I ‘Ww* J 1 1 ■* k! * r : 0 t ®* 9Ucobgi mt * PRINCETON, N. J. Presented by cScArn&S VYAC/\A) \\\\ , . li BT 1101 .C44 1850 v.2 Chalmers, Thomas, 1780-1847 On the miraculous and internal evidences of the <3 si ■ A >■« • . ON THE EVIDENCES OF THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION; AND THE AUTHORITY OF ITS RECORDS. BY ' THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D. & LL. D. PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, AND CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ROYAI. INSTITUTE OF FRANCS. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL II. NEW YORK: ROB E R T CARTER &, B R'O T II E R S, / X o. 2 8 5 B R 0 A D W A Y. 1850. CONTENTS. BOOK III. 3N THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. fUl 7 Chap. 1 . On the Consistency of Scripture with itself and with Contemporary Authorship, .... U. On the Moral Evidence for the Truth of the New Testament,. ^g CL On the Experimental Evidence for the Truth of Christianity,. gj ^7. On the portable Character of the Evidence for the Truth of Christianity,.. BOOK IV. on THE BOOKS OF THE JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN REVELATION, AND THE DEGREE OF AUTHORITY WHICH BELONGS TO THEM. Chap. I. On the Canon of Scripture; and, more especially, of the Old Testament, . . . . . # 21.3 Aft II. On the Inspiration of the Old and New Testa- ments, • # , ••••••# 343 III. On the Internal Evidence as a Criterion for the Canon and Inspiration of Scripture, ... 397 IV. On the Supreme Authority of Revelation, . . 432 BOOK III. ON THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. CHAP. I. On the Consistency of Scripture with itself and with contemporary Authorship . I. It is not at all times possible to obtain a precise adjustment between the actual state of things in nature, and the definitions of our own artificial philosophy. There are often certain rebellious and intractable phenomena, which do not full/ and properly belong either to one division or another; and, just from the impossibility of an exact classi¬ fication, we fail in our attempts, completely to accommodate our schemes of universal science to the scheme of the existent universe. The line of demarcation between cognate subjects and cognate sciences, is often obscured by things of a common or ambiguous character, which partially belong to each, but fully belong to neither. Thus, for example, there are certain anomalies which serve to obliterate somewhat the distinction between the animal and the vegetable kingdom. Thus too, there is a midway—a debateable ground between 8 CONSISTENCY OP SCRIPTURE. the sciences of chemistry and natural philosophy. There are many other instances which might be specified—all serving to show that it is not by an immediate transition that we pass from one branch of philosophy to another. There is what painters would call a shading off between them. They do not pass instanter into each other by lines, the ma¬ thematical definition of which is length without breadth. But they melt into each other by stripes or margins of separation, across which intermediate boundary, the colour or character of the one region gradually dies away, till it fully emerges into the distinct colour and character of the other region. 2. What has suggested these observations is, that, in attempting to distinguish the internal from the external evidences of Christianity, we perceive the same sort of hazy undefined border between them, that there is between so many of the other contiguous provinces of human thought. The two kinds of evidence, in fact, run very much into each other. If it be meant of the external evidences for the truth of the Bible, that they are such as are gathered from places without the book, and of the internal that they are gathered from places within the book, it will be found of its largest and strongest evidence, that it comes not properly or fully under either the one head or the other. We scarcely know of any evidence purely external, but that which lies in the testimonies of writers not sciiptural, to the existence and the authority and the eailv date and the reputed writers of scripture. And we scarcely know of any evidence purely in¬ ternal, but that which is founded on the consistency CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. 9 of scripture with itself, on the characteristics of honesty which may be more or less obviously dis¬ cerned in it, and perhaps on the pure and right morality whether of its sentiments or precepts. It will be found of most other evidence that, instead of being drawn exclusively from either that which is without or that which is within the Bible, it is in fact elicited by the comparison of the one with the other. In estimating the force of the argu¬ ment, for example, founded on the references of the early fathers to scripture, and even on their testimonies to the miracles which are recorded there, there is the comparison of that which is said out of the Bible, with that which is said in it; and the mind must have respect to the contents of the book, when attending to the credentials by which they are thus verified. Again, when a credibility is founded.on the accordance which there is between the Bible and history, in those numerous allusions which it makes to the state and customs and various circumstances of the age in which it was written_ this too, though perhaps commonly ranking as an internal evidence, pre-supposes a comparison between that which is within and that which is without the record. Even that credibility so com¬ monly spoken of as internal, which is drawn from the accordance of Bible statements with the felt state of man and of all his moral and spiritual necessities, rests on the comparison of the scriptural with the ex-scriptural—of that which is graven on the tablet of revelation, with that which is graven on the tablet of the human heart. The evidence too that lies in the suitable representations which \ 2 10 CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. the Bible gives of the character and ways of God, requires that we should look not only to that which is in the book, but also to that which is separate from the book; to compare the notions of God which are drawn purely from revelation, with the notions which are drawn from other sources of human opinion or knowledge. Notwithstanding the current and familiar style in which we talk of external and internal evidences for the truth of revelation, as if we perfectly understood what we were saying, there is a real difficulty in tracing the precise line of demarcation between them. 3. But we are not bound to task ourselves with the labour of bringing about an adjustment between the real state of the case on the one hand, and the arbitrary names or distinctions which our predeces¬ sors may have devised in the work of investigating it. Yet, in vindication of the title which we have prefixed to this book, it will be necessary to explain in what sense the various matters discussed in it should be brought within the department of the internal evidences. They all agree in this, that they have respect to the subject-matter of the Bible; but to a great deal more regarding this subject-matter, than to the consistency of its vari¬ ous parts with each other. Beside this, we found an argument on the consistency of that which is within the record, with that which is external to the record—of which last, however, it is necessary that we should have the distinct and independent knowledge. There may be a perfect consistency between what the Bible tells us of angels, and what is objectively or externally true in regard to them CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. ll But we have no independent knowledge of this order of beings, and can found no evidence there¬ fore on this information of the Bible—to which our only access is through the pages of the Bible itself. Whenever an evidence is founded on the harmony which obtains, between the depositions of scripture respecting certain things and the actual state of these things, we must have other means by which we know of these things than scripture itself; and so the argument is made to rest on the coincidence which obtains between the statements of the Bible, and what we know of the truth of these statements from other sources. Yet one of these sources must be excepted, else we shall lose the distinction between the internal and the external evidences. The Bible announces to us its own miracles, beside furnishing us with certain traces both of its own antiquity, and of the authors by whom it was penned. Its testimony in these matters is corro¬ borated by the testimony of other and ex-scriptural authors; and the strength of this latter testimony forms the main strength of the external evidence for the truth of the Christian revelation. Let us exclude this, and there remains an internal evidence •—a great part of which is grounded, like the exter¬ nal, on a comparison between what we learn in the Bible, and what we know apart from the Bible; yet distinguished from the external, in that the know¬ ledge is ours through another medium than the testimony of authors, ’deponing historically, either to the antiquity and genuineness and reception of tbe Bible, or to those miracles which constitute the firv 3 t and most palpable vouchers for its authority. 12 CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. Our knowledge of God, our knowledge of the morally right and wrong, our knowledge of our own hearts, our knowledge even of human life and character as grounded chiefly on personal observa¬ tion, are all otherwise derived than from the testimony of historians; and on the consistency between all this knowledge and the subject-matter of the bible, there is founded a great part of what is commonly recognised as internal evidence. It seems in most instances to receive this appellation of internal, when the subject-matter of the Bible is brought immediately to the tribunal of a man’s own sense and a man’s own judgment—whether it is to the light of conscience and consciousness, or to the light of a well-exercised discernment into human character and affairs. Were we to avail ourselves of the distinction here between the truths of in¬ struction and those of information, we should say of all the argument which is founded on the harmony between scripture and the former class of truths, that it belongs to the department of the internal —whereas when founded on the harmony between scripture and the latter class of truths, it belongs to the department of the external evidences. Yet such is the difficulty of framing an unexceptionable definition on this subject, that, on the one hand, the agreement between the subject-matter of the Bible and the informations of Josephus and other Jewish or profane authors, is referred to the head of the internal evidences ; and on the other hand, though a stronger argument for the miracles of the New Testament may be gathered, as w r e have abundantly endeavoured to show, from within than CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. 13 from without the canon, from the original testimony of scriptural than from the subsequent testimony of ex-scriptural writers—yet is the whole of this argument referred to the department of the exter¬ nal evidences. 4. But whether we succeed or not in this work of classification, it does not affect the substantive reality and strength of the various branches of evidence, however they may have been grouped when we view them separately. There is however one general remark applicable to almost all the evidence for Christianity, and which we are un¬ willing to pass over. It is well known that the defenders of Christianity have often been led to certain walks of argument and investigation, on which they might not otherwise have entered by 'some hostile assault or other of the enemies of the faith. When a combatant has pointed the finger of scorn to some alleged weakness; some vulnerable quarter, whether in the outworks or in the substance itself of Christianity—it has often ended with the counter-demonstration of a strength in that very quarter, of which neither the church nor the public had any conception before. The objection of adversaries first drew to it the attention of friends ; and they have achieved a great deal more than simply displaced the objection. They have built up a strong affirmative evidence in its room. They have not been content with the overthrow of that hostile argument, which first led them to the ground, and there set them on some specific w'alk of reason¬ ing or of inquiry. They have generally chosen to prosecute that walk further; aid the fruit has been, 14 CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. not a defence merely against the particular infidelity winch had provoked them to the combat, but a great positive conquest over it. The alleged disproof has been turned into a weapon against the adver¬ sary ; and, where we at one time in the battles of the faith were told to look at a breach, an opening or place of exposure—there we now behold the firmest of its bulwarks. Such for example we flatter ourselves to be the effect of Hume’s peculiar scepticism on the subject of testimony, when the right treatment is bestowed on it. A great positive gam redounds to the Christian argument, if it have been proved, not only that there is enough of that best and highest testimony which neutralizes the improbability of a miracle—but as much more of it as creates a vast overplus of evidence in favour of the gospel miracles, and brings them down to posterity as far the best authenticated facts which have been transmitted to us in the history of ancient times. The same has been the upshot of the con¬ troversy, first provoked by infidels, on the alleged discrepancies between one part of scripture and another. The defenders of the faith have not only adjusted these; but they have made a more strenuous inquisition than was necessary for this service alone- and the result is that, beneath the surface of general observation, they have discovered such a number oi before unobserved harmonies—such minute and till then unnoticed coincidences, that no impostor could ever have devised, or, if he had, then, to serve his own purpose, he would have placed them more openly in the view of all men-such an artless and obviously undesigned correspondence, in many CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. 