the seas; and that, whether such works in the estimation of Julian were mighty or not, they were not to be denied by those who disparaged them, and that Jesus had ever been celebrated from the time that they were wrought.

Though it was a dubious article in the pagan creed whether the great shield which fell from heaven was sent from the great Jupiter or from Mars, yet a heathen emperor was willing to own himself a liar if any other men of eminence were converted from among the Gentiles, within a brief and limited time, but those who (exclusive of Jews or Jewish proselytes) are named in the Acts of the Apostles; and he could say, as expressly as significantly, what things Jesus and Paul had nowhere directed to be done. The genuineness of the Christian scriptures is not merely held to be undoubted, but, instead of a Christian challenging a heathen, an unbeliever and a gainsayer challenges Christians to deny or to dispute it, or to bring forward any other or contradictory testimony as to the facts which the Scriptures record, or to the precepts which they enjoin. And now that the word of God is tried, though in a thousand ways, and ever comes out like gold from the furnace, and that the name of Jesus is still honoured after eighteen hundred years, the shield which they would not worship, and the oracles which they would not believe, though adored and revered by those who mocked at the faith of Him of whom all the prophets testified, are illustrations of the scriptural affirmation, that, while the lip of truth shall be established for ever, a lying tongue is but for a moment. And, while the words of our enemies are enduring monuments of the genuineness of our Scriptures, the once adored shield, which, in our skeptical notions, first fell from the forge of some son of Vulcan upon earth, having failed to fulfil its pledge as to the perpetual government of a pagan city, may serve as a memorial of the reasoning of Julian, and, though eaten up of rust and unfit to be worshipped, may be good enough to grace the tomb of the immortals, from whom the apostate, who cast away the heaven-descended shield of faith, believed that the piece of earthly iron came down.

The word of the Jewish prophets turns darkness into light. And our enemies, from first to last, by bearing witness to facts which they foretold, are constrained to prove that the shield of faith which Christians bear hath indeed come down from heaven. The gods of the heathens were not immortals. But he who once was dead is alive again, and liveth for evermore. And those alone are “miserable people" who believe not in Jesus, and die in their sins. The contemptuous designation of a "dead Jew" is itself a sign of his Messiahship. The lion of the tribe of Judah arose from the grave, as the king of the forest, arising from sleep, shakes himself

from the dust. According to the prophets who spake by inspiration of God, he it is and he alone that was cut off out of the land of the living, who hath prolonged his days, and in whose hand the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper. His death was the needful precursor of salvation to man. The Messiah was to be cut off, but not for himself. And it was even because he poured out his soul in death that he was to divide a portion with the great and the spoil with the strong.

In the triumph of prophetic and Christian truth, the captive enemies of the cross usher in the heralds of the gospel, strew all their flowers in the way, lay down their palms before the feet of the apostles of Jesus, and bear the chains which they themselves had forged.

Our

Before going forth with the Israelites from dark and idolatrous Egypt, Moses said unto Pharaoh, who sought to keep their goods, "Thou must give us also sacrifices and burntofferings, that we may sacrifice unto the Lord our God. cattle also shall go with us; there shall not a hoof be left behind; for thereof must we take to serve the Lord our God." Gen. x., 25, 26. And when Joshua had entered the land of Canaan, and conquered the kings that fought against him, he said unto the captains of Israel, "Come near, put your feet upon the necks of these kings; and they put their feet upon the necks of them. And Joshua said unto them, Be strong and of good courage; for thus shall the Lord do to all your enemies." And in passing from the land of our enemies and entering on holy ground, the proudest of our foes must give us sacrifices and burnt-offerings, that we may offer them unto the Lord our God; of all that our enemies would take from us, not a hoof shall be left behind; we may put our feet upon the necks of their captive kings; and the triumph of the gospel may at least be like that of the law.

CHAPTER VIII.

OF THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES.

Ir would betray equal ignorance and presumption to attempt, within the compass of a few pages, to give anything like a complete view of the credibility of the Christian faith, in respect even to the manner in which it has been communicated, or in which it is set before our reason, and held forth to the belief and acceptance of man. Every writer on such a subject must feel himself encumbered with the abundance of materials, and his only difficulty lies in selecting, ar

ranging, and condensing them. This, our only labour, increases at every step as we go on in the investigation of the evidence of Christianity. The mine on which we are now entering has been often explored; much precious ore has been brought from it, some of the latest of which is also some of the richest. And as bright gems, before unseen, ever spring up anew and sparkle beneath the hand of the miner, so, we doubt not, much still remains to reward and bless the researches of those who, in confirmation of the faith of others, as well as for perfecting their own, diligently search the Scriptures. Not in this field alone, but in every other, the analogy holds good between the word and the works of God, that many facts, ever open to investigation in the discovery of truth, have only of late been searched out and applied; and the darkness which, to unobservant speculatists, seemed to hang over both, begins at last to be completely cleared away. All that can be attempted here is a simple exhibition of the form of credibility in which the gospel is set before us. And though it would require terse and massy volumes to exhaust the subject, yet, from the fulness of the matter, a few reflections may suffice to show that, while, as we have seen, there is nothing questionable in the testimony respecting the genuineness of the Christian scriptures as written by the disciples and apostles of Jesus, so there is nothing incomplete in the record, and nothing to be found that can warrant the most scrupulous inquirer to withhold his faith from those witnesses of Jesus who, after the prophets, first testified of Him, and whose writings have come down untarnished from their hands into our own.

