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the knowledge of his power to do so, and his umvilliugness to 
attempt it, according to the fine saying of the poet, — 
Video meliora proboque 
Deteriora sequor , 
we ask, What philosophy, ancient or modern, has ever been 
able to account for all these things? But the whole subject is 
revealed to us in the majestic narrative of Scripture— how man 
was originally created in the image of God, and how he lost it 
through the fall. Place side by side these two statements — the 
theory that man is no better than a well-developed ape, and 
the Biblical statement that he was created after the image and 
likeness of his Maker ; the one based on the testimony of 
Revelation, and the other on the mere conjecture of a specu- 
lative human being ; and it will surely approve itself to the 
intelligent mind that on such a subject science has no 
evidence to offer which can be compared to the proof afforded 
by the Bible. It is true that the fall has darkened our 
reason, but it has not destroyed it. There is light enough, as 
Pascal has pointed out, for those whose sincere wish is to see, 
and darkness to confound those of an opposite aim. We 
encounter objections to our faith, some of which it may be 
difficult to answer in consequence of our ignorance, and proof's 
drawn from our knowledge in the opposite scale. Concerning 
the evidence in the Biblical record, it has been well said, “If 
it were greater the Gospel would cease to be a faith, if it were 
less the Gospel would become a superstition, if it were more 
there would be no probation for the heart, and if less no 
grappling point for the reason.” But, alas ! how often is the 
voice of reason drowned in the cry of imaginative folly ! To 
what absurdities will not the understanding often assent when 
the will has determined upon their advocacy ! How little way 
can truth make with the intellect when there is something in 
its character which opposes the inclination; as it has been 
remarked, that Athens Avas but the rudiments of Paradise, and 
an Aristotle or a Socrates only the rubbish of Adam. Dryden, 
in his Religio Laid has forcibly expressed this idea in the 
following nervous lines : — 
Dim as the borrow’d beams of Moon and Stars 
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers, 
Is reason to the soul : and as on high 
Those rolling fires discover but the sky, 
Not light us here ; so reason’s glimmering ray 
But guide* us upward to a better day. 
* In the edition of Dryden’s Works, 1808, now before me, it is printed 
r/uide, not guidF.s — the former being allowable. 
