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istory recounted to us varies very consideraly from or is directly opposed to our view of hem, we refuse our immediate belief, and wait For further evidence. Thus, if we hear that - friend, in whose integrity we have perfect confidence, has committed a dishonest action, ve place our former knowledge of our friend nopposition to the testimony of our informer, and we anxiously look for an explanation. BeTore our minds are easy on the subject, we must either discover some circumstance in the action which may bring it under the general principle which we have formed with regard to his character, or else we must form to ourselves some new general principle which will explain it.

We reason in the same way of the intelligence of actions as we do of their morality.When we see an object obtained by means of a plan evidently adapted for its accomplishment, we refer the formation of the plan to design. We reason in this case also from the cause to the effect; and we conclude, that a strong intelligence, when combined with a desire after a particular object, will form and execute some plan adapted to the accomplishment of that particular object. An ambitious man of talents will, we are sure, fix his desires

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ome scheme fitted for its attainment. ate and judicious friend of Julius Cætired to some distant corner of the Tore the commencement of the politiof that wonderful man, and had there n accurate history of every circumhis conduct, how would he have reHe would certainly have believed it; erely because he knew that Cæsar was but also because he could discern - step of his progress, as recorded in , was adapted with admirable intelliccomplish the object of his ambition. of the history, therefore, would rest nsiderations,-first, that the object by it to Cæsar corresponded with the principle under which he had classed character of Cæsar; and, secondly, was evident, through the course of y, a perfect adaptation of means to He would have believed just on the ciple that compelled Archimedes to me history of the steam-boat. nese processes of reasoning, we have of conviction, upon an evidence most strictly speaking, internal, an altogether independent of our confi

dence in the veracity of the narrator of the facts.

Surely, then, in a system which purports to be a revelation from heaven, and to contain a history of God's dealings with men, and to develop truths with regard to the moral government of the universe, the knowledge and belief of which will lead to happiness here and hereafter, we may expect to find (if its pretensions are well-founded) an evidence for its truth, which shall be independent of all external testimony. But what are the precise principles on which the internal evidence for or against a Divine revelation of religion must rest? We cannot have any internal evidence on a subject which is in all its parts and bearings and relations entirely new to us; because, in truth, the internal evidence depends solely on our knowledge that certain causes are followed by certain effects: Therefore, if a new train of causes and effects perfectly different from any thing which we have before known, be presented to us, all our notions of probability, all our anticipations of results, and all our references to causes, by which we are accustomed to judge of theories and histories, become utterly useless. In the hypothetical case of Archimedes deciding on the story of the steam-boat, the

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grounded on his belief that similar ald produce similar effects, and on his e that the causes which the traveller were actually followed in nature by which he specified. The philosonever seen this particular combination but he knew each distinct cause, with train of consequents; and thus he anhe general result of the combination. the credit attached to the narrative s exploits, by his distant friend, was on the conviction that ambition would r to aim at empire, and on the knowthis object could not be attained exat course which Cæsar pursued. Ale circumstances were new, he could _ve predicted, from analogy, that, he design proved finally successful or r would certainly form the design, ruct some such plan for its accom

uaintance, then, with certain causes rily connected with certain effects, tuitive conviction that this same conIl always subsist between these causes 5, form the basis of all our just antici the future, and of all our notions of

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that he had sent for the man and interrogated him; and, from his unorderly and unscientific, but accurate specification of boilers, and cylinders, and pipes, and furnaces, and wheels, had drawn out the mechanical theory of the steamboat,-he might have told his friends, "The traveller may be a liar; but this is a truth. I have a stronger evidence for it than his testimony or the testimony of any man: It is a truth in the nature of things. The effect which the man has described is the legitimate and certain result of the apparatus which he has described. If he has fabricated this account, he must be a great philosopher. At all events, his narration is founded on an unquestionable general truth." Had the traveller committed an error in his specification, that defect would have operated as an obstacle to the conviction of Archimedes; because, where the facts which are testified constitute the parts of a system, they must, in order to produce conviction, be viewed in their relation to one another and in their combined bearing on the general result. Unless they are thus viewed, they are not seen as they really exist, -they do not hold their proper ground. A single detached pipe or boiler or valve could not produce the effects of the steam-engine; and a man who knows no more

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