of these statements are abundant in the first three centuries. They were also early collected into a distinct volume; commentaries were written on them, and harmonies formed from them, before the year 200. They were publicly read in christian assemblies. They were received by the various sects of ancient christians, and appealed to in their controversies, on both sides. The four Gospels, the Acts, thirteen Epistles of Paul, the first of John, and the first of Peter, were never doubted, apparently, by any of the early christians. The enemies of christianity, as Celsus in the second century, and Porphyry in the third, and afterwards the Emperor Julian in the fourth, attacked the historical Scriptures, as being, to the christians, the record of their faith, and thus bore testimony to their existence, and the esteem in which they were held. To all these statements, proofs in the shape of copious extracts might be given, but our time will not admit. And these are statements which can only be proved as to the canonical scriptures.

The genuineness and authenticity of the New Testament Scriptures being established, it will follow as a matter of course that the facts and doctrines contained in them are well founded, for the writers being perfectly acquainted with the facts they relate, being either eye-witnesses, as two of them were, or companions of others who were, the conclusion is inevitable, that as it was for the miraculous story, the substance of which is given us in these books, that the labours, sufferings, and pains of the apostles were encountered, and these books are proved to be genuine, the religion they teach is true; for the books contain in substance the story which the apostles told, and for which they laboured and suffered. The religion then must be true. These men could not be deceivers. They might have avoided their sufferings if they had ceased to bear their

testimony; and as their own narrative shows they were impelled by a sense of duty to act as they did, it would be impious in any to say that they went about lying to teach truth.

3. A farther observation we would offer is, that the New Testament itself contains internal evidence of its truth. If we examine the books thus written by witnesses of the events they relate, we shall find every possible mark of truth and sincerity. For instance; in the language and style in which they are written, there is very strong evidence that they proceeded from such men as are reputed to be their authors. The style is not pure Greek, such as characterizes the classic writers, nor is it the Greek of the christien fathers. It is full, as critics have amply shown, of Hebrew and Syriac idioms, which agrees only with men who were what the writers are represented to have been. It would be difficult to forge a book like this. Then, there is such an amount of candour and simplicity in their narrative, and in many of the facts and circumstances they mention, as commends them to our regard as the most artless and unsuspicious historians. They tell many things of Christ that designing men would have omitted: as the meanness of his origin, the various accusations his enemies brought against him: as that he was a Sabbath breaker, seditious, a blasphemer, a gluttonous man and a wine bibber, a demoniac, and how at last he was most ignominiously put to death. There are no remarks thrown in by way of caution to anticipate objections; they are at no pains to think whether they will appear credible or not. If the reader will not believe their testimony, there is no help for it; they tell the truth and nothing else. Then, as to themselves, they are at no pains to conceal their own errors. Their low birth, their cowardice, their ambition, their unbelief, and foolish contentions. They seem to tell their tale with the artlessness

of a child, or under a solemn conviction that nothing was to be disguised or concealed. Accordingly we find that in Mark's Gospel, written as we have seen from Peter's discourses, the most severe account is given of his cowardly and wicked conduct in denying his master. It is remarkable, too, that in the simple narrative, they have all described the same character. The spirit, temper, and bearing of Jesus in the Gospel of John, is the same as in the other Gospels, and apparently without design they have all pourtrayed a person whose virtues attract universal admiration, even from infidels, and against whom not a single exception can be justly advanced. Their narrative of the life, miracles, and resurrection of Christ is given with the utmost circumstantiality. The place where his miracles were performed, the time when, and the multitudes who were witnesses. Sometimes, as in the case of feeding the multitudes, thousands were the recipients of his miraculous bounty. At others, the names of persons who have felt his healing power are given. The lame walk, the blind see, the deaf hear, the dead live. This is not the course of deceivers. The Jews, if these accounts had not been true, could easily have disproved them; but they never questioned them, neither did the subsequent enemies of christianity they imputed them to Satanic power, or to magic. The same is true as to the resurrection. Matthew, who wrote for the Jews, told how the Jews attempted to account for the absence of the body. The Jews could easily have produced the body, or refuted Matthew's account, if Christ had not risen; as it was impossible that a few women, or even all the apostles, could overcome the Roman guards, roll away the stone, and take him away. The apostles had the fullest evidence of his resurrection, and bore their testimony to the rulers themselves. There are also, in these books, many allu