15 hundreds of particulars, that had escaped the dis¬ cernment of all ordinary readers, and that has only been evolved into manifestation by a process of thorough sifting, on the part of those who have been at the pains laboriously to track, and to cross- examine, and to confront the various parts and passages of the record with each other—as nothing possibly can account for, but that the whole nar- . rative or composition has a ground work of truth for its subject-matter. In the present chapter we shall verify this remark by one or two instances, taken from that marvellous work the Horoe Paulinse of Dr. Paley. But again exceptions have been made to scripture on the ground of its discrepancies, not with itself alone, but with the informations of other and contemporary writers. These have led to a distinct walk of inquiry from the former; and the defenders of revelation have in general reconciled the alleged contradictions. But they have not stopped there. They have discovered, we mean Lardner and his followers, such a profusion of coincidences, and these too of so incidental a character, between the Bible and other writings— such an impregnation of historical truth, or what may be termed the truth of the times, as never could have been amalgamated by the skill of any fabricator, with a work either of fictitious design or that was the production of a later age. In like manner, the alleged immoralities of scripture have led to the triumphant exhibition of the moral, which some would place on a level with the miraculous argument for the truth of Christianity. But in no walk of evidence, we think, has the observation 16 CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. we n ow make been more remarkably verified, than in that which is termed the experimental. The subject-matter of Christianity has been represented as incongruous with the state of human nature, and as therefore inapplicable to the rectification or the improvement of it. On the contrary, no argu¬ ment has proved more effective on the side of the . gospel of Jesus Christ—none has been so mightily instrumental in gaining disciples to the faith_as the deep insight of this religion into the before unrevealed mysteries of the human spirit, and the adaptation of its doctrines to the felt condition and necessities of the species. 5. In all these instances, there is a distinct transition from the negative to the positive. We first repel the alleged disproof; and then, by a continuous and sustained prosecution of the sub¬ ject, we may succeed in raising a highly affirmative proof upon its overthrow. We might not only, for example, clear away from Revelation the burden of all its alleged immoralities; but we may evince the perfection and refinement of the moral system of the Gospel to be such—that, when contrasted with the licentious and revengeful system of Paganism on the one hand, or with illiberal Juda¬ ism on the other, it may manifest itself not to have originated with the fishermen of Galilee, but to have descended upon them by inspiration from heaven. Or again, not only may the imputed contradictions all be reconciled; but such recondite harmonies may be evolved; such obviously unde¬ signed coincidences, as were beyond the reach or the policy of any impostor, may be fetched from consistency of scripture. 17 0 oeneath the surface of common and cursory obser¬ vation 5 such minute and before unobserved sym¬ phonies between parts lying remote from each other may be brought out to view, as never could have been realized without a common substratum of truth to rest upon—that, out of these materials, a most-impressive argument, and altogether of a positive character, on the side of the Christian religion, may be constructed—as has been done in most masterly and felicitous style by Dr. Paley in his Horae Paulinae. Or again, not only may we manifest, that there is nought of discrepancy be¬ tween the Bible, and either the history and state of the world, or the state of human nature; but that throughout the narrative and doctrine of the sacred volume, there is a most marvellous accor- dancy with both; and on these may be grounded, not merely the affirmative proof of that sustained connexion which obtains between scripture and secular history, but that experimental proof which, in one branch of it, we hold to be the most effective of all for gaining proselytes to the faith. We mean the proof that is afforded by the felt agreement between the statements of the Bible and the state of the inquirer’s own breast—by the manifold adap¬ tations of Christianity to the moral nature of man —by the adjustment which obtains, like that of a mould to its counterpart die, between the offered remedy of the Gospel and the diseases of humanity, as for example between the propitiation that is set forth to us from heaven and the guilt which trembles upon earth. In all this, there is not merely a power to constrain the attention but to convince 18 CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. and satisfy the judgment; there is a light struck out between the Bible on the one hand, and the conscience on the other, which radiates, not a fanatic gleam, but a clear and rational evidence on the soul—and which, however disowned or perhaps derided in the schools of literature, is a powerful instrument of discovery notwithstanding, and would be enough of itself to guide the path whether of the peasant or of the philosopher to heaven. 6. At present we begin with an evidence which is strictly and wholly internal, founded on the agreements between scripture and scripture—such agreements as no impostor would have devised, and which therefore can only be accounted for by the general truth and authenticity of the whole. The initial step, in the track of this investigation, is, to deliver the Bible from the charge of its seem¬ ing contradictions—for even at first sight, and on the most slight and superficial view, appearances of this sort do stand palpably forth on the face of the record—such therefore as a superficial infidelity would be the most ready to seize upon. Now every semblance of this nature, if satisfactorily done away or disposed of on a nearer and stricter examination, forms a distinct argument in favour of the revelation--proving, as it does, such an absence of care and contrivance as could only pro¬ ceed from the consciousness of truth on the part of the narrator—else he would not have exposed himself to a discredit, which every author, who tries to palm a fabrication upon the world, would labour most studiously to avoid. When the alleged discrepancy obtains between different writers in CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. 19 scripture, as the evangelists of the New Testament— the legitimate inference on the adjustment of such discrepancy is, that there could be no collision between them; and that their testimonies therefore are independent of each other. This whole subject has been investigated with much detail, and been most ably and elaborately argued by the defenders of Christianity.* It will be found, that, with very few exceptions, these apparent contradictions all admit of an actual solution; and the remaining ones, of a solution which may be termed hypothe¬ tical—that is a solution which would perfectly account for the seeming discrepancy, on. certain given suppositions not unlikely in themselves, though not expressly warranted by any informations that we actually possess. Even here the principle which we have elsewhere laboured to demonstrate will be found of avail—we mean the use of an hypothesis in controversial argument, not as being competent to the office of establishing a proof, but altogether competent to the office of repelling an objection. If the supposition in question remove the discrepancy, and if, for aught we know , the supposition may be true or is not incredible—then, although not of strength enough to warrant its own absolute certainty, it may at least be of strength enough to keep an objection at abeyance, so that it shall not be suffered, when thus capable of being disposed of, to overset a religion having such weight * We have a pretty full list of these contradictions in Horne's “Introduction to the Holy Scriptures.” Ed. 7th, Vol. ii. Part II. Book II. ch. vii. sect. vi.—with an account of the manner in which they are reconciled. 20 CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. and variety of positive evidence in its favour. It reconciles us all the more to this conclusion on the subject of these remaining difficulties, that the labours of criticism are constantly diminishing the number of them—the affirmation of Michaelis respecting the alleged misquotations of the Old Testament in the New, which form one species of apparent inconsistency, holding true of them all.__ “ Having found,” he says, c< by actual experience and a more minute investigation of the subject, that many passages, which other critics as well as m 3 self had taken for false quotations, were yet properly cited by the Apostles, I trust that future critics will be able to solve the doubts in the few examples that remain.”* It is thus that the hypothetical solutions are at length converted into actual ones; and, on the strength of both, such a \indication has been effected, as not merely to neutralize the objection, but to substantiate a strong affirmative proof in favour of the artless honesty of writers, who evidently practised no elaboration for the purpose of sustaining a veri¬ similitude in the absence of verity, or giving an aspect of consistency to imposture. 7. But the argument thus obtained from the adjustment of these seeming contradictions and differences, is distinct from the argument on which we are now to insist, and which is obtained from the discovery that has been made, in this same line of investigation, of a mighty host of coincidences before unnoticed and unknown. For many Michaelis’ Introduction by Marsh. Ed. 4th, Vol. L p. 210. CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. 21 turies the Christian world had not been aware of their existence; because placed as it were in latent depths beneath the reach of cursory or superficial observation, whence they have at length been extracted and exposed to view by the diligence of critics and collators. We have already referred to the happiest specimen of this in the Horse Pan- linse of Dr. Paley, who not only, as if by the use of a probing instrument in most skilful hands, has found his way to these hidden treasures; but gathered and arranged them into a cabinet of trulv precious things, for the entertainment and solid instruction of his readers. There are only two hypotheses, which can account for the perfect cor¬ respondence that he exhibits, between remote informations, and often fragments of information, which he has brought together from the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of Paul—and so as to make out of them, in each instance, one entire and consistent fact or passage in the history of the Apostle. Either it must have been a true history, or else a most artful and laborious fabrication. It must have had a real groundworK in a series of actual occurrences; or it must have been the sus¬ tained and skilful invention of one, who so pieced and adjusted one part to another, as to present us with that immense and ever-increasing number of circumstantial agreements, which are now set forth in open manifestation to the general eye. Their exceeding minuteness and variety, altogether refute the imagination that they could have happened at random; and this shuts us up to one or other of the two hypotheses—an authentic story; or a most 22 CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. intricate and refined imposture, the chief plausi¬ bilities of which however were to lie in reserve for nearly two thousand years, till, by a process of development almost as laborious as the original invention of them, they should at length become patent to general observation, and then work their fu l and favourable effect on the minds of a distant posterity. Such a species of practising is wholly unexampled in the history of this world’s delusions. We might as soon expect that the pretender to an *?rtate would, with his own hands, tear the likeliest of its forged title-deeds into fragments and then bury them in scattered portions under ground,—. where in the course of generations they might be reassembled by some future antiquaries into a demonstration, that his were the valid rights of the property, that these were the undoubted evidences of himself being the legitimate proprietor. No impostor would first devise a number, an exceed¬ ing number of specious likelihoods in his favour, w.rd then deposit them in places so inaccessible, as that not one in ten thousand could be in the least aware of them. This is not the way of an impostor, who is ever sure to set himself off to the greatest and most immediate advantage, and who for this purpose would make all his proofs and pretensions stand forth as discernibly as possible before the eye of public observation. There remains no other conclusion then, respecting these inferred and altogether undesigned congruities, than that they are the vestiges and proofs of a real history, and of which the world was not conscious till thoroughly explored by the shrewd and fortunate adventurer CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. 23 who had opened his way to them, as to a rich mine of evidence, and thence gathered the materials of an overpowering argument for the truth of our religion. But, instead of attempting the general description of this mode of inference, it is better that we should present the reader with at least oi>* or two of its specimens—selected, not altogether because they are the most striking in the collection* but because they are among the shortest. 8. 44 Colossians iv. 9. 4 With Onesimus, a faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you' 44 Observe how it may be made out that Onesimus was a Colossian. Turn to the Epistle to Phile¬ mon, and you will find that Onesimus was the servant or slave of Philemon. The question will therefore be, to what city Philemon belonged. In the epistle addressed to him this is not declared. It appears only that he was of the same place, whatever that place was, with an eminent Christian named Archippus. 4 Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ and Timothy our brother, unto Philemon our dearly beloved and fellow-labourer ; and to our beloved Apphia, and Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the church in thy house/ Now turn back to the epistle to the Colossians, and you will find Archippus saluted by name amongst the Christians of that church. 4 Say to Archippus, Take heed to the ministry which thou hast received in the Lord that thou fulfil it* (iv. 17). The necessary result is, that Onesimus also was of the same city, agreeably to what is said of him 4 he is one of you/ And this result is the effect either of truth which produces consistency without the writer’s 24 CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. thought or care, or of a contexture of forgeries confirming and falling in with one another by a species of fortuity of which I know no example. 