be useless. "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." If we are only to be convinced by personal evidence, we require a personal miracle; and should the miracle be vouchsafed, it would affect only those who beheld it. If granted to others, it would soon cease to be a miracle, for it would become to us part of the ordinary course of nature.

Reason, from its universality, is, therefore, a much stronger guarantee of truth than any miracle can be; and the force of the early miracles lies not in the fact of their being miracles, but in their reasonableness. A Divine revelation required a Divine testimony; it was reasonable to expect it. Therefore, miracles were granted at the beginning. But as soon as the new Revelation was established and recognised as Divine, the instrument for its transmission was reason, working through those general principles of historical evidence which are applicable to all ages. This does not do away with the collateral, and what may be termed the metaphysical evidence to the truth of Christianity. But such evidence cannot be the general foundation of intellectual belief, because it depends upon the peculiar theories and the moral constitution of each individual; and no man could rest his hopes of salvation upon a proof which, though accepted by one man, could be reasonably denied by another. God's witness is fact: Christianity is a fact. Let those who deny its divinity begin by first dis

proving its origin. If it is not true, from whence did it arise?

Well will it be for all to remember that, granting the truth of Christianity, the question by which its rejecters will be judged at the Last Great Day will be, not whether they had all the evidence which they thought necessary to convince them of the divinity of the Revelation, but whether they accepted the truth of its facts upon that amount of reasonable evidence on which they received the ordinary witness of history. St. Peter was pardoned when his faith grew weak, for the full testimony to his Lord's divinity had not yet been given; but there will be no pardon for us.

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PREJUDICE.

ST. LUKE, xxii. 66-71.

"And as soon as it was day, the elders of the people and the chief

priests and the scribes came together, and led Him into their council, saying, Art Thou the Christ? tell us. And He said unto them, If I tell you, ye will not believe: and if I also ask you, ye will not answer me, nor let me go. Hereafter shall the Son of Man sit on the right hand of the power of God. Then said they all, Art Thou then the Son of God? And He said unto them, Ye say that I am. And they said, What need we any further witness? for we ourselves have heard of His own mouth."

HERE again is an illustration of the natural working of the human heart; something like thought and compunction arising as the dark excitement of night passes away, and the cold, grey dawn of morning casts a chill over the passions as well as over the bodily frame. The difference between the view of events taken at night and that taken in the daytime is known and acknowledged universally; and every one who has experienced the effect of the early morning, must remember the dreariness which then creeps over the heart, either in deep sorrow, or after strongly-awakened feelings;the sudden pause and questioning which the dull, faint light seems to force upon us ;-the doubt how our actions or our plans will be re

garded by others;—how we shall ourselves view them when looking back from amidst the business and pleasures of life. Without night one might almost imagine there would be no overwhelming energy either for good or evil. Without the cold dawn, no warning of prudence, and no bitterness of repentance.

And so it seems that the chief priests and scribes, startled by the contrast between the vehemence of their passionate indignation against our Blessed Lord, and the coldness of that first awakening of nature, were induced to pause in their course, and, leading Him into the council, to ask, as though anxious to find some cause for relenting, "Art Thou the Christ? tell us."

The answer was clear; the warning which accompanied it most awful; but their long-indulged enmity was too strong for the feeble visitings of compunction; and the very words which should have terrified them to their salvation, were turned to the furtherance of their guilty schemes. "Hereafter," said Christ, "shall the Son of Man sit on the right hand of the power of God." In this declaration was contained a fresh cause for fear. The Christ was in their eyes a temporal prince; but Jesus spoke of Himself as far greater. Partly in terror, as it would appear, partly in anger, they all exclaimed," Art Thou then the Son of God?" And when the reply left no doubt, with the madness of determined guilt, acting the more fiercely because its course had for a moment been arrested,

they converted the words, spoken as a warning, into an occasion of accusation, and exclaimed, "What need we any further witness, for we ourselves have heard of his own mouth!"

The outcry was the result of prejudice-of a decision made before the case had been examined into. For the question which the chief priests were called upon to determine,—supposing the examination of our Lord to have been carried on according to the ordinary rules of justice,-was not what were the claims which He brought forward, but whether those claims were true. Pre-judging, pre-determining, they wilfully mistook their business,-made the very fact of the claim a sin,—and for that condemned him.

They were prejudiced. Prejudice is not considered a great offence, and it is a very common one. There are scarcely any of us who can say that we are entirely free from it. At times perhaps it shows itself in a way which, upon consideration, startles us. Passion occasionally induces us, in a measure, to sin actually in the same way as the chief priests. We feel, after an angry discussion, that we have perverted the words we have heard, that we have hastily turned them into an accusation without cause; and our hearts reproach us; yet, upon the whole, we think very lightly of prejudice. As the chief priests grounded their condemnation of our Redeemer upon zeal for the glory of God, so do we base our condemnation

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