humanity, it is a most natural and we should think a most needful inquiry-how far? By what line are the outcasts of condemnation, to whom no forgiveness can be extended, separated from those who are within the confines of pardon and pity from on high? The truth is, that, in the absence of all that is clear and all that is definite, every man will suit the reply to his own imagination; or, what is likelier still, to his own convenience. The law of heaven will be brought down to a degrading compromise with human corruption and human indolence. Each will make the adjustment for himself; and, sinning just as much as he likes, will still figure that the indulgence of the God who knoweth our frame, and will make merciful allowance for all its infirmities-will be extended too to his own frailties and his own errors. The attributes of the Godhead will be made to play fast and loose with each other; and so as to accommodate the standard of the divine exactions to the ever-varying practice of men. There is a scale of moral worth that comprehends all the varieties of character in our world-up from the loveliest and most honourable of the species, down to those who are sunk in the worst excesses of profligacy and, as none can say, at what point in this scale the momentous transition in question is situated, each will determine it for himself; and so be able to combine the peace of his own spirit, with the full indulgence of all its waywardness. He will sin just as much as he likes; and yet he will hope just as largely as his own fancy or his own wishes can carry him. He will give himself

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up to his own impulses in this world; and yet be as little disturbed by the prospect of another, as if he fetched every practical impulse of his life from the will of Him who has the disposal both of his time and of his eternity. It is thus that a deep and fatal security hath spread itself over the face of our alienated world; that men, even in the very midst of their rebellion, have no disturbance whatever from their fears; that under all the gradations of morality, even down to the malefactor's cell, there is still a vague confidence in the mercy God; that they do not tremble under a sense of His justice, because they have confounded the attributes at their pleasure and made the one to efface the character of the other. All is loose and obscure and indeterminate, under the lax administration of a law-whose sanctions have no fulfilment, whose threats have no significancy. This we hold to be the state of our academic theism, and a state the more dangerous, because of that seeming air of completeness and sufficiency wherewith she has finished off the ample round of her demonstrations. She looks with all the complacency of having done a full and a finished achievement, and that without one utterance on man's universal sinfulness-making no provision for the offended dignity of God in heaven, and no provision for the prostrate cause of godliness upon earth.

31. It is well that the conscience of man is often too strong, both for the lethargy of nature, and for the illusions of this sentimental theism. The Boul of him who rightly contrasts the sacredness of

the Divinity with the exceeding sinfulness of his own character, will not be so easily satisfied with the soft and flimsy representations which are often given of heaven's clemency. His moral nature, now quickened into adequate sensibility, must be otherwise met; and unless there be a revelation of mercy that makes full provision for the justice and truth and authority of the Godhead, he neither can view the Lawgiver as at peace with him nor himself as safe.

32. It is in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and there alone, that he finds that precise counterpart which at once meets this difficulty and resolves ita constitution of forgiveness which makes full exhibition of the divine character, without any violation to the jurisprudence of the upper sanctuary, or any conflict and concussion between the attributes of the High and the Holy one who presides over it.* The atonement of the cross

So that beside the moral and the experimental, there is what may be called the doctrinal, as a branch of the internal evidence of Christianity-an evidence that results, not from the comparison of the objective truth with the subjective mind, but from the comparison of one truth or one doctrine of Christianity with another. The whole scheme, viewed objectively, may abound in those symphonies or adaptations of part to part, which might serve to recommend it as founded in wisdom, or as having a real foundation in the nature of things. The resulting evidence might be illustrated in this way. We can imagine the human bearers of a profest message from some distant part of the universe, to report certain peculiarities of its astronomical or physical system, which prove that matter there is under a law of gravitation different from our own; and yet that by a profound mathematics, each special phenomenon can be demonstrated to be a consequence of that law, which harmonizes all the separate informations, and gives consistency to them all. Let the apostles of such a revela. tion be simple and illiterate men, and palpably ignorant of matnematics so as to make it obvious, that the distinct things which

adjusts all, reconciles all. It is the intelligent view of this great mystery which lets in a flood of light on the mind of the beholder-as he discerns the impress of infinite love and infinite sacredness on that wondrous scheme, in the contemplation of which he finds all the misgivings of his own guilty nature appeased, and yet his reverence for the divine nature unbroken.

33. Thus much on the second experimental evidence for the truth of a profest revelation-the first being the accordancy between the statements which are there made, and the felt state of the human heart. The second is founded on the

they tell could not have been educed by any reasoning process of their own. Then the dependence, the mathematical dependence of these things, argues that they must have received by information what they could not evolve by reasoning; and the consistency which obtains in the matter of their revelation speaks for the truth of it. Now the same might apply to the agreements, the profound and exquisite agreements, which obtain between the parts of the spiritual system-too manifold, and perhaps too recondite, to have been devised by the messengers who have been the bearers of itthus evincing the transcendental wisdom or truth from which it must have had its rise. The doctrine of the atonement is far from being the only, though perhaps the most conspicuous, and certainly the most important exemplification of this-providing the freest and largest outlet for the divine mercy, and yet casting thereby a brighter radiance over the other attributes of the Godhead, and more especially over the divine holiness. The more intensely this is viewed, the deeper is the insight which it gives of Christianity, as a well-compacted system, that, instead of being devised by man, originated with Him who presides over the harmonies, of truth and of the universe. The more that the understanding is illuminated to behold the truths of scripture and their relations, the more will it appreciate the Bible as a well of hidden wisdom that is fathomless: and the more will it perceive the significancy of the expression "the unsearchable riches of Christ." This doctrinal evidence is entitled to a distinct chapter by itself. But we must stop somewhere-for however far we might prosecute the theme, we should still leave unfinished an argument that is in truth exhaustless.

accordancy between the felt wants of our nature, and the provision, that is there intimated to have been made for them. Both serve to manifest a power of divination. By the one it proves itself a skilful diviner of our thoughts; by the other a skilful diviner of our necessities. Had we time to expatiate on this second argument, we think it might be made palpable, that the hand of a God may be as directly inferred, from the adaptations which there are in the book of a profest revelation to the wants and the well-being of our moral economy-as from the adaptations which there are in the book of external nature to the wants and the well-being of our natural economy. If the beauty that regales the eye, if the music that charms the ear, if the food that appeases the hunger and sustains the else decaying body in health and vigour, if the many fitnesses of outward things to the senses and the convenience of man-if on these there can be validly founded the conclusion, that the same God who constructed our material framework, may also be traced in the manifold congruities of the surrounding materialism-then might there likewise be such a varied suitableness between the needs and the fears and the appetencies of man's spirit on the one hand, and the doctrines or the directions of that volume which is addressed to him on the other, as to put the legible impress of a presiding and an inspiring divinity upon its pages. Were full development given to this most interesting conclusion, we think that the evidence of a designing God may be made to shine forth as directly from His word, as it does from His works,