But their united wisdom never framed a sentence like that in which the true God was revealed to Moses: The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty.' It is on this part of the character of God, that the Scripture is so abundantly full. This ignorance of the mercy of God associated itself in the heathens, with much other religious and moral blindness. From this ignorance, that God was merciful, their only means of persuading themselves that they were in his favour, was to assume that they were upright. And, who can estimate the moral consequences of an habitual effort to represent to ourselves all our own actions, as not having any of the guilt of sin, and as not impeaching our claims to the justice of the Almighty? The lofty sentiment, that they were themselves a species of gods, was sometimes resorted to, at once as a source of self-complacency, and as the supposed means of virtue. The Stoic affected to rise superior to the temptations of the body, to soar above all sense of guilt, and all dread of pain, by the aid of an extravagant, and almost atheistical sentiment, which was opposite to common sense, and subversive of all true humility, a quality which is the very basis of Christian virtues. He was his own god: for he assumed to himself to be able, by his own strength, if he would but exert it, to triumph over fortune; in other words, over Providence, over pain, fear, and death itself; and to rise, by the same strength, into a participation of the nature of the Eternal. Thus, as an eminent writer has observed, those who endeavoured to cure voluptuousness, resorted to pride as the means of virtue.' In the latter ages, indeed, not a few appear to have been at once elated by stoical pride, and dissolved in epicurean luxury.

man, and comes recommended by the acknowledged occasion for it.

How striking are the peculiarities, how obvious the superiority, which, even on a first attentive perusal, fill the mind of the serious reader of the Scripture! But what infidel writer has so much as taken its most obvious facts into sober consideration? who has attempted to explain how the writers of the Old Testament should differ as they have done from all the writers in the world, not only in maintaining so pure a theology, but in connecting with it a national history, through which that theology passes as a chain, binding together and identifying itself with their whole system, civil and religious? This history, involving supernatural events, may be a reason why the wilful infidel should reject it without examination. But let him who pretends to candor, attentively consider these records, and try if he can project even an outline of Jewish history, from which those miraculous interpositions shall be consistently excluded. These are facts in this narration which cannot be disputed: the Jews necessarily having a history as well as other nations Let the sober infidel, then, endeavour to make out for them an hypothetic history, in which, leaving out every thing miraculous, all the self-evident phanomena shall be accounted for with philosophic plausibility. If this be possible, why has it not been attempted? But if this be really impracticable, I mean, if these events do actually so make up the body of their national history, that no history would be left, if they were to be taken away; then let some farther theory be devised, to explain how a history, thus exclusively strange, should stand connected with a theology as exclusively true? Let the sober deist prove, if he can, that it was unworthy of the God of nature to distinguish, by such extraordiTheir doctrine even of a Providence, con- nary interferences, that nation, which alone, nected as it was with the merely mundane of all the nations of the earth, acknowsystem, led to much misconception of the ledged him; or let him separate, if he be nature of true morality, and to gross super-able, that national recognition of the true stition. From ignorance of future retribu- God from their belief of those distinguishing tion, they imagined that virtue and vice re-interpositions. If they alone acknowledged ceived their exact recompense here. They the rightful sovereign of the universe, who were religious, therefore, even to supersti- believed that that sovereign had signally tion, in assuming the existence of providen-manifested himself in their behalf, can the tial interferences in the case of the commis-deist show that the belief of the events was sion of palpable crimes; and they were not essential to the acknowledgment of the tempted to esteem those actions, however supposed author of them? Or will he assert, sinful, to be no offences against God, which that the establishment of such a truth amongst God did not mark by some temporal punishment.*

Such appear to have been some of the chief deficiencies of the heathen system; a system which strongly points out the want of such a light as that which the Gospel af fords. The philosophers themselves seemed conscious of some great defect, and thus the very revelation which Christianity has furnished, supplied all that was necessary to

* A striking instance of this disposition to abuse the doctrine of Providence, was exhibited in the speech of Nicias to his soldiers, after they were defeated at Syracuse,

that people, who have since actually communicated it to so many other men, perhaps to all, deists not excepted, who really do embrace it; I say, will he soberly assert that such a purpose did not justly and consistently warrant the very kind of interposition, which the Jewish history presents?

