royal priesthood who offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, I will ask in the name of that everlasting priest of our profession, that you may not persist in despising the only name whereby you can be saved, and so perish in your own delusions, with the aggravated doom of those who have taught others to blaspheme; but that you may see your error, and may fall at the feet of that one priest "who is able to save to the uttermost, them that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them."

The whole of the preceding Lecture was not delivered from the pulpit. For those who had clamoured for free discussion, seeing how little they had gained by it, on the two former occasions, came, in overwhelming masses, with an evident determination to prevent all useful instruction or real discussion, by indecent noise or brute force. After much endurance of vexatious interruption, the Lecturer recommenced with an explicit declaration that he should attempt the continuance of the discourse only once more; for if fresh disturbance were created, he should dissolve the assembly. This warning not being heeded, the indecent clamour rendered it necessary abruptly to close the service. Scarcely twothirds of the Lecture, therefore, can be recognized by the audience. The remaining portion, it may be seen, was essential to the due improvement of the former. All discussion was unhappily precluded; though it had been hoped that, on this occasion, a more powerful and beneficial effect would have been secured.

INFIDELS CHALLENGED

TO SUBMIT THEIR OWN SYSTEM TO

EXAMINATION.

ISAIAH xli. 21.'

"Produce your cause, saith the Lord: bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob."

JEREMIAH viii. 9.

“Lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord; and what wisdom is in them?"

CHRISTIANS, when contending with infidels, usually keep on the defensive. If it be asked why? we answer, "Because we have something to defend, and something worth defending." The heroic defence of their freedom, which the Greeks maintained against the Persian despots, has set the stamp of inestimable worth on liberty, and conferred on it everlasting renown. We cannot see another exhausting his last energies, to keep possession of that which is attempted to be wrung from him, without feeling a conviction, that it is, at least in his own estimation, inexpressibly dear. When Christians " contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints," let infidels learn that we know its value, if they do not. The honour and usefulness of bearing this testimony to the value of divine revelation, are worth all the pains and cost expended on its defence.

P

Still it may be asked, "Why confine yourselves to a defensive warfare? Why not turn round upon your assailants, and carry the war into the heart of their camp? Would it not be good policy to avail yourselves of the advantages which always attend an attack? For the position of the defender is in many respects inferior to that of the assailant. The former, fixed to one spot, is chilled by his own quiescence, restricted in his efforts, and confined almost to the use of the shield; while the man who attacks may rove over a wide field, choose his own time and place and weapons, and by the very rush of the onset, heat his courage and augment the force of the shock, as a falling body is increased in impetus as it is accelerated in time."

Of this we are not ignorant. When, therefore, we have defended ourselves, successfully, as we think, and driven the enemy from our ramparts, we are not indisposed to change places with the assailant. Then, why do you not?" it may be said. We answer, "Because we can find nothing to attack. When we sally forth from our citadel, to pursue the foe, we look around and cry, 'Where is he?' there is nothing to be seen, but a cloud of dust, or a few flying Cossacks. However triumphant in our defence against those who are so fierce to attack, when we wheel round to pursue the foe, we are mortified to find that we have nothing to contend with, but shadows, or the flying fragments of a wreck."

Infidels boast " we seek nothing but truth." But who are infidels? Unbelievers. It is a negative

term. It means those who do not believe. Taken then in its full extent, it signifies those who believe nothing. As they call themselves by this name, it expresses a contradiction; for they cannot honestly take this appellation without believing that it belongs to them; and then the matter stands thus: We are the men who believe-what?-that we believe nothing. There they stand, then, at once believing something and nothing.

But it may be said, the term unbeliever, or infidel, like every other, must be taken according to its connection; and as it is used in opposition to a believer in divine revelation, it signifies one who does not believe in revelation. Very well; we will take it in that sense. It includes, then, a large class, comprising not only all the wicked, but all the babes, all the idiots, and all the brutes, for these do not believe in divine revelation.

But, restricting the term to human beings, and to those who have arrived at maturity, and are in the possession of reason, it includes not one sect, but many. Atheists are infidels, and so are sceptics, and so are Deists; and of Deists again there are many varieties. Infidels, therefore, taken as a genus, have not found what they shall believe, but what they shall not. They are not agreed, except in disagreeing with Christians. Their creed then, like their name, is a negation, it expresses nothing positive, but something negative, that is to say, a something which is nothing.

Who, therefore, can wonder that we find it difficult to attack such a shadowy foe? For when we

challenge them to present their own system, and to submit their creed to examination, they reply, "Creed! we have none. Convict our system of falsehood, if you can." Cowardly heroes! Rout and ruin and desperation make them bold. They are like the gypsies before an invading army: having neither towns to be taken, nor houses to be "who can burned, nor property to lose, they say, disperse or plunder us?" Thus the very emptiness and destitution and vagrancy of infidelity, make them difficult to attack. They could find their foe, for he presented a compact front; they could take their aim, for he laid bare his breast; they had something to inflame their hopes of plunder, for he had riches to be seized. But as for us; when we thought to march to battle, we had to go on a voyage of discovery; when we ought to have been using our arms, we have to employ our telescope; and when we hope we have begun the conflict, we are liable to feel our ardour checked by the confounding information, " that is not the foe."

Surely the days of chivalry are not past. We have still to sally forth in quest of our giants, and, like the knight of La Mancha, are in danger of meeting nothing but windmills; for infidels shift round to all points of the compass, and he who began by professing to belong to one species of the genus, ends with taking refuge under the shield of another. We must, however, comfort ourselves with the thought that we can and will form some definite notions, if they cannot or will not. We will class them as animals in natural history, and