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unless, indeed, the evidence on which it rests be of a nature not to be called in question; and hence the Bible, more than any other literary performance with which we are acquainted, has been the subject of minute examination and keen controversy. In every age daring spirits have arisen to question the justice of its title to the character which it assumes, while hosts of champions have at no period been wanting to meet the objections of the infidel, under whatever guise brought forward. It cannot be expected that, in a work like the present, we should enter much at large into the matter of these disputes; but it appears essential to the plan of every History of the Bible, that some, at least, of the many reasons extant should be given why the sacred records are to be received as authentic.

No person who believes that God exists, and that he is a being of infinite power, wisdom, and knowledge, can reasonably deny that he may, if he think proper, make a direct and extraordinary revelation of himself and of his will to men, instead of leaving them, in matters so important, to the less certain guidance of their own rational faculties. God's power being almighty, it must extend to whatever does not imply a self-contradiction; and as there is no self-contradiction here to the possibility of such a revelation, no rational objection can be offered. In like manner, it appears the height of absurdity to affirm, that God, when communicating this revelation, does not possess the means of convincing those to whom it is granted, that they have been subject to no delusion: such advantages men every where enjoy when conversing, or otherwise negotiating the one with the other-it were strange to deny to the great Author of the universe a degree of power which is continually exercised by his creatures.

Again, there are a variety of circumstances connected with the annals of our race, in themselves neither unimportant nor easily overlooked, which

lead to the conclusion not only that some such reve. lation is possible, but that its actual occurrence is in the highest degree probable.

If any credit be due to the general sense of mankind, we shall scarcely find an individual in any age who, believing in the existence of a God or gods, did not also believe that some direct commerce subsisted between God and man. Hence it is that all popular religions, the most abominable as well as the most pure, have been said by their votaries to have been derived from the gods; and hence, also, the care with which the most eminent legislators of antiquity sought to impress the minds of the people with a persuasion that they held with their deities an intimate communication. Zoroaster, Minos, Pythagoras, Lycurgus, Numa, &c. &c., all thought it necessary to lay claim to immediate inspiration, and their claims were not disputed, because the persons to whom they addressed themselves felt that they stood in need of supernatural illumination, and fondly believed that their gods were willing to grant it. But it is not from a bare contemplation of the conduct of the illiterate among mankind, that we arrive at the conclusion which has just been drawn. It seems perfectly inconsistent with the tenor of God's dealings with the inferior animals, that he should place them at once in the highest state to which they are capable of attaining, yet leave man without the means of acquiring that knowledge in which his chief happiness centres; for that man is incapable by any exertion of his reasoning faculties, to discover such a religious system as shall satisfy his wants, or reconcile him to his destiny, we have the testimony of all experience for asserting. Let any man turn to the writings of the wisest and best of the heathen philosophers, and he will find there proofs innumerable that the statement which we have hazarded has not been rashly advanced, while a consideration of those gross and debasing fictions with which the vulgar VOL I.-B

were deluded and deceived, will not, we presume, have a tendency to shake our argument.

The possibility, and even the probability, of an event does not, however, furnish grounds for arbitrarily assuming that the event in question has actually occurred. To authorize such an assumption, it must be farther shown, that the event is in itself necessary for the attainment of some end, concerning which no doubts are entertained; and hence it becomes incumbent upon us to prove, that the great design of God in creating man could not be fully accomplished without an immediate revelation of himself and of his will to his creatures.

Those who maintain that a revelation is not necessary to man, yet allow that man cannot attain to his highest state of perfection without a knowledge of God and of religion, rest their argument upon one or other of two grounds. They assert either that man is naturally endowed with an innate sense of Deity, which leads him to worship and obey his Maker; or that human reason is, of itself, and unassisted by a higher power, capable of discovering the great and fundamental truths of all religion.

We, on the other hand, absolutely deny both propositions; and it remains that we demonstrate their fallacy.

To overthrow the notion of an innate sense of religion, it is sufficient to observe, that instincts, where they exist, are never erroneous, nor lead such as obey them into absurdities. Instinct directs all animals to eat when they are hungry, and to drink when they are thirsty*-never to drink when they are hungry, or eat when they are thirsty; indeed, instinct, as far as it goes, is undeniably the most certain guide to which creatures endowed with vitality and sensation are subject. It is a well established

* There is this difference between appetite and instinct, that whereas appetite advises animals of their wants, instinct, and instinct alone directs them how to satisfy those wants.

fact, moreover, that the more rude and uncultivated the condition of man is, the more just and accurate are all his instincts, which are never thwarted nor overborne, except in a highly civilized and unnatural state of society.

Let us see now in what manner this innate sense of religion has operated among mankind. Have the most correct notions of God and religion been uniformly entertained by savages, and has civilization tended to corrupt and debase them? The very reverse is the fact. The more barbarous men appear, the more unworthy are all their ideas of the Great First Cause; nay, there are whole tribes in whose language no term is to be found expressive of the Creator and Governor of the universe.

All this, as we need not point out, is directly at variance with the one and immutable law by which instincts are governed; and hence the theory that man is instinctively a religious being, falls to the ground.

As little reason is there for supposing that man, if left to himself, from the first hour of his creation, could have arrived at any satisfactory knowledge of the existence, power, and moral attributes of God. Let the condition of man, as he came from the hands of his Maker, be duly considered. Is it conceivable, that a solitary pair of creatures, or several pairs of creatures, called suddenly into existence, without a single notion or idea engraved on their minds, would ever think, however fruitful their world might be, of instituting one inquiry as to its origin; or, if they did institute such inquiry, would they be capable, short and simple as the process appears, to conduct it to an issue? No man, who has paid due attention to the means by which all our ideas of external objects are introduced into our minds, through the medium of the senses, or to the still more refined process by which, reflecting on what passes in our minds themselves, when we combine or analyze these

ideas, we acquire all our knowledge of intellectual objects, will pretend that they would.

The efforts of intellect necessary to discover an unknown truth are so much greater than those which may be sufficient to comprehend that truth, and feel the force of the evidence on which it rests, when fairly stated, that for one man whose intellectual powers are adequate to the former operation, ten thousand are equal to the latter. Those, therefore, who attribute our knowledge of religion to the efforts of human reason, are driven to the conclusion, that at first, and during many succeeding generations, mankind were ignorant of that science; but that, in proportion as they emerged from a state of absolute and deplorable barbarity, so they attained to a belief in the existence of God or gods, and became religious. In other words, it is held that there is in human nature an innate tendency to perfection, which has slowly, but surely, advanced the race from a savage to a refined state, and that this tendency has operated not more powerfully with reference to their outward habits, than in regulating their mental or inward speculations.

We have already shown, that to treat man thus; to leave him, even for several generations, without a competent guide to direct him in a matter so important as religion, is diametrically opposed to the whole process of God's dealings with his other animated creatures.

They, as well the fowls of the air as the beasts of the field, have, from the beginning, been supplied with faculties which conduct them steadily, and without any instruction, to the utmost perfection of which their several natures seem to be capable; and they accordingly continue, as species, the same at this moment as they were when preserved with Noah in the ark, thousands of years ago. How different has been the state of man during the same extended period! Many nations which, soon after the Deluge,

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