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looked to in connexion with God who in every individual case originates the process, it may be regarded as the fruit of His grace and sovereignty. When looked to in connexion with man who undergoes the process, it may be regarded as the fruit of moral earnestness and prayer. Whether viewed in the history or in the results of it, it gives the impress of a thorough moral character to the economy under which we sit-that the fulfilment of duty should thus lead the way to the fuller comprehension of doctrine-or that by the desires and the labours of an honest aspiring conscientiousness, that channel is opened by which the light of heaven is let in upon the soul. The system under which knowledge is thus made to arise in the train of righteousness bespeaks the essential righteousness of its author, and is so far an evidence of its having come from the all-righteous God. But this evidence, grounded on the nature of the process which leads to the spiritual revelation, is distinct from the more latent evidence that lies in the things which are revealed-in the lineaments, now made obvious, of an authority and a sacredness and a wisdom and a truth which serve immediately to announce the Godhead to an awakened and illuminated reader of the Bible. And in the event itself of his being thus awakened, in the fact or the fulfilment that has taken place in the history of his mind, there is a third evidence

-as distinct from the two former as the miraculous is from the moral evidence. The event viewed historically, or as an event, has in it indeed somewhat of the character of a miracle-but, to estimate

fully its argumentative force, we must view it not merely in the light of a moral, but of an experimental evidence for the truth of Christianity.*

22. The spiritual evidence of Christianity does not supersede the use or the importance of its rational evidence-which discharges the same function in the revealed, that the incipient light in the minds of all men does in the natural theology. If the first suggestions of conscience respecting a God, lay us under the obligation of entertaining the topic and prolonging our regards to it—so the first evidence that we obtain for the Bible, as a message from God, lays us under the same obligation of pondering its contents, and of making honest and faithful application of them. A larger illumination in the one case as to the evidence for natural religion, and in the other as to the evidence for the religion of the Gospel, will be the fruit of both these exercises. It is not the historical or the literary evidence for the truth of the Bible. which christianizes the philosophical inquirer. But it should lead him to read the Bible, and to go in quest of that evidence by which he is christianized. Neither those credentials of the book which gain the assent of the philosopher, nor that precognition of the book which is taken by the peasant, are able of themselves to work that faith which is unto salvation. They fall short of awakening such a conviction as this in the breast of either but they form like imperative claims on the attention of both. And it is in the train of this

See the next Chapter.

attention, earnest and prayerful and persevering, that the effective manifestation comes, by which the soul is turned from darkness unto light; and, as the fruit of this earnest heed to the word of the testimony, the day dawns and the day-star arises in the heart. The evidence lies in the word. It is the entrance of the word which gives light unto the simple. It is the word which is a light unto his feet, and a lamp unto his paths. Whatever originated the attention at the first, however diverse the points from which the peasant and the philosopher have taken their respective departures -both must arrive at the same landing-place, and both must submit to be tutored by the same evidence at the last. The manifestation of the truth unto the conscience is made to each in the same way; and there is a common process by which they arrive at their common Christianity.

CHAPTER III.

On the Experimental Evidence for the Truth of Christianity.

1. THE moral may be distinguished from the experimental evidence for the truth of Christianity thus. In the former, we look altogether to that which is objective-for the evidence is elicited by our comparison of one objective thing with another. The moral system contained in the Bible is clearly an objective matter of contemplation-presented to

the mind in an outward volume, and made present to the mind in the act of perusing it. The abstract system, or the system of virtue as regarded according to our own natural and anterior notions of it, may be viewed also in the light of that which is objective --as separate from the mind, and distinct from any of those facts or phenomena of which the mind is the subject. It is true that the system of virtue in the Bible rectifies our own previous notions of it; and, by its enlightening effect upon the conscience, tends to assimilate more closely the ethical system of revelation with the ethical system of our now better instructed human nature. At length, instead of the likeness, we come to feel the identity between these two; but this, instead of lessening the objective character of our contemplation, makes it more singly and strongly objective than before. When

we make a study of scripture, we, immediately and without any feeling of comparison, recognize the purity and perfection of those moral characteristics which enter into its ethical system-and so pronounce it worthy of having proceeded from the God, who is at once the fountain and the exemplar of all righteousness.

2. And this objective nature of the things which engage our attention is fully sustained, when, instead of looking to the virtues of scripture as the component parts of its ethical system, we look to them as embodied in the character of the Godhead. There is an evidence grounded on the accordancy which obtains between the representations in the Bible and our own previous notions of the Deityand still more, when these notions are rectified by

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the Bible itself, to the appearance of which book in the world, we indeed owe the now purer and more enlightened theism of modern Europe. Still, when comparing God as set forth in scripture with God as seen in the light of our own minds, we compare the objective with the objective; and this character is if possible enhanced, when, instead of recognizing the likeness, we recognize the identity, and feel immediately on our perusal of scripture that God Himself is speaking to us, or that we are engaged in close and personal correspondence with God. It is when God thus announces Himself as present to us in the Bible, in His own characters of holiness and majesty, that this self-evidencing light is seen in its brightest manifestation. A simple uneducated peasant, when his eyes are opened to behold this, takes up immediately with scripture as a communication from heaven-which viewed altogether objectively by him, and without any reflex view of what passes within himself, makes direct revelation of its own divinity to his soul.

3. But though in the study of the moral evidence, the mind is altogether engaged objectively-it is not so in the study of the experimental evidence. Of the two parts of the tally which are here brought into comparison, the one is objective and the other subjective. It is on the accordancy between the sayings of scripture and the findings of conscience, that this evidence is chiefly founded-between the statements or proposals in the book of revelation on the one hand, and the facts or phenomena of our own felt and familiar nature upon the other. Yet to prepare us fully for a judgment on the

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