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PREFACE.

THE present is eminently an age of Christian profession and effort; and it is no less an age of scepticism and infidelity. Unexampled exertions are made by means of schools, Missions, the distribution of the Bible, and the multiplication of religious books, to bring all nations to the obedience of faith; and, on the other hand, the most determined attempts are made to neutralize all these agencies, and create an utter disregard for the religion of Christ.

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The policy which infidels at present adopt is peculiar. They do not, in general, like their less cunning predecessors, make direct attacks upon Christianity as a whole, openly speak of it as a fraud; nor do they undertake to answer any of the more distinguished defences of revealed truth, such as those of Lardner, Butler, and Paley; but they endeavour to lose sight of it, to divert the public mind from its doctrines and claims, and silently to substitute for it the principles of what is called "natural theology." By this

means intellectual vanity is stimulated and flattered. Religion is made a matter of original discovery, like the physical sciences; and the student deems himself a philosopher, who rests all his deductions on the basis of sensible fact and experiment. At the same time a slur is cast upon the leading doctrines of the Bible, which are occasionally singled out and spoken of as the unauthorized dogmas of Divines, and of the superannuated adherents of creeds and confessions of faith; for natural theology knows nothing of the fall of man, and of the consequent corruption of human nature; nor can it acknowledge the atonement of Christ, or the regenerating influence of the divine Spirit. The mediation of Christ is thus superseded; and it is left as a matter of absolute uncertainty, "whether there be any Holy Ghost." Perhaps it may be regarded as an opinion, or a probable conjecture, that the soul exists in a future state; but the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, of the general judgment, to be executed by the Lord Jesus in his office of Mediator, of the final happiness of the just, and the endless misery of the impenitent and unholy, is given up as a prejudice of which philosophy knows nothing, and which it therefore repudiates. Such is the

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