1 he supposition of design, I think, is excluded, not only because the purpose to which the design must have been directed, viz., the verification of the passage in our epistle in which it is said concern¬ ing Onesimus, £ he is one of you,’ is a purpose which would be lost upon ninety-nine readers out of a hundred; but because the means made use of are too circuitous to have been the subject of affectation and contrivance. Would a forger, who had this purpose in view, have left his readers to hunt it out, by going forward and back¬ ward from one epistle to another in order to connect Onesimus with Philemon, Philemon with Arehip- pus, and Archippus with Colosse ? all which he must do before he arrives at his discovery, that it was truly said of Onesimus, 6 he is one of you/ *’ 2 Timothy iii. 15. ‘And that from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are N able to make thee wise unto salvation/ “ Ihis verse discloses a circumstance which agrees exactly with what is intimated in Acts xvi. 1. where it is recorded of Timothy’s mother 6 that she was a Jewess.’ This description is virtually, though I am satisfied, undesignedly, recognized in the epistle, when Timothy is reminded in it 6 that from a child he had known the Holy Scriptures/ 1 he Holy Scriptures undoubtedly meant the Scriptures ot the Old Testament. The expression bears that sense in every place in which it occurs. j hose of the new had not vet acquired the name. CONSISTENCY OE SCRIPTURE. 25 * not to mention that in Timothy’s childhood proba¬ bly, none of them existed. In what manner then could Timothy have known ‘from a child’ the Jewish Scriptures had he not been born on one side or both of Jewish parentage? Perhaps he was not less likely to be carefully instructed in them, for that his mother alone professed that religion.” 9. These are but two specimens out of many alike impressive, and they are yet far from being exhausted. They will be still further multiplied by the labours of future inquirers, and so as to form an accumulating evidence, and of a kind too strictly and wholly internal—educed as it is altogether from the comparison of scripture with scripture. Were the agreements thus manifested obvious and explicit, refuge might be taken in the imputation of forgery; but, when they can only be obtained by a very circuitous track of investigation, all suspicion of contrivance is effectually done away. It is this which constitutes the main strength of that circumstantial evidence which lies in the depositions of living witnesses, who exhibit a sustained coincidence without collusion, and that too in evidence of the utmost particularity. It is consent without concert, in things of such exceeding minuteness and variety, that stamps a credit upon testimony, even when the character and condition of the witnesses are altogether unknown—nor is it necessary, for the purpose of feeling its strength, that more should be attended to than the testimony itself. The two species of agreement are quite distinguishable—that which is the fruit of artifice, B 20 CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. and that which is altogether unsought and sponta¬ neous ; and it is the exceeding multitude of these last which makes the history of Paul, as educed from the Acts of the Apostles and from his own epistles, so pregnant with an evidence of the highest order. For these documents admit of being con¬ fronted and cross-examined in the same wav that living witnesses are, who, if found to agiee in every point even the most incidental and the .most exempt from every appearance of design—then no other conviction can possibly result from their common testimony, than that it is the evidence of a common truth to which all the parties had access, and on which the statements of them all are founded. The closeness and exactness of these now evolved harmonies are all the more impressive that they were before unnoticed, and which go therefore irresistibly to prove that they were also undevised —for they would not have answered the purposes of forgery. The evidence afforded by these unex¬ pected junctions of so many little fragments which lie far apart from each other, has been aptly compared by Dr. Paley himself to the evidence given by the parts of a cloven tally, as being indeed the real parts of a real and authentic ^vhole. No such contexture could have come forth of the hands of fiction or imposture—which never would have busied itself in framing a tissue, not of palpable but of unseen consistencies, that never could have been known, had it not been for the labours of a dexterous analyst who succeeded, but with great pains, to open up and unravel them. The thread, to use Dr. Paley’s own image, which touches upon CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. 27 bo many points, would have been set forth more fully and plainly, by the original fabricator, if the whole be indeed a fabrication, and not left to be disen¬ tangled from the mass in which it lies enveloped_- proving incontrovertibly, that it is a substratum or a ground-work of truth from which it has been taken. The reciprocal illustration cast by texts or clauses of texts far asunder from each other, as being obviously not the result of studied adaptation, can only be the result of that living reality which pervades and animates the whole. The immense number of such correspondences, as if by an author altogether unconscious or certainly without the least endeavour to display them, yields an evidence of the strongest sort—an evidence too independent of history, and not drawn from any external source, from any outward credentials; but from the very contents and substance of the record itself. 10. And it is an evidence not confined to that special department of scripture, whence it has been gathered in such teeming and marvellous profusion by the hand of Dr. Paley. We believe that it is an evidence more or less to be found in every true narrative of any considerable length, which has descended to us from ancient times. We must therefore expect to meet with it in other parts of scripture ; and accordingly, this successful attempt of Paley, has been followed up by successful imitations on the part of other labourers. The direct narrative of the transactions in the Pentateuch, and the proper record of which is to be found in the books of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, is again presented to us in an altered and abridged 28 CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. form in the book of Deuteronomy. The comparison of the history with its recapitulation has been ably prosecuted by Dr. Groves; and much pleasing evidence of this kind has been deduced by him.* The same has been well accomplished by Mr. Blunt in another portion of scripture — the four Gospels which he confronts both with each other and with the Acts of the Apostle's.! We offer from the latter performance a few brief specimens of that coincidence without design on which the whole of this particular argument is founded.— Compare Matt. viii. 14. with 1 Cor. ix. 5, where from each passage, and obviously not copied the one from the other, we gather that Peter was a married man.—Read the four following passages, Markvi.3, Luke viii. 19, John ii. 12, and Matt. xii. 46 ; and it will be found that the death of Joseph is indirectly shewn by all the four evangelists, to have happened when Christ was alive; and we add, that from Luke ii. 42, 43, it appears to have happened after he was twelve years of age. In keeping with this, ' no mention is made of Joseph at the feast of Cana, or at the resurrection.—There are certain minute and delicate traits, and certainly not the less effective on that account, of the authorship of the gospels by Matthew and John, and which harmonize with the received understanding, that themselves were the writers of them. The following are two examples taken from the former of these evangelists. * See Groves’ Lectures on the four last books of the Pentateuch, designed to show the divine origin of the Jewish religion, chiefly from Internal Evidence. f See Blunt’s veracity of the Gospel and Acts, from their coin¬ cidences with each other and with Josephus. CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. 29 In Matt. ix. 10, Jesus is represented as sitting down to meat with publicans and sinners in the house. When the same transaction is recorded in Mark ii. 15, it is called his house, the house of Matthew. In Luke v. 29, it is called his own house. It was natural in thfe proprietor to call it the , rather than his or his own house. It forms another internal mark of truth that so many publicans suould have been of the party. Again in Matt. x. 2, &c., the Apostles are enumerated in pairs, probably from their being sent in their respective missions by two and two. Matthew is associated with Thomas; and when the enumeration is made by Matthew, Thomas is named first. In Mark iii. 18, and Luke vi. 15, Matthew is named the first. The discreditable circumstance of his having been a publican is kept out of sight by the two latter evangelists, but noticed with characteristic modesty by Matthew himself.—In Matt. xiv. 1, 2, we find Herod speaking to his servants , of Jesus, which was very likely to happen, if he knew them to have been interested in Jesus and aware of him. This is corroborated both in Luke viii. 3, where mention is made of Joanna the wife of Herod’s steward, and Acts xiii. 1, where we read of Manaen brought up with Herod_In Matt. xxvi. 67, 68, they who struck Jesus with the palms of their hands are made to say, “ Prophesy (or divine) unto us, thou Christ, who is he that smote thee ?”._a challenge to the supernatural pretensions of him who profest to be the Messiah, that is not very intelligible from the omission of a circumstance supplied by another evangelist. In Luke xxii. 64, 30 CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. we are told that he was blindfolded .—In Matt, xxvi, 65, the charge on which the Jews condemned Christ was blasphemy —a crime of all others the best fitted to make him the object of popular indignation. Whereas in Luke xxiii. 2, when instead of being accused before the Jews, he was taken to the Roman governor before whom this charge would not have been so effective, he was represented as “ perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ a king.” All this is in harmony, but surely an unstudied harmony, with John x. 33, John v. 18, and Acts xxiii. 29—Lastly, in John vi. 5, we find Jesus singling out Philip in the question he put, as to the means that could be provided at the place where they then were, for the entertainment of a multitude overtaken with hunger. In Luke ix. 10, we read that it was a desert place, belonging to a city called Bethsaida. And lastly, in John i. 44, we are told that Philip was of Bethsaida—the likeliest person then to whom this question should have been addressed. These are but a few examples out of the many. In Mr. Blunt’s work, which is a superior performance, the reader will meet with a goodly number of others to the full as striking and satisfactory, as those which we have now given. 11. Scripture throughout is replete with this internal evidence; but, without instancing any. other or separate portions of it, let us advert for one moment to that great and general coincidence —that unity of purpose and counsel, by which from first to last the whole of it is pervaded. In the whole history of the world, there is nothing that CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. 31 bears the least resemblance to it—an authorship beginning with Moses and terminating with the Apostle John, that is, sustained by a series of writers for 1500 years, many of them isolated from all the rest, and the greater part of whom were unknowing and unknown to each other, insomuch that there could be no converse and no possible concert between them. A conspiracy between parties or individuals so situated had been alto¬ gether superhuman. Their lots were cast in dif¬ ferent generations; and nothing can explain the consistency or continuity of their movements to¬ wards one and the same great object, but that they were instruments in the hands of the one God, who, from generation to generation, keeps un¬ changeably by the counsels of His unerring wisdom, and the determinations of His unerring will. The convergency towards one and the same fulfilment of so many different lights, appearing in different ages of the world and placed at such a distance from each other, admits we think of but one inter¬ pretation—nor, without the power and the pre¬ science of an overruling God, can we account for that goodly that regular progression of consentaneous and consecutive authorship, which is carried for¬ ward by the legislators and seers and historians of the children of Israel. And this evidence is not confined to the articulate testimony of their writings. The ritual, the institutions, the events, of which their priestly and consecrated land was the theatre, all tell us of the same thing; and announce that divine harmony which connects the dim prefigura¬ tions of the elder with the brighter developments 32 CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. of the latter dispensation. There is a minute and microscopic cognizance which might be taken of the harmonies of scripture, and which comes intimately home to the conviction of the inquirer; but there is also a consistency of greater lineaments —an unbroken continuity of design which passes onward from century to century—the congruities, not of one personal history, but of a scheme that commences with the first origin and has its con¬ summation in the final destinies of our species—a succession of profest revelations, of which the first and last stand apart at the distance of greatly more than a millennium, yet all actuated by one reigning spirit, and having, for their object the establishment of a spiritual economy which might reconcile glory to God in the highest with peace on earth and good will to men—these form the correspondences, not of a story that embraces but the transactions of one individual, but of a system which is com¬ mensurate to the world and bespeaks in its leading characters the mind and the majesty of God.* 12. But there is another species of adaptation, alike prolific of argument with that on which we have insisted hitherto—not the coincidence only which obtains between scripture and scripture, but the coincidence alike varied and minute and circum¬ stantial, which obtains between scripture and the works either of Jewish or Christian authors—or rather between scripture and the state of things as made known by these authors in and about Judea. The title of Mr. Blunt’s work to which we have * We ask the reader to reflect how unlike in this respect the religion of Mahomet is to that of Jesus Christ. CONSISTENCY’ OF SCRIPTURE. 