Having dilated largely on the testimony borne to the genuineness of the New Testament, not merely because of its importance and abundance, but also and chiefly because many of the facts are little known and not easily accessible to the generality of readers, this reason may well be reversed, and the proof of the authenticity of the gospels and epistles may be drawn within a narrower compass, because the knowledge of the facts on which it mainly rests are within the reach of all. We need but to search in order to discover, or, rather, simply to come and see, how perfectly the very framework of the gospel is adapted to its purpose of conveying to man, in a credible and intelligible form, the revelation of the will, of the mercy, and of the grace of God.

While the proved inspiration of the Jewish prophets, the credibility of miracles even from experience, the Divine authority of the Mosaic dispensation, are all before us, and while the words of the Lord by his prophets concerning the Messiah are yet in our hearing, and demand that their fulfilment should be shown, we neither stop nor stoop to banter with the fancies of men about the impossibility, the improba

bility, or the needlessness of a Divine revelation. For reason would be abjured in pausing to question whether the prophets of a God of mercy as well as justice had not a higher purpose to fulfil than to foretel the desolations of cities because of sin; whether he who in times past and in divers manners spake unto the Israelites by the prophets, might not speak again by others unto all; whether, as the God not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles, he might not give a perfect revelation of his will for all nations of the earth, as, ultimately for their sakes, he had formerly given unto one. Nor do we enter for a moment on the discussion of the question, not to be mooted without blaspheming the name and belying the word of the Holy One of Israel, whether he would keep back his new and everlasting covenant, and break his promise and his oath to the father of the faithful, and to David to whom he had sworn, or whether the limited time never should arrive when Messiah the Prince should come, and be cut off, or whether every threatened judgment should be fulfilled, and every promised blessing be revoked and disannulled. No; the sure word of prophecy is not to be held in abeyance, nor its credit to be suspended, till the fantastic imaginations of men be consulted and satisfied. The verdict of reason, as given by Socrates and Plato, who confessed the need of a revelation from on high, and expressed the hope that a Divine Being would for that end visit the world; every form of false faith; the gross darkness that covered the world; the deep debasement of our moral nature; the imperfect virtue and the sanctioned vices of heathen moralists; their want alike of motives, of means, and of power to reform, or, rather, to renovate mankind; idolatry in all its forms-man, in whom God had put a spirit, bending to stocks and stones, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things, changing the glory of God into a lie, and turning his own glory into the deepest degradation; the blinded consultation of heathen oracles which spoke for hire, pandered to the evil passions of men, and often stimulated to war, and which never uttered a word worthy of the remembrance of the world; the miserable ignorance of the pagan priesthood, who could neither tell nor do anything by which man could be saved from sin, and who acted rather like necromancers than teachers of mankind; the sacrificial rites of the heathens, in all their cruelties, miseries, and abominations, the screams of children passing through the fire, the blood of immolated human victims that long drenched the altars in every country under heaven, and the renewed indulgence in sin so soon as expiated in the blood of their kindred; the character of the gods, patterns of vice, and fit agents of the prince of darkness, under whose domination iniquity would have been perpetuated; the idols that are still

brought from heathen lands, and all the barbarous deeds that yet are done under the sacred but abused name of religion; every virtue, to the astounding of pagans, that was practised by the early Christians, while the power of the faith as it is in Jesus was felt, and a proof was given to the world what glorious forms, through its efficacy, could be raised out of ruins; every evil that has resulted from the corruption and perversion of Christianity, from whence idolatry was renewed, and the "dark ages" returned, while the light of the gospel was hid, and the commandments of men were substituted for the word of God; and the disorganizing of society and demonizing of men, the experience of which needs not to be told, which followed the national abjuration of the Christian faith, when nothing but the name had to be renounced; all these, but not these alone, even the whole history of our race might tend to show, from the mere outward aspect of the state of man, that human nature was not without the need of a remedy or man of a Redeemer, but that our blindness is such as God alone can enlighten, and our sin and misery such as that God alone could find a ransom. And all cry aloud from every quarter and from every age, that light from heaven could alone enlighten the nations, and that all the ends of the earth stood in need of the promised salvation of the Lord.

It would be in vain for one man to address another in a language to him unknown. And the mode of communicating truths, though they be divine, has necessarily to be adapted to the faculties and perceptions of those for whose instruction they are revealed. In declaring his will to men and not to angels, it seemed meet unto the Lord, as experience in the case of Israel shows, to make use of human means and human instrumentality, even as throughout all nature he has adapted everything to its object, and has fitted its shell to the worm.

Deriving all our knowledge of external things, and of whatever happens in the world, through the medium of our senses, it is necessary, if we remain not in utter ignorance, that such knowledge be communicated to us in some tangible shape or intelligible form. Far superior to the faint and imperfect traces which oral tradition leaves of events long past, history presents us with their vivid impressions as if they were ever new; and as if embalming them while yet they retained their actual and living form, preserves them from the corruption that preys upon all human things. By its means the past becomes the heritage of the future. And, fitted to the immortal mind, the events of many generations lie open to our view; the evanescent interests of an hour leave, as they pass, an enduring memorial; and as the augury of a higher judgment to come, they may be brought to the bar of