PREFACE. HAD the following Parish Lectures been originally prepared with an eye to publication they might have been different in some respects. But they would hardly have been more careful in their statement of main facts and arguments. These are believed to be exact as much so as if expressed in more technical and scholastic forms - and to recognize all that is - valuable in the latest Biblical researches. The au He In some cases it costs as much to prepare the ground for a house as it does to build it. thor thinks himself dealing with such a case. even thinks it a harder task to bring unbelievers into that moral state in which alone they can fairly use the Evidences, than it is to build up the Evidences themselves. In their usual state such persons shed the best arguments as rocks do rain. Even the Christian Euclids make no impression on them. can be PREPARED after a certain manner in the Bible and in the Lectures Unless they insisted on there is no help for them from the most potential logic. In accordance with these views, large space has been given to the earlier topics of the book. The author by no means professes to give all that he considers available arguments in favor of the Bible. He only offers such specimens as he has happened thus far to present to his own people. He knows that these are only a few out of many equally sound. But he also knows that these few are abundantly sufficient to put every true inquirer in the way of a rational faith. The reader may expect to find throughout the work an air of great confidence. He is invited to attribute this, not to a professional habit, but to the sincere conviction of one who in a course of rational inquiry has been "brought out into a wealthy place." Not only was Diderot right when he said, "No better lessons than those of the Bible can I teach my child ;" not only was Franklin right when he said with dying lips, "Young man, my advice to you is that you cultivate an acquaintance with and a firm belief in the Holy Scrip tures this is your certain interest; " but even Descartes and Newton were right when they said, “No sciences are better attested than is the Religion of the Bible not even the mathematical." Nay, One still more illustrious than these great scientists was right when He said, "If they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." Whoever will take the trouble to go as far as the metaphysics of the senses or of geometry, can find that even their ultimate principles are assailed by no smaller objections and defended by no greater proofs than attach to the Biblical Religion. And yet he would not be the wisest of men who should decline to believe in an external world, or should allow himself to suspect that he is following "cunningly devised fables" while following the triumphant demonstrations of Newton and La Place. Lyme, Connecticut. |