33 already referred, is, 44 The veracity of the Gospels and Acts from their coincidences with each other and Josephus ” The truth is that from the one compari¬ son we might educe an argument of the very same character and effect, with that more strictly internal argument, which, by means of the other comparison, has been presented with such signal ability and suc¬ cess by Dr. Paley. In mathematics, if one line of perfect straightness but coincide with another in two points, then they are perfectly straight through¬ out and coincide universally. What is now affirmed of a line in mathematics does not hold to the same extent of a line in history—but certain it is, that the greater is the number of points at which any given history coincides with another that is received and trusted in as authentic, the greater is the pro¬ bability of their entire coincidence both with truth and with each other—the inference from their mutual agreement being, that both copied from and there¬ fore that both agree with the same original realities which they are employed in describing. This probability is greatly enhanced by the situation in which we find these points of coincidence_that is in situations the least prominent, the least noticeable, the least obtrusive, and therefore the least likely to attract the observation of readers or inquirers. We can imagine a number of coincidences to be framed by an inventor, but then it would be in places which served his immediate purpose best; nor would he ever think of devising a number of coincidences, and then placing them so beyond the reach of common access or observation, that not one in ten thousand of his readers ever could have b 2 34 CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. discovered them. They are agreements like these which form the materials of one and the same argument, whether in the process of internal or of external comparison. When the comparison is between parts of scripture, the resulting evidence is like that afforded by the fragments of a cloven tally. When the comparison is between scripture and other authors, the resulting evidence is altogether of the same genus—though, without supposing a disjunction of parts, it is more like that afforded by the adaptation of a key to its lock, of a die to its counterpart mould, of a seal to its impression, or of any unbroken whole to the external contour from w r hich it has taken both its dimensions and its outline. 13. The literature connected with this part of the argument too was, like the other, originated by infidelity. Contradictions were alleged by Woolston and others, between scripture and the known customs and history of scripture times; and, not only have these been satisfactorily disposed of; but the ulterior achievement in this walk of investigation has been, that a strong affirmative evidence is now raised, on the basis of a deeper and more manifold coincidence, between scripture and external history or external observation, than was before known or even imagined. Both ancient writers and modern travellers have made their respective contributions to this argument, which, though defensive at the first, has earned a great posiiive accession to the cause, and made it far more rich in evidence than before. In the work of reconciling the apparent contradictions, the CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. 35 f) student will not fail to observe the operation of a principle to which we have often adverted—a dis¬ position on the part, not of infidel only, but of Christian writers also, to defer greatly more to the testimony of the exscriptural than to that of the scriptural authors—insomuch, that, on every sem¬ blance of a disagreement betwixt them, the blemish or suspicion is always associated with the latter and not with the former. Matthew and Mark and Luke and John and Paul are sisted as parties or pannels at the bar—while Josephus and Philo and Tacitus and Pliny are- made the judges, at whose tribunal they must wait their sentence, whether of acquittal or condemnation. Nay, the silence of the profane, has often been construed into an im¬ peachment against the testimony of the sacred authors_whereas the converse treatment has never been attempted in the way of retaliation by the defenders of Christianity. If it had, the attempt would have been resented, and most warrantably, by every sound eruditionist or critic—for how are the informations of history to grow upon our hands, unless each individual writer be permitted to offer some contributions of his own? There might be enough of common truth among the esteemed authors of antiquity, to authenticate their respective narrations—so that, while Tacitus obtains full credit for , all that is peculiar in his history, why might not evangelists and Apostles be indulged also in their peculiar statements, even when no foreign corroboration is to be found ? But it is when the evangelists are not only unsupported, but to appear¬ ance contradicted by profane or Jewish writers, that 36 CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. # this disparity in their treatment becomes most obvious. For example, Josephus tells that Cyrenius was not governor of Syria till ten or twelve years after the time at which Luke, in the first and second verses of his third chapter, seems to tell us that he was the governor of that province. It seems a settled point among the controvertists on both sides of this question that Josephus must be right, and the mis¬ take, if any, must be Luke’s.* The defenders of Chiistianity scarcely ever think of boldly retorting the possibility that Josephus or Tacitus or Pliny might be mistaken. Fhe infallibility is all conceded to the exscriptural authors; and the great effort is to clear up the apparent mistatements or mistakes, into which it is assumed, on every case of an aspect of contrariety, that the evangelical writers must have fallen. In the particular instance now referred to, this has been effectively done by the indefatigable Lardner, who conceives that Cyrenius had made an assessment at the time of our Saviour’s birth, and before he was governor of Syria; but that Luke, in telling the transaction, mentions Cyrenius, not as When St. Luke, then, and Josephus differ in their accounts of the same fact, the question is, which of the two writers has given the true one ? And here it is not a little extraop&nary, that without further inquiry it is universally determined in favour of the latter, as if Josephus were inspired, and whoever contra- dicted him must of course be mistaken. This is a method of proceeding which is applied on no other occasion," &c. . ‘‘ This at least is certain, that if we found the same contradic¬ tion in the relation of a fact between either Greek, or Roman, or modern historians, we should not hesitate to prefer the author who was contemporary to the event related, and who to a know¬ ledge of the person described joins minuteness and impartiality, to him who lived in a later period, and wrote a general history, of which the subject in question was only an inconsiderable part.” Michael is Introduction, Vol. i. Part II. chap. ii. sect. xii. * CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. 37 oeing actually governor at the time, but as one who now, or at the moment of his writing, in virtue of having received the preferment some time after¬ wards, had the title affixed to his name; and which is often 'given to individuals—even when relating those parts of their history, that take place either previous or subsequent to the period of their official dignity. 14. But not only, in the progress of criticism, are these contradictions rapidly clearing away, so as to present a number that is gradually and per¬ petually lessening; but their force is w'ell nigh disarmed, in that they seem now as if lost and overborne, in the affirmative evidence of those opposite harmonies, which every new labourer in this field of inquiry is adding to the list—and such harmonies too, as nothing but truth can explain. .The richest collection of these is to be met with in Lardner, who—if we read of the trials, or the travels, or the customs, or the controversies, or the local and national peculiarities, or the varieties ot incident and discourse which are recorded in the New lestament—finds in every contemporaneous author who borders on the same ground, and may even have entered upon it, or in the subjects of which he treats, whether they be Chronology, or Geography, or Jurisprudence, or History, or facts and statistics of any sort—finds in every such author, and in every such subject, a test or a touchstone which he might apply to the writings of the evangelists and apostles, and by which he might determine the accuracy of their statements or allusions both to the circumstances and the 38 CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. * events of the period which is described by them. The restless politics of that age—the perpetual cnanges then taking place in the government of provinces, and the territorial distribution of the lessei states, more especially of Judea—the limits and respective functions of the civil and military power in these subjugated countries, adverted to so frequently in Scripture, and open either to disproof or confirmation from the well-known practice and polity of the Romans—these, and such as these, make up altogether a most delicate and severe ordeal, by which to detect the mistakes of ignor¬ ance, or the misstatements of forgery and fiction. It is strikingly demonstrated by Lardner in the first part of his Credibility, how well the w r riters of the New Testament have stood this ordeal. We can scarcely afford to offer any of the parti¬ culars of that very minute and statistical examina¬ tion into which he has gone. In his chapter on the Princes and Governors mentioned in the New Testament, the evangelical writers stand confronted chiefly with Josephus—both as to the name and title and history and period of these ever-shifting func¬ tionaries, and as to the limits of their respective jurisdictions. For one example out of the very many—when Herod who had possession of the whole country died, and Joseph the reputed father of our Lord returned from Egypt—he was afraid of Archelaus, who, in the division that took place after his fathers death, was made king of Judea—, and turned aside to the parts of Galilee, not now under the same government; for Herod Antipas, as Josephus tells us, was then governor of Galilee CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. 39 and Peraea, and Philip of Trachonitis and the neighbouring countries. Among the manifold points of agreement that are elicited by this com¬ parison between the incidental allusions of the New Testament and the direct informations of the Jewish historian, we would instance the passage which relates to this Herod and which respects both his wife Herodias and his daughter Salome__ as also the story of another Herod mentioned in the Acts, who was grandson of Herod the Great, who killed James, and apprehended Peter, and suffered a remarkable death, and which, as respects all that is ostensible in the testimony of Luke, is fully borne out by the testimony of Josephus_ Regarding this last Herod, there occurs what may truly be termed a very critical coincidence_ inasmuch as Luke ascribes to him, towards the end of his government, the sovereign power in Judea; and it appears from other sources, that this power he actually did exercise, but only during the three last years of his life_We have a nicety of a still more trying description in the title of Proconsul given with propriety by the Evangelist, but a propriety dependent on the fluctuations that were constantly taking place in the arrangement and constitution of the Roman provinces_In another chapter respecting the state of the Jews and Judea during the ministry of Christ and his apostles, the history in the Gospel is brought into contact at many points with that of Josephus and others. We advert but to one of these instances—the power of life and death reserved to themselves by the Romans, while the 40 CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. power of the lesser punishments was suffered to remain with the Jewish authorities.—It is only for the purpose of noticing the amount of surface over which this work of comparison has been extended, that we advert to the title of his next chapter, “ of the state of the Jews out of Judea”—whilst the title of the following, 44 concerning the Jewish sects and Samaritans, serves to evince how crowded the four Gospels and Acts of the Apostles are with the materials of a cross-examination between their respective authors and Josephus. The next suc¬ ceeding chapter of the Jews and Samaritans’ expectations and their idea of the Messiah, brings even heathen authors into a state of juxtaposition with the writers of the New Testament.—But perhaps, no passages of the evangelical history are more replete with this sort of argument, than the single chapters which retail the circumstances of our Saviour s last sufferings, where we have the names and titles and respective powers of the respective dignitaries that were concerned in this solemn transaction—the process of trial and con¬ demnation—the infliction of mockery and scourging that took place before the execution—the bearing of the cross—the inscription of the offence upon it in three different languages, which is fully deponed to by classic authors as one of the cus¬ toms of the age—the mockeries which He had to endure at the time of the crucifixion—the place of it, without the city of Jerusalem—the burial, and Lastly the embalming of the body. Nothing can be more artless or incidental than the manner, m which all these particulars are detailed by CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. 