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every individual of the entire species, can be incontrovertibly made out, except by an induction of particular instances, far more extensive, and a scrutiny into every secret motive far more close and penetrating, than is practicable for man, even were he a competent judge; or, failing this, by revelation. Indeed so far from the moral imperfection of man being an admitted first principle, or easily demonstrable verity, carrying with it the ready assent of all, it has been controverted, even by those who have enjoyed the light of revelation, and profess to acknowledge its authority. With how little success this is not the place to show; but till this truth be felt and acknowledged, there may be some who will not admit it as a necessary conclusion that a system of doctrine is truly a revelation, simply on the ground that its principles are sound. On the contrary, I suspect that were a man to stake the divine authority of a new series of doctrines solely on their purity: notwithstanding that his personal integrity, and the excellence of his teaching might give him a right to expect great deference to his words, the very pretension to divine authority would engender a suspicion in the minds of many that he is practising one deception at least, which had he claimed the system for his own, they would not have entertained. is, then, in the union of purity of doctrine with miracles that our full strength consists; and was it not because either alone would have been insufficient satisfactorily to complete his purposes, as fully as the necessities of the case required, that in practice God has employed the two together? -Let us illustrate the matter a little further.

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Uprightness and integrity of character, beyond all question, carry with them, if not their due meed, yet a very considerable meed of respect. A man of steady consistency and indomitable honesty of purpose, may be a mark at which the unprincipled delight to level the shafts of ridicule; yet his word is believed, even where his motives are not appreciated or understood. But let such a man announce it to the world: I have a revelation from God: the bosom friend whose wont has been to repose the most unwavering confidence in every word that falls from him, will in all probability be staggered at the declaration. There is, on the one hand, a persumption that so upright a man will not lightly utter a falsehood; and on the other, that so uncommon a thing

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as an immediate message from heaven, will not be sent. But let him add: In proof of my assertion, a series of miracles shall be displayed before your eyes. Here is another assertion equally uncommon; and therefore with a presumption both for and against it of precisely the same kind; but the contrary presumption is capable of being removed by the actual exhibition of the miracles announced. Any obstacle arising from the uncommon nature of the thing is thus taken away, and the matter may rest on his integrity alone. His veracity is attested by the fact, in one of the two instances in which he has assumed extraordinary authority; and this, in conjunction with the undeviating honesty of his previous character, leaves a very powerful impression that his other assertion is also true.

But now let us look at the doctrine he says he is commissioned to teach. Suppose it to inculcate evil: the proof of miraculous powers remains just where it was before; and his personal integrity may be unblemished, for he may be the involuntary agent of some crafty being, striving to set off his devilish machinations by the recommendation they will acquire as coming through an upright and respected man! But notwithstanding this recommendation, the presence of false principles in the doctrines, their immoral tendency, or whatever it be that marks an author capable of practising or countenancing evil in any form, destroys all my confidence in the doctrine; the threatenings may be merely a politic attempt to terrify into obedience with no intention or ability to execute them; the promises may be only to allure, with no intention or ability to see that they are fulfilled; the instructions may be such as to entrap the unwary;-in short a revelation with any indications of evil in it, has no more claim upon my faith, than a fellow creature whose character is chequered with some vice, which tells me he is not to be trusted as a righteous man.

Suppose, on the contrary, our friend propound a system of doctrine levelled against evil in every possible form; so unsparingly denouncing its abominable and essential obviousness that none but a Being of absolute and uncontaminated purity can in any way give it the seal of his unqualified approval. Still if that approval be, I do not say, denied, but unasked and simply withheld; the matter of its being a revelation rests only on our opinion of the teacher's integrity, and

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we may, or may not, think that this, and the excellence of his doctrine, bears him out in the assertion that it is divine. The general association of this doctrine with miraculous powers in the person of its teacher, would give us a footing of great security. But if it be brought into still closer combination with the miracles by a direct appeal to them as an attestation of its truth; we stand on still firmer ground, for there is not left so much as a bare possibility that the two may be independent of each other. It is not merely that the veracity of the speaker is ascertained in one of two concomitant assertions, and that we are left to infer his veracity in the other; but the Being, from whom he has derived a power we know he cannot possess except as derived from another, has mitted the exercise of that power, when openly called on to permit it, in direct attestation of doctrines which no Being could lend himself, directly or indirectly, to establish, except his delight were in unmingled truth. We are thus assured by the miracle that the commission to deliver a revelation, is no fiction of the speaker's fancy, but a veritable reality; and further, that the doctrine he inculcates is also true. The attestation is given both to the pretensions of the commissioner, be his office distinguished by what term it may, and to all that he communicates in virtue of of that office. If he tell us that he declares only what he has received; or if he advance a higher claim to the honours of a deity, we are bound to believe the whole. The power by which the miracles are wrought may or may not be identified with the source from whence the doctrine flows, or with him by whom it is delivered. These are mere accidents that do not affect the leading question. If they be not identified, the authentication loses nothing of its value: there is a Being superior to nature, giving his sanction to a system of unsullied purity, which none but a Being essentially pure could approve. And if the commissioning and ratifying authority be one, he is giving the self same sanction to a system of his own. The Christian system does identify the two: it is one God who issues the command to teach, and who confirms; and the appeal is made to him in attestation of truths imputed to himself. We can concede much to the bare assurance of a man of known integrity, when his teaching is altogether incorrupt; but forasmuch as a revelation is a matter neither of

