Faith, then, in St. Paul's language, is religion in its simplest, inward principle. It is the deep and efficacious impression, which the manifestation of God, made to us in the Scripture, ought in all reason to produce in our hearts; but which it does not produce until, in answer to our earnest prayer, his holy Spirit opens, as it were, our hearts,' to receive the things which are thus presented to our minds. When the unseen realities of religion, are able to do more with us than the tempting objects of this visible world, then and not before, is the divine grace of faith really formed within us. That this is the scriptural idea of faith, will appear at once, from a perusal of that most interesting portion of Scripture the eleventh chapter to the Hebrews. The definition with which the chapter commences, states this precise notion :—Faith is the substantiation of things hoped for, the demonstration of things not seen.'* · ingly, we find such a course generally pursued, the divine realities. It is, in short, such a conby the ancient moralists, both of Greece and viction of what is revealed, as gives it an effica Asia. Of this, it is not the least inconvenient cy equal for every practical purpose, to that result, that rules must be multiplied to a degree which is derived through the evidence of our the most burthensome and perplexing. And senses. there would be, after all, a necessity for incessant alteration, as the rules of one age could not be expected to correspond with the manners of another. This inconvenience might perhaps, in some degree be avoided, by entailing on a people an undeviating sameness of manners. But, even when this has been effected, how oppressively minute, and how disgustingly trivial are the authorized codes of instruction! Of this every fresh translation from the moral writings of the east is an exemplification; as if the mind could be made pure by overloading the memory! It is one of the perfections of revealed religion, that, instead of multiplying rules, it establishes principles. It traces up right conduct into a few radical dispositions, which, when once fully formed, are the natural sources of correspondent temper and action. To implant these dispositions, then, is the leading object of what we may venture to call the Scripture philosophy. And And the instances adduced are as the heart must be the seat of that which is to influence the whole man, so it is chiefly to the most satisfactory exemplifications. By faith, heart that the holy Scriptures address them- Noah, being warned of God of things not seen selves. Their object is to make us love what is as yet, being moved with fear, prepared an ark,' 'By faith, Moses forsook Egypt, not fearright, rather than to occupy our understandings &c. with its theory. Knowledge puffeth up, says ing the wrath of the king, for he endured as With the heart,' one of our divine instructors, but it is love that seeing him who is invisible.' edifieth. And the principle which is here as- says St. Paul, man believeth unto righteousness; that is, when the infinitely awful and sumed, will be found most strictly true, that if a love of goodness be once thoroughly implanted, inexpressibly engaging views of God, manifestwe shall not need many rules; but we shall acting himself in the Scripture, as our Creator, aright from what we may almost call a noble kind of instinct. If thine eye be single,' says our Saviour, thy whole body shall be full of light. Our religion, as taught in the Scripture, does, in this very instance, evince its heavenly origin. St. Paul, whose peculiar province it seems to have been to explain, as it were scientifically, the great doctrines of his master, gives us a definition of Christianity, which outdoes at once in brevity, in fulness, and even in systematic exactness all that has been achieved in the art of epitomizing, by the greatest masters of human science,-Faith which worketh by love. It is not too much to affirm, that this expression substantially contains the whole scope and tenor of both Testaments; the substance of all morality, and the very life and soul of human virtue and happiness. A want of attention to what St Paul means by faith, too generally makes the sense of the passage be overlooked. But the well-directed student will discern, that St. Paul assumes exactly what has been intimated above, that God's object in Revelation is not merely to convey his will, but also to manifest himself; not merely to promulgate laws for restraining or regulating conduct, but to display his own nature and attributes, so as to bring back to himself the hearts and affections of fallen man; and that, accordingly, he means by faith, the effectual and impressive apprehension of God, thus manifested. In his language, it is not a notion of the intellect, nor a tradition coldly residing in the recollection, which the Scriptures exhibit, but an actual persuasion of · Redeemer, and Sanctifier, really, and effectually * I thus venture to strengthen the expression in the authorised translation, in order to convey some clearer idea of the original terms, which, as the best critics allow, have, perhaps, a force to which no English words can do justice. The Scripture then, in reality, does not so much teach us how to be virtuous, as, if we comply with its intention, actually makes us so. It is St. Paul's argument through the Epistle to the Romans, that even the most perfect code of laws which could be given, would fall infi. nitely short of our exigencies, if it only gave the rules without inspiring the disposition. The law of Moses had afforded admirable moral precepts, and even the sages of the heathen world had found out many excellent maxims; but, an inspiriting principle, by which men might be made to love goodness as well as to know it, was that of which the Gentiles, and, in some measure, the Jews also, stood in need. And to furnish this principle by inspiring such a faith in God, as must produce love to God, and, by producing love to God, become operative in every species of virtue, is avowedly the supreme object of the gospel of Christ. ences, to be at once