CHRISTIANITY THE ONLY HOPE.

67

and the doctrines themselves are, several of them, borrowed from Christianity, and then inculcated as the teachings of reason.

No; there is nothing on the face of the earth that can, for a moment, bear a comparison with Christianity as a religion for man. Upon this the hope of the race hangs. From the very first, it took its position, as the pillar of fire, to lead the race onward. The patriarchal, and Jewish, and Christian dispensations, all finding their identity in the true import of sacrifices, and in the inculcation of righteousness, have been one religion. The intelligence and power of the race are with those who have embraced it; and now, if this, instead of proving indeed a pillar of fire from God, should be found but a delusive meteor, then nothing will be left to the race but to go back to a darkness that may be felt, and to a worse than Egyptian bondage.

LECTURE III.

INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. -VAGUENESS OF THE DIVISION BETWEEN THEM. - REASONS FOR CONSIDERING THE INTERNAL EVIDENCES FIRST. — ARGUMENT FIRST: FROM ANALOGY.

IN In my first lecture, I attempted to show that, if God has given a revelation, we may certainly know it; and in the second, that there is no such antecedent improbability against a revelation, as to justify us in requiring proof different from that which we require for other events. There are laws of evidence according to which we judge in other cases, and I only ask that these same laws may be applied here.

If these points are established, we are ready to inquire whether God has in fact given a revelation.

On coming into life, we find Christianity existing, and claiming to be such a revelation. We wish to satisfy ourselves of the validity of that claim. How shall we proceed? The evidence by which its claims are sustained is commonly divided into two kinds, the exter mal and the internal. This division is simple, and of long standing; but by it heads of evidence are classed together, having so little affinity for each other, and, in regard to some of them, it is so difficult to see on what principle they are classed under one rather than the other, that its utility may be doubted. Thus the evidences from testimony, from prophecy, from the mode in which the gospel was propagated, and from its

INTERNAL EVIDENCE.

69

effects, topics resembling each other scarcely at all, -are classed under the head of the external evidences; while the various marks of honesty found in the New Testament, the agreement of the parts with each other, its peculiar doctrines, its pure morality, its representation of the character of Christ, its analogy to nature, its adaptation to the situation and wants of man,- topics still more diverse, - are classed under its internal evidences.

Chalmers and Wilson.-I notice the vagueness of this arrangement, because these two classes of evidence have often been opposed to each other, and the superiority of one over the other contended for; and because great and good men, as Chalmers formerly, have in some instances regarded it as presumptuous to study the internal evidences at all, as if it would be a sitting in judgment beforehand on the kind of revelation God ought to give; and others, as Wilson, have thought it arrogance to study the internal evidences first, as if the capacity to judge of a revelation after it was given implied an amount of knowledge that would preclude the necessity of any revelation at all.

Internal evidences

their study not presumptuous.But of which of the internal evidences mentioned above can it be said to be presumptuous for man to judge without reference to external testimony? Certainly not of those natural and incidental evidences of truth spread every where over the pages of the New Testament; nor of the agreement of the several books with each other; nor of the morality of the gospel; nor of its tendency to promote human happiness in this life; and if there be some of the doctrines, of the probability of which we could not judge beforehand, that is no reason why we should be excluded from an immediate and free range in every other part of this field. There is what has been called, by Verplanck, a critical, as well as a

moral internal evidence. Of the first we are competent to judge, and, in determining the question of our competency to judge of the second, we are not to overlook a distinction made by the same able writer. It is that "between the power of discovering truth, and that of examining and deciding upon it when offered to our judgment." "In matters of human science," he goes on to say, "to how few is the one given, and how common is the other! Look at that vast mass of mathematical invention and demonstration which has been carried on by gifted minds, in every age, in continued progress, from the days of the learned priesthood of ancient Egypt to those of the discoveries of La Place and La Grange. Who is there of the mathematicians of this generation who could be selected as capable of alone discovering all this prolonged and continuous chain of demonstration? If left to their own unaided researches, how far would the original and inventive genius of a Newton or a Pascal have carried them? Yet we know that all this body of science, this magnificent accumulation of the patient labors of so many intellects, may be examined and rigorously scrutinized in every step, and finally completely mastered and familiarized to the understanding, in a few years' study, by a student who, trusting solely to his own mind, could never have advanced beyond the simple elements of geometry.

"This reasoning may be applied, either directly or by fair analogy, to every part of our knowledge of the laws of nature and of mind; and it therefore seems to be neither presumptuous nor unphilosophical, but, on the contrary, in strict accordance with the soundest reasoning, to maintain that though the world by wisdom knew not God,' yet, so far forth as he reveals himself to men, and calls upon them to receive and obey that revealed will, he has given to them faculties, by

TO JUDGE OF REVELATION NOT PRESUMPTUOUS. 71

no means compelling, but yet enabling them to understand his revelation; to perceive its truth, excellence, and beauty; and to become sensible of their own want of its instruction, as well as to estimate that extrinsic human testimony by which it may be supported or attended."

Certainly, there are many things in which we perceive a fitness and an excellence, when they are made known, of which we should never, of ourselves, have formed any conception. Thus the Newtonian system comes before the eye of the mind as a great mountain does before that of the body, and we see at once that it is worthy of God. No timid disclaimer of our right to judge of the works of God can prevent this effect. Its simplicity, and beauty, and majesty, speak with a voice more pleasing, and scarcely less satisfactory, than that of mathematical demonstration. I will not say

how much of this perceived excellence, or whether any, must belong to a revelation which we are under obligation to receive. Certainly, that of the Jews had to them far less of this than ours to us. But I will say that it is the natural impulse of the mind to examine any thing claiming to be a revelation by such tests; and if it is done in a proper spirit, and with those limitations which good sense must always put to human inquiries, it is neither presumptuous nor dangerous. It is not judging beforehand of what God ought to do; it is judging of what it is claimed that he has done; and the same spirit that would prevent us from doing this would debar us from any study of final causes in the works of God. If the gospel is to act upon character, it must be received with an intelligent perception of its adaptation to our wants, and of its excellence. The message, not less than the minister of God, might be

* Verplanck's Evidences of Revealed Religion.