their attacks, have assumed a seeming strength and triumph to which they have no claim, except in leading captive the willing mind, deceiving and being deceived. Their victims have been many. They have assailed every bulwark of Christianity and threatened to raze them, till, like the temple of Jerusalem, not a stone should be left upon another. And assuming the victory of infidelity to be complete, they denominated the period of its greatest prevalence the age of reason! Christians may surely copy the zeal of their enemies, and realize against them their highest pretensions. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty, through God, to the pulling down of strongholds; and they need but to be rightly wielded in order to put to flight the armies of the aliens. And, in the warfare of the enemies of Zion, under the banner of him who leadeth captivity captive, any "soldier of Christ" thus armed may brave the boldest of the chiefs of skepticism, and lead them captive in the cause of truth. After the utmost rage of the enemy has been exhibited, and all their strength exhausted, the faithful host that long withstood them unbroken, and repelled every assault, may in turn become the assailants, trusting to the God of truth in whose strength they stand, that the victory will finally be the more completely their own. Though Goliaths, as of old, have defied the armies of the living God, and dismayed the faint-hearted in Israel, yet at the last even they can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth; by their own words they must be confuted, and by their own swords they must be slain.

In order to come at once to common ground with gainsayers, it is best to meet them on their own, and to show both the right and the might by which Christians have and hold it. Nothing is to be assumed or supposed, where, however reasonable, nothing will be conceded; but adducing facts as proofs, and enemies as witnesses, and their very arguments as our needful reasons, the feeblest advocate of the Christian faith-beginning with admitted, positive, undeniable, existing, and visible facts reclaimed from our foes, and advancing connectedly from proof to proof at every point-may as freely disclaim all need, as the most unyielding skeptic would deny him all right, of commencing and conducting an investigation into the absolute verity of his faith, on any assumption or supposition whatever. And through means which God has given, and proofs which, in his overruling Providence, enemies have supplied, a body of evidence may be adduced which renders any supposition needless, and sets all objections at defiance; the gospel may be vindicated as the word of Him who truly said of his kingdom, "Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder;" and aught less than a dem

onstration of the truth of Christianity would be a disparagement of the faith that is nothing less than divine.

Abundant as are the materials for the construction of such an irrefragable argument, yet additional evidence is still accumulating. While the progress of physical science discloses the works of the God of nature, it illustrates also the truth of his word. The very objections of ignorance become the arguments of knowledge. And, as superstition is shaken, true religion is confirmed. And the labours of all the enemies of the truth, in seeking to confound Christianity with its corruptions, or to subvert them together, is only the clearing away of the rubbish which has too long obscured the rock on which the church of Christ is built; and that man must know but little of the spirit of the times, and be ill-instructed unto the kingdom of Heaven, who, in seeking to illustrate the truth of the gospel, could not readily bring forth out of his treasure things new as well as old.

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Things old" must necessarily be brought forth, though every Christian might rightfully reckon them in his treasures, and the Christian faith would be left without defenders if these were not still adduced, as they have been in ages past, times without number. But something "new" may be found in the arrangement, combination, and connexion of the evidence, in the application of many of the facts on which it rests, the introduction of others, and in the adoption and use of the arguments of our adversaries.

So liberally have unbelievers unconsciously repaid in facts their idle scoffings against the prophecies, that they have furnished the means of demonstrating their inspiration, sufficient singly to form a sure foundation whereon to rest the whole superstructure of Christian evidence.

In the following treatise, existing facts, which any man may witness, abundantly supply, in the first place, a palpable demonstration that the prophets of old spake by inspiration of omniscient God. The great infidel argument urged in modern times against the credibility of miracles, is next-as recorded and refuted in Scripture-appropriated and applied as Christian evidence, and as involving the principle on which miracles give proof of revelation. The way is thus doubly prepared for illustrating the credibility of the Old Testament and of the New; the former as heralding the Messiah, and preparatory of his coming; the latter as recording concerning Christ and the Christian religion, the things which Moses and the prophets did say should come. The leading sentiment which pervades, connects, and illumines the whole, is, that the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. Associated with this theme, other proofs, not wholly destitute of novelty, are adduced in verification of the Jewish Scriptures. And the inspiration of these, together with the witness which they

bore of a coming Saviour, being manifestly set forth, the historical testimony borne to Jesus has only to take its proper place, and to be viewed in connexion with the testimony of the prophets, in order that not even a heathen could narrate facts respecting Christianity, or urge arguments against it, without thereby giving proofs of the Messiahship of Jesus. The Christian testimony, though assuming a lower position in the order of evidence than that which it generally occupies, is thus endowed with a far higher power than any testimony could exclusively possess, and is neither to be evaded nor resisted. And, finally, the authenticity of the records being established, a comparison between the prophecies and the gospel sets demonstration before the eye-as the Spirit by whom the prophets spake can alone bring conviction to the heart, in believing unto righteousness-that Jesus and the Messiah, as well as the doctrine of the gospel and the promised salvation, are alike one and the same.

