dubitably true; and if the truth and authority of the doctrine be admitted, the mystery connected with it cannot be rejected.

18. Finally, The mysteries of revelation are proved to be of divine origin by their influence and tendency. That which invariably tends to the melioration of human character, and to the production of all the fruits of righteousness, must be of heavenly origin. The peculiar doctrines of Christianity, or those principles of revelation which are mysterious, are found to have a mighty influence in increasing the virtue and happiness of mankind. Those by whom they are truly received regard the atonement, for example, as a remedy that is ample as the malady of their moral nature, and which, in their saddest hours, brings to their hearts its healing and its tranquillizing balm. It surprises them not that the facts connected with the incarnation of the Son of God should surpass their full comprehension, and that He only, whose habitation is eternity, can see all their bearings, and calculate with unerring certainty all their vast and distant results. It is enough for them that they can trace their connexion with the process of their recovery from sin and error; and that they experience their operation as incentives to holiness, urging them onwards to higher and still higher degrees of virtue, with a persuasiveness and an energy all their own. Others may reject the mysteries of the Bible because they are beyond their comprehension; but while they derive from them a power that enables them to encounter and overcome evil,-a power that gives them strength in infirmities, and that supports them in afflictions, in necessities, and distresses, have they not reason for adhering to them as the truths of God, and as worthy of all acceptation?

19. When we are satisfied, then, that a book which claims to be revelation from God was written by men who spoke and who acted under the divine authority, we are warranted by the justest principles of reasoning to give

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an unhesitating credit to its most mysterious declarations; for though we cannot comprehend the doctrines themselves in all their bearings, we can fully understand the nature of the evidence on which they are founded. We are not

at liberty to open the record with the determination to bring down its lofty themes to the level of a preconceived theory, or even to the comprehension of reason. When we think, or when we act as if we thought, that we are qualified to decide what are the truths which it is fit for God to reveal, and what it is worthy of human reason to receive, we invest our fallible judgment with an authority to which it is totally inadequate, and for the exercise of which it never was designed. In assuming this prerogative, we act as if the range of our knowledge were infinite, as if we were capable of judging as to the nature and degree of that illumination which the Almighty may be pleased to communicate; as if we perfectly understood all the maladies of our moral nature, and could ascertain the means proper for remedies.

20. Human reason occupies precisely the same office in unfolding the volume of revelation which it holds in interpreting the volume of nature. It is an elementary principle in true philosophy, that man is only the minister and interpreter of nature, and that he neither knows nor can know any thing of her laws or operations but by observation and experiment. The application of this principle to science has been the means of bringing to light the most hidden truths, and has inspired with a confidence in the pursuit of knowledge, and in the order and regularity of the appearances of nature, which has greatly augmented the intellectual power of man. The same obvious and legitimate mode of investigation must be employed in examining a book which claims to be a revelation from God. As the only object of the philosopher is the discovery of truth without pretending to understand, in every case, all the bearings of that truth; in other words, as his design is simply to ascertain what is

true, and not to infer the truth of a fact from its susceptibility of being fully understood by the human mind; so, the first question for our consideration is, Whether the book be of divine origin? and when this question is solved to our satisfaction, by a careful review of the different evidences by which its claims are supported, our duty then is not to judge of what portion we ought to receive on account of its being level to our comprehension, but humbly to receive the whole as given by inspiration of God, and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. The notion of a revelation from heaven presupposes ignorance and imperfection in those to whom it is given, and that they are therefore bound to lay aside all vain confidence in their own wisdom, and to look with humility to the Father of Lights for guidance and direction.

21. We readily perceive the folly of a man who would receive only so much of philosophical truth as is perfectly obvious to his understanding, because we are aware, that in the compass of science there is not a single truth for which we can fully account, and all of whose bearings we can fully explain. We can discover the fact,—we can give demonstration for its existence,—we can connect it, in the place which we assign to it in the system of knowledge, with another fact or phenomenon with which it is conjoined, and we may call this proof of its reality, and of the place which it occupies in the order of natural appearances, an explanation,—but the efficient cause of its production is unknown to us, and lies entirely beyond the comprehension of the human understanding. Hence it is, that during the two last centuries, philosophy has not pretended to give more than the laws which regulate the order and succession of the phenomena of nature; and that in conformity to this unassuming pretension, we are said to explain a phenomenon when we show it to be necessarily included in some phenomenon or fact already known, or supposed to be known; and we consider

one phenomenon the cause of another when we conceive the existence of the latter to depend on some force or power residing in the former."

22. This is the mode of thinking and of reasoning that we are to bring to the investigation of religious truth. As we are satisfied of the truth of all that the volume of nature offers for our instruction, and feel it to be our duty to collect and treasure up her information, without mingling it with the caprices of human fancy, so, if we believe, and are warranted by the strength of evidence in believing, in the divine authority of a book which claims to be a revelation from God, we have only to ascertain, with prayer for heavenly teaching, what are its contents, without either adding to them or taking from them. We are nearly as unqualified for the task of judging of the fitness or unfitness of the doctrines which infinite wisdom should reveal, as the philosopher is to ascertain, a priori, the laws by which the natural world should be governed. Nor are we required to understand theoretically all that a revelation may contain; for a doctrine may have the most important practical uses, while its full comprehension may be reserved for a more perfect state of being: in other words, a doctrine may answer all the ends to be subserved by its forming a part of a revelation from God, though it should continue to be in relation to our understandings a great mystery.

BOOK II.

CONSIDERATIONS PRELIMINARY TO A REVIEW OF THE

EVIDENCES OF DIVINE REVELATION.

CHAPTER I.

ON THE USE OF REASON IN RELIGION.

1. As the reason or understanding of man must judge of the evidences offered in support of divine revelation, and determine as to their sufficiency to authenticate such revelation, it is proper that we should consider what is the legitimate use of reason in religion.

That it is the duty of man to exercise this characteristic faculty of his nature in distinguishing truth from error, in judging what is right, in examining the evidences of revelation, and in interpreting its meaning, is unquestionable. The appeal made by revelation is to the reason of man, not only in regard to the proofs of its divine authority, but to the nature of its contents. The circumstance of its containing some things hard to be understood, forms no valid objection to its credibility, inasmuch as such things are to be found in every department of the works of God. The case, however, would be different, if a book claiming to be a revelation from God contained doctrines altogether repugnant to, and irreconcilable with, right reason we could not admit the validity of its claims; on the contrary, it would be our duty to reject them as without foundation.