INTRODUCTION.

AN unneccessary Preface is as tedious as the tatler who stops you in the street, bores you with his budget of nothings, and-lest you should escape the full infliction-holds you fast by the button. But when the preface is really needed it is another affair. It is then something more than an author's bow to his readers: a bow too often as awkward as it is unmeaning. It is a conspectus of his book; a statement of the object at which it aims, the method by which it proceeds, or the reasons for which it appears.

"ADSUMUS. With no pregnant words, that tremble

With awful purpose, take we leave to come:
Yet, when one enters where one's friends assemble,
'Tis not good manners to be wholly dumb."

Those of my readers who are familiar with what I have already written on this subject will readily believe that it is from no lack of appreciation of what has since been published, if I entertain the conviction that there yet remains both room and reason for something more. The following pages are not intended as an addition to the numerous publications which have already appeared on some single topic of the general subject: still less are they intended to supplement those scholarly refutations which comprise the whole. But between these two-surveying the whole field indeed, yet examining only the most prominent objects; not avoiding even the most abstruse topics, but avoiding an abstruse

method in handling them; combining to some extent the distinctness of smaller treatises with the comprehensiveness of larger ones;-there might be a book which should be by no means superfluous.

Such a book might also, with much propriety, point out the most prominent features of the contrast between the uncertain assumptions of infidelity and the assured certainty of faith. Without detailing all the processes of investigation by which the most certain results have been reached; without even enumerating all the results themselves; it might yet present enough of both to dissipate the doubts of a sincere. enquirer, and the fears of a timid believer. To that large class of persons to whom "a great book is a great evil," a manual such as that now indicated, would be most valuable. Such is the ideal of this little volume: how far that ideal has been realized my readers will decide.

It is only natural that for some time yet to come, the attitude of a Christian apologist should be assumed with reference to that of the now exploded "Essays and Reviews," supplemented as they have been by "The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua critically Examined." Set for the defence. of the Gospel; combating that hardihood of assertion which is assumed to impose upon the uninformed; detecting those specious sophisms designed to seduce the unwary; and finding so much of both in these last pretentious books on the side of unbelief: what can be more natural than that, tacitly if not explicitly, his own course should be taken with direct reference to that of his adversaries? The following pages have no other concern however with "Essays and Reviews," or the astounding production of the Bishop of Natal, than as defending those "First Truths" which have been therein so malignantly attacked. Hence though not put in by way of answer, they stand out in direct antagonism.

The seven "Essays" Essays" are by no means equal, either in merit or importance. The First is too plainly opposed to notorious facts, the Fourth to common honesty, and the Fifth to common sense, to be capable of doing much mischief. It is with the subjects of the remaining four that we have chiefly, though incidentally, to do: the reality of prophecy, the certainty of miracles, the veracity of Moses, and the interpretation of Scripture.

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Grouped around these principal topics are others, subordinate indeed but not unimportant, which alike deserve and demand our attention. The systematic disbelief exhibited in the "Essays," and in the Examination of Dr. Colenso, is a phenomenon more striking than singular. It does not stand alone. It is fraught with the most fatal consequences (why should it fear to be judged by them?) and these consequences are to be borne in mind when we consider its character. For it is these which afford the practical demonstration of that character. What it is practically, that it is actually for the practical is the actual. Nor is this all. We may test the worth of its promises by examining the merit of its performances : try what it seeks to do by what it has already done. For it is no new thing. It has a history. If that history is one which its friends are ashamed to own, so much the worse for it and for them; but they who know the steady light which the actual receives from the historical will not walk in darkness, but make that light their own. By its aid we shall clearly perceive how, in that edifice of unbelief where many begin to build but no one is able to finish, the gaping walls are bedaubed with untempered mortar; how weak arguments are propped up by strong assertions; how baseless assumptions and positive untruths are dignified by pompous designations, as the triumphant masterpieces of Kant's "pure reason," or-better stillthe intuitional conceptions of Williams's "verifying faculty."

Such is the edifice we are about to survey; and such some of the salient points which obtrude themselves upon our notice.

THE DIFFICULTIES FELT BY SOME; THE DOUBTS WHICH PERPLEX MANY; THE SOPHISMS WHICH BEWILDER MORE; AND LASTLY AND CHIEFLY, THE IMMOVEABLE AND INFALLIBLE CERTAINTY WHICH IS WITHIN THE REACH OF ALL: THESE ARE THE DIVISIONS OF OUR SUBJECT.

In every department of knowledge-but especially in its highest department-" a wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels." Not the perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds; not the short-lived speculations of men who though ever learning are never able to come to the knowledge of the truth; but to "wise counsels." To the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, and the secret of the Lord, which is with them that fear Him; the knowledge of the true God, and of Jesus Christ whom He has sent; the knowledge of a divine enlightening, and of things which accompany salvation; the incomparable magnificence of the "kingdom which cannot be moved," and the abiding, infallible CERTAINTY of the things wherein he has been instructed,