many less than downright blasphemy. But Profane swearing, like most other vices, seldom fails to proceed from bad to worse. He who begins with minced oaths, has reason to fear that he may go on to blasphemy or perjury. There is indeed little doubt, that the lamentable prevalence of perjury is, in a great measure, to be attributed to the loss of reverence for a solemn oath, occasioned by the multitude of profane oaths which the guilty parties have been accustomed to use, and the criminality of which they have never considered. Those who indulge in profane Its language, in their common conver- (To be continued.) FOR THE CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE. A PLEA FOR THE BIBLE. (Continued from p. 346.) 5. The authenticity of the Bible is unquestionable, at the bar of sound reason. Our limits confine us here to a space unworthy of the argument. But our design being simply and affectionately to invite attention to the highest of all interests, we remark: (1.) That the Christian religion, as contained in the New Testament and sanctioned by the Old, is strikingly fitted to the state of mankind. There is a feeling of guilt connatural to man. It has originated more than half the idolatrous rites and customs of the heathen world. For this the gospel offers, in the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, an ample remedy-a balm which leaves no wound unclosed, no terror unsubdued. There is also a depravity in human nature, which has ever defied all human restraints. Like a resistless torrent that rushes over all the barriers thrown across its course, the depravity of mankind has descended from age to age, mocking every effort that man has ever devised to arrest its progress. But for this vast evil, the Bible affords a sure remedy, in the promised effusions of the Holy Spirit: and if our world exhibits a scene of misery which has widened and darkened with the progress of its population, the religion of Christ furnishes a principle that dwells in "the hidden man of the heart," and from thence puts forth an influence which deprives misery of its edge, and death himself of his sting! In addition to these peculiar virtues, the gospel possesses the unrivalled advantage of a perfect adaptation to all the gradations of human society. Far from disturbing the order of so'cial life in any essential point, it defines the duties of each relation; it commands down every disorganizing passion, and diffuses through the whole mass a pervading harmony. (2.) The external evidence for the truth of the sacred scriptures, is as complete as the nature of the case requires. The miracles of Moses and of Christ were designed as credentials of a divine mission. For that end, their fitness is seen in their admirable accordance with the character of God, merciful and just; as also in their immediate tendencies toward the benefit of man. This last quality marks every miracle recorded of the Son of God. All were directed either to the spiritual advantage, the mental comfort, or the bodily relief of human beings. Not one is beneath the sacredness of character ever sustained by their Author. Those miracles were recorded by eye witnesses, whose testimony has been preserved and corroborated by an unbroken chain of other competent testimony, to the present hour. Prophecy is a species of proof which grows stronger with the lapse of ages. It challenges investigation. It presents its records to mankind along with the pages of history, up: braids their thoughtlessness, and condemns their unbelief, while it fain would win them to conviction. The truth of this Divine Volume is witnessed also, by existing monuments of the facts recorded as the basis of its claims. The Christian church could not so long have existed, on a foundation of fable and fiction. Baptism, and the Supper of the Lord, both testify the verity of the gospel history, as clearly as the London monument points to the calamity which it was erected to commemorate; and that people whose history the Bible traces up to their first Patriarch, a space of almost four thousand years, still exist as a people, distinguished from all other nations by the very peculiari ties described and predicted in both Testaments. They are found in all the four quarters of the globe, yet have no political power in any one region. They bear with them through all their dispersions, both the scriptures which condemn their unbelief, and the prejudices which hold them in spiritual blindness. A process of extermination,the most terrible ever tried upon any considerable nation, has been tried on them, by the most potent empires of the world. Still they live and increase, and they still are Jews, in spite of all the efforts which have been employed to amalgamate them with other nations. (5.) View the aspect of society wherever, and as far as, the religion of Christ prevails in its simplicity and power. In proportion to its prevalence, you will infallibly find whatsoever things are true, and honest, and just, and pure, and lovely, and of good report. In the same degree, those vices which arise from corrupt appetites and passions, and which lead with fatal certainty to misery and degradation, are unknown. There the virtues, the arts, the sciences, that bless