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SUBSTANTIALLY AS THEY WERE WRITTEN.

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rious periods advanced. But we may be confident that no interpolations of this kind have been made, because in examining these books, we find that they furnish no support-make no allusions to the doctrines that have been so zealously upheld. I find in them no trinitarian arguments, nor anti-trinitarian. They know nothing of any such questions. Only by implication, not by design, do they take part in our theological disputes. Here, by the way, what a decisive proof have we that the Gospels must have been written previously to the appearance of the doctrines referred to. Had they been the work of any period subsequent to that in which they purport to have been written, they would have borne numerous and unquestionable traces of the dogmas which, in one form or another, have ever since prevailed.

Besides, however anxious the different sects of Christians may have been to secure the authority of Scripture each for itself, there was but little temptation to corrupt and garble the text, when the arbitrary and fanciful methods of explaining these books, so early adopted, allowed almost any doctrine to be proved from almost any passage. The allegorical

mode of interpretation, so much favoured and practised by the early Christian writers, fruitful as it was in errors, still served one good purpose. It protected the sacred text from all tampering and interpolation. There was little inducement to forge or corrupt a passage, when by the exercise of a little ingenuity, a favourite opinion might be discovered on every page, in almost every syllable.*

*The reader who wishes to see to what extent the Fathers carried

As there are few interpolations worth speaking of, calculated to affect doctrines, we may be very confident that there are none in the case of the facts related. But to perceive how utterly groundless is the suspicion, that the accounts of the miracles may have been inserted into these narratives at a period subsequent to that in which these books were written, we have only to glance at the Apocryphal Gospels. There is one, for instance, entitled, the Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus.' It is full of stories, the most childish and ridiculous; stories which satisfy us, at once, of the impossibility of fabricating miracles that should not betray their falsehood by their palpable inconsistency with the character of Jesus.

So

But none, not even the authors of the New Testa ment histories themselves, could have forged miracles that should harmonize with the Spirit of Christ. In him we have a new manifestation of moral beauty. much is admitted, even by those who deny any extraordinary agency in the introduction of Christianity. To connect mere fabrications with such a character, without producing the most striking discordancy, would be combining the grossest delusions with the loftiest truths. Can the brightest light and the deepest darkness be so united that the eye cannot instantly discern the widest difference? Now to my mind it is wonderful enough, that the miracles attributed to Jesus, do not directly and manifestly militate against his character. But this negative evidence of their reality,

the allegorical method of interpretation, may be gratified by consult. ing a review of the "Publications of Bishop Hopkins."-Christian Examiner, 3rd Series, No. vi.

THE MORAL IDEA WHICH IN FACT THEY REVEAL.

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powerful, and altogether singular as it is, is not all. It is but the shadow of the argument which they carry with them. They not only do not violate the original beauty of that life, but more strikingly than anything else related of Jesus, they reveal, exalt, and perfect the moral idea which we form of him. They give us a conception of moral character, of the spiritual power and glory with which humanity is capable of being clothed, that we could not form by any other means. Nay, they harmonize not only with his life, but with the profoundest philosophy of our being. I cannot desire nor imagine any evidence for their reality more complete and satisfactory.

Every one feels the force of the internal evidence for Christianity, expressed in its moral lineaments, in the wisdom and benignity of its precepts, the purity and thoroughness of its rules of life, and the virtues of its founder. If I do not mistake, here lies the main foundation of every intelligent man's faith. The internal moral evidence the most sceptical have felt. Now what I say is this, that in no part of the New Testament histories is this moral power, in my view, more conspicuous than in the accounts of the miracles of Jesus. There is that in them, which goes to my heart as directly, creating faith there, as his eloquent recommendations of peace and love. In the exercise of his singular power, there is not only no display, nothing done for effect, no puerility, but a sublime "majesty of action," a godlike singleness of purpose, a perfect naturalness, in which the heart may behold, with awe and with tears, the crowning manifestation of Divinity. His authority over matter arrests my

attention, chiefly as it reveals his moral power, evinced in an entire freedom from pride and every selfish aim, and the complete, yet calm devotion of his whole being, with all its unprecedented gifts, to the cause of truth and of God.

CHAPTER X.

JESUS AS A PROPHET.

"Thou prophetic spirit that inspirest
The human soul of universal earth!"

WORDSWORTH.

My chief object in this chapter is, to show how satisfactorily the great founder of Christianity is proved, in the histories of his life, to have been possessed of an extraordinary knowledge of future events.

I wish first, however, to make some remarks upon the nature of his Prophetical Gift.

Whether he pierced the veil of Futurity by special, instantaneous inspiration of God, or by the natural intuition of his own wonderfully endowed being, I do not pretend to determine, I do not know. But one thing is very plain. I cannot shut my eyes to the analogy that presents itself between the prophetical power of Jesus and the very nature of all mind.

All things are in an infinite variety of ways interwoven with one another-great and little, high and low, past, present, and future. The knowledge of any one thing involves an acquaintance with numberless other things. How far into the depths of the past

THE SPIRIT OF PROPHECY.

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hath the eye of science penetrated, simply by surveying the present appearance and condition of the earth! What mighty and remote revolutions hath the human mind predicted by observing the present positions of the heavenly bodies! Nay, is not our very nature as it exists in all men, in a feeble degree perhaps, but still in a certain sense, prophetical? What is this yearning that we have towards the future, or, to say no more, the bare idea of the future, what is it but the germ of prophecy in the human soul? It reveals at least the desire and capacity of foreknowledgethat faculty of our being, which, let us only advance as we may, and as we feel that we ought, will qualify us to receive whatever communications of foreknowledge may be made to us here or hereafter, and however they may be made. Beautifully, but not more beautifully than truly, has it been said,

"Knowest thou Yesterday, its aim and reason?
Workest thou well To-day for worthy things?
Then fear not thou the morrow's hidden season,
But calmly wait what hap soe'er it brings."

But why fear not the future? Why calmly wait? Because to the mind that wisely listens to the past and faithfully uses the present, there must come the assured conviction that the future has in store for it no real evil. To know so much of futurity as this, though we should never know more, is it not prophetic knowledge? To know and feel that the everlasting future can do us no harm, surely this is to see with a prophet's ken! But some minds have seen further and more clearly into the coming time than others.

Their knowledge of futurity was the result of no

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