes witness the same individual giving the most convincing proofs of the superiority of his understanding in science, and of its imbecility in religion, advancing in the one by the vigorous exercise of his faculties to the discovery of its most hid

den truths, and remaining, in relation to the other, ignorant of the elements of that book which claims to be a revelation from God. Let us not yield to the influence of a notion so false and delusive, nor think that we are to abandon the exercise of reason when we examine the authenticated record of the ways and the workings of the Almighty. Our service can be acceptable to a Being of infinite intelligence only when it proceeds from the convictions of our understandings as well as from the grateful feelings of our hearts.

7. The exercise of reason, then, is essentially required, in the first place, to judge of the evidence offered in attestation of divine revelation; secondly, to interpret its meaning; thirdly, to classify its contents; fourthly, to trace the connexion between what is mysterious and incomprehensible, and what is already clearly understood and believed.

In examining the internal evidences in particular, the exercise of reason is essentially required. Without this there would be lost one of the most striking evidences of the truth of Christianity," its exquisite conformity as brought out in the writings of men who were not philosophers, in a country where little of that philosophy was known, to all that the most profound metaphysical research has been able to discover of the phenomena of the human mind."*

8. The conclusion of these observations on the office of reason in religion may be thus summed up:-" The office of reason is to judge of the evidence of the record professing to be a revelation from God. When we are satisfied of the divine authority of Scripture, our understanding is to be humbly employed, and with dependence upon God, in ascertaining its sense: and whatever doctrine is there stated, or necessarily implied by the harmony of its different parts, is to be admitted, believed, and held fast, whether it corroborate or contradict the notions * Cook's Inquiry, &c. p. 42.

which our previous or collateral reasonings have led us to adopt. It is, indeed, more flattering to the human mind to be accounted a judge than to be reduced to the rank of a scholar; to be placed in a condition to summon divine wisdom to its bar, and oblige it to give an account of the reasons of its decisions, than to receive them authority; but this is the safe because the humble path. to the patient, prayerful study of divine truth, by its own light, that its harmonies, and connexions, and beauties, most freely reveal themselves, as the bud discloses to the solar light the graces it refuses to the hand of violence."

upon

It is

[ocr errors]

CHAPTER II.

OBSERVATIONS INTRODUCTORY TO A CONSIDERATION OF THE NATURE OF THE EVIDENCES BY WHICH DIVINE REVELATION IS ESTABLISHED.

1. It is the intervention of human agents in the delivery of a divine revelation which renders it necessary to examine the nature of the evidence by which its heavenly origin is attested. Their mere affirmation concerning the divine nature of their communications cannot be received unless accompanied by indubitable proofs of their being commissioned by God to show unto men the way of salvation. These proofs may be both in the message which they deliver, and in the credentials which they furnish of their commission. In the former, we have the internal evidence for the truth of divine revelation; in the latter, the miraculous works by which its authority is attested. These two classes of evidences strengthen each other, and it is preposterous to disparage the one with the view of exalting the other.

2. As a miracle is a sensible deviation from the known

*Watson on the Use of Reason, &c.

« PreviousContinue »