41 the Apostles; and yet, such testimonies can be brought together both of the Jewish and classic authors, as to furnish throughout the most ample and sustained corroboration—carried forward, be¬ yond the death and resurrection, to the accounts which the New Testament gives of the various churches that were founded by the first teachers of Christianity. Here we have a chapter of close and manifold communion between the scriptural and the exscriptural, in the account it gives of the treatment which the apostles and other disciples of Jesus met with both from Jews and Gentiles. The chapter which follows treats of diverse opinions and practices of the Jews; and we shall finish our very general description of this vast and voluminous evidence, by the catalogue which Lardner makes of the Roman customs mentioned in the New Tes¬ tament—First, the use of the question or of torture for the discovery of crimes by the Romans—then of their method of examination by scourging— then of the unlawfulness of scourging a Roman, especially if uncondemned—then of the power which Lysias who had Paul in custody held at Jerusalem —then of Paul’s citizenship—then of the way in which this was obtained by purchase—then of the Roman justice in not receiving accusations in the absence of the person accused—then on the im¬ prisonment of St. Paul—then on the sending of prisoners to Rome—and, lastly, on the practice of their being delivered there to the captain of the guard. Within our narrow limits, we represent most inadequately the power and the abundance of this argument; and perhaps it had been better, for 42 CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. the purpose of impressing it on the reader, to have made a general reference to Lardner-without at¬ tempting what we have done but slightly, to instance a lew of the specimens. The number, the minute¬ ness, the circumstantiality of the allusions, and the manifest undesignedness wherewith they occur in the course of the narration—all serve to satisfy the inquirer, that a history which touches the truth at so many points, could not have done so fortuitously anc at random; and these coincidences are so obviously beyond the reach, or even though within possibility could so little subserve any of the pur¬ poses of design, that no other conclusion remains lor us_but that they touch the truth at so many points, only .because they touch it generally or at all points; or because truth is the direction in which the writers of the New Testament move, the ground¬ work along which the platform of the gospel history is laid. . I he coincidence with truth at so many places in the absence of the art that could have tramed or even of the power that could have accom¬ plished it, is the sure token of an entire coincidence. 15 One precious fruit of these investigations is, tuat they have demonstrated, and upon their own new and peculiar evidence alone, the antiquity of the evangelical record. None but contemporary " 1 lters cou!d ha '' e exhibited so minute and manifold an accuracy, amid the ephemeral changes, which, m these , da >' s of incessant fluctuation, were ever taking place in the civil and political arrangements of Judea. And what makes it altogether conclu¬ sive is, that, m a few years after the resurrection of our Saviour, Jerusalem was destroyed and the whole CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. 43 fabric of the Jewish polity was swept away—so that not a fragment or a vestige of it remained. On this tremendous event we feel assured, that the local practices and peculiarities which are so sta¬ tistically and truly set forth in the New Testament must have been described by eye-witnesses, or at least during the subsistence of the Hebrew common¬ wealth—for the memory of them could not have survived a single generation. The unavoidable inference as to the early publication of these nar¬ ratives, is of immense worth to the Christian argu¬ ment_proving, as it does, that they made their appearance at a period far enough back, for afford¬ ing every facility, whether to the confirmation or the exposure of the miracles which are recorded in them. 16. And there is one great synchronism, which, singly and of itself, fixes the age of the composition of the New Testament; and settles it down to the first age of Christianity. It is such a style as could only have proceeded from men of Hebrew origin, who wrote in Greek, but in a Greek tinged and interspersed with the peculiarities of their own vernacular language. And accordingly, it is alike distinguishable from the language of classic authors, and from that of the Christian fathers, of the second and third centuries. To imagine that the innumer¬ able Hebraisms and Syriasms of the New T estament were interpolated, or rather intertwined with the whole structure of the book, for the sole purpose of giving a colour or consistency to its reputed author¬ ship in the days of the Apostles, were to accredit some forger of a later age, with the most difficult. 44 CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE, if not impracticable of all imitations—and the more as the idioms in question, instead of being simply inserted in the volume, are obviously incorporated or interwoven therewith. It is an infusion rather than a mixture i and what altogether precludes the theory of a fabrication, as aggravating tenfold the unlikelihood of its ever being realized, is the dis¬ tinct and characteristic variety of style, which appears in each of the individual writers—another coincidence, by the way, between the internal char¬ acter of the volume and its external history. There is no mistaking, for example, the signatures of one and the same hand in the gospel of John and in the epistles which are ascribed to him. And the same remaik is applicable to the obvious mannerism of Paul—in whose writings we cannot fail to recognize the same energy, and affection, and argumentative vehemence, and abrupt transitions of a mind fired by its subject, and overflowing with its fulness every new channel which every new suggestion opens up to him. The argument is all the more enhanced by the peculiarities that obtain in the writings of Luke ; and by the circumstance that Paul, notwith¬ standing the peculiarities of his style, gives abundant evidence of that more accomplished literature and general erudition, which harmonize with the ac¬ counts that are handed down to us by ecclesiastical histoiy, of his superior education and opportunities to those of the other apostles.* 17. And we have to remark in this department Michaelis Introduction to the New Testament by Marsh, Edition 4th. Part I. chap. ii. sect, x. CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. 45 too—in the external harmonies of scripture with other and separate testimony, as well as in its internal harmonies with itself—a great and general coincidence, between the whole history which it unfolds to us, and all that is known beside of the history of the world. And the history in the Bible is the history of the world; but under the peculiar aspect, in the language of Butler, of its being God’s world.* He deduces a strong argument for the truth of scripture, from the immense number of places at which it lies open to comparison with profane history ; and yet the manner in which it stands its ground, and bears to be confronted with all the informations and documents of antiquity. This argument for the general truth of scripture grows in strength and intensity, the more intensely it is reflected on. This book professes to be an account of the world regarded as the dominion and property of God; and, both in its commencement and its conclusion as well as its intermediate con¬ tents, there is a greatness altogether commensurate • to this object—beginning as it does with the crea¬ tion of the species, and ending with an account of the two distinct and everlasting destinies which await the two great divisions of the human family. In the conducting of this sublime narrative, there are references to beings and places external to our world, arising from the interchanges which are said to have taken place between the visible and the invisible—the occasional visits from heaven to ea-rth, actual or alleged—the inspirations which descended Analogy, Part IL chap. vii. 46 CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE upon men; and, in the course of these allusions we have not only repeated notices of God, but of other orders of intelligence beside ourselves and of the relations in which we stand to them. Now, in the glimpses which are thus afforded of an ex¬ tended moral economy, we are unable to confront the informations of scripture, with any independent knowledge of our own. We have no direct or personal observation of angels and spirits; and we are not in circumstances, either for obtaining a con¬ firmation of the Bible, or of detecting, in its state¬ ments any marks of imposture—by comparing what it tells of things supernal to the world, with aught that we previously or originally know of these things. 18. But the Scripture not only offers notices and allusions in regard to matters external to the world; it offers these notices far more abundantly in regard to matters that are within the compass of the world, but external to the church—and all which matters, unlike to the former, were within the compass of human observation, and many of which have been derived by historical transmission to ourselves in the present day. The truth is, that the Bible may be said to present us with a general outline of the world’s history—as con¬ sisting in the movement of nations, in the rise and fall of earth’s great empires, in the most noted chronological eras; and adventuring, as it does, both on the names of countries, and the monarchs that ruled over them, and the manners that characterised their people—never did imposture, if imposture indeed it be, so expose herself to a thousand lights of cross-examination; or so multiply CONSISTENCY OF SCRIPTURE. 47 her vulnerable points, by the daring and extended sweep, that she has thus taken among the affairs of men. There is something incredible in a com¬ pact or conspiracy of deceivers, the scheme and spirit of which were handed down from one to another through a whole millenium; but that one and all of them should have sustained such a general historic consistency through the whole of that period, that no glaring contradiction has yet been detected, between the multitude of incidental notices that the penmen of Scripture have made to the countries around Judea, and at a great distance from it, and the actual state of the world—that sacred and profane history should so have harmon¬ ized, as that a consistent erudition, made up of an immense variety of particulars, has actually been raised and established out of the connection* between them—that there should be such a sus¬ tained coincidence from the first dawnings of history, and extended by means of prophetic anti¬ cipation to the present day—truly, apart from the peculiar evidence of prophecy altogether, there is much in the artless and unforced agreements which are everywhere spread over so broad a surface of comparison, as to stamp the strongest appearance of truth both on the general narrative of the bible, and by implication, on the miraculous narrative, that, without the slightest appearance of ingenuity or elaborate design, is so incorporated therewith. * See Shuckford, Prideaux, and Russel on the connection* between sacred and profane History. 4 H ON THE MORAL EVIDENCE FOR THB CHAPTER II. On the Moral Evidence for the Truth of the New Testament . 1. "1 he argument of the last chapter is of frequent application in questions of general criticism; and upon its authority alone many of the writers of past times have been admitted into credit, and many have been condemned as unworthy of it. The numerous and correct allusions to the customs and institutions, and other statistics of the age in which the pieces of the New Testament profess to have been written, give evidence of their antiquity. The artless and undesigned way in which these allusions are interwoven with-the whole history, impresses upon us the perfect simplicity of the authors, and the total absence of every wish or intention to palm an imposture upon the world. And there is such a thing, too, as a general air of authenticity; which, however difficult to resolve into particulars, gives a very close and powerful impression of truth to the narrative. There is nothing fanciful in this species of internal evidence. It carries in it all the certainty of experience, and experience too upon a familiar and well-known subject, the characters of honesty in the written testimony of our fellow-men. We are often called upon, in private and every-day life, to exercise our judgment upon the spoken testimony of others, and we both feel and understand the powerful TRUTH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 49 evidence which lies in the tone, the manner, the circumstantiality, the number, the agreement of the witnesses, and the consistency of all the parti¬ culars with what we already know from other sources of information. Now, it is undeniable, that all those marks which give evidence and credibility to spoken testimony, may also exist to a very impressive degree in written testimony; and the argument founded upon them, so far from being fanciful or illegitimate, has the sanction of a principle which no philosopher will refuse) the experience of the human mind on a subject on which it is much exercised, and which lies com¬ pletely within the range of its observation. 2. We now enter on the consideration of the moral evidence for the truth of the New Testament, as gathered, however, not from the present char¬ acter of the witnesses, but from the nature of that ethical system which they delivered; or, more generally still, not from themselves but from the subject-matter of their testimony. Doubtless, we may collect from the performance itself, such marks of truth and honesty, as entitle us to conclude, that the human agents employed in the construction of this book were men of veracity and principle. But this argument has already been resorted to,* and a very substantial argument it is. Our present attempt is to found an internal evidence for the divinity of scripture on • the morality of its doctrines, or the purity of that moral light which * In Chap. iii. of Book II., where we also adverted to the argu¬ ment of the last chapter, but not with such particularity or fulness, us to prevent our again recurring to it. VOL. IV. C 50 ON THE MORAL EVIDENCE FOR THE beams from its pages; and which, as distinguished from other systems of religion, whether from revengeful and licentious Paganism on the one hand, or from a corrupted Judaism on the other— seems to invest the New Testament with a sort o£ celestial radiance, and so to be no unambiguous token of the Heaven from whence it came. 3. But a certain preliminary question requires to be adjusted, ere it is made perfectly clear, that an internal evidence can be raised on the superior and recognized excellence of the Christian morality. For if man be capable of recognizing this excellence, does it not argue him to be alike capable of having conceived it at the first, and so of bringing it forth originally to the view and admiration of the wrnrld ? The faculty, one might think, of discerning the worth or goodness of any system, would seem to bespeak the faculty of discovering or devising it. If the pure and perfect morality of the gospel be now the theme of universal acknowledgment, and that by minds of every order—why might not some mind of the highest order, at the era of its publi¬ cation, have been able to originate the ethical system, that was afterwards to command the assent and acquiescence of the enlightened and the virtuous in all ages ? The same faculties, it can naturally be imagined, by which we are enabled to appreciate the inherent truth and value of