on the face of them the stamp of human imperfection and weakness. They were of earth, earthy. Christianity has a heavenly aim and object.

Its spirit corresponds with its object. It embraces all those qualities, which we are formed to venerate and love. To feel as a Christian is to have ardent and confiding piety; a deep sentiment of our responsibleness; a strong abhorrence of sin, sorrow for the share we have had in it, and a resolution no more to incur the stain of it; fond breathings after a loftier measure of virtue; enlarged and feeling benevolence, embracing intelligent natures throughout the universe; warm sympathy; subjected desires and self-restraint; a chastened imagination, pure thoughts; meekness, humility, gentleness; deference to the feelings, pity for the distresses, indulgence and mercy for the failings and faults, of those around us; gratitude for benefits and oblivion of injuries. What more is necessary to form a character at once venerable and pleasing, happy in itself, and tending to impart happiness to others, fitted to adorn earth and occupy a place in heaven?

Yet where, we do not say in the religions of antiquity, where in the writings of her sages and moralists, is such a character held up as an object for the attainment of which we should be willing to sacrifice all the glories of the world? For those writings we feel, it is hoped, due veneration. From several of them there comes a voice of profound instruction. They contain stores of deep thought and grave ethical wisdom. But we should form no very favourable opinion of the head or heart of the man, who after carefully reading over the instructions of Jesus, should hesitate, for one moment, to admit, that those instructions are of a far more heavenly mould, that they send forth far more of a healing and exalting influence, than the purest and best strains uttered by pagan antiquity.

The aim and spirit of Christianity admit of a variety of rich and striking illustrations. The subject, too, has forcible attractions. But the object we have in view in these remarks, that of pointing to a few of what we conceive to be the strongest marks of divinity which Christianity bears on its features, does not require us to pursue it.

We pass to the doctrines of Christianity. If it be what it pretends to be, those doctrines must carry with them evidence of coming from the Author and Preserver of nature, and Father

of the spirits of all flesh;--part of which is, that they be reasonable; that they be found in unison with nature, with the known attributes of God, with the best sentiments and feelings of the human breast. Nothing but what is so can be venerated as a doctrine of revelation.

Many of the strongest prejudices, which have grown up against Christianity, and which have many times amounted to a rejection of it, have arisen, we are confident, from an idea that it demands a surrender of the understanding. Acquainted with it only in its most corrupted forms, men have viewed it as a monstrous and extravagant fiction. Its doctrines, as they have been offered to their minds, have appeared chargeable with impiety, and gross, palpable absurdity. They have seemed to divest God of that character, which all within and around us leads us to view as unchangeably belonging to him. They have robbed him of his noblest attributes of goodness and compassion; they have held him up to our minds as the author of injustice and cruelty; arbitrary, capricious and unfeeling, first willing our guilt, and then punishing us with bitter and everlasting wo for being guilty. As they have cast a shade over the divine attributes, so they have left a stain on human nature. They have ascribed to it features of black, inherent, and universal depravity, by which according to the best information derived from our own hearts and from observation, it is not characterized; and which, if they really belonged to it, would overthrow all responsibleness and virtue. From such chilling, and, as it has appeared to them, impious and immoral doctrines, they have felt compelled to turn away; and a great deal of open infidelity, we are satisfied, has been the consequence. Of those, who have stopped short of this, many have fluctuated in uncertainty, or have been filled with gloom and distrust. They have been haunted with a suspicion or feeling, that the instructions of Christianity partake of something of the marvellous or irrational, and that it requires, therefore, some effort of credulity to admit their truth. Until this feeling is overcome, the strongest arguments for the truth of Christianity, drawn from testimony, from its correspondence with ancient predictions, from the time and manner of its introduction into the world, and its growth and prevalence in subsequent ages, will appear no better than cold and feeble abstractions.

We are confident, however, that this feeling may be removed; but not till the mass of corrupt doctrines, which have for centuries overshadowed Christianity, is finally destroyed. Those doctrines can never be objects of veneration in a refined and intellectual age. We rejoice that they are fast falling away. Their hold on multitudes of minds has been shaken. More rational views of Christianity are rapidly extending. We look forward to their universal diffusion, as an event, which will revive that reverence for the instructions of Jesus, which, in consequence of gross mistakes about their nature, has been partially withholden. It would not be difficult to show that Christianity -we mean such as it is found in the Bible-Christianity divested of the encumbrances, with which human pride, or folly, or fanaticism, or imposture, the refinements of speculative understandings, and gross conceptions of weak minds, have loaded it,―teaches nothing, which is irrational, nothing which common sense and the common feelings of humanity compel us to reject; that whatever monstrous and absurd doctrines fallible mortals have inculcated as forming parts of it, its genuine features are not deformed and gloomy;-that it wears a venerable and attractive form;-that there is nothing chilling in its looks, nothing adapted to inspire dejection or melancholy in the mode in which it addresses us, nothing in its whole air and spirit fitted to terrify the imagination and shock the feelings. Far from it. Its language is echoed from all within the breast, and from all the mute forms of nature;-it utters sentiments, which all facts in the history of matter and mind, all the sublime instructions breathed from the earth, the air, and majestic overhanging heavens, unite in confirming. Nor have the evidences of its truth and adaptation to human nature been weakened by the progress of human intellect and growth of civilization in modern days; they have gathered strength from age;-time, which has blotted out venerable empires, and shaken into dust the most solid fabrics of human genius, has only caused the beautiful and majestic proportions of Christianity to stand out in more bold relief.