But let the honest infidel, if such there be, take further into the account the manner in which the maintainers of the one true God have acted upon that belief. Let him examine the principles of the Jewish moralists, and see where else, in the ancient world, the genuine interests of virtue are so practically provided for. Let him read the sublime and

To the sentiment of a great philosopher and poet, let us add that of a no less eminent historian. Polybius says, It seems that men, who, in the practice of craft and subtlety, exceed all other anals, may, with good reason, be acknowledged to be no less depraved than they; for other animals are subservient only to the appetites of the body, and by them are led to do wrong. But men, who have also sentiment to guide them, are guilty of ill conduct, not less through the abuse of their acquired reason, than from the force of their natural desires.*

most cordial effusions of the Old Testament ence, in a period the most eventful. And, poets, and say, where else the Author of Be- to this point, he uniformly brings all his dising, and of all good, is so fully recognised, quisitions, that man can only be happy by or so suitably adored? Let him consider the a conquest over himself; by some energetic expostulation of the prophets, and the self-principle of wisdom and virtue so establishcriminating records of the historian, and ed in his bosom, as to make him habitually find for them any shadow of paralle: in the superior to every wrong passion, to every history of mankind. Let the man of genius criminal or weak desire, to the attractions of observe how the minds of the writers were pleasure, and the shocks of calamity. But elevated, on what a strong and steady pinion it was not Cicero only, who rested in this they soared. Let the man of virtue reflect conclusion: Horace, the gayest of the Latin how deeply their hearts were engaged; and poets, is little less explicit in his acknowlet the man of learning compare what he ledgment, that man should then only find reads here with all that has come from hea- ease when he had learnt the art of flying, in then poets, sages, or lawgivers; and then, a moral sense, from himself. let it be soberly pronounced, whether it is conceivable that all this should exist, without some adequate cause, and, whether any cause can be so rationally assigned, as that which their venerable lawgiver has himself expressed in terms the most critically apposite, and the most unaffectedly impressive? 'Ask now,' says he, of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon earth; and ask from the one side of heaven to the other, whether there had been any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it? Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire as thou bast heard, and live? or has God assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of another nation, by temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the Lord your God did for you, in Egypt, before your eyes? Unto thee it was shown that the Lord He is God; there is none else beside him. Know, therefore, this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the Lord he is God; in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath, there is none else.' If such be the inevitable conclusion respecting the Old Testament, how much more irresistible must be the impression made by the New! The peculiarity which was adverted to above, ought, even in the eye of a philosophical inquirer, to engage deep at tention. I mean, that to which heathen sages pointed, as the only valuable object of human pursuit, is, in this wonderful volume, described as matter of possession. Here, and here only, amongst all the records of human feelings, is happiness seriously claimed, and consistently exemplified. To the importance of this point, witness is borne by every wish which a human being forms, and by every sigh which heaves his bosom. But, it is a fact, perhaps not yet sufficiently advert ed to, that at no period do heathen sages seem so strongly to have felt the utter insufficiency of all their schemes for attaining this object, as at the period when the light of Christianity diffused itself through the earth. Cicero, that brighest of Roman luminaries, had not only put his countrymen in possession of the substance of Grecian wisdom, to which his own rich eloquence gave new force and lustre, but he had added thereto the deep results of his own observations, during a life of the most diversified experi

Although, therefore, the doctrine of human depravity be, strictly speaking, a tenet peculiar to Revelation; since it is the Bible alone which teaches how sin entered into the world, and death, with all its attendant woes and miseries, by sin; though it is there alone that we discover the obscurity and confusion which there is in the understanding of the natural man, the crookedness of his will, and the disorder of his affections; though it is there alone that we are led to the origin, and, blessed be God, to the remedy of this disease, in the renewal of our nature, which is the peculiar office of the holy spirit to effect; yet, the wiser and more discerning among the heathens both felt and acknowledged, in no inconsiderable degree, the thing itself. They experienced not a little of the general weight and burthen of the effect, though they were still puzzled and confounded in their inquiry after the cause And their continual disappointment here was an additional source of conviction, that the malady, which they painted in the deepest colourings of language, did exist. They seemed to have a perception, that there was an object somewhere, which might remedy these disorders, aid these infirmities, satisfy these desires, and bring all their thoughts and faculties into a due obedience and happy regulation. They had a dawning on their minds, that a capacity for happiness was not entirely lost, nor the object to fill and satisfy it quite out of reach. In fact, they felt the greatness of the human mind, but they felt it as a vast vacuity, in which, after all, they could find nothing but phantoms of happiness, and realities of misery.