Instead of exhausting the subject of the evidence of Christianity, scarcely a tithe of it is touched on in the following pages, as many excellent and voluminous treatises may testify. It has been the writer's purpose to show that Christianity, in all reason, is accredited as divine so soon as it is rightly seen even in a single view, or in its due relationship, in part, to Judaism. Its adaptation to the nature, or its adequateness, when truly embraced, to the salvation of man, is a theme with which he purposed to close the present essay, as showing forth in still brighter form the Divine handiwork and heavenly beauty of the inner sanctuary. But even a step or two into the outer court affords demonstration that the workmanship is of God. If enabled to advance a step farther, it may yet be the author's privilege, as it is his hope, to cast another mite into the Christian treasury. If his present labour-often wrought out in much weakness, and always in conscious inadequacy for so great a cause-may be prized, at that rate, by Him who looked not unpityingly or unapprovingly on the widow's mite, the commendation or the censure, the flattery or the calumnies of man would be all alike unworthy of a thought. And if any gain, however small, hence accrue to the Christian cause-if God's word has in any way been magnified, while the wisdom, the pride, and the power of those who set themselves against it has been brought low, even to the ground-none can rejoice more than the writer of these pages in the renewed illustration thereby given to the Scriptural truth, that God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty, that no flesh should glory in his presence.

CHAPTER I.

EXISTING PROOFS OF THE INSPIRATION OF THE JEWISH PROPHETS.

So abundant and obvious are the proofs of the want of true faith in a Redeemer from all iniquity, and so clear and conclusive, when impartially and fully investigated, are the evidences of Christianity, that it is infinitely more needful to urge on professing Christians compliance with the Scriptural precept, to examine themselves whether they be in the faith, than to ask the unbeliever to abate one jot of his skepticism, till, if not altogether inveterate, it yield to positive evidence and demonstrative proof.

It is one great office of reason to distinguish between truth and error, to weigh the evidence which may be adduced on both sides of a question, and rejecting that which is false, and adhering to that which is true, to judge what is right, and, trying all things, to hold fast what is good. While the undisguised enemies of the Christian religion have maintained, in contradiction to these Christian precepts, that it is not to be defended on the principles of human reason, nor fitted by any means to undergo such a trial, the decision may be left to the arbitrament of reason, whether the disbelief of the truth of Christianity be not of all things the most irrational as well as dangerous. Man has more understanding than the beasts that perish; and, in the exercise of that high faculty of our nature, it behooves him, undeceived either by vain imaginations or false pleasures, to see that in the way in which he is going or in which others would lead him— he neither go nor be led like an ox to the slaughter, or be as a bird that hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life.

'A wise man," says Hume, "proportions his belief to the evidence:" and we ask no other rule for the confirmation of faith and the extinction of skepticism. Let us thus reason together from the first line to the last; let faith be proportioned to evidence; let the testimony of enemies be heard ; let facts be looked at; and let the most direct inferences be drawn in the plainest exercise of unbiased reason, and every reader may decide for himself, on the soundest dictates of an enlightened judgment, on which side, to an absolute certainty and entire conviction, the truth must lie, in respect to the question here to be discussed, whether that which was spoken by the prophets of old has come or not, or whether they spake as the Spirit gave them utter

ance, or out of the imaginations of their own hearts. We speak as unto "wise men," judge ye what we say.

Holding to the principle of rejecting, as entirely unnecessary, any preliminary assumption or supposition, we begin with the ocular demonstration given by existing facts to the inspiration of the Old Testament prophets, whose writings were translated into Greek above three hundred and forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans.

Reason and Scripture alike warrant that the precedence in the Christian testimony should now be given to visible facts, which at the end do speak and cannot lie, and are not to be gainsaid. A divine doctrine might be taught, and yet the question be asked, Who hath believed our report? Human testimony may have been borne to it in ages past by a thousand tongues, and written by a thousand pens, and the same question be as often repeated. The light might shine in darkness, and yet the darkness comprehend it not. But though men will not judge what is right, nor, if told, believe what is true, yet if they close not their eyes, and wilfully choose the darkness rather than the light, they must see what is set before their eyes, not in abstract forms, but in palpable facts. It is thus that the truth of the word of the Lord by the prophets may be seen; and the prediction more frequently repeated than any other, and affixed to many threatened judgments, may itself be thus verified-they SHALL KNOW that I am the Lord.

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"If by a prophet," says Paine, we are to suppose a man to whom the Almighty communicated some event that would take place in future, either there were such men or there were not. If there were, it is consistent to believe that the event so communicated would be told in terms that could be understood." It is the purpose of this chapter to show that there were such men; because the events communicated to them were told in terms not only easy to be understood, but impossible to be misapprehended; because the events were also such as no foresight or sagacity of man could ever have discovered or conceived; and because that, instead of having to be searched for in the records of a high antiquity, they have, in manifold instances, been recently or newly ascertained, so that all controversy may be here cut short by abundantly adducing existing facts and modern discoveries in literal fulfilment of manifold prophecies, the antiquity of which, as preceding these events, is altogether indisputable.

To accumulate opposing facts is not the worst mode of subverting wild and baseless theories; and positive proof may safely be set against unsubstantial and fanciful objections. The prophets of Israel have all been stigmatized as "impostors and liars," and the book as a book of lies ;"

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