LESLIE'S "INFALLIBLE PROOF."

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2. That it be performed publicly, in the presence of wit

nesses:

3. That there be public monuments and actions kept up in memory of it; and,

4. That such documents and actions shall be established and commence, at the time of the fact.

The two first of these marks make it impossible for any false fact to be imposed upon men at the time when it was said to have occurred, because every man's senses would contradict it. The two last make it equally impossible that the credulity of after-ages should be induced to believe, as real, things which were only fictitious. It is not pretended that every thing which wants these four marks is false; but it is fearlessly asserted that every thing which has them all must be true. Few things in ordinary history, even when received without question as undoubtedly true, do actually combine these four marks of truth: e.g., the existence of Julius Cæsar, his victory at Pharsalia, etc. But they are all found in the Scripture History of Moses and of Christ; and their presence furnishes an INFALLIBLE PROOF that this history is true.

To these are subjoined "four additional marks; the three last of which, no matter of fact, how true soever, either has had, or can have, except that of Christ."

When to this we add that none of the persecutors of Christianity, whether Jewish or Roman, when referred to by its first teachers as witnesses of its great facts, ever ventured to deny them; that no apostate disciple, under the fear of punishment, or the hope of reward, (not even the artful and accomplished Julian himself!) ever pretended to detect in them any deception; that neither learning nor ingenuity, in the long lapse of so many years, have been able to show their falsehood; although, for the first three centuries after their promulgation, the civil government strongly stimulated hostile enquiry; while their original relators, after lives of unintermitted hardship, joyfully incurred death in attestation of their truth-we cannot imagine the possibility of a more perfect or abundant demonstration.

If, after all, there remain any who think they can resist the overwhelming force of evidence like this, Let them produce their Cæsar or Mohammed,

EE

1. Performing a fact, of which man's outward senses can

judge;

2. Publicly in the presence of witnesses;

3. In memory of which public monuments and actions are 1 kept up;

4. Instituted and commencing at the time of the fact;

5. Recorded likewise in a set of books, addressed to the identical people before whom it was performed, and containing their whole code of civil and ecclesiastical laws;

6. As the work of one previously announced for that very period by a long train of prophecies;

7. And still more peculiarly prefigured by types both of a circumstantial and personal nature, from the earliest ages; and lastly,

8. Of such a character as made it impossible for either the relators or the hearers to believe it, if false, without supposing a universal deception of the senses of mankind.

Further: Let them display, in its professed eye-witnesses, similar proofs of veracity; in some doctrines founded upon it, and unaided by force or intrigue, a like triumph over the prejudices and passions of mankind; among its believers, equal skill and equal diligence, in scrutinizing its evidences,—

Or, let them submit to THE IRRESISTIBLE CERTAINTY OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.

1

CHAPTER XVI.

IT IS CERTAIN THAT THE MOST RECENT, SUBTLE, AND POWERFUL ASSAULTS ON THE BIBLE HAVE UTTERLY FAILED TO SHAKE THE FOUNDATIONS OF OUR FAITH.

"Can length of years on God Himself exact?

Or make that fiction, which was once a fact?"-COWPER.

SURVEYING the immoveable ground of Certainty traversed in the last chapter, one naturally asks-What is the ground in possession of our adversaries? And the answer is, "A tissue of Uncertainties—nothing more!" Not all the ingenuity ever exhibited on the side of unbelief has availed to substantiate a single argument against Christianity. Not one of all the pretexts ever devised by that ingenuity, that has not been triumphantly refuted and destroyed. It may be useful, in this chapter, to corroborate the correctness of these two assertions by some instances drawn from recent publications.

I. 1. Take a single instance from "Essays and Reviews." What could be more insulting than the bitter mocking tone of contemptuous derision in which the writer of the Second Essay spoke of those who professed their faith in the old-fashioned Bible? How loud his boastful bravados on behalf of his idol, his "remorseless criticism," and his "vast induction on the destructive side!" Now, what was it all worth? What was the amount of actual fact substantiated in evidence against the Bible? The answer to this question shall be given (not in the words of some bigoted believer, but) in the words of the most eminent of all the apologists for the Essays themselves :—

"Conclusions arrived at by the life-long labours of a great German theologian are pitchforked into the face of the English

public who never heard of them before, with hardly a shred of argument to clothe their repulsive forms."1

It may help the reader however, to appraise at their proper value these "life-long labours of a great German theologian,' to be told that even this admirer of Bunsen, this eulogist of Prof. Jowett, and sturdy apologist for the Essays, goes on to say in the very next sentence:

"ASSERTIONS which even the learned and sceptical would hesitate to receive after long discussion, ARE ASSUMED AS CERTAIN, WITHOUT A WORD OF PROOF, and without any connexion with the context in which they occur."

Nor does he fail to establish this charge against his friends; for in a note he adds :

"Such is Mr. Wilson's statement respecting the date of the fourth Gospel, (p. 116,) and that 'the taking of Jerusalem by Shishak is for the Hebrew history that which the sacking of Rome by the Gauls is for the Roman.' (p. 170.) This last ASSERTION WHOLLY UNSUPPORTED BY ARGUMENT, IS, not only according to our humble belief, but according to the whole tenor of the great work of Ewald, EQUALLY UNTENABLE IN ITS NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE ASPECT."

2. So much for the character of the attack: but how triumphant was the defence which that attack provoked! The "Replies" were Legion; and few of them but were worthy of the occasion. Of those which still stand in the front rank, Mr. Birks's admirable volume alone supplies a complete refutation, without conceding one inch of ground; while among the writers of two others' we have a combination of the learning, the eloquence, and the conclusive argumentation of ten of the first men of our times. Any one of these three volumes is more than a sufficient answer to "Essays and Reviews "; but taken altogether, they present an aggregate of solid learning and valuable thought, the like of which the Church has

DR. COLENSO ANSWERED IN FULL.

437

scarcely had offered to her in any former year of modern times.

II. 1. Very much the same must be said of Bp. Colenso's productions; and of the answers they have evoked. He publishes a volume of what he calls "insuperable difficulties; and forthwith there step forward champions of the Faith who solve them one by one. Than Dr. Mc. Caul, "there is no Jewish Rabbi, either in England or on the Continent, more conversant with every form of Hebrew literature, and no man in England who is more intimately acquainted with the German writers for and against the truth, the 'real scholars' to whom Dr. Colenso appeals." But this same Dr. Mc. Caul has not only met the difficulties proposed by the Bishop-met them fairly and fully-but he has shewn that every problem is capable of at least one solution. In many he submits two or three, taking first the difficulty as stated by the Bishop, and shewing that if even it were real it would not be insuperable; afterwards proving that it is of the critic's own making. Some of the most remarkable of these difficulties result entirely from the critic's unauthorized additions to the Sacred Text; some from omissions and perversions, the result of careless haste or excessive zeal; many from ignorance so gross as to evince the writer's utter disqualification for the task he has undertaken; but among them all there is not one which, when cleared from misrepresentation and mistake, can fairly be laid to the charge of the Sacred Writer himself.

2. Mr. Birks's refutation of the Bishop's argument, though proceeding by another method than that of Dr. Mc. Caul, reaches the same result. He deals less with the Hebrew and more with the arithmetic of his opponent. The result is, that (in the words of an able reviewer,) "The arithmetician is beaten on his own ground." "Mr. Birks does not propose, as Dr. Mc. Caul has done, to give several alternatives, every one of which may be a possible solution of a difficulty, and therefore sufficient to silence an objector. He selects one which he

5 See Dr. Colenso's Letter to the "Athenæum."

The Christian Advocate and Review, vol. iii. p. 326.