essential virtue, and essential happiness; and both united, are found to be that pure element in which rational intelligences are formed to live, and out of which they must ever be perturbed and miserable. But, to make the Scripture thus efficacious, it must be studied according to the will of him who gave it. It is said of our Saviour in the instance of his disciples,-"Then opened he their understandings, that they, might understand the Scriptures;' and it is said of Lydia, saint Paul's first convert at Philippi, That the Lord opened her heart, to attend to the things which were spoken of Paul.' We read of others of whom it is observed, the gospel was preached, but it did not profit them, because it was not mixed with faith in them that heard it.' What follows? evidently, that the Scripture, to be read effectually, must be read devoutly, with earnest and constant prayer to him whose word it is, that he would so impress it on our hearts, by his good Spirit, that it may become the power of God unto salvation. If any man lack wisdom let him ask it of God,' says St. James, who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him.' But, one grand peculiarity of Christianity remains to be mentioned-That it addresses us not merely as ignorant, but as prejudiced and corrupt; as needing not merely instruction, but reformation. This reformation can be accom And, therefore, it is that the Scripture represents to us facts, and doctrines founded on facts, rather than theories; because facts are alone fitted to work on the heart. In theories, the understanding acts for itself; in apprehending facts, it acts subserviently to the higher powers of the soul, merely furnishing to the affections those objects for which they naturally look; and distinguishing false and seductive appearances from real sources of delight and comfort. In this way the sacred Scriptures make the fullest use of our rational powers, uniformly present-plished, these prejudices and these corruptions ing such facts, as grow clearer the more severely they are examined: completely satisfying our understandings, as to their aptness to the great purpose of working on our hearts, and, on the whole, making our religion as reasonable, as if, like the mathematical truth, it had been exclusively addressed to our intellect; while its influence on the rightly disposed heart gives such an inward proof of its divinity as no merely ra. tional scheme could, in the nature of things, possess. Let, then, the royal pupil be carefully taught, that Christianity is not to be examined, nor the sacred Scriptures perused, as if they were merely to be believed, and remembered, and held in speculative reverence. But, let it rather be impressed upon her, that the holy Scriptures are God's great means of producing in her heart, that awe of his presence, that reverence of his majesty, that delight in his infinite perfections, that practical affectionate knowledge of the only true God, and of Jesus Christ whom he has sent, which constitutes the rest, the peace, the strength, the light, the consolation of every soul which attains to it. Let her be taught to regard the oracles of God, not merely as a light to guide her steps, but, as a sacred fire to animate and invigorate her inmost soul. A purifying flame, like that upon the altar, from whence the seraph conveyed the coal to the lips of the prophet, who cried out, 'Lo! this hath touched my lips, and mine iniquity is taken away, and my sin is purged.' That fear of God, which the Scripture, when used as it ought, never fails to inspire, is felt by the possessor to be essential wisdom; and that love of God, which it is no less fitted to excite, is equally acknowledged by him whom it influ can be removed, only by divine power. It is a new creation of the soul, requiring no less than its original formation, the hand of the divine artificer. The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; they are foolishness unto him.' God must reveal them by his Spirit: he must produce the disposition to receive them. To this end no kind of previous knowledge is more conducive than the knowledge of ourselves as fallen, depraved, and helpless creatures; and, therefore, absolutely requiring some such gracious interposition in our favour as that which the Scripture offers. Exactly as the malady is felt, will the remedy be valued; and, consequently, no instruction can be more indispensable for the royal pupil, than that which tends to impress on her mind, that in this respect she stands on a level with the meanest of her fellow. creatures. That, from the natural corruption of every human heart whatever amiable quali ties an individual may possess, each carries about with him a root of bitterness, which, if not counteracted by the above means, will spread itself through the whole soul, disfigure the character, and disorder the life; that this malignant principle, while predominant, will admit but of a shadowy and delusive semblance of virtue, which temptation ever dissipates, and from which the heart never receives solid comfort. Who can enumerate the hourly calamities which the proud, the self-willed, the voluptuous, are inflicting on themselves; which rend and lacerate the bosom, while no eye perceives it? Who can express the daily disappointment, the alternate fever and lassitude of him, whose heart knows of no rest, but what this disordered world can afford? This book divides itself into two great portions, the first containing the account of a preparatory religion, given to a single nation; the latter describing the completion of the scheme, so far as to fit this religion for general benefit, and unlimited diffusion. Who then is happy? He alone, whether prince | fully to explain the simple phenomenon of such or subject, who, through the powerful and salu-a volume being in the world, on the supposition tary influence of revealed religion on his heart, of fabrication or imposture ? is so impressed with things invisible, as to rise superior to the vicissitudes of mortality: who so believes and feels what is contained in the Bible, as to make God his refuge, his Saviour his trust, and true practical holiness the chief object of his pursuit. To such a one his Bible, and his closet, are a counterpoise to all the trials and the violence to which he may be exposed. Thou shalt hide them privily,' says the Psalmist, by thine own presence, from the provoking of all men; thou shalt keep them secretly in thy pavilion from the strife of tongues. CHAP. XVI. On the Scripture evidences of Christianity.