INFIDELITY.

It is no way wonderful that there should be infidels now, when on the awful day of the crucifixion, there were so many infidels around the cross-when though the earth trembled under their feet, and the heavens were darkened at noonday over their heads, only a single one was made to cry out, "Truly this was the Son of God."

Infidels say, if our religion is so important, why is it not universal? Such ought to remember that there have been two periods before the birth of our Saviour, when it was universal, and that since his birth, it has demolished every system of idolatry that was in the known world. It would, however, be a sufficient reply, to such, to say, "That with the Lord, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day; and that God is not slack concerning his promise," but has reserved, in his infinite wisdom, the latter day, for the most glorious manifestations of his grace; so that if Christianity had always been universal, it would, at the same time, have been grossly false in its predictions.

PHILOSOPHY.

Philosophy may boast that her's is a tried foundation. And she may appeal to her disciples, as we do to Christians, if they have not been supported by it through all the adventures of life, and in the hour of death. But she has no testimony, as Christianity has, from beyond the grave. John heard many voices in heaven, saying, "Worthy is the Lamb," &c., but none ever heard the blessed above, crying, "Worthy is philosophy to receive honor and glory.”

There is a philosophy that pretends to a sovereignty over the ills of life, boasting of a mithridate, or a catholicon, that will cure every pain of the heart. But ah! there is more and longer grief in the cure than in the patient sufferance of the ill. It cures by cauterizing the heart, so that it shall not feel.

REASON.

The province of reason respecting the Scriptures, is two-fold:-first, to ascertain whether they bear the marks of a divine original; and secondly, to ascertain their true meaning.

The advance of the ancients was attended with no

improvement. The much adored philosophy, which came to its maturity in Greece, whatever else it did, did nothing for correct theology. Athens had more gods than all Greece besides; and Socrates, the best and wisest of Athens, advised his pupil not to pray, and asked, as his dying request to his friend, that he would slay a cock, which he had just recollected he owed to Esculapius.

At best, reason is but a little taper, that lights us on our way to death, when it becomes a dim and diminished flame and goes out.

Reason has never fathomed the depths of the future. She can never chase away its cloud. She goes with you to the utmost verge of life, points to the darkness, and leaves you alone. If you ask of her, what you are to expect beyond it, she can only put into your hand Plato's book, or Cicero's commentary upon it; and while you doubt, she bids you die and decide the mighty question. Oh, be "led by the Spirit of God." Let him take you by the hand,-lead you to the Bible, and to the Saviour, and he will lead you, through holiness, to heaven-to God.

Some say their reason declares certain doctrines of revelation to be untrue, and that is enough. Your reason! And what, pray, is your reason? How much is its dictum worth? What weighs your reason in the great scale of minds? Who made it a judge of what its Maker ought to reveal, and ought to be and ought to do? and to affirm that this may be true, and that may not be true? Do you say that God enkindled this True; but he meant it to illuminate

light within you?

its own little sphere, and not to boast itself a sun, and plant itself in the heavens, in its Maker's place and stead.

There be many that say, reason is man's able and sufficient teacher, counsellor and guide, through earth to heaven; and that he needs no other religion than what reason finds within the mind, and deduces from works without the mind. Is it so? Where then was reason when men went from the truth of the one God to polytheism, that it put in no warning voice? When the immortal bowed himself low to the hazeless sun, and thanked him for his influences, was it the ignorance or the obstinacy of reason, that she did not teach him better? Could she not penetrate beyond a star, or distinguish that which shone from him who made it. shine? Was reason asleep, when dead men were made gods, and worshipped by human suffrage, and had their tenements assigned them in heaven, and their districts allotted them on earth? It were enough to canonize, and not to deify! though it may be as bad to make a saint as a god. Idolatry prevailed. Was idolatry the child of reason; or did she only adopt the infant? And magic, divination of its various kinds, and sorcery, had they their noble parentage in reason; or did she only stand godmother to them? Was it her voice, that said in calamity, slay a sacrifice, and if the calamity thicken, offer a hecatomb; study the pure science of futurity in the entrails of a hart; mark and note down the way of a bird in the air; for thereby is knowledge of things to come? These questions are sufficiently answered by the fact, that all these absurdities came in, when reason

was sole sovereign, and when, in other matters, it was as vigorous as it ever has been. In religion only, it seemed to fail, for at the same time that the devotion of Eygpt was consecrating reptiles to her worship, her reason was demonstrating theorems in geometry. Nay, while the priest was offering the annual victim to the Nile, the geometrician was upon the bank, applying his reasonings to the measurement of its overflowing. Let it be remembered, that the same country, which was the cradle of science, philosophy, and the arts, rocked the infancy of idolatry and superstition.

FAITH AND REASON.

Faith is not contrary to reason, any more than John the Baptist was contrary to Christ-than the morning star is contrary to the sun. They go together, so far as reason can go at all, as the elder and younger prophet, until, one being left gazing up, the other mounts a chariot of fire and ascends into the third heaven. Though faith is greater than reason, and goes far beyond it, yet they are not contrary the one to the other.