text. Let us exemplify these remarks. Every man at all acquainted with the world, has heard the most important truths of revelation ridiculed or opposed from the fancied impossibility of reconciling them with the character of God, with human reason, or with the actual condition of mankind. These separate charges have been made particularly in regard to the Origin of Evil, -the Doctrine of the Trinity, Salvation by Grace, -the Foreknowledge of the Deity, and Future Punishments. Adopting the language of an objector, let us begin with the Origin of Evil. Moses opens the Pentateuch with a long history of the fall of man. He tells us that our first parents were created holy and innocent. They were then placed in a garden, where, without any assignable cause, a prohibition was issued debarring them from the fruit of one particular tree. Like sheer idiots, however, they ate of that tree, when there was an abundance of others for their use ; and when they knew that the curse of God would rest on their conduct. From this period, their Creator, who might have prevented the whole, drove them from the garden; doomed them to labor and suffering; and, not content still, he subjected all their posterity to pain, and labor, and death. And methinks the objector would close his wise remarks by exclaiming, " What a fine story to tell of a pure, perfect, and benevolent Deity!"

Now, my brethren, we, who profess to believe this story, are called upon every day to make it clear and intelligibleto divest it of every thing for which we cannot give a reason-and to reconcile it with our own short-sighted views of propriety. Instead, however, of directly complying with the requisition, let us see, for a moment, what we should gain by setting Moses aside. We certainly do find man, in some cases, sinful-this will be admitted on all hands; for how else shall we account for the crimes, the excesses, the abominations, which every succeeding day is unfolding? and in what way can we make these melancholy facts to quadrate with the perfections of God? Had not the Om. nipotent Being of the universe power to prevent the wickedness by which our world has been cursed? Again: Look through the earth: we shall find, not suffering alone, but the severest suffering of innocence and virtue-we shall see the great mass of every community compelled to earn their subsistence by the sweat of the brow-we shall behold Death reigning with indisputable sway-invading the peace of families, and peopling the realms of mortality with the tro. phies of his triumph, without regard to age, or character, or rank. All this we know, independently of the Bible. Let me ask, then, Why shall we find fault with the history of the fall in the Pentateuch? It teaches us that man was made holy, and apostatized from God. Common experience cannot tell us that he was once holy; but it can and does tell us that he is not so now. Moses teaches us that man was driven from Paradise, and condemned to labor and pain. Ex. perience does not say that he was ever in Paradise; but it attests too well his condemnation to labor and pain. The Bible asserts that, in consequence of Adam's sin, his posteri. ty were doomed to suffering and death. Experience, indeed, knows nothing of Adam; but it proves, and that, too, without giving any reason for the fact, that the first man, whoever he might have been, is dead, and that his posterity have suffered, and have died, through every successive gene. ration.

Now, I should like that some of the carping enemies of Revelation should furnish some reason for these three things. They are not discovered by the light of the sacred Scriptures -they have nothing to do with the sacred Scriptures. They are those every-day occurrences, which no man in his senses can deny. Why is it, that men are wicked when God might have ordered it otherwise? Why is there so much distress in society, when God might have animated every heart with unmingled joy? Why are we all, even infants, subject to death, when God might have destined us to an earthly immortality? Can our enlightened philosophers, who are too wise to believe the believer, afford a satisfactory explanation of these mysterious events? Neither tell I them, nor is any believer of inspiration bound to tell them, why God permitted the fall-why he punished it afterwards-or why, in the language of the Westminster Assembly, all mankind, descending from Adam, by natural generation, have sinned in him, and fallen with him in his first transgression.

But let us glance at another subject, to which we have alluded. I mean the Doctrine of the Trinity. The Christian world is accustomed to believe, that the Deity exists in three persons and one essence. Before I proceed, how. ever, I would remark, that I have never been satisfied with the word persons to express the idea intended to be convey. ed. Person, in our language, is commonly significant of distinct and separate existence. Among the Greeks and Latins, it was not so. They only meant by it, that distinct existence and separate exercise of modes, attributes, and offices, which should harmonize at the same time with strict indivisibility and oneness of being. And recollect, my hearers, that their vocabularies had provided a word for this idea long before the Christian religion was known. With this explanation, then, we firmly believe the Doctrine of the Trinity. But the caviller may reply, "This is absurd-it is contrary to reason." To say there are three persons in one God, will amount, after all, to the same thing, as to say, there are three Gods. And it does not relieve the difficulty to allege, that by person it is not intended to communicate the idea of a distinct Being; for the mind can form no conception of modal existence; there is no possible analogy for it in nature; and besides, the phrase. ology appears to have been adopted merely for the sake of evading the charge of inconsistency and contradiction. So much, brethren, for objections. Without attempting to disprove them, I simply observe: that if Philosophy has ever taught a single truth which cannot be shaken, it is, that we should inquire in religious things, not what is rational and what is not, but what is revealed, and what is not; for we may be assured, no absurdity ever made a part of Divine revelation. But to return: it is said that to be three and one at the same time, in any sense, is impossible. Perhaps not, my brethren. Perhaps every man may find in the structure of his own mind a refutation of that sophistry. For what is mind? It is a something composed of reason, memory, and imagination-three powers plainly distinguished from each other. Yet, does it follow, that each individual has three minds? This is no logomachy. Deny, who can. At all events, Mr. Locke, Mr. Stewart, Mr. Reid, have not denied, that each one of these powers is essentially necessary to the existence of the others, and yet perfectly distinct from both. In some sense, then, three may be one, and one three; that they are ever so in the same sense, nobody has said, and nobody believes. And here. the opposer is not on his own ground; he unblushingly charges absurdity on religion; while, if he has the least candor, he finds the same absurdity in his own breast, and is utterly unable to get over it. But in reply to all this, it may be said, as it often has been, that the Doctrine of a Trinity is incomprehensible and that God cannot require his creatures to believe what they cannot understand. Be it so ; but recollect, that by the rules of logic, that which proves too much, proves nothing at all. And let me ask, is there nothing out of the enclosure of revelation which is incom. prehensible? Let us test the case: A certain class of Atheists will tell us the world is eternal. What think we of something existing which did not begin to exist; neither older now than it ever was, nor younger now than it ever will be? A Deist will confess that God is omnipresent. What think we of a Being who is everywhere at the same time, and neither a part in one place, and a part in another, nor a whole in any place? But why do we multiply examples! The truth is, the human mind was not formed for investigating first principles. I cannot tell what moves my finger. It is true, indeed, that it is owing to an operation of the will; but why that will, which is immaterial, should move my own body, naturally motionless matter, any more than some other substance, is a question which can never be solved. Now, to recur to the objector: He ridicules the idea, that the Godhead includes Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and demands of Christians to explain the mystery. But can he explain the nature of the mindthe attributes of the sacred Being-or even the motion of his own frame? Neither tell we him in what way, according to the confession of faith, there can be in unity of the God. head, three persons of one substance, power, and eternity. On some future occasion, with the leave of Providence, we shall consider the remaining articles proposed to be examined by the light of our text, viz: Salvation by Grace, the Fore-knowledge of the Deity, and Future Punishments. For the present, let a single brief reflection suffice. It is this: The sacred Scriptures, although written by none of the cautious and Argus-eyed men of this world, have recorded no fact which history has not more or less verified, and have announced no doctrine which genuine philosophy will not tend to confirm and establish. We have seen every possible effort made-we have seen the whole parades of objections, difficulties, and scruples-we have seen, in every age,