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which, though deficient in point of practical influence over the human mind, as shall be af terwards explained, is yet true,—and who has learned from experience to refer actions to their moral causes,-is in possession of all the elementary principles which qualify him to judge of the internal evidence of Christianity. He can judge of Christianity as the rude shipcarpenter of a barbarous age could judge of a British ship of the line, or as the scientific anatomist of the eye could judge of a telescope which he had never seen before.

He who holds this scheme of natural relig ion, will believe in its truth (and I conceive justly,) because it urges him to what is good, deters him from what is evil, and coincides generally with all that he feels and observes; and this very belief which he holds on these grounds, will naturally lead him to believe in the truth of another scheme which tends directly to the same moral object, but much more specifically and powerfully, and coincides much more minutely with his feelings and observations.

The perfect moral tendency of its doctrines, is a ground on which the Bible often rests its plea of authenticity and importance. Whatever principle of belief tends to promote real moral perfection, possesses in some degree the quality of truth. By moral perfection, I mean the perception of what is right, followed by the love of it and the doing of it. This quality, therefore, necessarily implies a true view of the relations in which we stand to all the be

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ings with whom we are connected. In this sense, Pope's famous line is perfectly just,"His (faith) can't be wrong, whose life is in the right." But it is evident that a man may a very useful member of this world's society, without ever thinking of the true relation in which he stands to the beings about him. Prudence, honourable feelings, and instinctive good-nature, may ensure to any man, in ordinary times, an excellent reputation. But the scene of our present contemplations lies in the spiritual universe of God, and the character that we speak of must be adapted to that society. We cannot but believe that true moral perfection contains the elements of happiness in that higher state; and therefore we cannot but believe that that view of our moral relations, and of the beings to whom we are so related, which leads to this moral perfection, must be the true view. But if the attainment of this character be the important object, why lay so much stress upon any particular view? The reason is obvious: We cannot, according to the constitution of our nature, induce upon our minds any particular state of moral feeling without an adequate cause. We cannot feel anger, or love, or hatred, or fear, by simply endeavouring so to feel. In order to have the feeling, we must have some object present to our minds which will naturally excite the feeling. Therefore, as moral perfection consists of a combination of moral feelings (leading to correspondent action,) it can only have place in a mind which is under the impression or has

a present view of those objects which naturally produce that combination of feelings.

The object of this Dissertation is to analyze the component parts of the Christian scheme of doctrine, with reference to its bearings both on the character of God, and on the character of man; and to demonstrate, that its facts not only present an expressive exhibition of all the moral qualities which can be conceived to reside in the Divine mind, but also contain all those objects which have a natural tendency to excite and suggest in the human mind that combination of moral feelings which has been termed moral perfection. We shall thus ar

rive at a conclusion with regard to the facts of revelation, analogous to that at which Archimedes arrived with regard to the narrative of the traveller,-viz. a conviction that they contain a general truth in relation to the characters both of God and of man; and that therefore the Apostles must either have witnessed them as they assert, or they must have been the most marvellous philosophers that the world ever saw. Their system is true in the nature of things, even were they proved to be impostors.

When God, through his prophet Jeremiah, refutes the pretensions of the false teachers of that day, he says,-" If they had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings." This moral tendency of its doctrines, then, is the evidence which the book itself appeals to for the proof of its authenticity; and

surely it is no more than justice, that this evidence should be candidly examined. This is an evidence, also, on which the apostle Paul frequently rests the whole weight of the gospel.

According to this theory of the mode in which a rational judgment of the truth and excellence of a religion may be formed, it is not enough to show in proof of its authenticity, that the facts which it affirms concerning the dealings of God with his creatures do exhibit his moral perfections in the highest degree; it must also be shown, that these facts, when present to the mind of man, do naturally, according to the constitution of his being, tend to excite and suggest that combination of feelings which constitues his moral perfection. But when we read a history which authoritatively claims to be an exhibition of the character of God in his dealings with men,—if we find in it that which fills and overflows our most dilated conceptions of moral worth and loveliness in the Supreme Being, and at the same time feel that it is triumphant in every appeal. that it makes to our consciences, in its statements of the obliquity and corruption of our own hearts,—and if our reason farther discovers a system of powerful moral stimulants, embodied in the facts of this, history, which pecessarily tend to produce in the mind a resemblance to that high character which is there pourtrayed, if we discern that the spirit of this history gives peace to the conscience by the very exhibition which quickens its sensibility that it dispels the terrors of guilt by

the very fact which associates sin with the full loathing of the heart-that it combines in one wondrous and consistent whole our most fearful forebodings and our most splendid anticipations for futurity-that it inspires a pure and elevated and joyful hope for eternity, by those very declarations which attach a deeper and more interesting obligation to the discharge of the minutest part of human duty,—if we see that the object of all its tendencies is the perfection of moral happiness, and that these tendencies are naturally connected with the belief of its narration,-if we see all this in the gos-pel, we may then say that our own eyes have seen its truth, and that we need no other testimony: We may then well believe that God has been pleased, in pity to our wretchedness, and in condescension to our feebleness, to clothe the eternal laws which regulate his spiritual government, in such a form as may be palpable to our conceptions, and adapted to the urgency of our necessities.

This theory of internal evidence, though founded on analogy, is yet essentially different in almost all respects from that view of the subject which Bishop Butler has given, in his most valuable and philosophical work on the analogy between natural and revealed religion. His design was to answer objections against revealed religion, arising out of the difficulties connected with many of its doctrines, by showing that precisely the same difficulties occur in natural religion and in the ordinary course of providence. This argument converts even the

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