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النشر الإلكتروني

SERMONS

ON

IMPORTANT SUBJECTS.

SERMON I.

THE DIVINE AUTHORITY AND SUFFICIENCY OF THE CHRISTIAN

RELIGION.

LUKE XVI. 27-31. Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house, for I have five brethren, that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham, but if one went unto them from the dead they would repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.

WHAT Micah said superstitiously, when he was robbed of his idols, Ye have taken away my gods; and what have I more? (Judg. xviii. 24) may be truly spoken with regard to the religion of Jesus. If that be taken from us, what have we more? If the foundations be destroyed, what shall the righteous do? Ps. xi. 3. The generality of you owe all your hopes of a glorious immortality to this heaven-born religion, and you make it the rule of your faith and practice; confident that in so doing you please God.

But what if after all you should be mistaken? What if the religion of Jesus should be an imposture ?—I know you are struck with horror at the thought, and perhaps, alarmed at my making so shocking a supposition. But

this suspicion, horrid as it is, has probably been suggested to you at times by infernal agency: this suspicion may at times have arisen in your minds in their wanton and licentious excursions, or from the false alarms of a melancholy and timorous imagination: and if this suspicion has never been raised in you by the sophistical conversation of loose wits and affected rationalists, it has been owing to your happy retirement from the polite world, where infidelity makes extensive conquests, under the specious name of deism. Since therefore you are subject to an assault from such a suspicion, when you may not be armed ready to repel it, let me this day start it from its ambush, that I may try the force of a few arguments upon it, and furnish you with weapons to conquer it.

Let me also tell you, that that faith in the Christian religion which proceeds from insufficient or bad principles, is but little better than infidelity. If you believe the Christian religion to be divine, because you hardly care whether it be true or false, being utterly unconcerned about religion in any shape, and therefore never examining the matter; if you believe it true, because you have been educated in it; because your parents or ministers have told you so; or because it is the religion or your country; if these are the only grounds of your faith, it is not such a faith as constitutes you true Christians; for upon the very same grounds you would have been Mahometans in Turkey, disciples of Confucius in China, or worshipers of the Devil among the Indians, if it had been your unhappy lot to be born in those countries; for a Mahometan, or a Chinese, or an Indian, can assign these grounds for his faith. Surely, I need not tell you, that the grounds of a mistaken belief in an imposture, are not a sufficient foundation for a saving faith in divine revelation. I am afraid there are many such implicit believers among us, who are in the right only by chance: and these lie a prey to every temptation, and may be turned out of the way of truth by every wind of doctrine. It is therefore necessary to teach them the grounds of the Christian religion, both to prevent their seduction, and to give them a rational and well-grounded faith, instead of that which is only blind and accidental.

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