-The Christian religion peculiarly adapted to the exigencies of men; and especially calculated to supply the defects of heathen philosophy. IF Christianity were examined with attention, and candour, it would be found to contain irresistible evidences of its divine origin. Those who have formed continued trains of argument in its support, have, no doubt, often effected very valuable purposes; but it is certain, that conviction may be attained in a much simpler me. thod. In fact, it would imply a very reasonable charge against Christianity, if its proofs were of such a nature, that none but scholars or philosophers could feel their conclusiveness. Respecting the first great portion which we call the Old Testament, the leading features appear peculiarly striking. In this book alone, during those ages, was maintained the first great truth, of there being only ONE living and true God: which, though now so universally acknowledged, was then unconceived by the politest nations, and most accomplished philosophers. And respecting both portions of this book, but especially the latter, known by the name of the New Testament, this no less interesting remark is to be made, that, in every essential point, nearly the same view is taken of man's weaknesses and wants, of the nature of the human mind, and what is necessary to its ease and comfort, as is taken by the wisest heathen philosophers; with this most important difference, however, that the chief good of man, that pure perennial mental happiness, about which they so much discoursed, after which they so eagerly panted, but of which they so confessedly failed, is here spoken of substantially, in their notion of it, as a blessing actually possessed, and the feeling of it described in such language as bears, so far as it is possible for human expressions to bear, the stamp of conscious truth and unsophisticated nature. A book exists in the world, purporting to con- May we be allowed, in this connexion, to give tain the authentic records, and authoritative a superficial sketch of the defects in the system principles of the one true religion. It is obvi- of the ancient philosophers? The belief in a ously the work not of one person, or of one age. life to come was confined to a few, and even in Its earliest pages, on the contrary, are, beyond them this belief was highly defective. Those all sober question, the most ancient writings in who asserted it, maintained it only in a specuthe world; while its later parts were confessedly lative and sceptical way; and it would not be composed at a time much within the limits of easy to produce an instance of their using any historic certainty; a time, indeed, with which doctrine of rewards and punishments in a future we are better acquainted than with any other state, as their instrument in promoting virtue. period in the retrospect of ancient history; and They decorated their system with beautiful saywhich, like a distant eminence brightly illumi-ings, on the immortality of the soul; but they nated by the rays of the sun, is distinctly seen, while intermediate tracts are involved in impenetrable mist. Against the authority of this most interesting volume, numberless objections have been raised. But, who has yet clearly and satisfactorily shown how its existence, in the form it bears, can be rationally accounted for, on the supposition of its spuriousness? That a series of records originating so variously both as to time, occasion, and circumstances, should involve some obscurity or difficulty, or even in some instances apparent incongruity, is surely no cause of wonder and that these should be dwelt upon and exaggerated by persons hostile to the principles which the volume contains, and which its truth would establish, is most natural. But, which of those objectors has ever been able to substitute a system less liable to objection? Have any of them given a satisfactory solution of the unparalleled difficulties which clog their hypothesis? Which of them has even attempted VOL. II. 4* did not support it upon this basis. There was, therefore, no foundation to their fabric. Poetry, indeed, had her Elysium, and her Tartarus. It appears, however, that the philosophy of Greece and Rome, in proportion as it advanced, diminished the strength of the impression which the poets had made on the minds of the vulgar, and thus the very religion of the sages tended to lessen among the people the sense of a future responsibility. The ancient philosophers had no idea of what we designate by the name of the grace and mercy of God. They had some conception of his bounty, of his providential care, of all his natural perfections; and of some even of his moral excellences; for example, of his benevo lence and justice. 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 F 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 clated by stoical pride, and dissolved in epicurean luxury. Their doctrine even of a Providence, connected as it was with the merely mundane system, led to much misconception of the nature of true morality, and to gross superstition. From ignorance of future retribution, they imagined that virtue and vice received their exact recompence here. They were religious, therefore, even to superstition, in assuming the existence of providential interference in the case of the commission of palpable crimes; and they were tempted to esteem those actions, however sinful, to be no offences against God, which God did not mark by some temporal punishment.