who shall deliver him? It is the exclusive prerogative of "the glorious gospel of the blessed God," to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the doors to them that are bound.

II. It is certain

That the Christian Religion is perfectly adapted to the actual condition and necessities of mankind. This adaptation is demonstrated in these two particulars :-First, Christianity reveals a Pure Object of Worship; secondly, it accompanies this revelation with a bestowal of Power;-a power sufficient to detach the worshipper from the debasing service of his false gods, and to attach him to the elevating service of that One who alone is True. When man's instinctive worship is paid to a Pure and Worthy Object, his rescue and reformation become, for the first time, possible. And then the process is completed by the transforming efficacy of the assimilating power, by which the possible becomes the actual. To reveal that ennobling Object, and to bestow that transforming Power, are the glorious and distinctive characteristics of the Christian Religion, and of that religion alone.

He who would see a demonstration of the adequacy of Christianity in its perfect Fitness and Adaptation to the necessities of mankind, may find it in a comparison of Christendom with heathendom. The demonstration of the Power by which that fitness is accompanied, is to be found in every land to which Christianity has come. When St. Paul first set foot at Philippi, there was not a city in Europe which had not its own idolatrous shrines; but now, centuries, and even kingdoms, have passed away since the last idolatrous temple was demolished by the spiritual power of the Christian Religion. What were the South Sea Islanders before the introduction of Christianity? What were the aborigines of New Zealand? And what are they now? They are the "commendatory letters" of Christianity; "living epistles" known and read of all men; a tangible and evidential demonstration of the perfect adaptation to the neces

2

See "Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation," pp. 1-15. Also, “Ireland on Paganism."

sities of mankind which characterizes the religion of the Bible: a religion that comes "not in word, but in Power."

III. It is certain

That the objections alleged against the Bible are untenable. 1. The Bible, we are told, abounds with Difficulties. Without doubt it does; and so does everything else in this world. The natural processes connected with the transformations of matter-the organic from the inorganic-the dull earth and the viewless air transmuted into leaf, and flower, and fruit, and woody fibre, not to speak of vital heat, "the blood which is the life," or all the curious mechanism of eye and earall these are beset with Difficulties innumerable, and Mysteries incomprehensible. If from the region of matter we ascend to the region of mind, our difficulties are increased both in number and magnitude. We know of Gravitation nothing but the fact and the name. Of Volition we know, if possible, still less.

But how it is that the force of volition can arrest and counteract the force of gravitation; of this we know nothing at all. From mental to moral questions the ascent becomes more steep as it becomes more high. We are "of yesterday: " is it for us to scale the throne of The Eternal? We do not understand the commonest elements of "earthly things:" is it for us to fret and fume because forsooth, we cannot comprehend the sublimest mysteries of "heavenly things?"

We therefore not only admit the existence of these difficulties, but we maintain that their presence in the Bible not less than in the World is a strong reason for believing in the common origin of both. Besides, the thoroughly untenable character of this objection will sufficiently appear from these two considerations alone :

First, The principal difficulties of the Bible are not peculiar to the Bible. They would all continue in full force, if the Bible were extinct to-morrow. They constituted the chief perplexities of enquiring minds before the Bible existed. The mysteries of moral evil, of free-will, of Divine Sovereignty, of the nature and necessity of future rewards and punishments, are indeed of a higher order, but not of a more real nature, than the mysteries inseparable from the abstract idea of infinity,

or the concrete ideas of infinite extension, infinite duration, or Infinite Being. They are mysteries inseparable from the vastness and the grandeur of the subjects themselves. The Bible did not create them, but it does diminish them; and if it does not altogether dispel them, it is only because the finiteness of man is not yet able to comprehend the infinity of God!

But secondly: If even these alleged difficulties were peculiar to the Bible: what then? Why, then the objection amounts to this:"The Bible teaches much-very much-more than any other book in the world-that is excellent; but it also teaches some things that are difficult: it shall be easy, as well as excellent, or I will have none of it!" Is such an objection worthy of an answer? What is it but to set up the pretensions of ignorance against the authority of knowledge? Our opponents admit the excellence of the Bible as fully as we admit its difficulties. But difficulty is merely another name for ignorance. Is it rational to take that which we do know, and to make it depend on that which we do not know? Are we to doubt whether we know anything, because forsooth we do not know everything? If not, then to urge the difficulties of the Bible in depreciation of its acknowledged excellence, is to raise an objection as irrational as it is untenable.

