To illustrate: Suppose any one should arise amongst us in the character of a divine messenger, having some communication from heaven of transcendant importance to the human race; it would not be sufficient that he solemnly affirm his mission. He must prove it: he must show the hand and seal of Heaven attached to it. Nothing like omnipotence or divine power so naturally addresses itself to the human understanding through the senses in evidence of inspiration. He performs physical miracles: this satisfies contemporaries, and they report it to posterity. But posterity would like to see as well as to believe a miracle. Well, he is as willing that posterity, as well as his contemporaries should be blessed. He, therefore, in the presence of many witnesses, at diverse times and places, foretells some future events which should in the different ages of the world sensibly and intelligibly occur: for example, among other predictions, he foretells that the inhabitants of a certain Spanish island shall, in fifty years from this time, possess this whole continent; that their language, laws, customs, and religion shall be every where predominant; and that our children, excepting such as migrate to some distant region, shall be extirpated by them. Now, suppose this prediction be made a matter of state record, placed among the archives of the nation, and copied and translated into different languages; and finally, should this event, with all its circumstances, so strange, so unexpected, so contrary to all human probability, actually occur; I ask, would not those who then lived, see as great a miracle, having the prediction in their eye, as we who saw the same Prophet raise the dead? While, then, we his contemporaries see some miracles and believe others, our posterity believe the miracles that we see, and see the miracles that we believe. And thus the more improbable the events foretold, and the longer the interval, the stronger the assurance of the mission of him that uttered them.

Such, gentlemen, are the supernatural facts recorded in the Bible, and such their use. And when the subject is examined with the candor and the care which its infinite importance demands, it will undoubtedly appear to all, that we who live in the year of Grace 1839, have prophecies accomplishing, miracles occurring before our eyes, which were registered in the records of nations and translated into different languages thousands of years before we were born; and therefore we have as good reason to believe that Jesus is the Saviour of the world as they who witnessed his miracles in Judea.

Indeed, the Bible is the only book in the world that ever did presume to foretell the fortune of the whole human race. It has, so to speak, one great prophetic meridian line which surrounds the destinies of our globe; and when we intelligently bring up

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any particular place or epoch to that line, upon it we read its fortunes at that hour. But this requires some intelligence in that Book, and in the history of the world; it requires that both be read and understood-just as it required the Jews to walk with Jesus to the tomb of Lazarus, and to look and listen, to see and believe that miracle. It therefore behooves us to go with the Prophets, geographically and chronologically, and to listen and look that we may see and understand the miracles submitted to us. The same candor and attention that could have seen and believed a miracle then, can see and believe a miracle now.

I can illustrate by only an instance or two these remarks on the second class of miracles-those displays of supernatural intellectual power in attestation of the great proposition. I will select a single specification from each Testament. That from the Old will be found in the writings of Muses, the most ancient of historians, delivered at a time when his own people were standing around him on their way from Egypt to Canaan. In anticipation of their breaking covenant with God, the Prophet Moses states, Deut. xxviii. 46-68., certain "curses which should be upon them for a miracle and perpetual wonder." These are among the specifications:

1. A far foreign nation, swift as eagles fly, should come from the ends of the earth-a nation of a foreign, and to them a barbarcus speech-of warlike character-fierce and unrelenting to old or young-and should devour their good land with all its products-and then besiege them in all their cities.

2. The details of the sieges are then given with a minuteness that ends with a delicate lady eating her own infant secretly in the distress and straitness which should come upon them.

3. They should afterwards be reduced in number, from immense multitudes, to comparatively a very few, and driven from their own land.

4. Then they were to be scattered among all people from one end of the earth to the other, and should serve them and their gods of wood and stone.

5. And while among these nations they should have no ease, no rest for the sole of their feet; but should be seized with a trembling heart, failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind.

6. Yet they should not be absorbed by those nations; for, as saith the Lord by Jeremiah, 'they should never, while sun, moon, and stars existed, cease from being a nation before him.' Jer. xxxi. 35.

These are but a few, not a hundredth part of the clear, literal, unfigurative predictions of that miraculous people-a standing miracle, indeed, they have ever been, from the supernatural birth of Isaac to the present hour; which go to prove that Moses and

their Prophets spoke by a divine and supernatural wisdom and intelligence. Now, as they who lived in the times of the siege of Jerusalem saw the verification of so much of the prediction as pertained to that epoch, so we who now live see another portion of it literally accomplishing: we see the Jews in our own land preserved a separate and distinct people; not yet amalgamated and absorbed by any nation on earth, though dispersed through Asia, Africa, and Europe as among us, without a home, a resting place, or national institutions; yet still a people. While the Assyrians, Medo-Persians, Greeks, and Romans, who ages after the prediction was delivered tyrannized over them, and rose to the government of the world, have long since been absorbed, amalgamated, and lost in the ocean of humanity. Now that Moses wrote in Hebrew more than three thousand three hundred years ago, and was publicly and by national authority translated into Greek more than two thousand years ago, are facts as veritable and certain as that there were once Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Greeks, Romans; and that is all that is necessary to perfect this miracle. For let me ask, was it within the power of human reason or intellect to foretell, with such minuteness, with a singularity of incident unparalleled in the history of the world, the present fortunes of any people some two, three, or four thousand years ago! If this be not a display of supernatural intellectual power-a real miracle-a palpable supernatural fact, we confess ourselves incompetent judges of the attributes of any fact, ordinary or extraordinary.