* 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 candour, 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. There 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 phenomena 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 extraordinary interfe rences, that nation, which alone, of all the nations of the earth, acknowledged him; or let him separate, if he be able, that national recog nition of the true God from their belief of those distinguishing interpositions. If they alone aeknowledged the rightful sovereign of the universe, who believed that that sovereign had signally manifested himself in their behalf, can the deist show that the belief of the events was not essential to the acknowledgment of the supposed author of them? Or will he assert, that the establishment of such a truth amongst 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, Such appear to have been some of the chief take further into the account the manner in deficiencies of the heathen system; a system which the maintainers of the one true God have which strongly points out the want of such a acted upon that belief. Let him examine the light as that which the Gospel affords. The principles of the Jewish moralists, and see where plilosophers themselves seemed conscious of else, in the ancient world, the genuine interests some great defect, and thus the very revelation of virtue are so practically provided for. Let which Christianity has furnished, supplied all him read the sublime and most cordial effusions that was necessary to man, and comes recom-of the Old Testament poets, and say, where else mended by the acknowledged occasion for it. the Author of Being, and of all good, is so fully How striking are the peculiarities, how obvi-recognised, or so suitably adored? Let him ous 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 consider the expostulation of the prophets, and the self-criminating records of the historian, and find for them any shadow of parallel in the history of mankind. Let the man of genius observe how the minds of the writers were elevated, on what a strong and steady pinion they soared. Let the man of virtue reflect how deeply their hearts were engaged; and let the man of learn. ing compare what he reads here with all that has come from heathen pocts, sages, or law. givers; and then, let it be soberly pronounced, whether it is conceivable that all this should exist, without some adequate cause, and, whether any canse can be so rationally assigned, as that, for other animals are subservient only to the which their venerable lawgiver has himself ex- appetites of the body, and by them are led to pressed in terms the most critically opposite, and do wrong. But men, who have also sentiment the most unaffectedly impressive? Ask now,' to guide them, are guilty of ill conduct, not less says he, of the days that are past, which were through the abuse of their acquired reason, than before thee, since the day that God created man from the force of their natural desires.* upon earth; and ask from the one side of hea- Although, therefore, the doctrine of human ven to the other, whether there had been any depravity be, strictly speaking, a tenet peculiar such thing as this great thing is, or hath been to Revelation; since it is the Bible alone which heard like it? Did ever people hear the voice teaches how sin entered into the world, and of God speaking out of the midst of the fire as death, with all its attendant woes and miseries, thou hast heard, and live? or has God assayed by sin; though it is there alone that we discover to go and take him a nation from the midst of the obscurity and confusion which there is in another nation, by temptations, by signs, and the understanding of the natural man, the crookby wonders, and by war, and by an outstretched edness of his will, and the disorder of his affecarm, and by great terrors, according to all that tions; though it is there alone that we are led the Lord your God did for you, in Egypt, be- to the origin, and, blessed be God, to the refore your eyes? Unto thee it was shown that nedy of this disease, in the renewal of our nathe Lord He is God; there is none else beside ture, which is the peculiar office of the holy him. Know, therefore, this day, and consider Spirit to effect; yet, the wiser and more disit in thine heart, that the Lord He is God; in cerning among the heathens both felt and acheaven above, and upon the earth beneath, there knowledged, in no inconsiderable degree, the is none else." 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. If such be the inevitable conclusion respect ing the Old Testament, how much more irre. sistible 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 attention. 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 adverted 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 brightest 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 experience, and a period the most eventful. And, to this point, he uniformly brings all his disquisitions, that man can only be happy by a conquest over himself; by some energetic principle of wisdom and virtue so established in his bosom, as to make him habitually superior to every wrong passion, to every criminal or weak desire, to the attractions of pleasure, and the shocks of calamity. But it was not Cicero only, who rested in this conclusion: Horace, the gayest of the Latin poets, is little less explicit in his acknowledgment, that man should then only find ease when he had learnt the art of flying, in a moral sense, from himself. 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 animals, may, with good reason, be acknowledged to be no less depraved than they; 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 want and weakness precisely as these sages represented it: and she confidently offers the very remedy for which they so loudly called. Her professed object is to establish, in the human mind, that collateral principle of virtuous and happy su periority to every thing earthly, sensual, and selfish, on which philosophy had so long fixed its anxious, but 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 correspondence 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. 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 *Hampton's Polybius, book 17, p. 393. |