2. But it abounds with Contradictions.

No doubt it does: with such contradictions as are found in all true histories; such contradictions as were never found in any false history whatever; such contradictions, and such only, as serve to give the strongest corroboration of its truth. In support of this statement, and in illustration of the merely apparent character of those contradictions which when found in Holy Scripture are proclaimed by our opponents to be absolute and final, it will not be irrelevant to cite here a striking example given by Ebrard' of the manner in which the same fact has impressed itself on different eye-witnesses.

"On the evening of September 5th, 1839, a rumour prevailed in Zurich, that an attack was to be apprehended from an armed force of Bernese. The greatest commotion was excited, and a body of men was drawn together in the district of Pfäffi

And quoted by "Lee on Inspiration."

CONCORDANT CONTRADICTIONS.

363

kon to repel the attack. The rumour was soon found to be without any foundation, and means were taken by the Government to allay the popular tumult.

tr

"On subsequently enquiring as to these events, Ebrard was informed by one person, that the Government dispatched N., one of their number, at a late hour, with a letter to Pfäffikon ; on another occasion, Ebrard was told, by a second informant, that N., after going a short distance, returned with the intelligence that the tocsin was already ringing in Pfäffikon. A third related that two persons on horseback had been dispatched; while a fourth averred that N. had sent two messengers on horseback to the disturbed district.

"If ever four accounts appear irreconcilable, these are so. And if a harmonist were to conjecture that N. had been sent to Pfäffikon; that he had been met on the Zurichberg by two peasants, coming from that place, with the intelligence that the people were already on the march; that he had returned with them to Zurich, and, entering the neighbouring house of a magistrate, had caused two horses to be at once saddled, and commanded the peasants to ride back in haste, to proclaim peace-all this would, no doubt, be set down as a highly improbable and artificial conjecture. And yet it is no conjecture, but the simple, true account, which N. himself gave me, when I asked him about that event."

We rest the demonstration of the untenability of the objection we are now considering, on these facts :

First, The "contradictions" alleged against the Bible are, in no case more irreconcilable than these of Ebrard's; but these are not irreconcilable at all.

Second, These contradictions arise from omission, not from opposition. Each account is true as far as it goes; and the seeming conflict becomes actual concord as soon as we are in possession of the whole truth.

Third, The usual character of human testimony is substantial truth under circumstantial variety: and this guarantee of veracity is precisely what we find in the Bible.

Fourth, It is certain that if the Bible histories had been fictitious, the forgers of those histories would have taken good

care-by avoiding all appearance of contradiction-to obviate all objections on this score.

Fifth, If it be said that the Bible narratives may be forgeries after all, and that these contradictions have been inserted to simulate the appearance of truth; then the objection refutes itself for no contradictions can be a mark of truth and a mark of falsehood at the same time.

3. But the Bible is of double meaning, and of doubtful interpretation.

And so (as we have already seen) are Shakspeare and Dante; but who ever thought of alleging this as a ground of objection against them? If even the studied severity of the language employed in framing Acts of Parliament is not sufficiently rigid to exclude double meanings and doubtful interpretations, where shall we look for a rigidity sufficiently precise? Not in the language of daily life, for that is the language of figure. Not in the language of nature, for that is poetry. If, in the stinging words which King John addresses to Hubert, Shakspeare intended his hearers to understand what words they were in which Queen Elizabeth might address Davison, what is this but a proof of the far-seeing wisdom and the far-reaching power of the author? And in like manner, when Solomon describes the doom of the wicked in terms which apply perhaps almost equally to this life, and to the life to come, we have—what in any other case would be regarded as an excellence, not a defect-a convincing reason for our belief in the profundity and power of that Great Spirit by whom the words were indited. This then is the first part of our

answer:

If the Bible-speaking not to angels, but to man-not of things natural merely, but of the supernatural-not of theoretic abstractions which amuse a few, but of stern realities which concern the mass of mankind-appealing to their highest reason -involving their eternal interests-had, notwithstanding, said nothing that might be shewn to have a double meaning, or nothing that might be said to be of doubtful interpretation, it would have utterly defeated its own purpose: for it would have been a book which no one would read; a book which no one would care to understand. It would have been so