yet have One, or even many-rather than be destitute of a God altogether. If, therefore, professed Revelations successfully appeal to men's religious nature, it may be expected that there will be points in which they will osculate. Otherwise, it is hard to see how any one of them, wholly destitute of such points, should have any chance of success at all. The counterfeit must have some resemblance to the genuine, else it would impose on nobody: it is precisely this element which makes it dangerous, and it is dangerous in proportion as it possesses it. As Bishop Hampden well observes in his "Essay on the Philosophical Evidence of Christianity:" "Without some conformity with experience, it seems impossible that any religion could obtain even a temporary currency in the world. A system of unmixed absurdity, which recoiled from all contact with the reality of human life, would carry too palpable a refutation of itself on its own front, to be received and embraced to any extent among mankind. . . Thus we find, even in those superstitions which are most revolting to common sense, some countervailing truths which have both softened and recommended the associated mass of error, otherwise too grossly repulsive for the heart of man ever to have admitted."I

Whatever analogies, therefore, may be detected in diverse systems of professed Revelation, we cannot from these alone justly determine the pretensions of any; for the true, granting for argument's sake one of them to be so, will have analogies with the false, and

I Pp. 132, 133. London, 1827.

the false with it. As little can it be hence inferred (though it too often has been) that all Revelations having such analogies are equal, or nearly equal, in their claims on human adoption and respect. Το determine this, it is necessary, not only to examine the points of analogy between different Revelations, but to note the points of contrast-the points which are exclusively characteristic of each.

Reading the Bible with this view, I seem to see, unless it be a strange delusion, a multitude of traits, which prevent my accounting for it, as I can for other professed sacred books, by a reference to the known properties and forces which exist in our nature. There are many points in which it seems altogether out of analogy with that nature in general, and contradictory to all its prevailing tendencies as exhibited in human history; and many other traits which could never have been anticipated from the condition of those who composed the book. On the other hand, if in many points it appears at variance with what man would or could have projected, it seems, in many of these very points, in unison with the works and ways of God, as disclosed in "the constitution and course of nature." Again; if the indications of unity about the book, in spite of its being the work of so many writers, separated by such wide intervals of time and space, be not mere fancy, it is impossible to refer them to human contrivance, and almost as impossible to refer them to chance. Further, the manifold unique peculiarities of structure, matter, and style, which, whatever its general resemblance to

other books, palpably discriminate the Bible from them all, and the altogether exceptional position and influence which these peculiarities have given it, and still give it in the world, make one suspect at least that more than the hand of man has had to do with its origination. These and many other arguments, the force of which must, of course, depend on the details and illustrations given in the subsequent lectures, have long compelled me to feel the truth of both parts of the following thesis:-That the Bible is not such a book as man would have made, if he could; or could have made, if he would.

Nor would it be a sufficient reply, that there may be isolated facts in the doctrine or history of other religious systems, which seem eccentric deviations from the ordinary course of human experience, though not absolutely incompatible with it. This is doubtless true; but it is on the degree, the startling character, and the number of such deviations, that the present argument is founded. It is on the tout ensemble, rather than any one or even several of its elements, that its force depends.

One thing more in justice to my theme. I do not pretend to have exhausted it; I have but touched a few topics under each head, and have no doubt that minds of greater compass and knowledge than mine may indefinitely enlarge them. Nor, whether the argument is strong or otherwise, does it in any way interfere with those other, and doubtless more weighty and direct arguments, on which the claims of the Bible have been usually vindicated.

This, in justice to my theme. In justice to myself, I would say that these lectures are not controversial. I simply speak of the impression which certain features of the Bible have made upon me, and state the reasons of it. If any think it a delusion, I have no right to complain that he does not see with my eyes; but I shall feel amply rewarded for any trouble in writing. these lectures, if they should originate or confirm a similar impression in any who may peruse them.

Without further preface, I proceed to enumerate some few of the many traits of Scripture which human nature in general, as known to us by consciousness and experience, would hardly warrant us in expecting, if it be a book of purely human authorship.

1. The inveterate proneness of mankind to idolatry is attested by the nearly universal condition of the world at the earliest dawn of authentic history, through all ages since, and even to the present day. The founders and progenitors of the Jewish nation origi nally practised it, like the rest of mankind,-as might have been anticipated, even if their history had said nothing about it. The facility and obstinacy with which this nation relapsed into it, age after age, in spite of instruction and chastisement, bear witness in like manner to the same proclivity of human nature; while that sure, though gradual process, by which Christianity was at length transformed into something very like the paganism it had supplanted, tells the same tale. One wonders, therefore, by what strange fortuity

it is that the Bible, though more varied in its contents than any other book, composed by different writers, who lived in far distant ages, utters from beginning to end a solitary, but persistent and clamorous protest, against this practice, and everywhere maintains the doctrine of a sublime, elevated, uncompromising monotheism. Nor is it an insignificant proof of the tendencies which it opposes, that even these writers for many ages iterated warning and instruction on "ears that would not hear," and "hearts that would not understand."

The

It is not easy to see how all this came to pass. tendencies of human nature would seem to be all on one side; the decisive voice of the book,-and of this book alone, on the other.1

Of the lofty character of this monotheism, and the magnificent language and imagery in which the attributes of the One God are expressed, I need say little, because to transcribe the passages which proclaim them, would be to copy many pages of the Bible. The substance of a few will suffice:-" He is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath, there is none else." "His is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in

He

1 It is not necessary to advert to the case of Mahomet. comes too late. He did not originate monotheism. His was avowedly an attempt to recall his countrymen to that monotheism of their ancestors from which they had apostatized. That the nation once enlightened in this doctrine had lapsed into idolatry, is (like the similar lapses of the Israelites) a stronger indication of the genuine tendencies of human nature than Mahomet's solitary recovery of the forgotten truth can be of the contrary.