Nor is it surprising that a truth so obvious should, even from adver. saries, extort concession. No where but in the Scriptures have we a perfect system of morals; and the deficiencies of pagan morality only exalt the purity, the comprehensiveness, the practicability of ours. The character of the Being acknowledged as Supreme must always im. press itself upon moral feeling and practice; the obligation of which rests upon his will. We have seen the views entertained by pagans or this all-important point, and their effects. The God of the Bible is “holy" without spot; "just" without intermission or partiality; "good," -boundlessly benevolent and beneficent; and his law is the image of himself, "holy, just, and good." These great moral qualities are not as with them, so far as they were apprehended, merely abstract, and therefore comparatively feeble in their influence. In the person of Christ, our God incarnate, they are seen exemplified in action, displaying them. selves amidst human relations, and the actual circumstances of human life. With them, the authority of moral rules was either the opinion of the wise, or the tradition of the ancient, confirmed it is true, in some degree, by observation and experience; but to us, they are given as commands immediately from the supreme Governor, and ratified as HIS by the most solemn and explicit attestations. With them, many great moral principles, being indistinctly apprehended, were matters of doubt and debate; to us, the explicit manner in which they are given excludes both for it cannot be questioned, whether we are commanded to love our neighbour as ourselves; to do to others as we would they should do to us, a precept which comprehends almost all relative morality in one plain principle; to forgive our enemies; to love all mankind; to live "righteously" and "soberly," as well as "godly;" that magistrates must be a terror only to evil doers, and a praise to them that do well; that subjects are to render honour to whom honour, and tribute to whom tribute is due; that masters are to be just and merciful, and servants faithful and obedient. These and many other familiar precepts are too explicit to be mistaken, and too authoritative to be disputed; two of the most powerful means of rendering law effectual. Those who never en.

administered it; but Jesus, in the midst of excruciating tortures, prayed for his merciless tormentors. Yes! if the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus were those of a God. Shall we suppose the evangelic history a mere fiction? Indeed, my friend, it bears not the marks of fiction; on the contrary, the history of Socrates, which nobody presumes to drubt, is not so well attested as that of Jesus Christ. Such a supposition, in fact, only shifts the difficulty, without obviating it; it is more inconceivable, that a num. ber of persons should agree to write such a history, than that one only should furnish the subject of it. The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in the Gospel, the marks of whose truth are so striking and inimitable, that the inventor would be a more astonishing mav than the hero."

joyed the benefit of revelation, never conceived justly and comprehensively of that moral state of the heart from which right and beneficent conduct alone can flow, and therefore when they speak of the same virtues as those enjoined by Christianity, they are to be understood as attaching to them a lower idea. In this the infinite superiority of Christianity displays itself. The principle of obedience is not only a sense of duty to God, and the fear of his displeasure; but a tender love, excited by his infinite compassions to us in the gift of his Son, which shrinks from offending. To this influential motive as a reason of ・ obedience, is added another, drawn from its end: one not less influential : but which heathen moralists never knew,-the testimony that we please God, manifested in the acceptance of our prayers, and in spiritual and felicitous communion with him. By Christianity, impurity of thought and desire is restrained in an equal degree as their overt acts in the lips and conduct. Humanity, meekness, gentleness, placability, disinterestedness, and charity, are all as clearly and solemnly enjoined as the grosser vices are prohibited; and on the unruly tongue itself is impressed "the law of kindness." Nor are the injunctions feeble; they are strictly LAW, and not mere advice and recommendations. "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord;" and thus our entrance into heaven, and our escape from perdition, are made to depend upon this preparation of mind. To all this is added possibility, nay certainty of attainment, if we use the appointed means. A pagan could draw, though not with lines so perfect, a beau ideal of virtue, which he never thought attainable; but the "full assurance of hope" is given by the religion of Christ to all who are seeking the moral renovation of their nature; because “it is God that worketh in us to will and to do of his good pleasure."