any doctrine, might have also suggested that doctrine—so that not only might men have become its obedient disciples, but a man might have been the inventor of it. In short, it is not perceived, why a thing of earthly recognition, might not bo a tiling of earthly origination also_or 51 TRUTH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. how if man, in virtue of his natural powers, can justly estimate the merits of any practical code or directory of human conduct, he might not, in virtue of the same powers, have been competent to frame it. It is on this ground that Christianity might be argued, notwithstanding the lustre of its moral superiority over every other faith, to be still a thing of terrestrial growth; and that therefore the hypo^ thesis of a divine revelation is altogether uncalled for. 4. Now, in opposition to this, we hold that many are the truths, which never could have sprung up within the mind—but which, when brought to it from without, meet with the full consent and coalescence of the judgment—and that in virtue, not of any external evidence, but of their own inherent recommendations. There is many a truth, the credibility of which does not serve to indicate it before it is announced, but which abundantly serves to recommend it afterwards. It may have no such light as shall guide the way to it; and yet as much light, as that it may be seen and recognized as truth, on the moment of its being presented. The intellect might remain in a state of darkness and dormancy, as to many a truth which it never could have found; but awakened, as if like a candle by ignition, at the moment of contact with that truth when it is told—it, in a medium of vision thus created, might be led to discern things, and on their own intrinsic evidence too, which it never could have discovered. Of this the experience of the mind itself supplies us with_many familiar illustrations. In mathematics, where every doctrine has the ground of conviction 52 ON THE MORAL EVIDENCE i-'Oil THE within itself, how frequent are the discoveries which could only have been made by the few, and yet which the many can most completely and most intelligently appreciate ? There are propositions of such a particular description, that the very state¬ ment of them furnishes the cipher for their own verification; and the mind feels itself placed on a distinct vantage-ground, when, instead of having to go forth in general quest of that which was altogether unknown, its now more limited aim is to certify that of which it has been specifically told. It is a homely, but we think an effective illustration of this—that when desirous of joining in the psalmody at church, but ignorant of the verses which have been given out, we are unable to collect from the general voice of the congregation, the articulate sounds to which they are jointly giving utterance. Yet when directed to the place, we can instantly recognize the coincidence between the notes in the music and the syllables in the lines that have been pointed out to us. It is thus also that a prophecy, respecting the fulfilment of which we are utterly in the dark before hand, might be cleared up after¬ wards—the coincidence between predictions and events which we could never have discovered, or perhaps even guessed at, becoming manifest as day, on the means of comparison being brought within our reach, when both are set before us. On the same principle too, we shall be able to explain that powerful and peculiar evidence of which we are told in scripture, when it speaks of the manifestation of the truth unto the conscience. But our inquiry at present, is whether the moral system of the Bible TRUTH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 53 might not be the object of man’s most intelligent approval, although he could neither have discovered nor devised it—or whether, though now abundantly met by the acknowledgments of an enlightened human sympathy, it did not require for its first intro¬ duction into the world a super-human revelation. 5. The apparent diversities of moral sentiment among men, have been well accounted for by those ethical writers who contend that the standard of duty is one and immutable notwithstanding; and that, not objectively in itself alone, but subjectively, or so as that all men have the same moral nature, and would agree in all their moral perceptions of virtue, if brought under the same moral tution— insomuch that, to be owned universally, it only needs to be promulgated universally, and in such circumstances as might ensure the serious and sustained attention of all men.* There are seeming exceptions to this, in the state both of individuals and nations—in the one, when conscience is perverted by the sophistry of the passions, or, if not extinguished, brought to utter stupefaction, by the headlong and reckless indulgence of them— in the other, when some urgent and generally felt interest associates whole communities in some practice or sentiment that nevertheless is at war with the common sense of humanity. It is thus that we can imagine, among the families of a smuggling village, or of a piratical state, or even of a large commercial city, in civilized and enlight¬ ened Christendom, which owes its wealth and * See our Natural Theology, Book III., Chap, ii., Art, 18—23, 54 ON THE MORAL EVIDENCE FOR THE pre-eminence to the guilty horrors of the slave- trade—we can imagine a very slender comprehension among them, of the unlawfulness of their respective vocations. And this epidemic peculiarity, extending to whole societies of men, is greatly enhanced by the sympathy of a common feeling and a common interest in the midst of them—so as to account for those aberrations from a universal morality, by which whole countries and whole ages of the world have been characterized. It is thus that in those tribes and nations which have to maintain a con¬ tinued struggle for their existence, revenge and rapacity are canonized as virtues—the obligations of a general equity being lost and overborne, in the obligations of a contracted patriotism. Whether we look to the cruelties of Indian warfare, or to the guilty conquests of Rome, we find, not that the obligations of an unchangeable morality have ever been formally renounced, but that they have been lost sight of and forgotten for centuries together, in the dazzling images of a nation’s glory and a nation’s weal. Apart from such influences as these—apart from the darkening and disturbing forces that we have now specified—we could obtain the same assent to the same lessons of piety and truth and justice and universal philanthropy all the world over. But the question is, who, in the strength and prevalence of a wide-spread delusion, who is to originate these lessons ? We can under¬ stand how, should these forces be suspended—how, when the spirit of a man, arrested and solemnized and recalled for a season from those influences which have so long perverted and enthralled it by TRUTH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 55 a voice from ivithout —liow it should respond to the voice; and the light of conscience, thus resus¬ citated and restored, should meet and be in harmony with the external light that has awakened it. But still the question recurs, who lifted that voice at the first; and whence, or in what quarter, did the light arise ? Both in the Islands of the South Sea, and in the North American wilderness—large portions of the territory have been reclaimed; and the men formerly of savage life, whose consciences had lain in a state of dormancy and delusion from time immemorial, are now awake to the pure morality of the Gospel—not how r ever in virtue of a light that sprung up among themselves, but of a light brought to them by missionaries from afar. Thus it is, we historically know, that the local darkness in every particular country of the world has been dissipated—by a visitation from abroad, by a movement from some region of light to this region of barbarism. This gives a sort of experi¬ mental solution to the question—whence did light break in upon the world at the first; or at the period of its universal darkness, when that pure and perfect system of morality, the introduction of which requires to be accounted for, was nowhere to be found—how and from what quarter, must it not have been from beyond the world, that the invasion was first made ?* “ When darkness covered the earth and gross darkness the people, * The first origin of civilization in the world is a controversy charged with principle. If history, which it seems to do, counte¬ nance or confirm the assertion that it never arose spontaneously in any nation—this points strongly to the conclusion of a primary {revelation. 56 ON THE MORAL EVIDENCE FOR THE the Lord,” it is said, cc shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee.” “ When the people which sat in darkness saw great light, when on them which sat in the region and shadow of death the light shone”—did it spring up from the earth itself, or was it a supernal light which shone over them ? Might it not have been a super-human light, although it met with a reflection in human bosoms ? Might it not have been a super-human voice that first gave utterance to those lessons of highest virtue, although it called forth a response and an echo from the consciences of men ? 6. It might help us to pronounce on this ques¬ tion all the more confidently, if we look to the state of the Jews at the time of our Saviour to their exclusive, their inveterately national principle, and contrast it with the more generous and expan¬ sive principle of our own Christianity—the one being obviously a system for a nation, the other as obviously a system for the species. Who, it may be repeated, could be the first author of such an enlargement ? It follows not from any distinction of ours between the ethics and the objects of revelation, that, however competent for humanity to own the lesson, it was therefore competent for humanity to have framed it—and, more especially, cumbered, as the universal mind of society then was, by the weight of those prejudices which it was called upon to renounce. The light which appears in the very midst of this darkness, could not, we apprehend, have been originated there. In the history of the apostles themselves, we recognize the slowness and the extreme difficulty of its TRUTH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 57 Teception, by a merely Jewish understanding-, which, though at length brought to acquiesce in the system, could never have devised it. In the very nature of that system, and more especially when taken in connexion with the circumstances in which it arose, w r e have an internal evidence for the divinity of its origin. To teach that which is not only repugnant to the taste, but at variance with all the hereditary and long established notions of society—to have germinated, in the heart of a dark and narrow region, a system of morality, that conflicted at the time with all which was im¬ mediately around it, but now receives the homage of every enlightened and well-exercised spirit in Christendom—such a phenomenon closely approxi¬ mates to a miracle, or rather possesses all the characters of an event as extraordinary. If to do that which is beyond human strength be a miracle of power, and to prophesy that which is beyond human foresight be a miracle of knowledge —then for a carpenter of Galilee to have taught, or for fishermen of Galilee to have promulgated that which was beyond human discovery, and surely beyond all the means and likelihoods of a discovery by them, this may well be termed a miracle of science or a miracle of sentiment. 7. This conclusion is greatly strengthened, when we attend in detail to the moralities of the Gospel—and, more especially, to those of its original moralities which may be regarded in the light of a protest against, not merely the universal practice, but till then the universal sense and feelings of mankind. Its nrescribed love of enemies—its law c 2 58 ON THE MORAL EVIDENCE FOR THE of universal purity, extending to the imaginations of the heart as well as to the overt acts of the history—its moral estimation of the superiority which lies in the desires and purposes of the inner, over the deeds and observations of the outer man —its equal and diffusive benevolence, without the abjuration at the same time of those relative sym¬ pathies which bind together the members of the same family—its high standard of charity, the love of one’s neighbour as one’s self; and withal, the extension of this neighbourhood so as to embrace the men of other climes and other countries than our own, embracing all in fact as we have the opportunity—its respect for rank and yet the honour in which it requires us to hold all men, so as to maintain unbroken the distinctions of civil life while it dignifies and exalts the very humblest of the species—the equal estimation in which it holds rich and poor on the high scale of immortality, and yet the homage which it pays to nobility and office, giving to this world’s authority all its prero¬ gatives while reserving for the objects and interests of another world all their immeasurable value—its self-denial—its profound humility and self-abase¬ ment—its renunciation of pleasure arid ambition and vanity—its walk of faith rather than of sight— its just comparison of the magnitude of time with that of eternity—above all, its entire subordination to God whom it teaches us supremely to love and implicitly to obey—These are the leading charac¬ teristics of the morality of the Gospel, new to the w r orld at the time of its publication, however fitted to recommend itself to the moral nature, not TRUTH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 59 extinct though under obliteration, given to men at the first and coeval with the species. And not only is this the morality which most approves itself to the calm and enlightened judgment of men, but, in act and in experience, is it found to be the best for the happiness of the world—a regimen of peace and charity and righteousness that of itself would turn earth into heaven; and when once universal, which it is its obvious tendency at length to become, then, in the great and glorious renova¬ tion that ensues, the brightest visions of prophecy will be fully realized. The same gospel which gladdens every heart and every family that it enters, would turn the dwelling-place of every nation whom it christianizes into a gladsome land; and, when once commensurate with the globe and of complete operation on all who live in it, it would revive and regenerate the whole earth. Other codes and other constitutions have been framed for the separate countries of the world, and they tell the wisdom of their respective but earthly legislators; but this, in its characters alike of goodness and of greatness, and withal of boundless application, obviously announces itself as the code of humanity—and bespeaks the com¬ prehensive wisdom of Him, who, devising for all times and for all people, is the Legislator of the species. It is not the workmanship of a few peasants in Judea. The perfection of its moral characteristics, the greatness and perpetuity of its results—both speak to us of a different fountain* head, and decisively point to us the celestial origin whence it must have sprung. 