refined, the virtuous and the vicious, the young and the old, of every generation and tribe of men. Yet these books proceeded from the Jewish nation, a people rude and ignorant, and more narrow and bigoted than any other, and from writers chiefly drawn from the least educated classes. Surely they must have been moved by the Spirit of God.

15. How may the divine origin of Christianity be argued from its moral character?

It is neither a well-founded nor a safe position for the advocates of revelation to assume that they are competent to form an à priori judgment of the kind of revelation that God ought to make. Yet let it be considered that, although we cannot always know what it is wise for God to do, nor see the wisdom of all he has done, yet we can infallibly discern in his works the presence of a supernatural intelligence. Precisely so we cannot prescribe what it is right for God to do, nor always understand the righteousness of what he has done, nevertheless we can infallibly discern in his word a moral excellence and power altogether superhuman.

The moral system taught in the Bible is

1st. The most perfect standard of righteousness ever known among men. (1.) It respects the inward state of the soul. (2.) The virtues which it inculcates, although many of them are repugnant to human pride, are, nevertheless, more essentially excellent than those originally set forth in any other system, e. g., humility, meekness, long-suffering, patience, love the fulfilling of the law, and the intrinsic hatefulness and ill desert of all sin.

2d. This morality is set forth as a duty we owe to an infinite God. His will is the rule, his love the motive, his glory the end of all duty.

3d. It is enforced by the highest possible motives, e. g., infinite happiness and honor as the objects of God's approbation, or infinite misery and shame as the objects of his displeasure.

4th. This moral system is perfectly adapted to the whole nature of man, physical, intellectual, moral, and to all of the multiform relations which he sustains to his fellow-men and to God. It includes every principle and rules every thought and emotion, and provides for every relation. It is never guilty of the least

solecism. It never falls below the highest right, and yet never generates enthusiasm or fanaticism, nor does it ever fail in any unexpected development of relations or circumstances.

Hence we conclude

1st. That this system necessarily presupposes upon the part of its constructors a supernatural knowledge of man's nature and relations, and a supernatural capacity of adapting general principles to the moral regulation of that nature under all relations.

2d. This system, when compared with all others known to man, necessarily suggests the possession by its constructors of a supernaturally perfect ideal of moral excellence.

3d. Bad men never could have conceived such a system, nor having conceived it, would they have desired, much less died, to to establish it. Good men never could have perpetrated such a fraud as the Bible is if not true.

16. How is the divine origin of Christianity proved by the character of its Founder?

That character, as it is known to us, is the resultant of the biographical contributions severally of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They evidently write without concert, and each with a special immediate object. They, in the most candid and inartificial manner, detail his words and actions; they never generalize or sketch his character in abstract terms, nor attempt to put their subject, or the word or action related of him, in an advantageous light.

Yet this character of Christ is

1st. Identical, (see Paley's Ev., Part II., chap. iv.,) i. e., these four different writers succeed in giving us one perfectly consistent character in every trait of thought, feeling, word, and action. They must have drawn therefore from the life. Such a composition by four different hands, writing in their inartificial, unsystematic way, would be the most incredible of all miracles.

2d. Unique and original. There have been many other redeemers, prophets, priests, and incarnate gods portrayed in mythology; but this character confessedly stands without the shadow of competition in universal history or fiction. And Jews, of all men, were the authors of it.

3d. Morally and spiritually perfect, by the confession of all

friends and foes. This perfection was not merely a negative freedom from taint, but the most positive and active holiness, and the miraculous blending of all virtues, strength, and gentleness, dignity and lowliness, unbending righteousuess and long-suffering patience and costliest grace.

He must then have existed as he is portrayed. The conception and execution of such a character by man would, as J. J. Rousseau confesses, be a greater miracle than its existence. If he existed he must have been the divine being he claimed. A miracle of intelligence, he could not have been deceived. A miracle of moral perfection, he could not have been an impostor.

17. How is the Christian religion proved to be divine by the spiritual power of its doctrines, and by the experience of all who sincerely put its precepts, provisions, and promises to the test of a practical trial?

Although man can not by his unassisted powers discover God, yet surely it belongs essentially to his spiritual nature that he can recognize God when he speaks.

