II. Then let us recollect what thankfulness we owe to God for the advantages we possess in this Christian and protestant country. What praises should we render to the Author of all goodness for casting our lot in a land of light and knowledge. After reviewing the darkness of the world, can we avoid exclaiming, Blessed are our eyes for they see, and our ears for they hear! If there be a humble state of mind, can we avoid thanking God continually for having been delivered from the kingdom of darkness, for having been blessed with the Christian revelation of light and peace!

III. Again, what unaffected compassion. should this subject inspire for the heathen and Mahometan nations that sit in darkness and the shadow of death! If we were to consider only the temporal afflictions and calamities flowing from the want of the Christian doctrine, where is there a heart so hard that would not feel some movements of sympathy when he beholds the souls of his fellow-men degraded-reason obscured-idolatry the most debasing triumphant-the light of truth extinguished-the dark and sensual passions enslaving the nobler powers-war raging with unmitigated fierceness-the whole female sex depressed, injured, enslaved-man the glory of the creation de

throned? Where is there the tender, the humane heart, that would not weep over a fallen world even in these respects, and be prepared to weigh with candour the evidences which the goodness of God has supplied of his revelation of peace and goodwill to man in Jesus Christ?

But when to these temporal miseries of the heathen world, we subjoin those which spring out of their spiritual condition; when we consider the perfections of God, his law, the accountableness of man, the immortality of the soul, and eternal judgment; and when we remember, moreover, that it is through the torpor of Christians that divine truth has not yet visited them, can we rest quiet without using all means, by the propagation of missions, and the circulation of the Holy Scriptures, to put a stop to the woe and desolation of sin? And can we forbear to feel a horror at that coldblooded infidelity which, from pride and the love of moral darkness, denies the aid of mercy to a ruined world, saps the faith of Christians where it can, and deals in scorn and sarcasm and objection against the healing doctrine of salvation? O, let the unbeliever remember that the guilt of rejecting revelation, is a crime from which the heathen at least, with all their vices, are free; for they

have never contracted the peculiar guilt of spurning this immense benefit with all its accumulated proofs; nor have they ever rendered themselves, by habits of obdurate resistance to truth, incapable of appreciating the evidence, and welcoming the message of eternal mercy.

LECTURE IV.

THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

2 THESSALONIANS III. 17.

The salutation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in my epistle: so I write.

WE proceed now to give some details of those direct Evidences of Christianity, by which its truth and infinite importance may be best imprinted on the youthful mind.

And here we, first, naturally ask, How do we know that the gospels and epistles were really composed by the apostles and disciples whose names they bear, and are deserving of credit as histories, so that a fact ought to be accounted true because it is found in them? Or, to speak the language of criticism, How do we know that the books of the New Testament are authentic and credible?

I say, of the New Testament, for none who admit the authority of that part of the Holy

Scripture, can doubt the truth of the other. The two, indeed, are so indissolubly connected, that a very few observations will serve to show the authenticity and credibility of the Old Testament, when the authority of the New has been once established.

At present, I confine myself to the question of authenticity. But before I enter on it, I pause for a moment, because perhaps it may strike a young person as a difficult thing, to show that the books of the New Testament were really written and published by their respective authors in the first century. The distance of time may seem to him so immense, as to render any satisfactory evidence hopeless.

How is it possible, he may ask, to prove that writings published seventeen or eighteen centuries since are genuine? Besides, his inexperienced mind may perhaps be startled at the very proposal of bringing the sacred scriptures to a merely historical test, in common with any other ancient writings. The very sacredness of the subject, and the awe with which we have justly instructed him to regard the Bible, may lead him rather to shrink from such a proposal. He may think it more natural and satisfactory to go at once to the divine inspiration of the New Testament, without entering on the historical question of,