course of medicine? God can raise him with a word. Why cultivate the ground, and seek the mediating office of the sun for the raising and ripening of your grain? God can load your fields with harvests without such a circuitous process. Why his power is not exerted immediately for these purposes, you can no more explain than why a sinner cannot be saved but by faith in the sacrifice of Christ. Your belief in the importance of intermediate steps depends as little upon the reasons of the divine appointments in one case as in the other.

Again, you read that the gospel is of inestimable importance to the happiness of man, a wonderful exhibition of divine grace to sinners, and yet there are hundreds of millions who have never heard of it; and it is asked, Why, since God is infinitely good and merciful, as well as mighty, has not such an immeasurable blessing been communicated to all mankind? This question is often put as a strong objection to the divine origin of the gospel. Were it taught in the Scriptures that those who had never had the gospel will be judged by its light and privileges, the objection would have force. But there is no such. doctrine. The objection is reasonable only so far as there is reason in a creature's requiring the Creator to explain his ways, and admit him to his councils, before he will believe them. Does a philosopher stand on such grounds? Does he doubt the immense difference between the gifts and blessings, the privileges and improvements, of a native of England and those of a savage of Kamtschatka, because he knows not for

what reason it was so ordained? Does he deny that the former are inestimable, because not universal? Will one refuse to believe that he has a mine of gold in his field, or that the gold is worth his seeking, because all men are not equally favored? Shall a husbandman despise the genial rain upon his grass because his neighbor's fleece is dry? If God has not seen fit to reveal the reasons for which he has distributed the gifts of nature, of providence, or of grace with an unequal hand, I find nothing to complain of. I can still believe that those gifts are from above, and are excellent, and distributed under the guidance of infinite wisdom.

That there are no difficulties connected with the Scriptures, and with the doctrines of revealed religion, it would be saying too much for the intelligence, education, and study of the general reader, to assert. Until all shall be candid, studious, patient, and humble, some will find many difficulties in Christianity. If a child, instead of beginning arithmetic in the elements, should dive at once into the midst of a calculation of algebraic roots and powers, he would scarcely escape being stifled with difficulties. Thus, however, do most objectors to Christianity endeavor to appreciate its doctrines. Instead of learning first the first principles, they plunge without ceremony amidst the deepest mysteries of the gospel. It is well said, "Objections against a thing fairly proved are of no weight. The proof rests upon our knowledge, and the objections upon our ignorance. It is true that moral demonstrations and religious doctrines may be

attacked in a very ingenious and plausible manner, because they involve questions on which our ignorance is greater than our knowledge; but still, our knowledge is knowledge, or in other words, certainty is certainty. In mathematical reasoning, our knowledge is greater than our ignorance. When you have proved that the three angles of every triangle are equal to two right angles, there is an end of doubt, because there are no materials for ignorance to work up into phantasms; but your knowledge is really no more certain than your knowledge on any other subject."

If it be a valid objection to religion, that to some minds it presents difficulties which cannot be solved, then there is no department of human knowledge that may not be legitimately condemned. What is more certain than the existence of a material universe? or of the necessary connection of cause and effect? But even in these, wise heads have succeeded in discovering difficulties which it would puzzle much more sensible people to remove by a process of reasoning. That matter is infinitely divisible, is assumed in science as fundamentally certain. That the doctrine, however, involves very great difficulties, is palpable to all common-sense; inasmuch as, to suppose a foot measure divided into an infinite number of parts requiring an infinite number of portions of time to pass over them, and yet to be passed over in a moment, is to make a moment infinite, in other words, eternal; for although it should be said that the portions of time would be infinitely small, still

they would be portions of time, and an infinite number of any portions of time must make an infinite duration. Who will pretend that in this there is no room for perplexity and doubt? In the mean time, the operations of science, in which the infinite divisibility of matter is assumed, proceed with as much confidence as if there were no difficulty connected with it.*

Its

Much is said of the certainty of mathematical demonstrations, but if difficulties that cannot be solved are sufficient objections, even here also must sentence of condemnation be pronounced. It might be shown how trifling are even the definitions of geometry, the most exact of all the mathematical sciences. definitions might be alleged, upon no inconsiderable grounds, to be nonsensical and ridiculous; its demands or postulates, plainly impracticable; its axioms or self-evident propositions, controvertible, and controverted indeed even by themselves. But why are not these things objected to the truth of matheinatics? What is there in the religion of Jesus more encumbered with difficulties?

Were the dispositions of the human heart and the idols of a sinner's devotion as much opposed by the demonstrations of mathematics as by the doctrines of

* "The divisibility, in infinitum, of any finite extension, involves us, whether we grant or deny it, in consequences impossible to be explicated, or made in our apprehensions consistent; consequences that carry greater difficulty, and more apparent absurdity, than any thing that can follow from the notion of an immaterial substance." Locke on Human Understanding.

The

Christianity, it would be just as difficult to convince men of the truth of the former as of the latter. folly of speaking of a something that has length without breadth; of a point that has no parts; of lines for ever approaching and never meeting; the futility of basing a certain demonstration upon elements so unintelligible and impossible, would be trumpeted to the ends of the world. The wicked might no more believe a proposition of geometry, than they will now a doctrine of redemption. The scoffer might find as much to ridicule in Newton's Principia as in Paul's epistles.*

But we do injustice to the good cause in which we are engaged by standing exclusively on the defensive. Infidelity has too long been indulged with the privilege of attack. It is the stratagem of weakness, to put on a bold front and make a desperate assault. Any arm can strike, but not every breast can repel a blow. It is high time infidelity were accused and brought to the bar. What proof of a single feature of doctrine or of moral principle can it produce, after having rejected such evidence as that of Christianity? What satisfactory argument for the obligation of any thing connected with natural religion, what reason for believing in a future state, what proof even of the existence of God, can be offered as worthy of reliance, without a shameful inconsistency, by men who, in the immense power of evidence sus

* See an interesting piece of reasoning, apropos to the above, in one of the tracts of the American Tract Society, entitled "Conversation with a Young Traveller," No. 203.