CHRISTIANITY. 



383 



Christian!- which there is no other example in the wide field of hu- 

 *f' man speculation ; he will either make out the insuffi- 



v ^Y" r ' ciency of the historical evidence, or prove that the false, 

 hood ascribed to Jesus Christ has no existence. He will 

 try to dispose of one of the terms of the alleged contradic- 

 tion, before he can prevail upon himself to admit both, 

 and deliver his mind to a state of uncertainty most pain- 

 ful to those who respect truth in all her departments. 



146. We offer the above observations, not so much for 

 the purpose of doing away a difficulty which we conscien- 

 tiously believe to have no existence, as for the purpose of 

 exposing the rapid, careless, and unphilosophical proce- 

 dure of some ei.emies to the Christian argument. They, 

 in the first instance, take up the rapid assumption, that 

 Jesus Christ has, either through himself, or his immedi- 

 ate disciples, made an assertion as to the antiquity of 

 the globe, which, upon the faith of their geological spe- 

 culations, they know to be a falsehood. After having 

 fastened this stain upon the subject of the testimony, 

 they, by one summary act of the understanding, lay 

 aside all the external evidence for the miracles and gene- 

 ral character of our Saviour. They will not wait to be 

 told, that this evidence is a distinct subject of examina- 

 tion ; and that, if actually attended to, it will be found 

 much stronger than the evidence of any other fact or 

 history which has come down to us in the written me- 

 morials of past ages. If this evidence is to be rejected, 

 it must be rejected on its own proper grounds ; but if all 

 positive testimony, and all sound reasoning upon human 

 affairs, go to establish it, then the existence of such 

 proof is a phenomenon which remains to be accounted 

 for, and must ever stand in the way of positive infideli- 

 ty. Until we dispose of it, we can carry our opposi- 

 tion to the claims of our religion no farther than to the 

 length of an ambiguous and mid-way scepticism. By 

 adopting a decisive infidelity, we reject a testimony, 

 which, of all others, has come down to us in the most 

 perfect and unsuspicious form. We lock up a source 

 of evidence, which is often repaired to in other questions 

 of science and history. We cut off the authority of 

 principles, which, if once exploded, will not terminate 

 in the solitary mischief of darkening and destroying our 

 theology, but will shed a baleful uncertainty over ma- 

 ny of the most interesting speculations on which the hu- 

 man mind can expatiate. 



147. Even admitting, then, thi single objection in the 

 subject of our Saviour's testimony, the whole length to 

 which we can legitimately carry the objection is scep- 

 ticism, or that dilemma of the mind into which it is 

 thrown by two contradictory appearances. This it the 

 unavoidable result of admitting both terms in the al- 

 leged contradiction. Upon the strength of all the rea- 

 soning which has hitherto occupied this article, we 

 challenge the infidel to dispose of the one term which 

 lies in the strength of the hiotoric.il evidence. But we 

 undertake to dispose of the other which lies in the al- 

 leged falsehood of our Saviour's testimony. We will 

 not try to make our escape, by denying the truth of the 

 geological speculation. We are not afraid to own that 

 we are impressed by its evidence, and feel our imagina- 

 ti n regaled by its brilliancy. We will not try to do 

 away the supposed falsehood, by asserting what has 

 been called the Mosaical antiquity of the world ; but 

 we deny that e.ur S'viour ever asserted this antiquity. 

 It is true th.it he gives his distinct testimony to tlie di- 

 vine legation of Mi>!.e^ ; but does Moses ever gay, that 

 when God created the heavens and the earth, he did 

 more at the time alluded to than transform them out of 



previously existing materials ? Or doe he ever say, Chriitiami- 

 that there was not an interval of many ages betwixt the tT - 

 first act of creation, described in the first verse of the '""""Y^ ^ 

 book of Genesis, and said to have been performed at the 

 beginning ; and those more detailed operations, the ac- 

 count of which commences at the second verse, and 

 which are described to us under the allegory of days ? 

 Or does he ever bring forward any literal interpretation 

 of this history which brings him into the slightest con- 

 tact with the doctrines of geology ? Or, finally, does 

 he ever make us to understand, that the genealogies of 

 man went any farther than to fix the antiquity of the 

 species, and, of consequence, that they left the antiqui- 

 ty of the globe a free subject for the speculations of 

 philosophers ? The historical evidence remains in all 

 the obstinacy of experimental and well attested facts ; 

 and as there are so many ways of expunging the other 

 term in the alleged contradiction, we appeal to every en- 

 lightened reader, if it is at all candid or philosophical to 

 suffer it to stand ? 



148. There is another species of evidence for Christiani- internal 

 ty which we have not yet noticed. What is commonly evidence 

 called the internal evidence, or those proofs that Chris- considered. 

 tianity is a dispensation from heaven, founded upon the 

 nature of its doctrines, and the character of the dispen- 

 sation itself. The term " internal evidence" may be 

 made indeed to take up more than this. We may take 

 up the New Testament as a human composition, and 

 without any reference to its subsequent history, or to 

 the direct and external testimonies by which it io sup- 

 ported. We may collect from the performance itself 

 such marks of truth and honesty, as entitle us to con- 

 clude, that the human agents employed in the construc- 

 tion of this book were men of veracity and principle. 

 This argument has already been resorted to, and a very- 

 substantial argument it is. It is of frequent application 

 in questions ot general criticism ; and upon its authority 

 alone many of the writers of past times have been ad- 

 mitted 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 allu- 

 sions 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 im- 

 posture 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 power- 

 ful impression of truth to the narrative. There is no- 

 thing fanciful in this species of internal evidence. It 

 carries in it all the certainty of experience, and expe- 

 rience too upon a familiar and well known subj-'ct, the 

 characters of honesty in the written testimony of our fel- 

 low 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 evidence which lies in the tone, the man- 

 ner, the circumstantiality, the number, the agreement 

 of the witnesses, and the consistency of all the particu- 

 lars 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 v_ry impressive degree in written tes- 

 timony ; and the argument founded npun them, so far 

 from being fanciful or illegitimate, has the sanction of a 

 principle which no philosopher will refuse ; the cxpe- 



