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from something bearing witness to us that there is something in that book 
which alone will fill the void that man feels, and which alone will soothe man’s 
sorrows and point out to him the means by which his sins and sorrows may 
be healed. I believe there is no greater philosophical truth, or one which 
can be maintained by such a tremendous amount of testimony, as the 
existence of sin in the world and the stain which sin produces in man’s 
innermost being. The fallen man, who feels that he is a fallen creature, and 
who feels that the Bible is the only book which gives him a true account of 
that fall, feels also that it is the only book which gives him a remedy or 
anything which will supply all the wants of his soul, and it supplies this 
with a fulness which may be appreciated and felt by the highest philosopher, 
by the most profound and truest student of all that is revealed in the 
external works of God ; while yet at the same time it is comprehensible by a 
child, and it enables the Christian child to meet death without fear or appre- 
hension. It carries comfort and consolation into the peasant’s cottage as well 
as into the palace, and it appeals to the peasant man and to the peasant 
woman with the highest and noblest philosophy which the world has ever 
seen. We know something of the philosophy which was acquired by patient 
seekers after truth — by men who sought for it without the full aid of divine 
inspiration— but, let me ask, can we find anything anywhere in the pages 
of Plato, or in the pages of Cicero, which is at all comparable with the 
majesty of that philosophy which we may have here in a peasant’s cottage 
from a man who has had nothing more than the teaching of that marvellous 
book, the Bible ? When we see such power as this, we may well claim 
it for ourselves that we are not credulous in believing in the divine nature 
of the book which has not only civilized Europe but which is carrying its 
civilizing influence throughout all the nations of the world, and which gives 
the lie to all that pseudo science which says that men are of many races and 
have not come from one common source and centre. That book shows 
us that the soul of man is the same whether his skin be white or black. The 
comfort and consolation and philosophy of that book are adapted to the wants 
of the whole human race, wherever they are found or however deeply they are 
sunk in barbarism. And this is not all : when we meet a sceptic face to face 
and analyze his science, we are always led to this conclusion, that the receiver 
of revelation is not credulous. He is a man who acts on the soundest and 
strongest probabilities, and who would go even further than Dr. Thornton 
and say, that in none of the mixed sciences received by man as demonstra- 
tive, can you find such an amount of demonstrative proof as you have, if you 
will only patiently and earnestly enter into it, to prove that the book which 
we believe to be divine really is divine. In adducing all this we are not 
credulous, but we are acting the part of men who can use scepticism 
in its right sense — in the sense in which thinking men may rightly use it to 
determine whether that to which he gives his assent be true or false. But 
there is another remarkable thing which fully bears out Dr. Thornton’s 
thesis, and it is this : Only watch the scientific sceptics, and see how very 
credulous they are upon those subjects which seem to be most monstrous to 