60 ON THE MORAL EVIDENCE FOR THE 8. But beside these more general attributes which belong to the morality of the New Testa¬ ment, there are certain tests of exceeding delicacv which serve to mark the discrimination of its Author—the profoundness of Idis wisdom, andnever more than when exemplified in cases of actual occurrence. The first specimen of this which offers itself to our recollection, is the occasion, when an expensive ointment was poured on the head of the Saviour, and Judas remonstrated because of that being wasted, which might have been sold and its price given to the poor. If there be one characteristic of the Gospel more prominent than another, it is the tenderness of its care and consideration for tne poor—not in the form how¬ ever of a headlong affection, but subject, as every other affection ought to be under a system not of moral feeling alone but of moral tuition, to the qualifications of wisdom and principle. Our Saviour vindicates the application that was made of the precious ointment; and thus lets us know that there are other impulses beside compassion for the poor, which, in their right place and on fitting occasions, should in their turn be obeyed. And an expression of reverence and respect for a divine messenger was one of these occasions. There are certain short-sighted philanthropists who would set up the plea of humanity to the poor in opposition to every cause; and who, under the guise perhaps the reality of a sympathetic regard for them, would lay an arrest on other good works, not only of more urgent principle and necessity at the time, but tenfold more beneficial in point of effect It TRUTH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 61 is thus that the expenses, even the most needful expenses of Christianity have been looked to with an evil eye; and not only would the decency, still more the dignity, of its temple services be grudged for the reason alleged by him who betrayed its a.ithor—but, on the same ground too, have we heard both the cost of religious education for our families at home, and the cost of a missionary apparatus for the people abroad, made alike the subjects of a most virulent declamation. And there are other expenses beside those which sub¬ serve the well-being of the soul, that relief for the wants of the body ought not to supersede—the expense of justice—the expense of government— the expense even of upholding in becoming state and splendour the offices of magistracy—all which, as connected with right sentiment as well as the real interests of human society, would seem to be warranted by this example of our Saviour—even in the face of that exclusive preference for the poor which some would allege in argument for doing them away. Little have they reflected on the ruinous effect, on the fatal certainty, wherewith it would extend and sorely aggravate the poverty of our land—were the whole wealth of the country turned into one undiverted and undivided stream towards the object of relieving it. And it marks we have often thought, not only a sound discrimi¬ nation on the part of our first Christian teachers, but their wisdom, the reach and comprehensiveness of their wisdom in the foresight of consequences__ that, while every positive sanction is given by them to the virtue of liberality, they have not left it 62 OX THE MORAL EVIDENCE FOR TUB • unassociated with the prudence and the principle by which all its exercises ought to be guarded. The refusal of the twelve apostles to continue their services in the distribution of the common fund for the poor, and that because of the better services by which they were occupied, evince, not their disinterestedness alone, but their enlightened judg¬ ment, in that they thought it a far higher walk of benevolence to instruct the poor than to relieve them. In striking and remarkable contrast with this is the conduct of Paul—who, while his brethren in the ministry refused to join in the work of distribution, because of its encroachment on the peculiar business of their Apostleship, he made large encroachment thereupon, by mixing with the labours of an Apostle the labours of a tent-maker, and so working with his own hands rather than that he should be burdensome. And this he did, we are told, that he might b* an example to others, In being able to say that with his own hands he lad ministered to his own necessities. There are some who appear to look on alms-giving as the highest exercise of charity; but here we are most impressively told, that a higher charity still is to teach the people to be independent of alms¬ giving. The same lesson is reiterated by Paul in his correspondence with the churches. “ If any refuse to work neither should he eat.” “ If any provide not for his own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.” Nothing can be more obvious than his contempt for money, or rather, his contempt for the sordid affection of covetousness—when he urges on every possessor TRUTH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 63 of wealth its best and most rightful application, whether at one time for the relief of the poor saints, or at another for the expenses of the ministry of the Gospel. But there is withal so much of manly sense, and so little of weak sentimentalism —such an equal and impartial dealing with all ranks, charging the rich that they should be ready to distribute and willing to communicate, charging the poor to be industrious and contented and if possible independent of charity—such a care lest his infant society should suffer from the contami¬ nations of that hypocrisy which would “ make a gain of godliness”—such a preference for that system of helping the poor, which teaches them, by their own exertions and economy and good conduct, to help themselves—in a word, along with the tenderness, the undoubted feeling which prompted his benevolence, such a power and pre¬ dominance of wholesome judgment in all his minis¬ trations of it—as bespeaks, not only the enlightened moralist, but the enlightened political economist also. In the directions given by him, for the management of the pauperism of these days, there is the profoundest insight, both into motives and consequences—insomuch, that, from the epistles which he has left behind him, we might draw a system of rules and principles, which, though the product of so early and rude an age, might not only serve for the guidance of particular churches, but is of best possible adaptation to the general and complicated society of modern times. This adaptation is of itself an argument for the wisdom of Christianity; and it amounts to a miracle, when 64 ON THE MORAL EVIDENCE FOR THE we connect it with the first teachers of Christianity, and think of a wisdom so singular so original, in the mind, whether of the tent-maker of Tarsus or of the fishermen of Galilee. 9. But in these days there occurred questions of still greater perplexity, in the solution of which Paul discovers a sagacity and a soundness of prin¬ ciple still more marvellous. We would instance his deliverance on marriage/ which he permits as an indulgence, but prescribes not as a duty—a sentence in which many of our household moralists, and many even of those economists who devise for the well-being not of a family but of a kingdom at large, would not altogether sympathize. We would instance also his sound decision on the question of slavery/—unlike, we do think, to the headlong the precipitate zeal of many modern philanthropists, when he enjoins on the children of a hapless servi¬ tude, both respect for their masters, and an acqui¬ escence in their state, but a preference withal for a state of enlargement, which, when it may be had, he tells them to “ use it rather.” But on no occa¬ sion does he evince a wisdom that looks more like the wisdom of inspiration, than in his treatment of certain peculiar questions which arose from the admission of the Gentiles into the Church of Christ, and their consequent union with the Jews in one and the same society. There is nothing to be more admired in Paul than the skill, even the dexterity, wherewith he unravels the casuistry of these questions—not of broad and obvious principle, * 1 Cor. vii. 7, 17, 28, 32—35. 1 Cor. vii. 21 —24. TRUTH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 65 but all the more delicate and difficult of manage¬ ment, that they related altogether to certain minuter observances of meats and ceremonies and days. It is impossible to withhold our homage from the superior and enlightened way in which the Apostle treats these questions of indifferency with the command of a master, whose own conscience had strength and enlargement enough for either alternative—but, at the same time, with the tender¬ ness of a fellow Christian which prompted the utmost respect and forbearance for the scrupulosi¬ ties of other and weaker men. He had a difficult part to act between Jews and Christians, in being all things to all men—not, it is quite palpable, for any end of selfishness, but for the sake of the furtherance of the Gospel. It is thus that he who fought so manfully for the exemptions and privileges of his Gentile converts, would not himself eat flesh while the world standeth, if it wounded the con¬ scientious prejudices of a brother or made him to offend. In the exercise of his apostolic wisdom, he was called upon to give sentence on many of these points of lesser observation; but he always did it so as to sustain Christianity in all its char¬ acters of greatness, to vindicate and manifest it as being a religion not of points, but of principles. And accordingly, when he recommended compliance in these matters of insignificance, he did it on a clear principle—the principle of charity. And when he contended for liberty it was on a prin¬ ciple alike clear—even that of an enlightened piety which holds the obedience of the heart, as consisting of love to God and man, to be the alone 66 ON THE MORAL EVIDENCE FOR THE indispensable obedience. If one regarded a day, enough if he regarded it unto the Lord. If another regarded not the day, enough if to the Lord he did not regard it. We have long thought that there is an identity of principle between these solu¬ tions of the Apostle, and the solutions which should be given now on certain indeterminate and not very determinable questions, that exercise, and often agitate and perplex, the minds of Christians in the present day. We mean those questions which respect the precise style and circumstantials of Sabbath observation, as well as the precise degree in which the true disciples of Christianity might externally associate with the world or take part in its companies and amusements. It were well to irradiate all these topics with the light of great and unquestionable principle—that, instead of degrading Christianity into a system of petty exactions urged with senseless and intolerant dogmatism, it might sustain throughout the character of that wisdom which is justified “of its children.” Now Paul accomplished this service in his wise and right adjustment of the controversies of that period. He both accommodated the Jews to the uttermost possibility, yet rescued the Gospel from the little¬ ness, the puerility of narrow and illiberal Judaism. When men pass from one extreme to another, they betray, in general, a like unqualified vehemence in both. But when Paul, brought up in the straitest ol the sect of the Pharisees, passed from this yoke of bondage to the liberty wherewith Christ had made him free, he was not transported thereby into any unbridled or unmanageable ardour of this THUTH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 67 sort. He partitioned the matter aright between the prejudices of the old and the privileges of the new economy; and the utterance his temperate yet decided judgments, while it bespeaks the enlargement, bespeaks also the guidance and the restraints of inspiration. 10. This reasoning might be prosecuted further. Other examples might be given in detail, of high wisdom and principle, not humanly to be expected in the state and circumstances of the Apostles— and which, therefore, as bordering on the mira¬ culous, or perhaps as fully realizing this character, might well be proposed as distinct credentials for the divinity of the New Testament. But the morality of the gospel might be viewed in another light, than merely as an exhibition on the part of its messengers—approving themselves to be singu¬ larly, and perhaps, supernaturally gifted men. It might be viewed in immediate connexion with God —or held as a demonstration, at least as a likeli¬ hood of having proceeded from Him, with whose character it is in such full and marvellous accord¬ ance. For that system of virtue which recom¬ mends itself to the consciences of men, must also recommend itself to their notions of the Godhead. The chief argument of nature, as we have already attempted to prove, for the character of the Divinity, is the character of that law which has been graven by His own hands on the tablet of our moral nature. That to which we do homage in the system of virtue, is also that to which we do homage in God as the living exemplar of it—and on the principle that Himself must be adorned bv 68 ON THE MORAL EVIDENCE FOR THE the virtues which He has taught us to admire. It is thus that we personify the ethical system into a Being; or pass from the character of the law to the character of the Lawgiver. We fully esteem and accredit God as author of the law of conscience; and should it correspond with the law of a profest revelation, more especially if it be a revelation by which the conscience itself has been greatly enlight¬ ened and enlarged, do we recognise the probability at least if not the certainty of its having come from God. 11. But we can imagine more than this. We can imagine a reader of the Bible to be visited with the resistless yet legitimate conviction, amounting to a strongly felt and immediate sense that God has spoken to him there—insomuch that he feels himselt to be in as direct correspondence with God uttering His own words to him, as with an earthly friend, when engaged in the perusal of a letter which he knows to be the authentic production of him from whom it professes to have come. It may be difficult to convince those who have never thus been visited by any such- direct or satisfying revela¬ tion, that there is no fancy or fanatical illusion in the confidence of those who profess to have been ina,de the subjects of it. And yet they may be helped to conceive aright of it by certain illustra¬ tions. Those Jews who heard our Saviour and testified that He spake as one having authority, had at first hand an argument for His divine mission which they could not adequately survey or explain the grounds of to another. r J he officers of the Sanhedrim who were sent to apprehend Jesus yet refrained from touching Him, 44 because,” as they NMY TESTAMENT. 