and women. Husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants are yet to be found, who have learned their duties from its precepts, and practised them under its sanctions. On the greatest of all topics in any religion, it is silent. By no suggestions of reason, no analogies of nature, no records of experience, no monuments of earth, blackened and withered by the curse of God, no pealing thunder, no convulsions of the elements, no smiling landscape, no blushing beauties of spring, brilliant glories of summer, or sombre shades of autumn, in short, by no voice from heaven, earth or air, has it ever taught how God could be just and yet the sinner saved. In no dungeon of despair has it cast a ray of hope. In no hovel of poverty has it left a crumb of comfort. In no scene of sorrow has it mingled its joys. No widow's heart has ever welcomed its consolations. No orphan's tears have been dried by its hands. Athwart no dark and gloomy tomb of infancy have its beams been shed. From no bed of pain and weakness, disease and death, have been heard the accents of its peace, or the notes of its triumphs. No portals of perdition have been closed by its power. No heaven of glory opened to its voice. If Christianity is to be despised and neglected as limited and feeble, much more must the boasted religion of nature be discarded, and from the toils and dangers of a fatherless world, he must launch forth on the dread Unknown of Futurity, without rudder or compass, pilot or sail, in the frail and foundering wreck of Atheism. We conclude, 1. That as on those topics, which are common to the course of nature and Revelation, objections to the latter are often relieved by showing that they apply to the former, we are justified in receiving Revelation, even although objections derived from other sources, as the apparent contradictions of science or our fallible apprehensions of the contents of the Bible, may still exist. For as we receive the course of nature to be from God, notwithstanding the existence of some very grave difficulties, on the general evidence afforded us, so we may believe Revelation credible. And as in the natural world, the same faculties of investigation and the same phenomena, from which great discoveries have been made and great objections removed, have been long possessed by men before such results were attained, so it is credible, that as time rolls on, existing difficulties in Revelation, may give way to the investigations which may yet be made. This has actually occurred in time past. We should then, on the whole, very modestly urge objections, and very cautiously permit them to influence our minds. 2. That while the existence of difficulties is acknowledged, yet there is such an appearance of truth in Christianity, and all the objections are counterbalanced by such strong evidences in its favor, we ought rather to suspect such difficulties are removable, than the contrary, and be urged to diligence in prosecuting our inquiries. True or false, Christianity must possess some inherent vitality. It has survived the rise and fall of numberless other systems, as well as numberless disasters, affecting itself. That appearance of truth has secured for it the suffrages of some of the acutest minds, the most profound reasoners, and the most splendid geniuses of the world. A system claiming as adherents, such men as Milton and Bacon, Locke and Newton, Pascal and Leibnitz, Chalmers and Edwards, and still sustained by the best men, other than its professed advocates, ought, were no objections to its matter capable of clear resolution, to obtain our favorable regard. And since all leading objections of this class are confutable, it is but little to ask, that we give it a fair, full, and impartial hearing. 3. Sound religious knowledge should be carefully imparted to the young. Infidelity is doubtless often more of the heart than of the head. After all the evidences have been accumulated and all objections confuted, still the greatest of all difficulties remains. It lies back of reason. Christianity is the foe of sin, which the heart is loving. The natural heart opposes it. But if the mind be uninformed, darkened by error and blinded by prejudice, the avenues to the heart are closed. Let these be kept open by a sound and thorough exhibition of the truth of the gospel scheme, and then may we hope successfully to approach the heart, and by the word of God and the Spirit of his power, subdue its opposition, resist its proclivity to evil, and renew its nature. We do not decry any kind of learning. But however enlightened on other subjects, he knows nothing commensurate with the responsibilities or destinies of man, who is not wise to salvation. The wisdom which is here taught, is alone permanent, pure, and eternally productive. The "fear of the Lord" is its beginning; to know Him, love him, and see him as he is, its glorious consummation. 4. Let the blessed results of Christian faith evinced in the lives and deaths of its true professors, be contrasted with the unfruitful works of that darkness which is unrelieved by a ray from heaven. Let the generous and expansive love, the zealous and untiring benevolent labors, and the self-denying and devoted faithfulness of the Christian be compared with the selfish and contracted tempers, the fierce and vindictive passions, and the degrading sensuality or deceitful dealings of the best of heathen. Above all, let the peace, security, and triumph, of the feeblest of the feeblest sex in the feeblest hours of human frailty, under the appalling approaches of man's most terrible enemy, be set against the dim uncertainies, the gloomy forebodings and often, fearful premonitions of despair, which have signalized the dying hours of the caviller and skeptic, and with all objections to his faith, reason compels the exclamation, "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his." |