and adorn life, spring up and flourish. Man attains, without the aid of ambition, the maximum of earthly happiness; while every blessing is heightened, and every sorrow mitigated, by the cheering prospect of eternity. (4.) There is a fact which involves both the truth and divinity of the Bible-a fact which is the more important, as it combines all the force of external, with that of experimental evidence. No instance can be given, in which a real believer in Jesus Christ denied the faith in his last hours. At a period of our existence so solemn, so honest, and so awful, and in which the soul is very often found in all the vigour and clearness of entire selfpossession, then, if ever, man displays the interior of his character. While, then, the ungodly have, in many thousand instances, honestly bewailed with their dying breath, a life spent without having secured a saving interest in the Redeemer, why must the Christian alone be suspected of insincerity, when, with his dying breath, he triumphs in this Redeemer? These facts, we boldly affirm, would be not simply unaccountable, but impossible, if truth did not form the basis of the Christian's hopes. The argument hence derived, acquires additional strength from those examples of sorrow and fear sometimes exhibited by dying Christians. They never deplore their past attachment to the faith, nor their past obedience to the precepts of the gospel. Nor do they fear lest eternity should detect falsehood at the foundation of that faith. They sorrow only for the sins which have shortened their attainments in the divine life-they fear only that, in the final decision of their own case, those sins should prove their individual experience to have been spurious and unsound. 6. But a book, professedly delivered to man for the high purpose of regenerating his nature, must possess some peculiar energy equal to the greatness of the design. This property must be something distinct from those qualities which meet the admiration of the scholar, or the natural sympathies of the heart. It is certain, that neither the venerable origin of the Bible, nor its boundless scope, nor its transcendent beauties, nor its overpowering evidence, nor all these combined, are alone sufficient to work a permanent change in the moral structure of the heart. No pleasures of taste, no amusements drawn from speculation, can, in a spiritual sense," enlighten the eyes," or " rejoice the heart," much less "convert the soul." If such only were the sources of spiritual illumination, faith, and holinessthen, indeed, might the triumphs of grace be few, and the believer might weep over a world of unlettered and uncultivated souls, placed under a ban of hopeless rejection. But God has "magnified his word above all his name." His own image and superscription are impressed on the sacred page, in characters of moral energy, which nothing but experience can interpret or discern; and when discerned, it penetrates and settles in a conviction of divine truth, which no attacks of sophistry, however plausible, no temptations, however strong, can overthrow. From such conviction, common to the learned and unlearned, the wise and simple, the great change in question follows-great, indeed, in every instance, but in many, the whole is manifestly divine. Men, who had become bitter in their enmity to the whole subject of religion, have some times been prevailed on to peruse the Word they utterly disbelieved, and the experiment has been followed by a soul-transforming faith. A heart hard and sensual, has been softened and refined; an imagination unbridled and gross, has been purified; a will altogether enlisted on the side of sin has been renewed; and "the creature," in a most important sense, has been "delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children of God." Such, reader, are the reasons, by the statement of which we have hoped to secure your immediate attention to the Book of God. Let it not offend, that we have proceeded thus far upon the supposition that you have hitherto failed to give that book a perusal, as close as it demands. Turn again to the fourth topick of this essay, and reconsider what is there said. If you have neglected the Sacred Volume, weigh that argument, acknowledge this neglect as an infinite risk sustained for no possible good: then sit down to the work with a firm resolve to know, by actual experiment, its whole amount of truth, of beauty and transforming energy. Minds endued with penetration equal to yours, hearts formed with equal candour, have wandered as long as you have wandered, in paths of trackless uncertainty, and have yet been persuaded to seek, and have ultimately found, the path of peace. We shall now proceed to try the weight of a few of the principal objections that have been urged against the Holy Scriptures. 