statements, cut and squared after human rules and laws of 
thought and speech, which would have proceeded from a 
human author; they are just in the form in which a superior 
intelligence might have been supposed likely to cast them, if 
He desired that human intellect should exert itself to learn 
about Him, and yield Him not a lazy, but a rational service. 
There is a very respectable and satisfactory chain of testimony 
which fixes these books to about the ages at which they are 
ordinarily stated to have been proposed to the world. The 
sanctity which has continually been attributed to them, must 
have prevented any serious alteration, omission, or interpo- 
lation, being made in them. And therefore I believe that 
they are indeed the Word of God. 
There is no credulity here. The antecedent probability is 
responded to by an intrinsic suitableness, or at least an 
absence of unfitness, and confirmed by an adequate amount 
of testimony. Wrong or right, the believer has plenty of 
grounds for believing. 
Now look at the case of the sceptic. He admits that it 
is not improbable that the Supreme Being should bestow 
upon man a Revelation, but declines to allow that this Reve- 
lation is to be found anywhere. He considers that a certain 
benefit is to be expected from the Benevolent Author of 
Nature, and then, when asked to recognize it, asserts that it 
is nowhere to be found. Surely it requires more credulity to 
hold that the Deity is likely to do a certain thing and has not 
done it, than to believe that He has. 
But we press the matter further. The Bible, as we term 
it, has been accepted in its totality by a large number of 
educated and thinking men ; indeed, we may say, for the last 
ten centuries and more, by the great majority of educated 
men in the world. It has also been singularly preserved. 
Enemies have endeavoured to destroy it, and enemies and 
well-meaning but injudicious friends alike to corrupt it ; but 
it remains still. Other works have been preserved indeed, 
and from remote ages : but no enmity was excited against 
them ; they contained no precepts distasteful to mankind, no 
accounts of the quailing of human might before weakness, 
when strengthened by the Most High. The Rig- Veda had 
no adversaries. The Zend-Avesta provoked no wrath nor 
jealousy. The poems of Homer were the glory of the Hellenic 
race. There was every reason why these should be pre- 
served, just as there was every reason why our Sacred 
writings, Jewish and Greek, should be destroyed. Here is 
a remarkable fact : the sceptic himself cannot deny it. These 
books have been largely regarded as sacred, and have been 
