

(II KISTI A NIT V. 



tjr can furnish. It i (lie unfortunate theory which forma 

 the grnd obstacle to the admission of the Christian mi- 

 racle*, wiJ which leads thr Dcit to an exhibition of him- 

 telf so unphikMOphkil, as npling on the sound- 



est law* of evidence, by bringing an historical fact under 

 !>unal of a theoretic. . The dextical spe- 



culation of Routseau, by which he neutralised the toli- 

 mony of the fir>t Christians, is as complete a transgres- 

 ,;*iust the temper and principles of true cience, as 

 a category of Aristotle when employed to overrule an 

 experiment in chemistry. But however this be, it is evi- 

 Rouueau would hive given a readier recep- 

 tion to the go*pel history, had his mind not been pre- 

 occupied with the speculation ; and the negative state of 

 m would have been more favourable to the admis- 

 sion of those facts, which are connected with the origin 

 and establishment of our religion in the world. 



180. This suggests the way in which the evidence for 

 Chrittianity should be carried home to the mind of an 

 Attuiit. He sees nothing in the phenomena around him, 

 that can warrant him to believe in the existence of a living 

 and intelligent principle, which gave birth and movement 

 to all things. He does not say that he would refuse credit 

 to the existence of God upon sufficient evidence, but he 

 says, that there are not such appearances of design in na- 

 ture, as to supply him with that evidence. He does not 

 deny the existence of God to be a possible truth ; but he 

 affirms, that while there is nothing before him but the con- 

 sciousness of what passes within, and the observation of 

 what passes without, it remains an assertion destitute of 

 proof, and can have no more effect upon his conviction 

 than any other nonentity of the imagination. There is a 

 mighty difference between not proven and clisproven. We 

 gee nothing in the argument of the Atheists which goes 

 farther, thin to establish the former sentence upon the 

 question of God's existence. It is altogether an argu- 

 ment ab ignoranlia ; and the same ignorance which re- 

 strains them from asserting in positive terms that God 

 exists, equally restrains them from asserting in positive 

 terms that God does not exist. The assertion may be 

 offered, that, in some distant regions of the creation, there 

 are tracts of space which, instead of being occupied like 

 the tracts around us with suns and planetary systems, 

 teem only with animated beings, who, without being 

 supported like us on the firm surface of a world, have 

 the power of spontaneous movements in free spaces. We 

 cannot say that the assertion is not true, but we can say 

 that it is not proven. It carries in it no positive charac- 

 ter either of truth or falsehood, and may therefore 

 be admitted on appropriate and satisfying evidence. 

 But till that evidence comes, the mind is in a state entire- 

 ly neutral ; and such we conceive to be the neutral state 

 of the Atheist, as to what he holds to be the unproved 

 astertion of the existence of God. 



181. To the neutral mind of the Atheist then, unfur- 

 nished as it is with any previous conception, we offer the 

 historical evidence of Christianity. We do not ask him 

 to presume the existence of God. We ask him to exa- 

 mine the miracles of the New Testament merely as re- 

 corded events, and to admit no other principle into the 

 investigation, than those which are held to be satisfying 

 and decisive, on any other subject of written testimony. 

 The sweeping principle upon which Rousseau, filled 

 with his own assumptions, condemned the historical evi- 

 dence for the truth of the gospel narrative, can have no 

 influence on the blank and unoccupied mine! of an Athc- 

 ut. He has no presumptions upon the subject ; for to 

 his eyt the phenomena of nature sit io loose and uncon- 

 d with that intelligent Being, to whom they have 



been referred as their origin, that he Joes not feel himself Chrittiani* 

 entitled, from these phenomena, to ascribe any existence, 'y. 

 any character, any attributes, or any method of administra- S ^"Y~^^ 

 tion to such a Being. He is therefore in the last possi- 

 ble condition for submitting his understanding to the en- 

 tire impression of the historical evidence. These difficul- 

 which perplex the Deists, who cannot recognize in 

 the God of the New Testament the same features and the 

 same principles in which they have invested the God of 

 Nature, are no difficulties to him. He has no God of 

 Nature to confront with that real though invisible power 

 which lay at the bottom of those astonishing miracles, on 

 which history has stamped her most authentic characters. 

 Though the power which presided there should be an 

 arbitrary, an unjust, or a malignant being, all this may 

 startle a Deist, but it will not prevent a consistent Athe- 

 ist from acquiescing in any legitimate inference, to which 

 the miracles of the gospel, viewed in the simple light of 

 historical facts, may chance to carry him. He cannot 

 bring his antecedent information into play upon this ques- 

 tion. He professes to have no antecedent information on 

 the subject ; and this sense.of his entire ignorance, which 

 lies at the bottom of his Atheism, would expunge from 

 his mind all that is theoretical, and make it the passive 

 recipient of every thing which observation offers to its 

 notice, or which credible testimony has brought down to 

 it of the history of past ages. 



182. What then, we ask, does the Atheist make of the 

 miracles of the New Testament?! the questions theirtruth, 

 he must do it upon grounds that are purely historical. 

 He is precluded from every other ground by the very 

 principle on which he has rested his Atheism ; and we 

 therefore, upon the strength of that testimony which has 

 been already exhibited, press the admission of these mi- 

 racles as facts. If there be nothing then, in the ordina- 

 ry phenomena of nature, to infer a God, do these extraor- 

 dinary phenomena supply him with no argument ? Does 

 a voice from heaven make no impression upon him? And 

 we have the best evidence which history can furnish, that 

 such a voice was uttered ; " This is my beloved Son, in 

 whom I am well pleased." We have the evidence of a 

 fact, for the existence of that very Being from whom 

 the voice proceeded, and the evidence of a thousand 

 facts, a power superior to nature ; because, on the im- 

 pulse of a volition, it did counteract her laws and proces- 

 ses, it allayed the wind, it gave sight to the blind, health 

 to the diseased, and, at the utterance of a voice, it gave 

 life to the dead. The ostensible agent in all these won- 

 derful proceedings arc not only credentials of his power, 

 but he gave such cmler.iials of his honesty, as dispose 

 our understanding to receive hicxplanation of them. We 

 do not avail ourselves of any other principle than what an 

 Atheist will acknowledge. He understands as well as 

 we do, the natural signs of veracity, which lie in the tone, 

 the manner, the countenance, the high moral expression 

 of worth and benevolence, and, above all, in that firm 

 and undaunted constancy, which neither contempt, nor 

 poverty, nor death, could shift from any of its positions. 

 All these claims upon our belief, were accumulated to an 

 unexampled degree in the person of Jesus of Nazareth ; 

 and when we couple with them his undoubted miracles, 

 and the manner in which his own personal appearance 

 was followed up by a host of witnesses, who, after a ca- 

 tastrophe which would have proved a death-blow to any 

 cause of imposture, offered themselves to the eye of the 

 public, with the same powers, the same evidence, and the 

 same testimony, it seems impossible to resist his account 

 of the invisible principle, which gave birth and movement 

 to the whole of this wonderful transaction. Whatever 



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