1st. The word of God reaches to and proves its power upon such deep and various principles of man's nature that even the unregenerate man recognizes its origin It is a "fire and a hammer;" it is a "discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.-Jer. xxiii., 29; Heb. iv., 12. This profound grasp that the word takes of human nature is in spite of the fact that it degrades human pride, forbids the gratification of lust, and imposes irksome duties and restraints upon the will. The mass of men are held subject to its power against their will. This is paralleled in no other religion.

2d. All who faithfully put this revelation to the test of practice finds it to be true in the deepest experiences of their souls. (1.) They experience as realities all it sets forth as promises. It does secure the forgiveness of their sins, their communion with God and joy in the Holy Ghost. "Doing his will they know the origin of his doctrines.-John vii., 17. (2.) They are witnesses to others. Men are by nature aliens from God and servants of sin. This revelation pledges itself that it can deliver them, and that none other can. The sum of all human experience upon the point is, that many Christians have been maile thereby new and spiri

tual men, and that no other system ever produced such an effect.2 Cor. iii., 2, 3. Dr. R. J. Breckenridge's Univ. Lecture. (3.) This revelation makes provision also for all human wants. The more a man advances in religious experience the more does he find how infinitely adapted the grace of the gospel is to all possible spiritual exigencies and capacities; witness regeneration, justification, adoption, sanctification, the intercession of the Son, the indwelling of the Spirit, the working together of all events in the spheres of providence and grace for our good, the resurrection of the body, eternal glory. And, as far as our earthly life goes, all these are actually experienced in their truth, their fullness, and their infinite capability of accommodation to every form of character and circumstance.

18. How may the divine origin of Christianity be proved from its effects, as witnessed in the broad phenomena of communities and nations?

Christianity, when entering very disproportionately into any community, has often been counteracted by opposing influences acting from without, and often adulterated by the intrusion of foreign elements; some philosophical, as the new Platonism of the early church, and ti e Rationalism and Pantheism of the present day; some traditional and hierarchical, as the Catholicism of the middle ages. Its sacred name has thus often been sacrilegiously ascribed to religious systems altogether alien to itself. Our argument however is

1st. That whenever the Christianity of the Bible is allowed free course, to that extent its influence has been wholly beneficial.

2d. That this influence has, as an unquestionable historical fact, availed to raise every race in the exact proportion of their Christianity to an otherwise never attained level of intellectual, moral and political advancement. If we compare ancient Greece and Rome with England or America; modern Spain, Italy and Austria with Scotland; the Waldenses with Rome of the Middle Ages; the Moravians with the Parisians; the Sandwich Islands and New Zealand with the gospel, with themselves before its advent, the conclusion is inevitable.

1st. That Bible Christianity alone furnishes a world embrac

ing civilization, which adapted to man as man re-connects in one system the scattered branches of the human family.

2d. That only under its light has ever been discovered among men (1), a rational natural theology, or (2), a true philosophy whether physical or psychological.

3d. That under its direct influence, and under its reign alone, have (1), the masses of the people been raised, and general education diffused, (2), woman been respected and elevated to her true position and influence, and (3), generally religious and civil liberty realized upon a practical conservative basis.

4th. That precisely in proportion to its influence have the morals of every community, or generation, been more pure, and the active fruits of that holy love which is the basis of all morality more abundant; as witness the provision made for the relief of all suffering, and the elevation of all classes of the degraded.

Hence we conclude, 1st. No imposture could have accomplished such uniform good. 2d. No system, merely human, could have achieved results so constant, so far-reaching and profound.

19. What argument for the truth of Christianity may be drawn from the history of its early successes?

Our argument is that Christianity extended itself over the Roman empire, under circumstances and by means unparalleled in the propagation of any other religion, and such as necessitates upon our part the belief in the presence of a supernatural agency.

The facts are, 1st. Christianity was bitterly repudiated and persecuted by the Jews among whom it originated, and to whose Scriptures it appealed. 2d. Its first teachers were Jews, the most universally abominated race in the empire, and for the most part illiterate men. 3d. It appealed to multitudes of witnesses for the truth of many open facts, which if untrue could easily have been disproved. 4th. It condemned absolutely every other religion, and refused to be assimilated to the cosmopolitan religion of imperial Rome. 5th. It opposed the reigning philosophies. 6th. It humbled human pride, laid imperative restraint upon the governing passions of the human heart, and taught prominently the moral excellence of virtues which were despised as weaknesses by the heathen moralists. 7th. From the first it settled and fought its way in the greatest centers of the world's philosophy and re