and reverence as the word of God; regard and study them daily as the rule to which you are to conform every thought and word and action: and as the rule by which all your thoughts and words and actions will be tried at the last day before the judgment-feat of Christ, CHAPTER VI, SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. I. Af the authenticity and inspiration of the Scriptures have been established in the two preceding chapters; then the truth of the Christian religion has also been demonstated. This proposition is self-evident. Nay, if there had remained any doubt concerning the inspiration of the writers of the Old and New Testament; if ifrhad not pleased God-that the Bible should be able to claim a higher character than that of an authentic narrative written by uninspired men; Christianity still would have Been proved. If the predictions there recorded were actually delivered; if the facts there related actually took place; in other words, if the Bible had merely spoken truth thro' the aid of human information and Veracity; the certainty of the Christian religion would would still have been indisputable. If the miraculous circumstances, which, according to antecedent prophecies, were to characterize the birth, the life, the death, and the resurrection of the Messiah, all united in Jesus Christ; he was the Messiah. If the predictions which Jesus Ch.rist delivered were literally fulfilled; if the supernatural powers which he engaged to bestow on his disciples were punctually conferred; he ivas what he affirmed himself to be, the Son of God, the promised and long expected Redeemer. But when the real state of the case is taken into the account; when we consider that, to render knowledge perfect and to ensure fidelity from suspicion, the superintending aid of the Holy Spirit of God ever accompanied the sacred penmen; we might presume that every possibility of doubt as to the certainty of the religion thus introduced and confirmed to mankind must vanish from the breastsof unprejudiced enquirers. The question therefore of the truth of Christianity might safely be rested on these grounds. It may be of use, however, on account of the supreme importance of the subject; and from regard to the difference in the degree of force, with which experience shews that different arguments strike different minds; to subjoin to the foregoing remarks some collateral arguments, which evince that the Christian religion came from God. II. The general state of the" world, at the time when Christianity was promulgated, was confessedly such as to render a further revelation of the will of God highly desirable to mankind. The Heathen nations, nations, Greeks, Romans, Barbarians, were invmersed in the grossest idolatry. It was not merely that they worshipped stocks and stones. Their supposed deities were usually represented of characters so detestably flagitious, that we should rather have expected them to have been singled out as objects of abhorrence than of adoration. We know with, how much greater proneness and facility men imitate a pattern of vice than of virtue. We know how extremely imperfect are the piety and morality of the collective body of Christians, who nominally at least profess to take their holy and sinless Redeemer for their model, and to look for eternal happiness or misery as the certain consequence of their conduct in the present scene of probation. We nnght therefore form, by speculative reasoning, a just opinion of the state of morals likely to be prevalent among nations who worshipped Jupiter, and Bacchus, and Mercury, and their associates in the Heathen Pantheon. Turn to history, and you find the display of depravity, which your imagination had pictured, delineated in still more glaring colours. The scattered examples of eminent virtue recorded in the annals of Greece and Rome, examples the brighter on account of their scarcity and of the gloomy contrast with which they are surrounded, militate not against the truth of this general representation. The occasional efforts of some philosophers to introduce better principles and better practice, had no effect on the great mass of the community. The philosophers phers themselves were frequently stained with open vice. Many of their tenets were absurd and even impious: and the rest were too obscure and too refined for popular apprehension, or too little interesting for popular attachment: and being founded on conjecture and theoretical arguments, carried with them no sanction which could ensure stedfast belief or habitual obedience. Socrates, the wisest of the philosophers, avowed in the strongest terms the necessity for the interposition of a Divine instructor for the reformation of the world. From the Heathens cast your eyes on the Jews. What had been the fruit of a dispensation delivered to their forefathers by the voice of God himself, confirmed by unnumbered miracles, upheld by national rewards and national judgments, and enforced by a long succession of prophets? Little more among the bulk ot the people, for I speak not of the more virtuous exceptions, than that they were at length purified from idolatry. In other respects they were proverbially pr»ud, selfish, and intolerant: placing their confidence on their groundless traditions, rather than on the Scriptures; on their descent from Abraham, rather than on personal righteousness; on the observance of ceremonial ordinances, rather than on the practice of piety and good works. Such being the general condition of mankind, in consequence of their having rendered thus inesficacious, by their own frailty and perverseness, the invitations and motives to righteousness which their merciful Creator had for so many ages set before them, partly by the light of natural conscience, and partly by special special revelation: it perhaps was not wholly unreasonable humbly to hope, that He who had already done so much of his own free will for his undeserving and sinful creatures, might yet in his infinite mercy do somewhat more. At least it was evident, that if he should vouchsafe to them a further discovery of his good pleasure, and encourage them with additional aids and incitements to virtue; such a dispensation would be a blessing, for which the warmest gratitude would be a most inadequate return. Now, if a considerate man, antecedently to all knowledge of the Christian plan of redemption, had been asked what particulars, consistent with the attributes of God and the situation of mankind, he should be principally solicitous to find in a future revelation; what, after full reflection, would have been his reply? He would have replied, that the utmost stretch of his hopes and of his wishes extended to the following points: full assurance that, on proper and practicable terms, his past sins and even his future offences might be forgiven; a clear and accurate delineation of the path in which he ought to walk; the promise of Divine help to assist him in following that path, and in regaining it if he should go astray; and the certain inheritance, if he should prove obedient, of a life of happiness beyond the grave. All these points are offered and ascertained in the Christian Revelation. Do these facts bear no witness to the truth of Christianity? |