which the civilized branches of the human family have ever made, took its rise in bewildered Jewish brains! Indestructible elements of advancement to which even infidel nations confessedly owe whatever is best and most hopeful within them, these elements of good, which were obtained for us at so vast a cost, had their source in a congeries of exaggerations, and in a mindless conspiracy, hatched by chance, nursed by imposture, and winged by fanaticism!" V. Further: It is certain that the Bible is now substantially and essentially the same as when first given. This affirmation is not affected by questions of authorship; or of Various Readings. The number of these latter in the Old Testament alone is thirty thousand; but their consequence and value are in exactly inverse ratio to their demand on our labour and patience. To estimate their practical value (in either Old or New Testament) as an element of uncertainty, Take any thousand, and see how many will vary even the most literal translation in any modern language: Then see how many (or rather how few) of those which have changed a word, have at all affected the sense: Lastly, of these changes of expression, see how few have touched a fact or doctrine, or any point of the least importance beyond the mere question of textual accuracy.' The text of the New Testament has been all but miraculously preserved. The care of Divine Providence in bringing the same text from the most opposite quarters, and from parts of the church diametrically opposed to each other in faith and practice, is as great a miracle as if the original autographs of the writers had been kept to this day. Besides: It is not necessary to the possession of the Word THE DOCTRINES REST ON THE FACTS. 449 of God that we should have a mathematically accurate text." The moral assurance of its logical exactness, which we do possess is even more satisfactory to our faith than the existence of any autograph copy could be; the identity of which must, after all, rest on evidence which no infidel would receive. VI. We have already seen that-apart from the Biblenothing is more true than the great facts of Christianity. No historical fact is more certain than that the original propagators of Christianity voluntarily subjected themselves to lives of fatigue, danger, and suffering, in the prosecution of their undertaking. The testimony of Pliny, above cited,' proves also that both the teachers and converts of the religion, in consequence of their new profession, took up a new course of life and behaviour. Now, what did they do this for? There can be but one answer: The narrative of Tacitus (quoted above) makes it certain that it was for a miraculous story of some kind or other. The institution of The Lord's Day-the transference of the Sabbath to the "first day of the week "makes it still more certain that that miraculous story was the story of Christ's Resurrection. But their relation to the such that if the facts be not The first preachers of Chris These facts are undeniably true. religion founded upon them is false, the religion must be true. * "The autographs of the Bible have never existed together." Hence, a Bible "gifted with this ideal and mathematical perfection has never been in the hands of a single human being." But notwithstanding this, the flaws incurred in transmission, "few in number, and chiefly in numerical readings or lists of names, cannot affect in the least the direct evidence which affixes a Divine sanction to all the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments." (Rev. T. R. Birks, in The Bible and Modern Thought;" and "Christian Advocate and Review," vol. iii. p. 343.) FF 66 tianity could not be deceivers. "By only not bearing testimony, they might have avoided all their sufferings, and have lived quietly. Would men in such circumstances pretend to have seen what they never saw; assert facts which they had no knowledge of; go about lying, to teach virtue; and though not only convinced of Christ's being an impostor, but having seen the success of his imposture in his crucifixion, yet persist in carrying it on; and so persist, as to bring upon themselves, for nothing, and with a full knowledge of the consequence, enmity, hatred, danger and death?" It is most certain that they would not. In other words, IT IS CERTAIN THAT-apart from the Bible-THE GREAT FACTS OF CHRISTIANITY ARE UNDENIABLY TRUE. VII. But it is equally certain that of these facts the Bible supplies the only possible explanation :-and not of these facts alone. Why there should be a nation unlike every other nation, as were the conquerors of Canaan; why there should be an Egyptian bondage, a Babylonish captivity, a Jewish dispersion; why there should be a Messiah at all; why He should have come at that particular epoch in the reign of Cæsar Augustus ; why He should have suffered an ignominious death, although His religion has given new Life to the world: of all these things we may say (in words already quoted)" "These facts must not only be admitted, they must be accounted for, and the Bible history is not only the best, it is the only conceivable way of accounting for them." VIII. The actual connexion between the Facts and the Sacred Books in which they are recorded, is such as to stamp the latter with the authority of a Divine Inspiration. For the facts were brought about in order to establish the doctrines. The works of Christ and of His Apostles, were appealed to as which Inspiration is alleged, had perished, and if nothing were now before us but the uninspired documents of Christianity, (those of the second century,)—I must still be a Christian, although I should often be at a loss as to the separate items of my creed. But now if the Canonical writings-Inspi- THE FORCE OF CONGRUITY. 