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and indispensable necessity of divine revelation, is greatly below the real truth of the case? Do you not feel that every step safely taken, is taken with Christianity as your guide?

But why press an argument further, which defies enumeration in its details? I speak to the docile student who is truly desirous to know the will of God, and I ask him—after this review of the state of the world before the coming of Christ, of unbelievers scattered now in Christian countries, of the heathen nations around us, and of Christian people in proportion as revelation is only partially known and obeyedwhether a revelation from God was not indispensably necessary for man; necessary to teach the unity and perfections of God; necessary to teach the state of man and his obligations; necessary to teach the way of expiation and atonement for sin; necessary to teach the rule of duty, the immortality of the soul, and a future state of rewards and punishments; necessary to teach the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, as renewing and consoling the heart, and applying to it the remedy which God has provided for all the wants of a fallen world.

Having brought my young inquirer to this point, I would add two or three remarks of the greatest importance. I would inform him that a general impression has actually prevailed throughout the world, that God has granted some communication of himself to man; that supposed revelations have obtained credit solely on the ground of the great likelihood of such a blessing; that any notion of natural religion doing all that is necessary for us, is opposed to the general sense and belief of mankind in all ages; and that the spontaneous dictate of the weakness of man is to crave a divine direction. Surely this is a remarkable fact: but this is not all.

I would inform him, further, that the wisest and greatest amongst the ancient heathen have confessed their despair of remedying, by any means known to us, the vices and miseries of mankind, and have desired a divine guidance; and that Socrates, more especially, cries out as it were for help, and tells his disciples to wait patiently till some revelation should be made.*

Having called his attention to these circumstances, I would then ask him to recollect the admitted benevolence, wisdom and goodness of the Deity; and that he has confessedly provided remedies and palliatives for every other evil in life, except, on *Plat. Dial. 2 Alcib.

the idea of there being no revelation, for the greatest of all, moral depravity.

I would next beg to ask him, as man, by the admission of unbelievers themselves, may come at some future period, and in another state of being, to a more enlarged knowledge of God and of himself, by an emanation of the divine favor; whether the obvious inference is not that the beginnings of such future communication may be looked for now in the intermediate accession of knowledge contained in a divine revelation ?*

Let the candid inquirer lay these things together, and let him say whether it be so extremely improbable that God has granted to his fallen but accountable creatures, some kind of divine aid and guide and hope of deliverance.

For, be it well remembered, that infidelity blots out, not only the revelation properly called Christian, but the preceding revelation also to Moses and the prophets, (from which all the faint traces of truth discernible in the sacrifices, the incense, the purifications, the oracles of the heathen world, had their rise,) and leaves a total blank in the creation of God from the fall to the present hour-a blank which it pretends not to fill, except by vapid declamations on the sufficiency of reason. But there is no other revelation-no counter-system-no choice of religions proposed to man. The question is between Christianity and nothing; between Christianity and a dark uncertain hesitation as to every point of faith and practice here, and a gloomy and impenetrable obscurity hereafter.

But no, my brethren, I cannot longer dwell on a supposition so frightful, so dishonorable to our Almighty Father and Preserver-so full of dark despair to man. No, my brethren, the God of mercy and creation has not deserted us in our fallen state: he has not left us without a guide. The unbeliever, in the scornful spirit which I described in my last discourse, may take the miserable part of exalting beyond all measure the light of reason, and may shut his eyes to the glories of Christianity; he may attempt to rekindle his faded taper at the blazing torch of revelation, and then claim it as his own, and try to extinguish the very luminary to which he. owes all his feeble irradiation. But we are not so lost to rea

*Davison.

The imposture of Mahomet proceeds on the revelation of the Bible, to which it pretends to be supplementary, and is altogether undeserving of notice in the present part of our argument.

son and conscience; we are not so lost to all feelings of gratitude to God; we are not so lost to all the dictates of experience and truth, as to follow him in his infatuated wanderings. We derive from the very necessities of man, connected as they are with the other direct testimonies which we shall soon review, an invincible argument in favor of our religion.

