time anticipated the celestial glory in the presence of three of his disciples, a voice came from heaven, saying, "This is my beloved Son; hear ye him." He was sent to tell men something which they did not know. Those, therefore, who believed the reality of this miraculous appearance, and yet did not listen to what he taught, rejected him on the very ground on which it was of prime importance that they should receive him.

The regeneration of the character is the grand object; and this can only be effected by the pressure of the truth upon the mind. Our knowledge of this truth must be accurate, in order that the image impressed upon the heart may be correct; but we must also know it in all the awfulness of its authority, in order that the impression may be deep and lasting. Its motives must be ever operating on us-its representations ever recurring to usits hopes ever animating us. This will not relax, but rather increase our diligence in the business of life. When we are engaged in the service of a friend, do we find that the thought of that friend and of his kindness retards our exertions ?-No. And when we consider all the business of life as work appointed to us by our Father, we shall be diligent in it for his sake. In fact, however clearly we may be able to state the subject, and however strenuous we may be in all the orthodoxy of its defence, there must be some flaw in our view of it, if it remains only a casual or an uninfluential visitor of our hearts. Its interests are con

tinually pressing; eternity is every moment coming nearer; and our characters are hourly assuming a form more decidedly connected with the extreme of happiness or misery. In such circumstances, trifling is madness. The

professed infidel is a reasonable man in comparison with him who admits the Divine inspiration of the gospel, and yet makes it a secondary object of his solicitude.

The Monarch of the Universe has proclaimed a general amnesty of rebellion, whether we give or withhold our belief or our attention; and if an amnesty were all that we needed, our belief or our attention would probably never have been required. Our notions of pardon and punishment are taken from our experience of human laws. We are in the habit of considering punishment and transgression as two distinct and separate things, which have been joined together by authority, and pardon as nothing more than the dissolution of this arbitrary connexion. And so it is amongst men; but so it is not in the world of spirits. Sin and punishment there are one thing. Sin is a disease of the mind which necessarily occasions misery; and therefore the pardon of sin, unless it be accompanied with some remedy for this disease, cannot relieve from misery.

This remedy, as I have endeavoured to explain, consists in the attractive and sanctifying influence of the Divine character manifested in Jesus Christ. Pardon is preached through him, and those who really believe are healed; for this belief implants in the heart the love

of God and the love of man, which is only another name for spiritual health. Carelessness, then, comes to the same thing as a decided infidelity. It matters little in what particular way or on what particular grounds we put the gospel from us. If we do put it from us either by inattention or rejection, we lose all the benefits which it is fitted to bestow; whilst, on the other hand, he who does receive it, receives along with it all those benefits, whether his belief has originated from the external evidence, or simply from the conviction of guilt and the desire of pardon, and the discovery that the gospel meets his necessities as a weak and sinful creature,-just as a voyager gains all the advantage of the information contained in his chart, whatever the evidence may have been on which he at first received it.

This last illustration may explain to us why God should have declared faith to be the channel of all his mercies to his intelligent creatures. The chart is useless to the voyager, unless he believes that it is really a description of the ocean which he has to pass, with all its boundaries and rocks and shoals and currents; and the gospel is useless to man, unless he believes it to be a description of the character and will of that Great Being on whom his eternal interests depend. Besides, the nature of the gospel required such a reception in another point of view: It was necessary to its very object, that its blessings should be distinctly marked out to be of free and unmerit

ed bounty. When we speak of benefits freely bestowed, we say of them, "You may have them by asking for them," distinguishing them by this mode of expression as gifts, from those things for which we must give a price. Precisely the same idea is conveyed by the gospel declaration, "Believe, and ye shall be saved." When it is asked, How am I to obtain God's mercy ? the gospel answers, that "God has already declared hitelf reconciled through Jesus Christ; so you may have it by believing it." Faith, therefore, according to the gospel scheme, both marks the freeness of God's mercy, and is the channel through which that mercy operates on the character.

It has been my object, throughout this Essay, to draw the attention of the reader to the internal structure of the religion of the Bible, -first, because I am convinced that no man in the unfettered exercise of his understanding can fully and cordially acquiesce in its pretensions to Divine inspiration, until he sees in its substance that which accords both with the character of God and with the wants of man: and secondly, because any admission of its Divine original, if unaccompanied with a knowledge of its principles, is absolutely useless.

We generally find, that the objections which are urged by sceptics against the inspiration of the Bible, are founded on some apparent improbability in the detached parts of the sysThese objections are often repelled by the defenders of Christianity as irrelevant; and the objectors are referred to the unbrok

tem.

en and well supported line of testimony in confirmation of its miraculous history. This may be a silencing argument, but it will not be a convincing one. The true way of answering such objections, when seriously and honestly made, seems to me to consist in showing the relation which these detached parts bear to the other parts, and then in explaining the harmony and efficiency of the whole system. When a man sees the fullness and beauty of this harmony, he will believe that the system of Christianity is in truth the plan of the Divine government, whether it has actually been revealed in a miraculous way or not; and if he finds that the fact of its being inspired really enters into the substance of the system, and is necessary to it, he will be disposed to believe

that too.

Let us suppose a man brought from the heart of Africa, perfectly ignorant of the discoveries of Europe, but of excellent parts: Let him be fully instructed in all the mathematical and physical knowledge connected with the Newtonian philosophy, but without having the system of astronomy communicated to him; and then let us suppose that his instructor should announce to him that most perfect and most beautiful of human discoveries under the name of a direct revelation from Heaven. The simplicity and the grandeur of the theory would fill his imagination and fasten his attention; and as he advanced in the more minute consideration of all its bearings, the full and accurate agreement of its principles with