When such is the moral tendency of Christianity, how obvious is its beneficial tendency both as to the individual and to society! From every passion which wastes, and burns, and frets, and enfeebles the spirit, the individual is set free, and his inward peace renders his obedience cheerful and voluntary; and we might appeal to infidels themselves, whether, if the moral principles of the Gospel were wrought into the hearts, and embodied in the conduct of all men, the world would not be happy;-whether, if governments ruled, and subjects obeyed by the laws of Christ ;-whether, if the rules of strict justice which are enjoined apon us regulated all the transactions of men, and all that mercy to the distressed which we are taught to feel and to practise came into opera. tion;—and whether, if the precepts which delineate and enforce the duties of husbands, wives, masters, servants, parents, children, fully and generally governed all these relations, a better age than that called golden by the poets, would not be realized, and Virgil's

Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna,

be far too weak to express the mighty change? Such is the tendency

of Christianity. On immense numbers of individuals it has superin. duced these moral changes; all nations, where it has been fully and faithfully exhibited, bear, amidst their remaining vices, the impress of its hallowing and benevolent influence: it is now in active exertion, in many of the darkest and worst parts of the earth, to convey the same blessings; and he who would arrest its progress, were he able, would quench the only hope which remains to our world, and prove himself an enemy, not only to himself, but to all mankind. What then, we ask, does all this prove, but that the Scriptures are worthy of God, and propose the very ends which rendered a revelation necessary? Of the whole system of practical religion which it contains we may say, as of that which is embodied in our Lord's Sermon on the Mount, in the words of one who, in a course of sermons on that Divine composition, has entered most deeply into its spirit, and presented a most instrucuve delineation of the character which it was intended to form: "Behold Christianity in its native form, as delivered by its great Author. See a picture of God, as far as he is imitable by man, drawn by God's own hand. What beauty appears in the whole! How just a symmetry! What exact proportion in every part! How desirable is the happiness here described! How venerable, how lovely is the holiness!" (WESLEY'S Sermons.) "If," says Bishop Taylor, "wisdom, and mercy, and justice, and simplicity, and holiness, and purity, and meekness, and con. tentedness, and charity, be images of God, and rays of Divinity, then that doctrine, in which all these shine so gloriously, and in which nothing else is ingredient, must needs be from God. If the holy Jesus had come into the world with less splendour of power and mighty demonstrations, yet the excellency of what he taught makes him alone fit to be THE MASTER OF THE WORLD." (Moral Demonstration of the Truth of the Christian Religion.)

INTERNAL EVIDENCE of the truth of the Scriptures may also be collected from their style. It is various, and thus accords with the profession, that the whole is a collection of books by different individuals; each has his own peculiarity so strongly marked, and so equally sustained throughout the book or books ascribed to him, as to be a forcible proof of genuineness. The style of Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, the evangelists, and St. Paul, are all strikingly different. The writers of the New Testament employ Hebrew idioms, words, and phrases. The Greek in which they wrote, is not classical Greek; but, as it is observed by Bishop Marsh, "is such a dialect as would be used by persons educated in a country where Chaldee or Syriac was spoken as the vernacular tongue; but who also acquired a knowledge of Greek by frequent intercourse with strangers." This therefore affords an argument from internal evidence, that the books were written by the persons whose names they bear and it has been shown by the same

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prelate, that as this particular style was changed after the destruction of Jerusalem, the same compound language could not be written in any other age than the first century, and proof is obtained from this source also in favour of the antiquity of the Scriptures of the New Testament. An argument to the same point of antiquity is drawn by MICHAELIS from the accordancy of the evangelic history and the apostolical epistles with the history and manners of the age to which they refer. Greek or Roman Christian," he observes, "who lived in the second or third century, though as well versed in the writings of the ancients as Eustathius or Asconius, would still have been wanting in Jewish literature; and a Jewish convert in those ages, even the most learned rabbi, would have been equally deficient in the knowledge of Greece and Rome. If then the New Testament, thus exposed to detection, (had it been an imposture,) is found, after the severest researches, to harmonize with the history, the manners, and the opinions of the first century, and since the more minutely we inquire, the more perfect we find the coincidence, we must conclude that it was beyond the reach of human abilities to effectuate so wonderful a deception."