common occurrence, nor of common importance, we are glad of a corroboration, which, when the miracles and the doctrine are associated as I have explained, assumes the character of a public ratification from God. It is only when the doctrine is absolutely pure that the proof of truth is unimpeachable and entire. But if there be some shadow of reluctance admissible in receiving the doctrine of Jesus and his followers, as men of tried integrity: if there were some slight demur at the very excellence of the doctrine itself, when we considered it alone, I say that we are imperatively called upon to attach the fullest credit to every word, when their teaching is combined with the works they did; for these also bore concurrent witness of them, that the Father sent them. (John. x. 37, 38. v. 36.)

When speaking of evil and good, it will of course be understood that I employ the terms in a moral acceptation. But it may be asked, how do we arrive at the knowledge of moral excellencies, and their contrary vices, except by revelation; and how can we pronounce the substance of any religious doctrine to be morally good or evil, and argue from it, in support of or against a revelation, when the only means of discriminating right from wrong is derived from itself? I reply that we need no revelation to inform us of the distinction between good and evil, or to lead us to approve the one, and condemn the other. I do not mean that men will be able, without a revelation, minutely and correctly to draw the line between them, so that no virtue shall find a place in their list of vices; and no vice be overlooked, or transferred to virtue's side, or that the true nature of either will be fully understood: but I mean that, in its broad features, men will rightly distribute the several enactments of their moral code; so that the general consent of mankind will be conceded to the proposition that murder, theft, adultery, treachery, lying, fraud, and the like are morally evil; and that honesty, chastity, truth, and mercy, rank among the qualities which ought to be esteemed as good. This common assent to the moral character of overt acts, and often of inward dispositions, takes its rise from the natural conscience. Conscience, indeed, like reason and every thing else that appertains to man, is most seriously perverted, and it may be, occasionally extinguished; just as the most docile animal may, by ill management, be made vicious,

the fertile field by neglect or wilful injury may become a wilderness, or a fruitful tree be transformed into a shapeless and unprofitable encumbrance to the soil. But, in general, it retains enough of its original correctness to approve or condemn moral actions to the extent I have pointed out above; and an abundance of passages might be adduced from writers who can never have heard of Christianity in support of this assertion. Hundreds of thousands of living men might be appealed to, in the most debased communities, who, if their real feelings were brought out, would prove themselves not so far devoid of all sense of morality, as to have lost or utterly confounded every notion of right or wrong; and I think few men could be met with, who could bring themselves to credit another, if he gave expression to the sentiment that murder, lying, envy, and their kindred actions and feelings are moral virtues. I do not say that they would refuse credit to one who might applaud or justify even great enormities; but I think most men would find it hard to receive it as a sincere declaration of the real state of his inward convictions, if a man pretended that he regarded them as virtues. Certain it is that, in this respect, the general sense of mankind does not theoretically swerve very greatly from the truth: like the pendulum, it may oscilate to and fro, and unlike the pendulum, with no uniform or steady motion; but it oscilates on either side a fixed line, from which its excursions do not extend to any considerable distance. This, then, is a principle in the investigation of moral truths, of the first importance. It is as much a natural element in our constitution as are the powers of reasoning, or the capability of transferring to the mind the impressions made upon our corporeal organs, and he that demurs at the use we are making of it here, will find it hard to account for their own use of the terms good and evil, or for the origin of the ideas they represent, or for the tolerable uniformity of their application by the world at large. It is in this way that we form our estimate of moral purity; just as we determine of the reality of miracles by the exercise of our ordinary senses, or of our judgment in weighing and settling the credit due to the reports of others; and having formed our estimate of both on the principles it has been my endeavour to explain, we have data enough to enable us to pronounce upon the genuineness of revelation.

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