To these deep-toned complaints, in which all sorts and conditions of men united, Christianity comes forward to make the first propositions of relief. She recognises every *Hampton's Polybius, book 17. p. 393.

want and weakness precisely as these sages physician thus pledged himself to relieve represented it; and she confidently offers agonized human nature? If there be no such the very remedy for which they so loudly instance. the conclusion is inevitable: that called. Her professed object is to establish, Christianity, from the deep importance, as in the human mind, that collateral principle well as the unrivalled singularity of its overof virtuous and happy superiority to every tures, justly claims our most serious inquiry, thing earthly, sensual, and selfish, on which whether what has been thus promised has philosophy had so long fixed its anxious, but been actually accomplished. hopeless desires, and to which alone it looked for real felicity.

In this view, then, Christianity rests her pretensions, not merely on historical evidences, however satisfactory, nor on the fidelity of successive transcribers, however capable of proof; but, on a much more internal, and even more conclusive title, its exquisite cor respondence to the exigencies of human nature, as illustrated by the wisest of all ages and nations, and as felt by every reflecting child of mortality

Christianity has amply provided for this natural demand; for it has been ordered, that while the New Testament contains every principle necessary for the attainment of human happiness, it should also give us a perfect specimen of its own efficacy. This we accordingly have in the fully delineated character of the apostle St. Paul There is, perhaps, no human person in all antiquity, of whose inmost feelings, as well as outward demeanor, we are so well enabled to judge, as of this great Christian teacher. The particulars respecting him in the Acts of the Apostles, compared with, and illustrated by, his own invaluable epistles, make up a fulllength portrait of him, in which no lineament is wanting. And, the wisdom of God, in this single arrangement, has furnished a body of evidence in support, both of the truth and the efficacy of our holy religion, which, when attentively examined, will ever satisfy the sincere, and silence the caviller.

Let, then, the deepest sentiments of heathen philosophers and poets, respecting human nature, be dispassionately compared with those expressions of our blessed Saviour, in which he particularly describes the benefits to be enjoyed by his faithful followers; and let it be judged, whether there is not such a correspondence between what they want, and what he professes to bestow, as occurs in no other instance in the intellectual world.-Rest for their souls, is what they anxiously sought: and, a burning fever of the mind, in which corroding care, insatiable desire, perpetual disappointment, unite in torturing, is the malady of which they uniformly complain. Is it not then wonderful to hear our Saviour so admirably adapt his language to their very feelings? Come unto me,' says he, all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take Was St. Paul, then, or was he not, an exmy yoke upon you, and learn of me, and ye emplification of that nobly-imagined wise shall find rest to your souls. He that drink-man, which the heathen philosophers had eth of this water, shall thirst again,' intima-pictured to themselves, as the height of hu ting by this very expression, the insufficiency man felicity? Does he appear to have found of every thing earthly to satisfy the mind, that rest, for which sages panted, and which but he that drinketh of the water that his divine master proposed to bestow? Did shall give him, shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give, shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.'

The numberless minute and unobvious coincidences between the narrative and the epistles, have been so illustrated in a late invaluable work,* as to make the authenticity of both matter of absolute demonstration; and, from such an instance of Christian influence, thus authenticated, the pretensions of Christianity itself may be brought to a summary and unequivocal test.

he possess that virtuous and happy superiority to every thing earthly, sensual, and selfish, which was acknowledged to constitute the very essence of true philosophy? Let him that understands human nature read, and answer for himself Let him collect all that has been spoken on this subject by Socrates or Plato, by Cicero or Seneca, by Epictetus or Marcus Antoninus, and judge coolly, whether St. Paul does not substantially exemplify, and, I may add, infinitely outdo it all?

Whoever is acquainted with the language of the ancient philosophers must see, that in these expressions our Saviour meets their wishes; we do not mean to say, that they had or could have any right apprehensions of that preliminary abasement which the Scripture calls repentance, and which was to put them in possession of the rest and peace for which they sought, and which Christ does actually bestow. We do not mean to say, that the Horace has celebrated the fortitude of Repride of unassisted nature could allow them gulus, in one of his most animated odes; but to see that they were indeed objects of pure it may most soberly be asked, what was the mercy on the part of God; and that their fortitude of this pagan hero, when compared knowledge of themselves, or of him, could be with that which was unconsciously displayed such as to bring the real spirit of their wishes by St Paul in his way to Jerusalem? Reguto any actual coincidence with the wonder-lus, we are told, would not turn his eyes toful means which God, in his goodness, had wards his wife or his children. In his herodevised to satisfy them. Though they did ism, therefore, he sinks his humanity. Not occasionally express a sense of an evil na- so our apostle; while he fears nothing for ture. and a wish for relief from it, yet who himself, he feels every thing for those around but the author of our religion ever met those wishes? In what other instance has a moral

* Paley's Hore Paulinæ.

him. What mean ye thus to weep, and to break my heart,' says he, for I am ready, not to be bound only, but to die at Jerusalem, for the name of the Lord Jesus.' If this be not perfect magnanimity, where was it ever exhibited ?

ble, gentle and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and of good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.'

