spiritual truth is not mainly the work of the logical understanding, nor of rough and round common sense. To do this requires that another capacity be awake in a man, a spiritual apprehension, or, call it by what name you may, a deeper, more internal light, which shall be behind the understanding, as it were, informing and illuminating it. For otherwise the understanding, however powerful or acute, attains not to spiritual truth. This power of spiritual apprehension is, though not identical with the moral nature, more akin to it, belongs more to this side of our being than to the intellectual.*"

The benign and practical influences, of the Christian religion cannot be overstated. Instances of its sovereign efficacy are to be met with wherever it has appeared, certifying that it is the "power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth." "Give me," says Lactantius, "a man who is choleric, abusive, headstrong, and unruly, and with a few words—the words of God-I will render him gentle as a lamb. Give me an unjust man, a foolish man, a vicious man; and on a sudden he shall become honest, wise, and virtuous. Did, or could, any of our heathen philosophers accomplish such important purposes as these?" And proofs are by no means rare or unusual at the present day, of the abiding holy and beneficent efficacy of the Gospel. I repeat then, the man who is the subject of an internal renovation has the witness in himself to the truth of the Bible. In the first instance, especially in a Christian country, he received it upon the recommendation of others, but he has now acquired an experimental acquaintance with it, and possesses a personal certitude of its truth. There is nothing to forbid this individual being a philosopher, a man of science, or an historian, but his inward transformation of character is something more than convictions resulting from induction and argumentation. The tender, hallowing, ele

*Culture and Religion," by Professor Shairp.

vating, workings of the Gospel in his own heart, form the fastest and crowning evidence of the truth of the Christian faith, for as no reasonings in the world could. be so powerful to convince him of the existence of the sun, as his own enjoyment and perceptions of the light and heat of that glorious luminary, so nothing can exceed in strength this proof of the Divine truth of the Gospel, arising from the consciousness of God's own manifestation to his soul. The doctrine enunciated by Professor Faraday, that when a principle is really established on such grounds as to approve itself undeniably to the mind and conscience, then "no hypothesis should be admitted, nor any assertion of a fact credited, that denies the principle," should be more influential among Christian believers in these times. A thankful and hearty welcome may be given to facts declared to be such by competent authorities, but haughty declarations, disrespectful estimates of Scripture, and suspicions and speculations respecting biblical historic certainties, should be disregarded, by the man who is a "new creature in Christ Jesus." He knows but one book, "The Divine Library," as Jerome was wont to call it, as early as the fourth century, and it is sufficient, its own and fullest witness to its Divine authority. These abiding convictions in the minds and consciences of Christian believers are facts, and it is not reverent nor respectful to ignore them, to designate them delusion, fanaticism, and ignorance. They are the firmest principles of many an honest and upright man's life, who has as strong belief in them as in his own existence. If we dispute the realities and certitude of consciousness, where are we, and what the bond in human society?

But further here, let us hold likewise to other facts, to facts not speculations, nor theories. Incontrovertible truth abides with the Bible. History, natural and civil, sacred and profane, renders a uniform and costly tribute to the veracity of its records. These records have

passed every mode of trial, received every conceivable attestation, and are triumphant in the present day in the face of the world. The Gospel history must be true, or all history false, and the whole of the past be reduced to a universal blank. A disdainful allusion to "the evidences of Christianity" does not disprove the certainty of the birth, the labours, the miracles, the matchless character, the sufferings, the death, the resurrection, of Jesus of Nazareth. Here is the heart of Christianity, and it cannot be destroyed. We have been adverting, not only to the incontestible truth of the Bible's history, but to heaven's seals to its writers, in plain and beneficent miracles; we have appealed to the attestation of prophecies; the sublime grandeur of its doctrines; the purity of its precepts; the unfailing exactness of its adaptations to universal man; and have found them to be facts, and the Christian system a theme of boundless exultation. Notwithstanding the attacks and aspersions of our day, what conclusions have been arrived at to hinder Christianity from occupying our pulpits, or have destroyed one fact of Christian doctrine hitherto held sacred by the Christian Church? What chapter of the Bible can we no longer read as a record of truth? Some statements and theories long influential may have been disturbed and refuted, but what long-established facts have perished? Holy Scripture is suffering in our age from aspersions, speculations, and imaginary scientific contradictions; but on the fields of scholarship, and in the laboratories of criticism, its challengers have been fairly met, and it still remains with the decisive stamp of Divinity upon it. In every way it is our duty and advantage to cleave to it. It is worse than nonsense to talk of mind cramping religious dogmas and antiquated Biblical notions. are thankful that there is something, in these days of change and hypothesis, clear and settled. The sun, like the Bible, is antiquated; but his beams are ever fresh and welcome-the emblems of a more precious

