ther it be in wisdom or folly, in force or feebleness. There are internal credentials not less convincing, and perhaps more impressive, than any that are external. When a book is the offspring of true genius, it attests the fact by the spell which it casts upon our hearts. So if its source be divine, it must bear on every page traces of His hand, who is the Head over all things to the Church.

We are not without intuitive notions and spontaneous tendencies which lead us, independently of revelation or formal teaching of any kind, towards the idea of an intelligent First Cause, and which enable us to discern in nature, and in our own souls, traces of his infinite perfections. Hence we have pre-existent ideas and great first principles, which prepare and predispose us to welcome a book claiming to be from God; and which enables us to try its claims by outward and by inward criteria.

No conception of God meets the real, though ever so much suppressed, wants and cravings of the human mind, but that which represents Him as infinitely good and infinitely holy. Hence when alleged miracles come before us, to authenticate the commission of one who claims to be our teacher in religion, we may at once judge whether they are from Satan or from God. A house divided against itself cannot stand; and we therefore conclude, that if the miracle be wrought or the prophecy uttered and fulfilled, to recommend and enjoin high moral duties which commend themselves to every conscience not wholly seared or besotted, or if they are employed as harbingers to introduce one whose doctrine is worthy of God's eternal power and majesty,-then in such case the miracle

and the accompanying instruction are to be owned, not as diabolical, but as divine.

So when we separate from Scripture its record of miracles and prophecies, and confine our attention to the simple matter taught or to the manner of teaching, both, if the book were really given by inspiration of God, must stand, in some sense, self-authenticated. In such a book, we anticipate that its style and structure, its principles and revelations, shall be at once natural and supernatural-natural, so far as to violate no deep-rooted and healthy sentiment of our minds, to misrepresent no well-established truth or law; and yet supernatural, because recording facts, and inducing impressions, and unfolding plans which no human intelligence could give birth to. On comparison with all other books, ancient or modern, the Bible, if divine, should vindicate its transcendent power and greatness, and should compel from all gifted souls, not perverted by pride or darkened by sinful passions, the admission that the Spirit that designed and the power that achieved it, could have sprung from no earthly or human source. And is not such its character? Is not that book a phenomenon, which can find adequate explanation, only in the presence and agency of God? Is it not a volume which, from title-page to colophon, seems written over and over, with a divine and heavenly signature? Look at its human authors,-herdsmen and shepherds, fishermen and publicans, men who wrote without even ordinary art or learning, and often in the rudest style; and yet, where among the great poets and philosophers of antiquity, those masters of language and models of taste, find we such burning words, such expanding

and soul-enrapturing conceptions? Or, to place the comparison on other grounds, range side by side the writings of the Apostles in the New Testament and those which have come down to us as works of Apostolic Fathers, contemporaries and companions of those Apostles; and who does not feel that the one repose upon a serene height, from which, to reach the other, there is a descent as great as it is sudden and abrupt? Minds of the most opposite tempers and tastes have found themselves constrained to confess, that when thoughtfully perused for a few hours, there is in this Book of books a spell which attests its origin to be unearthly. "Read to me," said the dying poet, the mighty Wizard of the North, who for more than a quarter of a century had held the reading world of both hemispheres in rapt delight with the offspring of his teeming brain. "Read to me." "In what book?” was the question. "Can you ask? there is but ONE," and he bade him open the Gospel of St. John. Says Calvin, a mind how different in type,-addressing scoffers and unbelievers, "John, thundering from his sublimity, more powerfully than any thunderbolt, levels to the dust the obstinacy of those whom he does not compel to the obedience of faith. Let all those censorious critics, whose supreme pleasure consists in banishing all reverence for the Scripture out of their own hearts and the hearts of others, come forth to public view. Let them read the Gospel of John; whether they wish it or not, they will there find numerous passages, which will at least arouse their indolence; and which will even imprint a horrible brand on their consciences to restrain their ridicule."*

* Institutes, Lib. I. c. 8, sec. 11.

There is one characteristic of Scripture, that deserves an ampler development than has yet been given to it. I refer to the intrinsic, and even monstrous, improbability of many of the facts recorded, and many of the predictions made, if we are to explain them on principles merely natural; and the absurdity, therefore, of supposing that those who wrote of their own mere motion, could have invented them, or would have asked for them the faith and affections of mankind. On the other hand, try these alleged facts and predictions by a divine and supernatural standard, and they become not only conceivable but probable. "It is impossible, and therefore true," said Tertullian,* speaking of the resurrection of Christ, i. e., impossible to any power but that of God, and therefore impossible that men not idiots, who wrote from the dictates of mere reason, and for purposes of imposture, could have invented that which was so essentially incredible. This principle admits of extension to a large portion of the sacred narrative, and in connection with the moral and doctrinal test, which I have noticed already, constitutes one of the strongest guarantees for its fidelity to truth. Events and sayings, the most strange to our natural ears, are recorded without one word of comment, and with perfect simplicity. Even when they involve that which is most discreditable to the writers themselves, or to the nation of which they are a bigoted and enthusiastic part, they are still set down without any attempt at extenuation; and in the case of the Old Testament, these records when once made, though throughout their whole extent they compro

* De Carne Christi, cont. Marc.

mise that nation grievously, are yet preserved, and guarded, and cherished by them with a care almost fanatical. Here, then, is a branch of Christian evidences most worthy of our study at this time, when the external or historical proofs are assailed alike by the advocates of authority, and the votaries of a licentious freedom; but it can be duly studied only by him who reads the Bible with all care and diligence for himself.

If we look at Scripture, again, as a THREEFOLD REVELATION. First, of God to man; Second, of man to himself; and Third, of nature in its relation to both-we shall meet other and more striking proof of its Divine origin.

Consider Holy Scripture, then, as a Revelation of God to man. When the learned Grotius would lay a secure foundation for the Law of Nations, in that great work of his, which may be said to have created a new science, he began by gathering from the sages and poets, the historians and orators, the lawgivers and moralists of ancient and modern times, a consensus of passages, which recognize certain first principles of moral obligation, certain fundamental and sacred duties as binding everywhere and in all ages, and which are to be accepted therefore as the universal dictate of reason and conscience. He thus demonstrates, that deep in human nature itself has been planted one great law, which is obligatory not only upon individuals, but upon nations regarded as moral persons, and which can never be rightfully superseded by custom or by positive institutions-a law before which, power in all its might and majesty is bound to bow, and under the shelter of which, weakness