when private vengeance is suffered to prevail? On the other hand, it is proved by experience, that meekness and forbearance prevent and check the evils which insolence and oppression create, and often disarm the violence which resistance tends to exasperate. Christianity, moreover, is designed for all; proposes to itself universal sway and dominion; and therefore cannot be expected to provide for disobedience to its enactments, or be made accountable for evils which would cease to exist if its precepts were generally followed. This would justify the rules in question, in a dispensation whose object looks beyond this world, even if they were found to occasion present inconvenience. But we possess a further proof of its emanating from more than human wisdom, when it issues a law of which human wisdom would dread the consequences, yet that law is found to correct and diminish mischief, even when imperfectly obeyed.

I conclude, therefore, that the nature of the Christian character affords fresh confirmation of

the divine origin of the Gospel which inculcates

it. In the course of things, that character could not be altogether new; many of its parts must have been previously recognised, and only derive stronger sanction from its authority. But still there is in it so much of novelty and originality, as must induce us to seek for their peculiar source; and the practical results contribute to persuade us, that the source must have been divine. Though the Christian character, before the preaching of Jesus, was in many points untried and unknown; experience has proved that as far as it has prevailed and been acted upon, it has cleared and brightened the aspect of the moral world; and that it only needs to be universally received, in order to remove the principal evils which disturb our state on earth.

And yet with such an agent as man, and in a condition so complicated as that of human society, it is no less dangerous than difficult to introduce new modes of conduct, and new principles of action. What extensive and unforeseen results have sometimes proceeded from a single statute, like that which provides for the support

of the poor in England—a single institution, like the trial by jury—a single admission, like that of the supremacy of the Roman pontiff-a single principle, as Luther's appeal to the Bible. How difficult, therefore, for the first promulgators of Christianity to foresee the possible effects of such a machine, the consequences of so new and untried an experiment; or to have anticipated the results of its working on a subject so complex and contradictory as the human heart.

Experience, however, universally sides in favour of Christianity. Reliance upon Christ, the main-spring of the whole character, instead of producing carelessness, has quickened the apprehension of offending. Christian benevolence and sympathy afford the surest alleviation of calamity: Christian meekness and patience under injuries prove the strongest safeguard against the encroachments of violence and pride. In every view, the moral tendencies and known effects of the religion strengthen the belief, that its origin was not from earth, but from heaven its author, not man, but God.

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CHAPTER IX.

Reasonableness of the Christian Doctrines.

may be thought, that what is gained on the one hand, by proving the originality of the doctrines taught in the Gospel, according to the argument of the preceding chapters, is lost, on the other hand, by showing their improbability. If the Gospel proposed a probable or a reasonable system of belief, it would have been likely to occur to those, who, from whatever motives, undertook to invent or introduce a new religion. If it were unlikely to occur, this will show it to be improbable and unreasonable; and so diminish, or even destroy, its credibility.

I conceive, that this objection is the root of all unbelief. The direct proofs of the truth of Christianity are so full, so various, and so irrefragable, that men cannot remain unbelievers through defect of evidence. They doubt or deny

in spite of evidence, because of the unexpected and unpalatable nature of what that evidence

attests.

The Scriptures themselves lead us to anticipate this. They tell us, that the doctrines are such as the heart naturally revolts from: receives slowly and unwillingly: such as are contrary to the suggestions of human philosophy, and will not be cordially embraced until the heart is brought into a docile and submissive posture, and is disposed to bow humbly before the oracles of God.

It does not however follow, that because the mind of man was not likely to perceive certain truths beforehand, therefore they are not truths: especially if they concern the nature of God, and the condition of man; the relation in which man stands towards God, and his ultimate destination. Setting aside the Bible, it is impossible not to be astonished at the little which mankind have ever discovered upon these mo