69 TKt'TIi or Tin: reported, “ never man spake like this man,” had also an evidence, which, however powerfully and warrantably felt in their own minds, they could not by any statement pass entire into the minds of other men. The centurion who was present at the cruci¬ fixion of the Saviour, and who from what he heard and saw of the tone and aspect and manner of the divine sufferer, testified that surely this was the Son of God—-may have received, through the vehicle of his senses, a deep and a just persuasion, which yet by no testimony of his could be borne with full effect, and so as to give the same persuasion to those who were distant from the scene. And, in like manner, the men who were not able to resist the spirit and the wisdom wherewith Stephen spake, may have felt a great deal more than they could tell—yet not a groundless or imaginative feeling, but a rightful impression, which it would have been well if they had acted on, that he spake with the truth and authority of an inspired man. In all these cases, we admit the possibility of such tokens having been exhibited, as might give to the parties who were present a strong and intimate persuasion, not the less solid, that it was only felt by themselves and incommunicable to others. The solitary visitant of some desert and before unex¬ plored island, has as good reason for believing in the reality of the scenes and spectacles before him, though no other eyes ever witnessed them but his own. And so too, in the person of a celestial messenger, there might, for aught we know, be such real though indescribable symptoms of the character wherewith he is invested—such undoubted 70 ON THE MORAL EVIDENCE FOR THE signatures of wisdom and authority and truth_ such a thorough aspect of sacredness—such traits of a divinity in every look and every utterance—that, though not capable of being made the subject of a public argument, or of being reported to the satis¬ faction of others, might nevertheless awaken a most honest and homefelt and withal sound conviction in the hearts of those who were the witnesses of such a present and personal manifestation, and who themselves saw with their eyes and heard with tlieir ears, what they could not make other under¬ standings than their own to conceive. 12. Now the question is, whether those charac¬ ters of truth and of power, which we now imagine to have been in the oral testimony, might not have been transplanted into the written testimony—or whether that palpable evidence embodied in the personal history, and in the words of our Saviour as He spake them upon earth, and of which the hearers took immediate cognizance, might not be fixed and substantiated in the Bible that He left behind him, and be there taken immediate cognizance of by the readers of the bible. Certain it is, that the priinci facie evidence, the first aspect of that verisimilitude which lies in the obvious sacredness and honesty of Scripture, is greatly brightened and enhanced by our intent and our prolonged regards to it. The man who devotes himself in the spirit of a thorough moral earnestness to the perusal of Scripture, feels a growing homage in his heart to the sanctity and the majesty and the authority which beam upon him from its pages—and in more conspicuous light, and with more commanding TRUTH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 71 effect, the longer that this holy exercise is perse¬ vered in. And the question recurs—might not this growing probability grow into a complete and irresistible certainty at the last ? Might not the verisimilitude ripen and be confirmed into the full assurance of a verity ? If in the course of actual experience it be found, that we do meet with daily accessions to this evidence—how are we to know that there is not as much of the evidence in reserve, as shall at length overpower the mind into a settled yet sound conviction, that verily God is in the Bible of a truth ? It is no condemnation of this evidence, that, only seen by those who have thus reached their way to it, it has not yet come within the observation of others who are behind them, who have not given the same serious and sustained attention to the Bible, or not so much made it the book of their anxious and repeated perusals—nor their right understanding of the book, the subject of their devoutest prayers. It is true, the resulting evidence is of that personal and peculiar quality, which cannot be translated in all its proper force and clearness into the mind of another—yet may it be a good and a solid evidence notwithstanding— as much so as the ocular evidence for the reality of some isolated spot which I alone have been admitted to see, and which no human eyes but my own have ever once beheld. The evidence is not at all weakened by this monopoly. To myself it is every way as satisfying and strong as if thousands shared in it. At least, irrespective of them, the con¬ viction on my own separate and independent view of the object of the question, may have been so perfect. 72 ON I Ill* MORAL EVIDENCE fOE THE as to require no additions. Yet, if not an addition, there is at least a pleasing harmony in the expe¬ rience of men, who have been admitted to the view along with me. We might be strengthened and confirmed by our mutual assurance of a reality in things unknown to all but ourselves, and which to the generality of the world abide in deepest secrecy. And such too the sympathy, such the confirmation felt by “the peculiar people,” in their converse with each other. They are a chosen generation, and have been translated out of darkness into the marvellous light of the Gospel *—each having the witness within himself, yet all prizing the discovery, when, on talking one with another, they find the consistency and the oneness of a common manifestation. 13. No explanation of this evidence will convince the uninitiated. But it may assist them to conceive of it—nay to acquiesce iaits possibility, perhaps even in its probability, or still farther in its truth —though a truth which they individually have not been permitted to behold. Yet we see not how they can approximate to the true understanding of it, unless they are told of the revelation made to the mind of man by the Spirit of God—although it be a revelation to which they are yet strangers. Yet they cannot fail to have read the intimations of such a process in the Bible—of “ men trans¬ lated out of darkness into marvellous light”_of “ things hidden from the wise and the prudent yet revealed unto babes”—of the “ day dawning, and the day-star arising in the hearts of those who were making diligent search after the doctrine of TRUTH OF THE MEW TESTAMENT. 73 their salvation”—of “ eyes being opened to behold the marvellous light contained in God’s law”—and finally, of “ God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, shining in the hearts of men and giving them the light of His own glory in the face of Jesus Christ.” There may be to them a felt mysticismin these various passages—yet they are the passages of a book, the argumentative evidence of which many of them have studied and been satis¬ fied therewith. This higher, this transcendental evidence, they may not have shared in. Yet perhaps some general notion could be given of it —and even they might be taught in part to apprehend what they have not yet appropriated. 14. It is of capital importance for those who are strangers to this evidence, and perhaps are suspicious of its fanaticism and folly—it is of capital importance for them to be told, that the Spirit, in revealing truth to the mind, reveals only the things which are contained in scripture. He tells us, not of the things which are out of the Bible ; but he tells us of the things that are in the Bible. He sheds a light on the pages of the Word. He opens the understandings of men; but it is to understand the Scriptures. He opens their eyes; but it is to behold the things contained in this book. The design of His internal revelation, is to make the things of the external revelation visible. They are the previous objective realities of scripture in which he deals; and, though His be in one respect a new revelation, yet the great purpose of it is to cast a light over the stable and independent truths of the old revelation. When VOL. IV. D 74 ON THE MO UAL EVIDENCE FOU THE He takes of the things of Christ and shows them unto us, He but shows us the things of Scripture, or the things which the Scripture tells of Christ. Each man on whom He operates is made the subject of a distinct manifestation; yet He does not tell a different Christianity to each, but the same Christianity to all—for the Christianity which He has graven on the hearts of those to whom He has imparted the gift of spiritual discernment, is a precise transcript of the Christianity previously graven on the pages of the New Testament. At this rate there might be no fancy, no fluctuation, in the Christianity of these men—for they are all made to behold the same things; and both the doctrine which they believe, and the morality which they are taught to practise, may be tried by a reference to the same standard—even the standard of the law and of the testimony. ,And scripture is still the abiding test-book of their Christianity _for, whatever the pretensions of these men, if they speak not according to the things that are written in this hook, there is no truth in them. And as there is nothing precarious in their doc¬ trine, neither is there aught precarious in the evidence upon which they have received it. One can imagine a hundred-fold strength given to the faculty of distant vision—on which the features of a remote landscape, now beyond the perception of the natural eye, might start into sure and satisfying revelation; and what we should thus behold would not be an illusion, but a solid reality, and on the best of all evidence, even that of ocular demonstra¬ tion. And one can also imagine a hundred-fold TRUTH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 75 strength given to the faculty of minute or micro¬ scopic vision—on which, the arcana of a hidden region, now beneath the perception of the natural eye would come into view, and still on the same evidence of ocular demonstration. And thus too we might imagine of the Spirit of God, whom it is not for us to limit as if we indeed comprehended the whole of His way—that He gives to the mind of the inquirer, to the eye of his intellect, a powerful and penetrating discernment into the matters of Scripture; and that he is made in consequence to behold a character of majesty and sacredness, and to hear a voice of authority which tells him irresistibly of God. Whether such signatures of the Godhead as these be actually in Scripture, or what the things to be discerned are which lie in reserve for our discernment there, can only be told by him who has the faculty of discern¬ ment, not by him who wants it—in like manner as the objects of a telescopic region can only be told by him who has the enlarged vision of the telescope, not by him who possesses but the limited vision of the natural eye. Certain it is, that if such tokens of the divinity exist in the Bible, and it is by an augmentation in the visual faculties of the mind that we are enabled to behold them—there might be as much reason and philosophy in the convictions of those by whom the truth as it is in Jesus is spiritually discerned, as there is in the confidence of the astronomer, when he tells of the satellites of Jupiter; or of the naturalist, when he tells of the atoms and animalcules that are beneath the ken of our unaided eyesight. The reader of the 76 ON THE MORAL EVIDENCE FOR THE Bible, when thus gifted, might have as legitimate an assurance of the new meaning he is no^ made to behold—as, with only his old faculties, he had of the mind or meaning of any ordinary author.* The very process whereof he is conscious in his own mind, and by which he has been usheied into this new and impressive manifestation of the Deity, adds a peculiar evidence of its own to that of the outward manifestation itself; and rivets still more the conviction, that the same God, who thus supernaturally teaches him to understand this Bible, is verily in the Bible of a truth. 15. It is thus that the veriest babe in natural knowledge might be made to perceive God in the scriptures, and there be revealed to him things hidden from the wise and the prudent-t When, in virtue of this spiritual revelation, the scales are made to fall from his eyes—he might recognize, in the sentences w f hich the Bible gives forth, the divinity of Him who utters them, directly announc¬ ing itself to be the voice of God clothed in majesty. Yet he is informed of nothing but what the word tells him; but to his mind, now opened and clarified, it tells what it never told before; and he can now say with him in the Gospel whom a miracle had cured, “ I was once blind but now I see.” In the whole of this wondrous record, from first to last, from the Patriarchs and Prophets of the Old to the * “ We cannot conceive how reason should be prejudiced by the advancement of the rational faculties of our souls with respect unto their exercise toward their proper objects ; which is^ all we assign unto the work of the Holy Spirit in this matter. ’— Dr, Owen on the Spirit. f Matt, xi 25. TRUTH OF TIIE NEW TESTAMENT. 77 • Apostles of the New Testament; he descries through¬ out, the purity and the wisdom and the sustained loftiness of the Godhead. As in personal converse we might recognize at once both the dignity and wisdom of him to whose spoken language we are at the time giving ear—so, in the perusal of written language, the same attributes might be discernible; and be so enhanced as to impress on the awakened reader, the sense and the rightful conviction that God Himself had broken silence. He feels it to be the language not of earth, but of Heaven’s august sanctuary. The evidence of this in the Bible beams direct upon him from its own pages; and, however difficult or perhaps incapable of analysis it may be, this hinders not its being his rational and well-grounded faith—when to him the reading of Scripture is an act of felt and immediate fellowship with God. 16. This evidence, however distinctly felt by him who is the subject of it or who has had the experience of its manifestation, it is extremely difficult to speak of discursively or to the satisfac¬ tion of others. Dr. Owen, in hiS treatise. on