1. One thing which may have weight with some minds, is the supposition that the whole matter of Revelation is an unsettled point, and that as long as it is so, every one is at liberty to await the issue. We answer, the truth of the Bible has been long since settled; and every objection deserving refutation has been refuted. The confident air with which groundless cavils are reiterated, proves nothing but the ig norance and the malevolence which gave them birth, and which still la bour to revive them. But, admitting the case were still undecided in the minds of nine-tenths of the human race-that fact, were it real, would involve a probability of the strong. est kind, in favour of a system which was able to hold so high a ground, after 1800 years of unremitted con flict with all that is corrupt in ha man nature; and such a probability would render wholly inexcusable the levity, the indifference, or the worldliness which prevents inquiry into the subject. As, however, the state of the evidence really is, no language can utter the folly of that fatal presumption, which can venture the hazards of eternity upon & ground so frail. Were Bible truths but matters of opinion, or objects of vague speculation, then, with propriety, they might be left with those whom taste or curiosity should move to examine them. But they hold at stake the whole existence of man not of one but of all-nor yet of all collectively, but of each severally "How shall we escape, if we neglet so great salvation P 2. It is urged, that the Bible has been opposed from the first by men of great talents; while its advocates have generally been found in the humbler and plainer classes of se ciety. Both parts of this objection might be true, without effecting the slightest breach in the ramparts our faith. But if genius has assailed our religion, it cannot be denied that genius has also defended it, and that triumphantly. If Porphyry, Celsus and Julian attacked the cause of truth, did not Justin, Origen, and Apollinarius maintain the ground? If the armies of modern infidelity have been headed by chiefs of preeminent talent, bad must be the cause which fell to ruin in their hands! If no Newton, Bacon, Locke, Boyle, Johnson, Watson, Beattie, Scott, or Chalmers, had appeared, to breast the fury of the foe, the Bible, we doubt not, would still have remained unsubdued, and uninjured, on the field: For compare the loose and profligate lives of Voltaire, and his satellite Paine, and the libertinism of Hume, with the morality of their opponents: extend the comparison through all the ranks of the opposing forces, and how does the controversy stand? Just where it has stood for more than a thousand years, with this exception, that the attacks of infidelity appear more and more in their real character. They are the rage of impotence against Omnipotence, the strugglings of depravity and vice to assume a dominion over the uni verse. 3. The Bible is often reproached by its enemies as the contrivance of an artful priesthood, to serve their own interests, at the expense of the rest of mankind. This reproach is as absurd as it is malignant. It supposes a conspiracy to have been carried on, with success, for at least 3500 years! It imputes, at the same time, to these conspirators, the greatest acuteness and the utmost stupidity. To frame such a scheme, they must have infinitely surpassed all the world in talent; yet, so blind were they to their darling object as to sentence themselves, without reprieve, to a life of hardship, opposition, and toil: for such is the general lot of the Christian ministry on earth. And here let it be noted, that in those countries where a religion called Christian is employed to pamper a priesthood, and to prop the throne of a despot, the Bible is carefully kept out of sight. The real gospel of the Son of God is supplanted by a system as contrary to its nature, as darkness to the splendour of noon. We appeal to the Christianity of these United States; and with no design to sound the praise of any order of men, we ask the enemy of our religion to imitate the American clergy in self denial, self devotion and philanthropy, before he ventures to blaspheme that worthy name by which they are called. 4. Again it is given as a suspicious mark, that the doctrines of the scriptures are perpetually in the field of controversy. We admit the fact, but we deny the conclusion. The matters in controversy among real Christians, affect not the vital truths of the gospel. Divisions of this nature only prove that human judgments are fallible; that believers are not perfectly conformed to the spirit of their calling; and that the truth, as they view it in the mirror of Revelation, is the object of their fondest desires and hopes. Meanwhile the spirit of controversy contracts its sphere, just in proportion as Christians advance in vital godliness. As their hearts approach Him who is the source of all illumination, they draw nearer to one anòther. Let the objector collect the sentiments and creeds of all the contending parties in the real church of Christ, and compare them with the Holy Scriptures. He will find, amidst all their diversities of sentiment but one mind, in regard to the grounds of Christianity. In their views of the corrupt and perishing state of man, the way of access to God by a Divine Mediator, the exclusive efficacy of his obedience unto death, as the foundation of the sinner's pardon and acceptance on his believing, and the regeneration of the believer by the Holy Spiriton these, and many other cardinal points, all real Christians are of one heart and of one soul. 5. Finally-It has been too generally supposed, that the develop |