These are topics, which he who would inspire a deep veneration for Christianity, should not neglect. He must show that it is reasonable. It may oppose our prejudices and correct

our misconceptions; it may impart instruction, which lay beyond the reach of our unassisted powers; it may teach that which our feeble capacities, if left to themselves, could never have found out; but it can inspire no distrust of those capacities; it utters no denunciations against human reason. It is intended, not to prostrate, but to assist and exalt intellect. It informs us of what was unknown, but never shocks us by absurdity. It quickens and instructs conscience without weakening our confidence in its decisions-without blotting out our moral natures. It is not at war with the understanding and with nature; it is a firm ally, and friend, a counsellor, assistant and strengthener of both. These are strongly marked features of Christianity. They are features on which, in consequence of the corruptions of Christianity, too little stress has been hitherto laid, and they have therefore been but imperfectly explained and feebly illustrated.

The object and spirit of Christianity and cast of its doctrines, prepare us to admit its claims to a divine origin. Had it grown out of the ordinary efforts of human nature, we should have expected it to partake of human imperfections; we should have looked for some resemblance to former productions of human genius, for some marks of grossness, for some traces of the tone of thinking and feeling prevalent in the country from the bosom of which it sprung. None of these features characterize it. We find in it no weak parts; no vestages of human imbecility and ignorance. It opposed the maxims and spirit of the age; it held out doctrines, which flattered none of the illiberal or corrupt prejudices of the people among whom it had its birth; it appeared furthest removed from a narrow, temporizing spirit; it extended its cares to the whole family of man; it embraced all subsequent times, and connected the interests of both worlds.

A sketch of the internal evidences of Christianity, however brief and hasty, would be imperfect without some notice of its author. The character of Jesus has many traits of surpassing excellence. Attempts have often been made to describe those traits, and, to render the portrait more striking, several comparisons have been formed. The subject, we conceive, is not yet exhausted. Much may still be done for the more full illustration of it. It is a subject, which the advocate for Christianity should not carelessly pass over. It is one around which, if he have feeling and skill, he may throw powerful attractions.

It holds a language to the heart, and is therefore peculiarly fitted to exert an influence over more warm and susceptible natures. In such natures the understanding takes counsel of the affections. Obtain sway over the latter, the former will not be slow in yielding. The character of the founder of Christianity, however, furnishes matter for profound argument, as well as occasion for the more delicate breathings of a simple, and pathetic, and feeling eloquence. It is of a nature, we should think, to engage, in some degree, the attention of the speculative, cold and skeptical.

No person, however obtuse his sensibility, who has thoroughly studied the character of Jesus, and reflected on the age and place in which it was produced, will hesitate to say, that it is a very extraordinary one. It must be admitted to be perfectly natural, and of a kind, which renders it impossible to believe, that it could have been a forgery of the imagination. It is too much to suppose, that a few illiterate men, who should have set about forming a fictitious character, would have portrayed one so totally unlike all which had before appeared in the world, and so much superior to the age in which they lived. It was too exalted a conception, too wonderful a portrait to have presented itself to their imaginations. Had they attempted to draw such a portrait, it would have been little short of miraculous, that they should have succeeded. They could not have thrown into it such an air of truth, and yet assigned it so many qualities, which are rare, and would seem not easily to blend and harmonize. No, it must have been a conception taken from a living original. And how, it may be asked, was that original formed? For, it will be recollected, Jesus had none of the advantages of wealth or rank; he was surrounded by no bright constellation of intellect; he had scarcely a tincture of human literature, or human philosophy; yet he uttered instructions, and bore a character, which had the air of something more than human. Is it to be supposed, that his mind, acted upon by surrounding objects, or impelled by its own reflections, originated those deep, far reaching and sublime instructions, or that his own will and energy, without assistance from above, formed that character, so fitted to draw all hearts, and compel the homage of all understandings? Do the known attributes of our nature authorize us to ascribe such an effect to any exertions of the human intellect?