Take another example:-Paul (in the 2d chapter, 2d Thess.) foretells a man of sin, with such a variety of circumstances, as wholly transcends all human prescience, as much as the removal of a mountain exceeds all human volition. Within thirty years of the crucifixion of the Messiah he describes one who should sit in the Christian church, assuming a power over all political magistrates and rulers; that this personage could not appear till an apostacy from the Apostles' doctrine should occur, and until the Roman Pagan magistracy was taken out of the way, as a hindrance to his full revelation. He also foretells the consump tion of this son of perdition, and final ruin, &c. And have we not this fact now before our eye? That apostacy came; Christian Emperors mounted the throne of the Cesars; and Christian priests made for themselves a Pontifex Maximus-a great High Priest-a Pope, who now sits in the temple of God, and who has oft assumed all the powers before described over all princes and rulers. And has not the consumption of his power commenced? and do we not see, ever since the Protestant Reformation, the waning and gradual diminution of his authority? Surely, we have this fact before our eyes at this moment. Now, that the

prediction is 1800 years old, is proved from the ancient Syriac and Latin versions, and all authentic records concerning the commencement and progress of Christianity, Jewish, Pagan, and Christian. And need I say, that nothing was or could be more unlikely to happen, thau that the alleged vicar of one then so recently crucified, should rise to a transcendancy of power eclipsing the glory of all Roman, of all Pagan magistracy—not for a moment, but for a series of ages, amounting to almost thirteen centuries!

In the extemporaneous address of an hour, gentlemen, it is not possible to set this matter forcibly and clearly before you. We rather submit to you these facts and observations as a subject of your own examination and development. To give to one of these supernatural facts the demonstration of which it is susceptible would require more time than we have now occupied on the whole premises before us. With me, I assure you, this is a transcendant subject. True religion and true morals are, like all true science, founded on homogeneous facts. Christianity is a supernatural institution for man in a preternatural condition; and it is itself, both its proposition and its proof, a super-human system. That God should have permitted his Son to die for his rebellious creatures, in open war engaged, is itself a moral miraele, and demands supernatural attestations. It is unique. proposition, the proof, and issue, are alike supernatural and transcendant.

The

In bringing this subject before you, gentlemen, I had another object: I desired to contribute my mite to the proof of another proposition not fully stated in this address-that all the discoveries in science are favorable to Christianity. The voice of nature will never contradict the voice of revelation. Nature and the Bible are both witnesses for God-they are consistent witnesses, and mutually corroborate each other. But they must be understood.

Some novices in religion are alarmed at every new discovery in science, lest it should militate against the Bible. Astronomy, geology, phrenology, have all been proscribed, like Galileo, by some untaught and unteachable ecclesiastics. We fear nothing from true science. Phrenology herself, when she takes her seat in the temple of true science, will lift up her voice for the necessity of the Bible, and of religion. She does it already by showing that man is made to worship and adore, to be both righteous and religious, just and generous; that in order to be happy, he must both know, and reverence, and delight in the true God. She proves man as he now is, to be a religious animal, and in need of a revelation from God; and leaves to reason and conscience to prefer truth to error-Christianity to idolatry-reality to fable.

That you, gentlemen, individually and collectively, may not only attain to the true science of God, but to the true enjoyment of a religion based on supernatural facts; that you may be prepared for the enjoyment of an immortal life in a new creation, is the unfeigned desire of your friend and fellow-citizen, long devoted with you to the great work of mental and moral improve.

ment.

INCIDENTS ON A TOUR TO THE SOUTH.

NO. VI.

A FEW sincere and heavenly-minded Christians which we found in Louisiana and Mississippi, with one consent lament the sudden degeneracy of all sorts of preachers who migrate from the North. Their zeal and piety either wholly evaporate, or soon become vapid and powerless. A southern sky, or soil, or society, or something it would seem, is most prostrating to the moral constitution of preachers. They seem peculiarly susceptible of a new inspiration from the spirit of southern society. Young preachers are apt to fall in love with southern ladies; whose general amiability and numerous attractions, especially when rich, soon subdue their too susceptible hearts into the delicious allegiance of the matrimonial covenant. They are usually very zealous, and often eloquent during the days of courtship and gallantry, and seem to be greatly intent on the riches and honors that are eternal. But, alas! the fine gold of their profession soon becomes dim; and having got a rich, and beautiful, and amiable wife, the preacher is soon merged in the husband; and the participations and sympathies, and cares and fears, and hopes and joys that are conjugal absorb the affections, engross the heart, and the preacher soon finds an opiate for his conscience, and a quietus for his active benevolence, in this most apposite and consolatory text-"If a man provide not for his own, especially those of his own family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an infidel." After musing a few days on this allimportant text, if he does not happen to inherit with his better half, he purchases a plantation and Negroes-becomes a planter-borrows fifty or a hundred thousand dollars, which he promises to make and pay within some four or five years; and then the days of preaching are few and far between. He is invited here, and he is invited there; but his standing excuse is, "A man must be just before he can be generous" "I do not like to be dependent on the people: I find they ere poor paymasters in things temporal. So soon as I am perfectly independent I will labor gratuitously, and do all the good in my power.' He appeases his own conscience, stifles his own benevolence, and sometimes silences the complaints of the brethren by such miserable sophistry.

Perhaps a plantation and Negroes is too serious and laborious an undertaking. The law, or the counting-house, or the political arena have for him more attractions; and the preacher is now a lawyer, or a merchant, or a lawgiver. Now, whatever leniency of feeling and ef