

Cil li I ST I A X I T V. 



..- cluud ever darkened the- brilliancy of his career, we would 



;>poe ID him the certain remembrances, both of ourselves 



""" nd of our whole neighbourhood. Were he to tell us, that 



we were perfec: e from passion, 



and loved our neighbour* at ourtelfet, we would oppose 



to him the hi.tory of our own lives, and the deeply-sealed 



consciousness of our own infirmities. On all thete tub* 



jccu, we can confront him ; but when he brings truth from 



.1 quarter which no human eye ever explored j when he 



tell* us the miud of the Deity, and brings before us the 



el* of that invisible being, whocc arm is abroad up- 

 on all nations, and whose riewi reach to eternity, he is 

 beyond the ken of eye or of telescope, and we must sub- 

 mit to him. We have no more right to sit in judgment 



his information, than we have to sit in judgment over 

 the information of any other visitor who lights upon our 

 planet, from some distant and unknown part of the uni- 



, and tells us what worlds roll in these remote tracts 

 which arc beyond the limits of our astronomy, and how 

 the Divinity peoples them with his wonders. Any pre- 

 vious conception of ours are of no more value than the 

 fooleries of an infant ; and should we otter to resist or 

 modify upon the strength of our conceptions, we would 

 be as unsound and as unphilosophical as ever schoolman 

 was with bis categories, or Cartesian with his whirlpools 



Let us go back to the first Christians of the Gen- 

 tile world. They turned from dumb idols to serve the 

 living and the true God. They made a simple and en- 

 tire transition from a state as bad, if not worse, than that 

 of entire ignorance, to the Christianity of the New Tes- 

 tament. Their previous conceptions, instead of helping 

 them, behoved to be utterly abandoned ; nor was there 

 that intermediate step which so many of us think to be 

 necessary, and which we dignify with the name of the 

 rational theology of nature. In these days, this rational 

 theology was unheard of; nor have we the slightest rea- 

 son to believe that they were ever initialed into its doc- 

 trices, before they were looked upon as fit to be taught 

 the peculiarities of the gospel. They were translated at 

 once from the absurdities of Paganism to that Christiani- 

 ty which has come down to us, in the records of evange- 

 lical history, and the epistles which their teachers addres- 

 sed to them. They saw the miracles ; they acquiesced 

 in them, as satisfying credentials of an inspired teacher ; 

 they took the whole of their religion from his mouth ; 

 their faith came by hearing, and hearing by the wards of 

 a divine messenger. This was their process, and it ought 

 to be ours. We do not see the miracles, but we see 

 their reality through the medium of that clear and unsus- 

 picious testimony which has been handed down to us. 

 \Ve should admit them as the credentials of an embassy 

 from God. We should take the wtiole of our religion 

 from the records of this embassy ; and, renouncing thn 

 ry of our own self-formed conceptions, we should 

 repair to that word, which was spoken to them that 

 heard it, aiid transmitted to us by the instrumentality of 

 written language. The question with them was, What 

 nearest thou ? The question with us is, What rcadest 

 thou ? They had their idol', and they turned away from 

 them. We have our fancies, and we contend, that, in 

 the face of an authoritative revelation from heaven, it is 

 as glaring idolatry in us to adhere to these, as it would 

 be were they spread out upon canvass, or chiselled into 

 material form by the hand* of a statuary. 



!'!. In the popular religions of antiquity, we sec 

 scarcely the vettigr of a resemblance to that academical 

 theism which is delivered in our schools, and figures 

 away in the speculations of our moralists. The process 



of conversion among the first Christians was a very slm- ehrutiani- 

 ple one. It consisted of an utter abandonment of their ')' 

 heathenism, and an entire submission to those new truths """Y"" 1 

 which came to them through the revelation of the gospel, 

 and through it only. It w.ii the pure theology of Christ 

 and of his Apostles. That theology which struts in fan- 

 cied demonstration from a professor's chair, formed no 

 part of it. They listened as if they had all to learn: we 

 listen as if it was our office to judge, and to give the 

 message of God its due place and subordination among 

 the principles which we had previously established. Now 

 these principles were utterly unknown at the first publi- 

 cation of Christianity. The Galatians, and Corinthians, 

 and Thessalonians, and Philippians, had no conception of 

 them. And yet, will any man say, that either Paul him- 

 self, or those who lived under his immediate tuition, had 

 not enough to make them accomplished Christiana, or 

 that they fell short of our enlightened selves, in the wis- 

 dom which prepares for eternity, because they wanted 

 our rational theology as a stepping stone to that know- 

 ledge which came, in pure and immediate revelation, from 

 the Son of God. The gospel was enough for them, and 

 it should be enough for us also. Every natural or assu- 

 med principle which offers to abridge its supremacy, or 

 even so much as to share with it in authority and direc- 

 tion, should be instantly discarded. Every opinion in 

 religion should be reduced to the question of what 

 ri.-tiJc.>t thou ? and the Bible be acquiesced in, and submit- 

 ted to, as the alone directory of our faith, where we can 

 get the whole will of God for the salvation of men. 



195. But is not this an enlightened age ; and, since 

 the days of the gospel, has not the wisdom of two thou- 

 sand years accumulated upon the present generation ? has 

 not science been enriched by discovery ? andis not theology 

 one of the sciences ? Are the men of this advanced 

 period to be restrained from the high exercise of their 

 powers ? and, because the men of a remote and bar- 

 barous antiquity li-ped and drivelled in the infancy of 

 their acquirements, is that any reason .why we should be 

 restricted like so many school-boys to the lesson that is 

 set before us ? It is all true that this is a very enlight- 

 ened age, but on what field has it acquired so flattering a 

 distinction ? On the field of experiment. The human mind 

 owes all its progress to the confinement of its efforts 

 within the safe and certain limits of obscr\ati->n, and to 

 the severe restraint which it has imposed upon its specu- 

 lative tendenoie.-. Go beyond these limits, and the hu- 

 man mind has .not advanced a single inch by its own in- 

 dependent exercises. All the philosophy which has been 

 reared by the lab. ur of successive ages, is the philosophy 

 of facts reduced to general laws, or brought under a ge- 

 neral description from observed points of resemblance. 

 A proud and a wonderful fabric we do alKiw ; but we 

 thr.-.v away the very instrument by which it was built 

 the mm: i" observe, and begin to the- 



orize and excogitate. Tell us a sinjle discovery, which 

 has thrown a particle of light on the details of the divine 

 administration. Tell us a single truth in the wholt field 

 of experimental science, which can bring us to the mo- 

 ral government of the Almighty by any other road than 

 his own revelation. Astronomy has taken millions of 

 suns and of systems within its ample domain ; but the 

 way sol God to man stand at a dibtancc as inaccessible as 

 evt'r. Nor has it shed so much as a glimmering over the 

 councils of that mighty and invisible Being, who sits in 

 high authority over all worlds. The bin. led I'.^coveriesof 

 modern science are all confined to that field, within 

 which the tense of man can expatiate. The moment 

 we go beyond this field they cease to be discoveries, and 