The manner of the sacred writers is also in proof, that they were conscious of the truth of what they relate. The whole narrative is simple and natural. Even in the accounts given of the creation, the flood, the exodus from Egypt, and the events of the life and death of Christ, where designing men would have felt most inclined to endeavour to heighten the impression by glowing and elaborate description, the same chastened simplicity is preserved. "These sober recorders of events the most astonishing, are never carried away, by the circumstances they relate, into any pomp of diction, into any use of superla tives. There is not, perhaps, in the whole Gospel a single interjection not an exclamation, nor any artifice to call the reader's attention to the marvels of which the relaters were the witnesses. Absorbed in their holy task, no alien idea presents itself to their mind: the object before them fills it. They never digress; are never called away by the solicita tions of vanity, or the suggestions of curiosity. No image starts up to divert their attention. There is, indeed, in the Gospels much imagery, much allusion, much allegory, but they proceed from their Lord, and are recorded as his. The writers never fill up the intervals between events. They leave circumstances to make their own impression, instead of helping out the reader by any reflections of their own. They always feel the holy ground on which they stand. They preserve the gravity of history and the severity of truth, without enlarging the outline or swelling the expression.'" (Mrs. MORE's Character of St Paul.)

Another source of INTERNAL EVIDENCE, arising from incidental com cidences, which, from "their latency and minuteness," must be supposed

to have their foundation in truth, is opened, and ably illustrated by Dr Paley, in his "Hora Paulinæ," a work which will well repay the perusal.

Much of the Collateral evidENCE of the truth of the Scriptures generally, and of Christianity in particular, has been anticipated in the course of this discussion, and need not again be resumed. The agree. ment of the final revelation of the will of God, by the ministry of Christ and his apostles, with former authenticated revelations, has been pointed out so that the whole constitutes one body of harmonious doctrines, gradually introduced, and at length fully unfolded and confirmed. The suitableness of the Christian revelation to the state of the world, at the time of its communication, follows from the view we have given of the necessity, not only of a revelation generally, but of such a revelation as the mercy of God has vouchsafed to the world through his Son. It has also been shown, that its historical facts accord with the credible histories and traditions of the same time; that monuments remain to attest its truth, in the institutions of the Christian Church; and that adversaries have made concessions in its favour. (4) Our farther remarks on this subject, though many other interesting particulars might be embraced, must be confined to two particulars, but each of a very convincing character. The first is, the marvellous diffusion of Christianity in the three first centuries; the second is, the actual beneficial effect produced, and which is still producing, by Christianity upon mankind.

With respect to the first, the fact to be accounted for is, that the first preachers of the Gospel, though unsupported by human power, and uncommended by philosophic wisdom, and even in opposition to both, succeeded in effecting a revolution in the opinions and manners of a great portion of the civilized world, to which there is no parallel in the history of mankind. (5) "Though aspersed by the slander of the malicious, and exposed to the sword of the powerful, in a short period of time they induced multitudes of various nations, who were equally distinguished

(4) The collateral testimony to certain facts mentioned in Scripture, from coins, medals, and ancient marbles, may be seen well applied in HORNE's Intro. duction to the Study of the Scriptures, vol. i, p. 238.

(5) The success of Mohammed, though sometimes pushed forward as a paralfel, is, in fact, both as to the means employed and the effect produced, a perfect contrast. The means were conquest and compulsion: the effect was to legalize and sanctify, so to speak, the natural passions of men for plunder and sensual gratification; and it surely argues either a very frail judgment, or a criminal dis position, to object, that a contrast so marked should ever have been exhibited as a correspondence. Men were persuaded, when they were not forced, to join the ranks of the Arabian impostor by the hope of plunder, and a present and future life of brutal gratification. Men were persuaded to join the apostles by the evi sence of truth, and by the hope of future spiritual blessings, but with the certainty of present disgrace and suffering.