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and expanding light for the soul of man, when Christian truth shall return to the bosom of the Godhead, whence it sprang, and where, after its conflicts are over, it will dwell for ever.

Our lot is cast in perilous times, but the charges. against our holy faith prove not to be facts, but suspicions, speculations, doubts; and yet these will prove we fear the shipwreck of the faith of numbers. But never let us dream that God will desert His Church, or suffer His Revealed Truth to be destroyed. Humble and penitent prayer for enlightenment and guidance will be our wisdom and strength. The best judges of Scripture and sound doctrine have ever been those who, with an honest and upright heart, endeavour to do the will of God, and without despising learning, or skill, or criticism, such men pursue the safe and useful tenor of their way, and live and die happily in the sanctuary of God's truth. I cannot too seriously repeat, that want of firmness of faith among Christians is a great source of weakness. If they cannot answer the difficulties, explain objections, and silence cavils, they need not be disturbed, other sincere believers, of more experience and knowledge, can do this. They have received the testimony which God has given of His Son, they know that God hears prayer, they are begotten again unto a lively hope, and look forward with inspiring confidence to a blessed futurity of happiness with God in heaven. How can all that be erroneous, delusive, and of human contrivance, which secures to them such solid happiness and brilliant anticipations? Let them live and act as if certain of their own convictions, and conscious of inward possessions of peace and joy, which the world certainly has not given, and which it cannot take away. "Certitude is the knowledge of a truth; but what is once, true is always true, and cannot fail, whereas what is once known need not always be known, and is capable of failing. It follows, that if I am certain of a thing, I believe it will remain

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what I now hold it to be, even though my mind should have the bad fortune to let it drop. Since mere argument is not the measure of assent, no one can be called certain of a proposition, whose mind does not spontaneously and promptly reject, on their first suggestion, as idle, as impertinent, as sophistical, any objections which are directed against its truth. man is certain of a truth, who can endure the thought of the fact of its contradictory existing or occurring; and that not from any set purpose or effort to reject it, but, as I have said, by the spontaneous action of the intellect. What is contradictory to it, with its apparatus of argument, fades out of the mind as fast as it enters it; and though it be brought back to it ever so often by the pertinacity of an opponent, or by a voluntary or involuntary act of imagination, still that contradictory proposition and its arguments are mere phantoms and dreams, in the light of our certitude, and their very entering into the mind is the first step of their going out of it.""

It is not assent to the teachings and authority of the Church, however cordial and entire; it is not faith in the Bible as a Divine Revelation, however sincere and confident; which bringeth personal salvation, but rather the penitent and hearty reception of the facts which the Bible narrates, and which the Church proclaims and enforces. It is the simple, complete, and loving embrace of the fact that Christ died for the ungodly, and was raised again for their justification, that realizeth the forgiveness of sins, and the blessed hope of heaven. The Church was in existence before some portions of Holy Scripture were written. So that personal godliness is based, not on the words of Scripture, but on the truths which these words enunciate. However much we may know, to whatever extent Biblical truth may illuminate our understanding, and improve our condition, its work is not accomplished unless it correct and

*Newman's "Grammar of Assent." p. 191.