seventh's chapel at Westminster might with as good reason maintain, yea, and much better, considering the vast difference between that little structure and the huge fabric of the world, that it was never contrived or built by any man; but that the stones did by chance grow into those curious figures into which we see them to have been cut and graven; and that the materials of that building, the stone, mortar, timber, iron, lead, and glass, happily met together, and ranged themselves into that delicate order in which we see them now, so closely compacted, that it must be a very great chance that parts them again. What would the world think of a man that should advance such an opinion as this, and write a book for it? If they would do him right, they ought to look upon him as mad. But yet he might maintain this opinion, with a little more reason than any man can have to say, that the world was made by chance, or that the first men grew out of the earth, as plants do now.'1

Here is no process of mathematical demonstration to refute the atheistical sentiment, that matter is eternal; and that this world assumed its present order and beauty without the agency of an intelligent Creator. But if such demonstration had been adapted to the subject and the hearers in this case, who does not feel that it would have been far less convincing than this skilful appeal to common sense? Such an appeal is felt at once, in all its power. Without that steady application of thought, which abstruse reasoning demands, without any effort indeed, even to uncultivated minds, conviction finds its own way to the understanding, as light finds its way to the eye. Hence this sort of evidence is peculiarly valuable

1 Tillotson's Sermons, Vol. I. p. 31. See also Vol. II. p. 50.

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to the preacher, in repelling sophistry, and in answering objections, that cannot be effectually met in any other way. Such are the cavils with which infidelity has often assailed Christian doctrines, especially when clothed in the obscure terms of scholastic theology. And such are the doubts with which anxious inquirers are sometimes distressed, under convictions of sin.

LECTURE XII.

ARGUMENT IN SERMONS.

THERE is a fourth source of evidence, namely, the Evidence of FACTS, which is more or less mingled with all the foregoing; and which includes also the evidence of experience, testimony, and authority. It is a general law of both the material and intellectual worlds, that like causes will produce like effects, or that the future will resemble the past. This law is the sole basis of physical and of political science. Hence we know that, in all ages and countries, rivers will flow downwards, fire will burn, and poison destroy. And hence we know too, how men will feel and act under given circumstances. If there were no uniformity in the operations of mind, no system of government could be framed for any community; nor could social relations exist in any neighbourhood or family. The same regularity resulting from settled principles in the divine government, and in human agency, gives a fixed character to what we call Christian experience. On this ground we may expect with certainty, wherever we find unsanctified human beings, to find them with selfish and depraved hearts; and wherever we find those who are sanctified by divine grace, to see them possess affections essentially the same as have distinguished pious men in all ages.

I need not spend time in applying these principles to the work of the preacher. He must be very unskilful

not to know, that some parts of almost every subject to be discussed in the pulpit, admit of confirmation or illustration from facts; and that this kind of reasoning, where it does apply, is precisely that by which men choose to be addressed, and are predisposed to be convinced. Other things being equal, he will have most power over an assembly whose mind is best stored with facts, especially scriptural facts, and who best know how to apply them with effect.

Testimony, as I have already said in treating of scriptural evidence, is a kind of proof that must be employed in sermons; but it is liable to great abuse. The extent to which some have carried appeals to ecclesiastical history, on certain points of controversy, is certainly undesirable, if not totally inadmissible, in the pulpit.

In these remarks I include also the evidence of authority. The spirit of this age indeed is not more disposed to bow to popes and fathers, than to the mystic trifling of scolastic theology, or the categories of Aristotle.

The abuse of authority in reasoning is strikingly exhibited in the "Oral Law," or traditions of the Jews, which they supposed God to have delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai, though never committed to writing. By these traditions, a great many ceremonies and authoritative maxims were handed down, as of sacred obligation, among that people; though some of them directly contradicted the written law of God, and were condemned with great severity by Christ in his sermon on the mount. Hence when the Pharisees complainingly said to Christ,

Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the Elders?" he replied in the solemn rebuke, "Why do ye transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?"

The Romish church too, as every reader of history

knows, has for ages framed to itself a set of traditions, by which the authority of the fathers is avowedly made to supersede that of the Bible.

: But there is another extreme. The blindest bigotry is not more blind than the narrow and boastful prejudice that discards all respect for received opinions. This is to discard experience and testimony, and indeed all the laws of evidence, by which human opinions are governed. Say what he may of authority, no man is free from its influence, or can be, without renouncing his reason. It has its weight even in matters of science. Who would not presume a demonstration to be correct, if he knew that it had often passed under the scrutiny and sanction of Newton, and had been re-examined and pronounced faultless by the ablest mathematicians to this day? Who does not feel, in any case, more reliance on the judgment of a wise man, than on that of one who is ignorant and weak? The power over the minds of others, ascribed to the Nestor of Homer, and the Mentor of Telemachus, is a just character in poetry, solely because it accords with philosophy and experience. Precisely for the same reason, a general coincidence of sentiment, especially among wise men, if that coincidence is not explained away by the force of some obvious countervailing principle, always furnishes a high presumptive evidence that the thing believed is true.

Preserving to every one then, the right of independent judgment, that judgment still to be rational, must accord with evidence; including the evidence of facts, as it appears in experience and testimony; otherwise no faith can be reposed in history, and no step can be taken in the common affairs of life.

The practical bearing of my remarks on authority, is briefly this. If the disciples of the Koran should