be produced, in which a believer in Revelation was terrified or dismayed because he had been a Christian. Many have been distressed on account of the defective evidence of their Christianity, but none on account of their being Christians. Does it never occur to you, that if Christianity be true, you are undone?-that if it be false, he who believes it can suffer no injury?* Who, let me ask you, are your companions? What are your pursuits? and what your hopes? I deeply feel for you, while I greatly blame you. You may have been inadequately instructed,-you may have seen bad examples, you may have witnessed great inconsistencies in some of the professors of religion. Granting, however, that all this may have been the case, still the interests of the soul are a per

"Indisputably," said Lord Byron, in a letter sent by him to the late Mrs. Sheppard, "the firm believers in the Gospel have a great advantage over all others, for this simple reason that if true, they will have their reward hereafter; and if there be no hereafter, they can be but with the infidel in his eternal sleep, having had the assistance of an exalted hope through life, without subsequent disappointment, since (at the worst, for them)' out of nothing, nothing can arise,'-not even sorrow."

sonal concern.

No man can stand in your place

when you die. I beseech you, then, to arouse yourself from that lethargy into which sin and unbelief, acting and reacting, have conjointly sunk you.

Ask yourself this question, "What makes me a sceptic? Is it because I have examined for myself, and know the Gospel to be a fable? or is it because I desire that it may be one?" And why should you desire this? If Christianity does not meet your case, no other system can. Infidelity has not met your case; it has not awakened hope; it has not allayed despair; it has not ministered peace. No: it has only stupified a conscience which must yet awake; it has only taught you to put the evil day far away; it has only blinded you for a time to the dread prospects of a future and impending eternity.

Why, I ask again, should you wish that Christianity may not be true? Is it because you feel yourself guilty, and shrink from the condemnation which it threatens ? Well might you thus shrink if it did not reveal a remedy, as well as disclose a disease and point out its

consequences.

You are guilty-yea, ten thou

sand times more guilty than you ever imagined yourself to be; but what I maintain is, that if you turn away the eye of faith from that great sacrifice which Christianity reveals, you must sink for ever beneath the pressure of your guilt, and with this superadded horror, that you perished at the threshold of mercy.

Is it because you do not love the pure and holy demands of Christianity, that you turn away from it? Well; but is not this, its pure character, the proof of its celestial origin? and if so, will it avail you to reject it? Will the holy life it requires be less obligatory because you determine not to pursue it? Will the great Judge excuse you at last because you loved your sins more than his revealed will?

Is it

Here

Besides, what is to root out unholy inclinations, to correct depraved habits, to superinduce devotion, and to raise the soul to God? not divine meditation on the blessed word? is that consecrated fountain which, by the of God, shall quench your thirst of sin. Here you may read of "the new heart" till you

grace

know, by experience, what it is. Here is a divine Deliverer, whose "name is called Jesus, because he saves his people from their sins."* Here is a divine Sanctifier, who can "create within you a clean heart, and renew within you a right spirit."t-One word more, and I have done. Ask God to teach you. Ask him, if the Bible be from him, to enable you to come to the belief of it. Ask him to remove your blindness, to allay your prejudices, and, above all, to prevent any sinful habit from giving a bias to your dicision. Make no delay in this work. If you die a stranger to the hopes of Christianity, it had been better for you that you had never been born!

* Matt. i. 21.

† Psalm li. 10.

PART SECOND.

THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE OF

CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER I.

THE COMPARATIVE CREDIT DUE TO THE CONCLUSIONS

OF SCEPTICS AND CHRISTIANS.

"For we have not believed cunningly devised fables."*

SUCH, at least, is the Christian's estimate of the stability of his own hopes; and such is the settled conviction of every sincere friend of revealed truth. When the moral character and habits of those who profess their belief in Christianity is taken into account, there can be no hesitation in admitting that they are strictly honest in the avowal of their faith, and that they do not affect to repose on the truth of a

* 2 Pet. i. 16.

F