LECTURE II.

LUKE XXIV. 46.

Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day.

IN preceding lectures an attempt has been made

to show that the certainty of our hope, and the reasonableness of our faith, as Christians, do not depend upon the genuineness and authenticity of the gospels as their only warrant. A thoughtful man would not lightly reject the evidence furnished by the constant and universal tradition of the Church: and in the agreement of Hebrew prophecy with the state of the world he would find an irresistible argument for the truth of Christianity. But by comparing tradition and prophecy with the epistles of St. Paul, he might advance even to certainty, so far as it is attainable in matters depending upon the laws of credibility. The verity of the gospel-history is, however, of the greatest importance, for, if true, we acquire two additional arguments, either in itself sufficient to silence every doubt. The doctrine, the miracles, and the resurrection of Christ, if faithfully narrated, prove incontestably that He is as he claimed to be, the Messiah, the Saviour of the

world, whilst at the same time the minute fulfilment of prophecy in the time, manner, and place of his birth, life, and death, testifies that he it is of whom the prophets wrote, and that their predictions were not the effusions of fanaticism or imposture, but the words of those who wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Many have been the attempts made to deprive us of this evidence by questioning either the genuineness of the gospels or the authenticity of the history which they profess to relate. But recently, as stated in the last lecture, an attack has been made possessing some degree of novelty from the manner in which it applies old objections. This new assailant rejects the gospel-history not as the work of wilful deceivers, but as a collection of legends gradually arising out of the previous opinions and actual circumstances of the early Christians, until at last insensibly and without design, it was moulded into its present form. The limits of these lectures do not permit us to show the impossibility and absurdity of this hypothesis, nor to discuss all the details of his criticism; but we propose this day to show the unsoundness of the principles on which his reasoning proceeds, and the invalidity of the conclusions at which he arrives.

His first reason for rejecting the historic value of the gospel-narrative is, that the evangelists relate not only what is improbable, but what, in his view, is impossible. 'A relation,' he says, 'cannot be matter of history; a narrative cannot.be authentic

when it is irreconcilable with the known and universal laws of contingency. Now, according to all sound philosophical principles, as well as all sufficiently attested experience, the very first of these laws is, that the great First Cause never breaks through the chain of finite causes by an immediate exertion of power, but, on the contrary, manifests himself only in the production of the whole complex of finite causalities, and their reciprocal action and reaction. Whenever, therefore, a narrative mentions a phenomenon or fact, with the expressed or implied assurance that it was produced immediately by God himself (as heavenly voices, theophanies, and such like things), or by human individuals in consequence of supernatural assistance from him (as miracles, prophecies): in so far we are not to receive it as an historical relation.' In other words this writer tells us, that a direct interposition of the Almighty, as implying a suspension or interruption of the laws of nature, is contrary both to philosophy and experience, and that therefore any narrative including any such interposition either in the way of miracle or revelation, is at the least a legend. Such is the basis of that higher species of criticism, now so highly celebrated on the continent, and regarded as the triumph of the intellectual faculty-a basis that makes all inquiry unnecessary, and all study of the gospels a mere mockery—that pronounces all evidence to be useless. Infidelity sometimes pleads in its defence the insufficiency of the evidence adduced,

the inconclusiveness of the arguments in favour of Christianity, the want of learning in its advocates; but this author fairly lays aside every pretence of the kind, and tells us that no evidence, no learning, and no power of reasoning, will ever be sufficient to convince him, inasmuch as his first principle is, that the alleged facts of Christianity are matters of impossibility. He does not pretend that his unbelief is the result of long and painful investigation, but admits that his rejection of the gospel is the result of his previous unbelief,-a confession that will help us to appreciate the impartiality with which his inquiry was conducted. His argument from the principle that miracles are contrary to experience has, in part, been advanced and answered long since, but as the application of it is somewhat novel, and as it is, in fact, the great essential difference between unbelief and faith, and the true source of all objections against revealed religion, it may be well to show that in its new application also it is false. The first great and obvious objection to it is, that, when fully carried out, it puts an end to all religion, natural as well as revealed, deprives even the Almighty of free agency, and represents all creation as under the control of a blind and irresistible fate. When this author says that immediate divine interposition is contrary to philosophy and experience, he means to say that it is impossible, for if he admit the possibility his argument is inconclusive. What the Creator can do he may do,

and it is only a revelation that can assure us that he will not do it. It is only an impossibility, therefore, which must be necessarily fabulous. But if it be admitted that it is impossible for God himself to interrupt or suspend the chain of cause and effect, then is that chain necessary, and God himself is subordinate to that necessity, and if the Creator himself, how much more the weak and fleeting beings of an hour which inhabit this earth. If Omnipotence cannot burst the chain of fate, nor assert its liberty, it is certain that man must be a mere machine, whose thoughts and actions, love and hatred, hopes and fears, are altogether involuntary, the necessary effects of invincible and immutable causes, and consequently neither good nor bad, entitled to no reward, and exposed to no retribu- · tion. If whatsoever is contrary to experience is to be regarded as impossible, then a life after death and a judgment to come are amongst the things to be rejected by all living, and thus whether we look to the supposed adamantine chain of cause and effect, or to the given limits of experience, every system of religion that includes a hope of God's approbation, or a fear of his displeasure, is a fiction. The philosophy which this author professes teaches us that there is nothing to hope and nothing to fear, or that if there be, all attempt to avoid the one or to attain the other is useless, for that the whole creation, and the individuals of which it is composed, whether rational or irrational, animate