If any difficulty, attending particular doctrines of Christianity, should present itself; it will be well first to inquire, whether the I will add but two instances. One ex- doctrine in question be really Christian? pressing the feelings which were habitual to and this can only be determined by a dishimself; the other describing that perfection passionate and impartial recurrence to the of goodness, which he wished to be pursued Scriptures themselves, particularly the New by others: and let the learned infidel find, if Testament. Whatever is clearly asserted he can, a parallel for either. In speaking of there, follows inevitably from the establishhimself, after acknowledging an act of friend- ed divinity of that which contains it. And ship in those to whom he writes, he says, in what conceivable case can, not only huNot as though I speak in respect of want, mility, but rational consistency, be more for I have learned in whatsoever state I am, wisely exercised, than in receiving, without therewith to be content. I know both how question, the obvious parts, and then no to be abased, and I know how to abound. I doubt can be entertained respecting the am instructed both to be full and to be hun- whole. Happy had it been for the Christian gry, both to abound and to suffer need. I world, had this self-evident maxim been can do all things through Christ which practically attended to; for then what disstrengtheneth me. What a testimonial this pute could possibly have arisen about-' that to the faithfulness of the offer of our Saviour, Word which was made flesh, and dwelt to which we have already referred! How among us, being also God over all, blessed consummately does it evince, that when he for evermore?" Or whether the Father, the engaged to fulfil that deepest of human de- Son, and the Holy Ghost, in whose name we sires, the thirst of happiness, he promised no are baptised, must not be essentially divine? more than he was infinitely able to perform! Or whether there can be any misconception The apostle's exhortation to others, is no in what the redeemed in heaven make the less worthy of attention. Finally, brethren, subject of their eternal song: that the whatsoever things are true, whatsoever Lamb which was slain, had redeemed them things are honest, whatsoever things are just, to God by his blood, out of every kindred, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever and tongue, and people, and nation ?' things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report-If there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things.' In what human words did genuine moral feelings ever more completely embody itself? Are they not, as it were, the very soul and body of true philosophy? But what philosopher, before him, after such a lesson to his pupils, could have dared to add the words which immediately follow? The things which ye bave both learned and received, and heard and seen in me, do, and the God of peace shall be with you.'

That plain and simple readers think they find each others doctrines clearly set forth in the sacred volume, is a matter of fact, authenticiated by abundant evidence; and that, where they have been disputed, those who have agreed in holding them, have evidently derived a deeper influence from Christianity, both as to the conduct of their lives, and the comfort of their minds, than those who have rejected them,-if it could not be substantiated by innumerable proofs, would be almost self-evident, on a merely theoretic view of the two cases For who ever derived either partial strength, or mental comfort, from indulging a habit of metaphysical disquisition! And who but such have, in any age of the church, questioned the doctrines of our Saviour's divinity, the threefold distinction in the divine nature, or the expiatory efficacy of Christ's one oblation of himself, once offered for the sins of the whole world?

This is a most imperfect portion of that body of internal evidence, which even the most general view of Christianity presses on the attentive and candid mind: and with even this before us, may it not be boldly asked, what else like this has come within human knowledge? On these characters of the gospel then, let the infidel fairly try his strength. Let him disprove, if he can, the correspondence between the wishes of philosophy, The Scriptures are so explicit on the last and the achievements of Christianity, or des- mentioned great doctrine of our religion, that troy the identity of that common view of man's we are not left to infer its truth and certainchief good, and paramount happiness. Let ty as we might almost do from the obvious him account, if he can, for these unexam- exigences of human nature. That guilt is pled congruities, on any other ground than one of the deepest of the natural feelings, that of the truth of Christianity; or let him will not be disputed; and, that the sense of even plausibly elude the matter-of-fact evi- guilt has been, in every age and nation a dence to this truth, which arises from St. source of the deepest horrors, and has sugPaul's character. In the mean time, let the gested even still more horrible methods of appious Christian enjoy his sober triumph in peasing the perturbed mind, can be questhat system, which not in St. Paul only but tioned by none who is acquainted, however in all its true votaries, in every age and na- slightly, with the history of the world. Athetion, it has produced-' a hope full of im- ists in pagan countries have made this very mortality, a peace which passeth all un- fact the great apology for their impiety. derstanding.'-'à wisdom pure and peacea-charging upon religion itself the dismal su