racter of efficient causes, is recognised, it is impossible to shew that the truths of revelation possess any claim to belief; nay, it is impossible to account for their being intelligible to human beings. While it therefore seems highly necessary to employ all proper weapons' for 'casting down' those high reasonings which thus exalt themselves, and for bringing them into captivity to the • obedience of Christ,' it by no means follows that there is either necessity or propriety in bringing forward to this warfare weapons which are unsound in themselves, and the employment of which throws open the fortress of Christianity to attacks from opposite quarters. Foes of the description alluded to, are not indeed likely to attain any degree of success, until the advocates of Christianity, by their ill-judged expositions of its evidences and doctrines, shall have destroyed that character of a reasonable service,' which it was. its glory at its first promulgation to bear; and by separating between faith and reason, and thus opening a way for the influx of fanati

cism, shall have undermined the foundations on which true religion rests.

There appears at times, on the part of advocates of revelation, a jealousy of natural religion, for which it seems difficult to account. The primary truths of religion, which human reason proceeding upon the evidences which nature furnishes, is enabled to establish, are doubtless sublime and important. Yet how narrow is the sphere of religious science within which unaided reason may legitimately expatiate, compared with that wide field which revelation opens to human view; and how uncertain must for ever have been the condition of man, unsupported by those assurances which revelation affords. It seems impossible that any man who possesses sound and comprehensive views of the extent, the harmony, and excellence of the Christian system, should ever entertain a thought of degrading or depreciating natural religion, in order that the vast superiority of Christianity may be apparent. It is true, that systems not more dangerous in character than false in principle, have

at times been grafted upon those primary truths which reason establishes, and have usurped the name of natural religion. But reason, and the legitimate conclusions of a theological and moral nature which she establishes, cannot in justice be considered as responsible for the truth or tendency of systems, which are the creation of extravagant fancy, or philosophical subtlety. The reprehension fairly due to speculative systems of this nature, cannot justly be directed against reason or natural religion; any more than the censure so well merited by those mystical systems. which falsely claim the title of Christianity, can be justly levelled against Christianity itself. Still less accountable, perhaps, is this anxiety to depreciate natural religion, when it is considered how intimately interwoven are the principles of evidence on which it rests, with those on which the credibility of revelation depends. Such anxiety is consistent enough with the opinion, that Christian truth is to be evidenced solely by mental feelings; but it is irreconcilable with the sentiments of

any who attach importance to the evidences, external or internal, by which Christianity is recommended to the faith of rational beings.

Attempts have been sometimes made by writers on the Evidences of Christianity, to bring the question of its truth into narrow compass and according as their peculiar views have led them to rest more or less weight on the different facts and arguments composing that evidence, they have turned their attention particularly to those proofs which seemed to their minds the clearest or most conclusive, and have left the question to be decided on these grounds. Arguments are not wanting in support of this method of simplifying and restricting the evidence of Christianity, but they are much more specious than solid. Simplicity is of the essence of a mathematical demonstration; and the more simple it can be rendered, the more appropriate and beautiful it becomes. But the proof on which the truth of Christianity rests is in its nature complex; and it cannot be simplified so as to give it any reseinblance to mathematical evi

dence, without breaking it in pieces. Still it may be maintained, that one piece may be advantageously selected from the others, and its strength and beauty displayed; leaving the spectator to examine the others at his leisure. And if the part thus selected be not represented as the whole;-if the operation of disjunction be carefully performed, so as that the other parts suffer no injury in consequence ;the process may perhaps be harmless, if not beneficial. But if the piece thus selected for producing effect, be represented as the only sound or useful part; if the others, on which perhaps the faith of many Christians may in some degree rest, are stigmatized as not merely unsound but injurious;-it seems impossible to contemplate without alarm the consequences which may ensue. Dr Chalmers well observes, that there is such a thing as the love ' of simplicity and system,-a prejudice of the ' understanding, which disposes it to include all the phenomena of nature under a few 'sweeping generalities,-an indolence which 'loves to repose on the beauties of a theory,