sions to existing customs, and contemporaneous events. Paley mentions forty-one of these particulars which he extracted from the laboured work of Lardner, showing that the references to dates, persons, kings, authorities, and events, which are incidentally made, were exactly consonant to the events, &c., of Jewish and Roman history, and that they are such as would be likely to exist only in a real history, and one written by contemporaries. These are too long to extract, and too unmanageable to condense. I must, therefore, refer you to the book itself. There are also, between the historical and epistolary parts of the New Testament, a great number of undesigned coincidences. and such as indicate the truth and reality of both the history and the epistles. An examination of them will prove that neither the history was forged to square with the letters, nor the letters to accord with the history; that they are so little seen by common observers, that it is impossible to suppose them the effect of forgery; that they are too numerous and close to be accounted for by the accidental, or by the designed concurrences of fiction, or in any other way than by the uniform tendency of truth to one point. In these epistles, too, there is repeated mention of miraculous gifts, which the writer, St. Paul, is said to have conferred on individuals to whom he wrote, as Timothy; and to these gifts as being enjoyed by members of some churches, as that at Corinth. Such a fact bears strong marks of reality. No writer, knowing these things to be false, would ever have so addressed either Timothy or the Corinthians; and the fact of their being so addressed, and therefore having the gifts, is a divine proof of the truth of the christian religion. Again, if we consider the evidences of deep piety, of love to truth, and admiration of all that is just and lovely that is manifest in every page, and compare these

things with the sufferings and patience of those who were the writers of these books, we shall feel that there is strong evidence that they who inculcated an abhorrence of lying were not guilty of it, but that as they urged all to act and speak as in the sight of God who searcheth the heart, they were themselves sincere in all their communications. And lastly, with all the evidence of fairness, candor, particularity, and integrity that these books furnish of their authors, there is nothing that indicates mere credulity. In the conduct of Thomas, and in that of all the apostles at the resurrection, the contrary is evinced. Nor have we any reason to imagine that Saul of Tarsus was predisposed to be imposed on by christianity, or to submit to it if it was not real, but the contrary. Taking then these books themselves, almost apart from other evidence, we are warranted in saying we have a very strong moral demonstration of the truth and divine origin of the christian religion.

4. A fourth observation we would advance, is, that the prophecies as contained in the Old Testament, and fulfilled in the New, and the general harmony which subsists between all the parts of Revelation, both in the Old and New Testaments, constitute a strong proof of the truth of christianity. The Bible is its own witness, and the predictions scattered through it prove its divine origin. The fact of the Old Testament being in the hands of the Jews, who are, for the far greater part, still the enemies of christianity, and that that nation religiously regards the Old Testament as a divine book, presents it to us as an unsuspected document. The foreknowledge of future contingent events is a peculiar attribute of Deity, and the plain and complete correspondence of events to the standing records of the ancient prophecies, obvious and conspicuous to all who will be at the pains to compare them, and applying accurately to the nicest

shades of the specified circumstances, suggests most forcibly the conviction, that the predictions came from God, and were declared to man for the wisest, and most beneficent purposes. This, then, is a kind of evidence which may be known, read, and appreciated by all men; and this is the kind of evidence with which every part of scripture, from the Pentateuch to the Apocalypse, abounds. The prophecies relating to the Ishmaelites, Nineveh, Babylon, Tyre, Egypt, the great empires, the destruction of Jerusalem, have been fulfilled to the very letter. But the weight of this kind of evidence accumulates prodigiously, when it is drawn from those prophecies which relate to the Messiah. Had only a single prophet left a book of predictions, specifying the time and manner of his coming, and he had come agreeably to those predictions, it would seem almost impossible to evade the conclusion deducible from it. But here is a series of prophets, for thousands of years, who succeed each other, and foretel the same event and the benefit it will produce: nay, more than this, a whole nation constitutes his harbingers; they subsist distinct from the rest of the world more than three thousand years, to testify in a body the assurances they entertain respecting him and when he arrives they disbelieve him, become reluctant witnesses of the truth of the prophecies they have preserved, but willing instruments in killing the Prince of Life,' and thus in accomplishing those predictions which, though they understood but in part, they constantly hoped to see realized until their hopes were about to be fulfilled.

:

It is worthy of remark, that our Lord, when he was upon earth, referred the Jews, his enemies and afterwards his murderers, to their own sacred books to learn who he was and what was his office: and that after his ascension, his disciples pointed to the prophecies read in synagogues, shewing that Jesus was Christ.'