But, whatever be the real value of these answers, they only leave the question where it was before; because they are as powerful on the side of Christianity, as when urged in behalf of its competitors. If they may be admitted as sufficient in one case, they cannot consistently be rejected in another: and both are thus thrown back upon the positive evidence by which they are sustained. I do not forget that the charges against Christianity have been either false, or frivolous and feeble; and those against other theories unanswerable; but I wish to impress it upon the reader's mind, that an admission of the validity of those against Christianity, must result in one universal spirit of scepticism and infidelity. All faith in the efficacy of every form of worship must be utterly demolished. Man must live for himself, and lean on himself; and die without a hope that there is a God who careth for his soul.

And suppose that rather than allow the Christian system to be true, a man will sacrifice all religion, and resign himself to the blank hopelessness of infidelity:-Does infidelity present no difficulty? Is it a light thing to set down to the blind caprice of chance those wondrous combinations of matter, so pregnant with consummate wisdom; whose "line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world," heard without voice; and shewing knowledge, though there is no "speech or language." (Ps. xix. 1-4. marg.) And does it involve no difficulty, admitting the exis tence of the Deist's God, to suppose that he has abandoned all care for the work of his own hands, and left his creatures to drag on a wearisome existence, with nothing to cheer them beyond the grave? The imaginations of men's hearts, when they devise for themselves forms of idolatrous adoration, lead them far astray. Yet is their error more pardonable, more natural, more reasonable, than the cold calculating pride of the heartless infidel; and if idolatry be, as it surely is, egregious folly; infidelity is never unaccompanied with a self-conceit, if possible, more fatal to the soul: for, "Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool than of him." (Prov. xxvi. 12.)

But to return; those who think that Christianity ought to be encumbered by no difficulties, forget the analogy of all they see around them. It is admitted there are difficulties, though possibly the catalogue which an objector could draw

up might be reduced by more than a moiety, as containing many which present no real difficulty at all. The number, of objections, however, is of less importance than their nature: for, on the principle that a material in which strength is required, has only the strength of its weakest part; one serious flaw will do more irreparable injury, than a hundred superficial blemishes. In certain processes of reasoning any defect will be necessarily fatal; for instance, in all demonstrative truths, the slightest error in a single step will vitiate the whole conclusion; and neither self-evident, demonstrative, nor logical propositions admit the co-existence of real conclusiveness and inexplicable difficulties. But with moral reasonings the case is otherwise: the question under investigation does not admit of positive demonstration, and becomes, strictly speaking, one of probability. Now all such questions are open to objections of various kinds; and their determination will depend upon our estimate of the relative weight due to the considerations advanced on either side; that is, to the preponderance of one argument over the other; and not to the absence of every thing which can be advanced in opposition to either. It must not, however, be imagined that the evidence from probability is, for this reason, inferior in kind to that from demonstration. It is a different species of evidence, relating to a different class of subjects, and regulated by entirely different laws. But in the contest between opposite probabilities, the one may so outweigh the other, and rise to so high a degree of irresistible force, as to amount to a moral certainty; and yet this does not necessarily destroy or explain the objection, or abate any thing from its real force, be that what it may; the true position of the latter is, that it has been overruled.

Perhaps it might be well to illustrate this by an example; and nothing occurs to me better adapted for the purpose than “a parable" from the masterly work of Ben Ezra on the second advent of Christ. I am reluctant to deny my reader the gratification of perusing the extract in the author's own forcible manner; but it would trench too largely upon my few remaining pages, and I am compelled to abridge. The story refers to the journey of Pope Pius VI. to Vienna, in the year 1782. This visit had for its object the prevention of certain extensive innovations in church affairs, which the Emperor Joseph II. had then in contemplation; and which

the entreaties of Pius failed, even to suspend. Ashamed, perhaps, of the ill success attending an act of condescension so unusual, a party began, at first in diversion, but afterwards seriously, to question whether such a visit had actually been paid; and urged its extreme improbability. "What necessity was there," said they, "that the Pope himself should remove from Rome, and make so long a journey; when it was so easy a matter to treat and to conclude any business, however grave it might be, by means of some one of his ministers, or of an envoy extraordinary, giving to him his orders and instructions; and investing him with his authority and the fulness of his power?" And they met the assertions of eyewitnesses, and the arguments from the publicity of the transaction, by pointing out the possibility of deception; and the ease with which a prince or minister of the Pope's court, might have personated his sovereign. For though the Pope was received with much pomp, and remained a month at Vienna; it is probable that very few who saw him were acquainted with his person; and all who were not, were utterly imcompetent to pronounce with absolute certainty that it was he. On the one hand, then, there was the improbability of the journey, and the difficulty of identifying a total stranger: on the other hand, the people could not easily be deceived, unless the Emperor were so too; and yet it was little likely that the papal court would risk exasperating him at so critical a juncture; or that, under the circumstances, so bare-faced an imposture could be successfully carried through. In short, no one possessed of common sense, and free from every inducement to stifle or bury his convictions, could hesitate to say, that no rational doubt remains as to the reality of the visit. Yet this does not annihilate its original improbability:-it sets that improbability aside as overpowered by a weight of contrary probabilities: and the importance of the object in view may, or may not, be thought satisfactorily to explain and justify so unprecedented a proceeding on the part of the proud but politic despot of Rome.

