Its Rejection by the Jews, &c. .... Nature of the Christian Religion........................................ 40 40 EVIDENCE OF PROPHECY. INTRODUCTION. No subject can be of greater importance, either to the unbeliever or to the Christian, than an investigation of the evidence of Christianity. The former, if his mind be not fettered by the strongest prejudice, and if he be actuated in the least by a spirit of free and fair inquiry, cannot disavow his obligation to examine its claims to a divine origin. He cannot rest secure in his unbelief, to the satisfaction of his own mind, without manifest danger of the most fatal error, till he has impartially weighed all the reasons that may be urged on its behalf. The proof of a negative is acknowledged and felt to be difficult; and it can never, in any case, be attained till all direct and positive evidence to the contrary be completely destroyed. And this, at least, must be done before it can be proved that Christianity is not true. Without this careful and candid examination, all gratuitous assumptions and fanciful speculations, all hypothetical reasonings or analogical inferences, that seem to militate against the truth of religion, may be totally erroneous; and though they may tend to excite a transient doubt, they cannot justify a settled unbelief. Being exclusively regarded, or being united to a misapprehension of the real nature of the Christian religion, the understanding may embrace them as convincing; but such conviction is neither rational nor consistent-it is only a misapplication of the name of freethinking. For, as Christianity appeals to reason and submits its credentials -as it courts and commands the most trying scrutiny that scrutiny the unbeliever is bound, upon his own prin ciples, to engage in. If he be fearless of wavering in his unbelief, he will not shrink from the inquiry; or, if truth be his object, he will not resist the only means of its attainment-that he may either disprove what he could only doubt of before, or yield to the conviction of positive evidence and undoubted truth. This unhesitating challenge religion gives; and that man is neither a champion of infidelity, nor a lover of wisdom or of truth, who will disown or decline it. To the believer such a subject is equally important and interesting. The apathy of nominal Christians, in the present day, is often contrasted with the zeal of those who first became obedient to the faith. The moral influence of the Christian religion is not what it has been, or what it ought to be. The difference in the character of its professors may be greatly attributed to a fainter impression and less confident assurance of its truth. Those early converts who witnessed the miracles of our Lord and of his apostles, and heard their divine doctrine, and they who received the immediate tradition of those who both saw and heard them, and who could themselves compare the moral darkness from which they had emerged with the marvellous light of the gospel, founded their faith upon evidence; possessed the firmest conviction of the truth; were distinguished by their virtues as well as by their profession, according to the testimony even of their enemies ;* cherished the consolations, and were inspired by the hopes of religion; and lived and died, actuated by the hope of immortality and the certainty of a future state. The contrast, unhappily, needs no elucidation. The lives of professing Christians, in general, cease to add a confirmation to the truth of Christianity, when they have often been the plea of infidels against it. Yet religion and human nature are still the same as they were when men were first called Christians, and when the believers in Jesus dishonoured not his name. But they sought more than a passive and unexamining belief. They knew in whom they believed; they felt the power of every truth which they professed. And the same cause, in active operation, would be productive of the same effects. The same strong and unwavering faith established on reason and conscious con *Plinii Epis. 1. 10, ep. 97. viction, would be creative of the same peace and joy in believing, and of all their accompanying fruits. And, as a means of destroying the distinction, wherever it exists, between the profession and the reality of faith, it is ever the prescribed duty of all who profess to believe in the gospel to search and to try-"to prove all things, and hold fast to that which is good;" and to "be able to give an answer to every one that asketh them a reason of the hope that is in them." To the sincere Christian it must ever be an object of the highest interest to search into the reason of his hope. The farther that he searches, the firmer will be his belief. Knowledge is the fruit of mental labourthe food and the feast of the mind. In the pursuit of knowledge, the greater the excellence of the subject of inquiry, the deeper ought to be the interest, the more ardent the investigation, and the dearer to the mind the acquisition of the truth. And that knowledge which immediately affects the soul, which tends to exalt the moral nature and enlarge the religious capacities of man, which pertains to eternity, which leads not merely to the contemplation of the works of the great Architect of the universe, but seeks also to discover an accredited revelation of his will and a way to his favour-and which rests not in its progress till it find assurance of faith or complete conviction, a witness without, as well as a witness within, is surely "like unto a treasure which a man found hid in a field, and sold all that he had and bought it." And it is delightful to have every doubt removed by the positive proof of the truth of Christianity -to feel that conviction of its certainty, which infidelity can never impart to her votaries, and to receive that assurance of the faith, which is as superior in the hope which it communicates, as in the certainty on which it rests, to the cheerless and disquieting doubts of the unbelieving mind. Instead of being a mere prejudice of education, which may be easily shaken, belief, thus founded on reason, becomes fixed and immoveable; and all the scoffings of the scorner, and speculations of the infidel, lie as lightly on the mind, or pass as imperceptibly over it, and make as little impression there as the spray upon a rock. In premising a few remarks, introductory to a Sketch of the Prophecies, little can be said on the general and comprehensive evidence of Christianity. The selection |