I. Let me then, in conclusion, urge upon all before me, the practical application of the topic which we have been thus considering. Let me remind them of that temper of teachableness and prayer in which the question is to be studied. Let me urge every one to examine, in this temper, the proofs of the necessity of revelation. Let each person ask himself what he ever knew, or what he now knows practically of the being and perfections of God, the holy law, the atonement for sin, the means of overcoming temptation, and actually living a holy and humble life, except as revelation shines with its friendly light? I do not wait for his reply. I know that in proportion as he imbibes the right disposition of mind, he will acquire, by his own observation, an increased capacity of judging of the need there is of a divine revelation. He will confess that, whatever others may say or think, he feels that without Christianity man can never be rescued from the gulf of sin and misery in which he is involved. His own necessities expound to the practical student the common state of mankind.

II. Then let us recollect what thankfulness we owe to God for the advantages we possess in this Christian and protestant country. What praises should we render to the Author of all goodness for casting our lot in a land of light and knowledge. After reviewing the darkness of the world, can we avoid exclaiming, "Blessed are our eyes for they see, and our ears for they hear?" If there be a humble state of mind, can we avoid thanking God continually for having been "delivered from the kingdom of darkness," for having been blessed with the Christian revelation of light and peace?

III. Again, what unaffected compassion should this subject inspire for the heathen and Mahometan nations "that sit in darkness and the shadow of death!" If we were to consider only the temporal afflictions and calamities flowing from the want of the Christian doctrine, where is there a heart so hard that would not feel some movements of sympathy, when he beholds the souls of his fellow-men degraded-reason obscured

-idolatry the most debasing triumphant-the light of truth extinguished-the dark and sensual passions enslaving the nobler powers-war raging with unmitigated fierceness-the whole female sex depressed, injured, enslaved-man, the glory of the creation, dethroned? Where is there the tender, the humane heart, that would not weep over a fallen world even in these respects, and be prepared to weigh with candor the evidences, which the goodness of God has supplied, of his revelation of "peace and good will to man" in Jesus Christ?

But when to these temporal miseries of the heathen world, we subjoin those which spring out of their spiritual condition; when we consider the perfections of God, his law, the accounta bleness of man, the immortality of the soul, and eternal judg ment; and when we remember, moreover, that it is through the torpor of Christians that divine truth has not yet visited them, can we rest quiet without using all means, by the propagation of missions, and the circulation of the Holy Scriptures, to put a stop to the wo and desolation of sin? And can we forbear to feel a horror at that cold-blooded infidelity which, from pride and the love of moral darkness, denies the aid of mercy to a ruined world, saps the faith of Christians where it can, and deals in scorn and sarcasm and objection against the healing doctrine of salvation? O, let the unbeliever remember that the guilt of rejecting revelation is a crime from which, at least, the heathen, with all their vices, are free: for they have never contracted the peculiar guilt of spurning this immense benefit and all its accumulated proofs; nor have they ever rendered themselves, by habits of obdurate resistance to truth, incapable of appreciating the evidence, and welcoming the message of eternal mercy.

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LECTURE IV.

THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

2 THESS. III. 17.

The salutation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in every epistle: so I write.

WE proceed now to give some details of those direct Evidences of Christianity, by which its truth and infinite importance may be best imprinted on the youthful mind.

And here we, first, naturally ask, How do we know that the gospels and epistles were really composed by the apostles and disciples whose names they bear, and are deserving of credit as histories, so that a fact ought to be accounted true because it is found in them? Or, to speak the language of criticism, How do we know that the books of the New Testament are authentic and credible?

I say, of the New Testament, for none who admit the authority of that part of the Holy Scripture, can doubt the truth of the other. The two, indeed, are so indissolubly connected, that a very few observations will serve to show the authenticity and credibility of the Old Testament, when the authority of the New has been once established.

At present, I confine myself to the question of authenticity. But before I enter on it, I pause for a moment, because it may perhaps strike a young person as a difficult thing to show that the books of the New Testament were really written and published by their respective authors in the first century. The distance of time may seem to him so immense, as to render any satisfactory evidence hopeless. How is it possible, he may ask, to prove that writings, published seventeen or eighteen centuries since, are genuine? Besides, his inexperienced mind may perhaps be startled at the very proposal of bringing the sacred scriptures to a merely historical test, in common with any other ancient writings. The very sacred. ness of the subject, and the awe with which we have justly