The case is precisely the same with the objections taken to Christianity, whether they respect its theory, or its evidence. The question is a moral one; and capable of moral, but not of demonstrative certainty; and it is not to be decided by the total absence of any real difficulty, but

by the possession of a power sufficient to counteract the weight of probability in the opposite scale. Now, to begin with difficulties in the theory of Christianity;-they will universally be found to arise from some statement or other, which, on examination, turns out to be, properly, above human reason, but never contrary to its dictates: and hence their existence, so far from causing us any concern, is itself a thing to be expected. Revelation confessedly deals in subjects of the most lofty nature; for beside that its communications are addressed to the incorporeal part of man; it speaks also of the highest and most excellent of all existing Beings; of his eзsence; of his purposes; of his acts. With some of the works of this exalted Being we are daily, hourly, and most intimately conversant; and yet in the most familiar of them we find displayed a skill of operation, which we are not only unable to imitate, but which we cannot even understand. Who, for example, can give to the hard and dry seed its vital property, and enable it to suck moisture and nourishment from the crumbling soil? Who can explain why it thus lives and grows, or lay open the process by which the complete circle of vegetation is carried on? Who can explain how it is that volition is conveyed, instantaneously and unconsciously, to the obedient limb? Or who can tell what is that mysterious principle of life, the presence of which gives energy and animation to every faculty, and whose withdrawal leaves the once active frame a putrid corpse? There are, then, facts innumerable which we know to exist; and of which we can render no account. It is even possible that, if explained, we might be unable to comprehend them; for though an ordinary mind is often, perhaps generally, capable of appreciating truths which it could never have discovered, it is no new thing to meet with one whose intellect is too narrow to entertain even a matter of no very extraordinary depth; and it may be so with the mind of man, as now constituted, with reference to some of the secrets of the natural world.

But this is of little moment. It is enough that in God's works on earth, there are things which we do not understand. Can we wonder, then, if there be something heyond our grasp, when our attention is directed to heavenly things? (John iii. 12.) We labour under a double disability. Our faculties are inadequate to the reception of

the ideas: and incommensurate as these latter are with the loftiness of the subject; the imperfection of the language in which they have to be communicated, is at best not less calculated to embarass their delivery; for a revelation must either be in the language of man; or in a language, the enlarged capabilities of which would make it as difficult of mastery as the ideas themselves, which it was invented to convey. Indeed, I think few would controvert the sentiment, that a much more plausible objection might have been raised, and one much less capable of easy resolution, had there been nothing, when God spake of himself, which did not outstrip our puny intellects, and rise above all that we are acquainted with on earth. The nature, therefore, of the truths which constitute the more peculiarly appropriate subjects of a revelation, is such that probability, so far from forbidding, on the contrary, leads us to expect something which we cannot fully understand; and something, therefore, on which it may be easy to raise, and hard to resolve a difficulty. An inspection of the world in which we live, may disclose to us, not only the existence of difficulties in known truths, but of difficulties closely analogous to some of those encountered in revelation. Analogy does not, however, remove or explain, the difficulty; but it blunts the edge of the objection, for it shows that inexplicable difficulties may coexist with absolute and physical certainty; and therefore may also co-exist with the same high degree, if there could be degrees, of moral certainty. When, therefore, there is only a deficiency of knowledge, and no real violation of its fundamental principles, an uncleared difficulty ought not to shake the confidence reposed in a lengthened train of irrefragable proofs.

But the embarassed position assumed by the man who finds an impediment to the reception of a well-supported truth, in the existence of a difficulty which he is unable to resolve, may be further exemplified by putting the question in an inverted form. Let us, then, abandon for an instant the proposition which we have been striving to establish, that "Christianity is true;" and reversing our previous nomenclature, let us make the objection our main proposition, and say;-"The difficulties with which Christianity is encumbered, are such that it must be rejected as incapable of proof." This statement becomes now the proposition to