451 so many infallible proofs of the truth of His words and of theirs. The works that He did bare witness of Him: and of them it was also true-He confirmed their word "with signs following." Besides, as we have already seen, in the Sacred Books, the historic is one with the supernatural. But the supernatural has been shewn (apart from these Books) to be true: the historic therefore is true also; and God's works are the testimony adduced to prove the verity of His word. IX. The cumulative evidence which demonstrates the Truth of Christianity, is still further strengthened by the Force of Congruity. The direct historical evidence we have seen to be unanswered and unanswerable. But this is not all. The very firmest of our convictions come to us not in the way of a sequence of evidences following each other as links in a chain, and carrying with them the conclusion; but in the way of the CONGRUITY of evidences, meeting or collapsing in the conclusion. This is not what is called 'cumulative proof,' nor is it proof derived from the coincidence of facts. Those impressions which command the reason and the feelings in the most imperative manner, and which we find it impossible to resist, are the result of the meeting of congruous elements; they are the product of causes which, though independent, are felt so to fit the one the other, that each as soon as seen in combination, authenticates the other; and in allowing the two to carry our convictions, we are not yielding to the sophism which consists in alternately putting the premises in the place of each other, but are recognizing a principle which is true in human nature. "You have to do with one who offers to your eye his credentials-his diploma, duly signed and sealed, and which declare him to be a Personage of the highest rank. All seems genuine in these evidences. At the same time, the style and tone, the air and behaviour, of this personage, and all that he says, and what he informs you of, and the instructions he gives you, are in every respect consistent with his pretensions, as set forth in the Instrument he brings with him. It is not then that you alternately believe his credentials to be genuine, because his deportment and his language are becoming to his alleged rank; and then that you yield to the impression which has been made upon your feelings by his deportment, because you have admitted his credentials to be true. Your Belief is the product of a simultaneous accordance of the two species of proof: it is a combined force that carries conviction, not a succession of proofs in line. "It is from the same force of Congruity, not from a catena of proofs, that we receive the most trustworthy of those impressions upon the strength of which we act in the daily occasions of life; and the same Law of Belief rules us also in the highest of all arguments-that which issues in a devout regard to Him, by and through Whom are all things. On this ground where logic halts, an instinctive reasoning prevails, which takes its force from the confluence of reasons.' The Bible stands above the sublimest effusions of human genius. It reveals truths concerning man's highest interests, and lying beyond the sphere where science and genius make their discoveries. It possesses a history altogether unparalleled and miraculous. It produces on individuals and communities such radical and beneficent changes of heart and life, as no other book in the world has even attempted. It claims to have received its grand revelations directly from heaven, and to have transmitted them under such infallible guidance as entitles it to be regarded as the oracle of God. And if, on the ground of the evidence internal and external, this claim be not conceded, then-in its structure, in its characteristic truths; in the simplicity and majesty of its style, in its matchless portraiture of Christ, in its influence on the world-the Bible is a greater miracle than the miraculous inspiration which naturalism would set aside. Considered merely as a book of morality, the Bible is incomparably a more complete, intelligible, and popular manual than any other composition. In whatever relates, either to the great principles whence virtue should emanate, or to the detail of the virtues and the vices, or to the application of general rules to particular occasions, the inspired writers leave nothing to be desired, or even imagined, in the way of perspicuity, or definitiveness, or of diversified expression and exemplification. In the plain matters of duty, of temper, and of Restoration of Belief, p. 103. |