transcribed with a very severe caution and subjected to a most vigilant scrutiny. The alteration of a letter would condemn the copy.

The whole of the Old Testament was translated from its original Hebrew and Chaldee into Greek at Alexandria, nearly three hundred years before the Christian era. This translation is called the Septuagint, and is still extant. Many passages in the New Testament quoted from the Old, are taken verbatim from the Septuagint; which proves that the Septuagint was in use at the time. the New Testament was written.

The Samaritan Pentateuch, still extant, is also very ancient, and agrees essentially with that of the Jews; and considering the enmity that existed between the Jews and the Samaritans, it is hence a strong confirmation of the genuineness of the original Pentateuch.

The Jews in their dispersion over the world still preserve the Scriptures of the Old Testament as sacred, and read them in their synagogues "every Sabbath day." Notwithstanding the explicitness with which the prophets predicted Messiah's advent and crucifixion, together with the subsequent dispersion and wretchedness of the Jews for their rejection of Christ, they still maintain the sacredness of these writings, and thus witness for the Bible against themselves.

It doth truly surpass all human marvel, that

such a collection of writings should have originated in such a source, and should have thus triumphed over all the ravages of time and come down to us entire, through the lapse of three thousand years. Egypt and Arabia and Persia were also learned nations, cotemporary with and subsequent to the Jews; and in respect to all human science, far surpassed them. They even claimed to monopolize the treasures of intellectual wealth. Theirs were the schools and halls of science; theirs the history, poetry and philosophy; and theirs the productions which promised to live and descend to posterity. Yet the fruits of their intellect have nearly all perished from the world; and of the feeble fragments which survive, excepting perhaps a little Arabian poetry, there is nothing which has any power over the minds of modern ages. They are laid aside to rust and be forgotten. While the Writings which we have contemplated, have not only survived in all their freshness, but have acquired increasing strength, and are continually developing new treasures of beauty and glory. No philosophy can explain this but that of an inspired apostle; they are the "ORACLES OF GOD."

CHAPTER VIII.

AUTHENTICITY, GENUINENESS, AND CREDIBILITY OF

THE BIBLE.

NEW TESTAMENT.

"We have not followed cunningly devised fables."

THE New Testament does not teach a different religion from that of the Old. If it did, both could not be true; for both could not harmonize with nature, as of course a true religion must. Nor indeed could either be true, since the New Testament recognizes the Old as divine; so that if the one is false, the other must be false, and if the one is true, the other must be true also.

The New Testament is a completion of the same great scheme commenced in the Old. It is a more full and bright development of the character of God and of the principles of his moral government. Thus Christ said, "Think not that I came to destroy the law and the prophets, that is the Scriptures of the Old Testament; I came not to destroy, but to fulfill." I suppose that the entire

HISTORICAL FACTS.

169

Bible contains a complete development of the principles of the divine government, so far as they will ever be known or needed in the most improved state of our race.

The same kind of evidence which establishes the authenticity and genuineness of the Scriptures of the Old Testament, is applicable to those of the New in a higher degree; inasmuch as the facts are less remote not back in fabulous ages, but within the range of well-authenticated profane history. The place, the time, the reign, the nation, the tribe, the family, the birth of the author of Christianity, together with its first propagators and the circumstances of its propagation, are all wellauthenticated facts confirmed by the unbroken voice of that history on which we rely for all our knowledge of the past.

The learned infidels of the first centuries, such as Celsus, Porphyry and Julian; and again of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as Herbert, Bolingbroke, Hume, Gibbon, Diderot, Rousseau and Voltaire, though they hated Christianity and openly opposed it, had too much knowledge of history and of the laws of historical evidence to deny its obvious historical facts. Admitting these as incontestible, they assailed its distinguishing doctrines its moral principles-with their philosophy. They undertook to affirm that the moral system of Christianity does not harmo

nize with that taught by the light of nature. But their philosophy having been proved shallow and false, and Christianity true to nature still going forth in her strength, modern infidelity, less learned and more desperate, has exhibited her stale drippings in the form of cavils respecting the very existence of Christ and of his apostles! Those facts respecting the life, teachings and supposed miracles of Christ and of his apostles, which none of all the most learned historians down to the very last century ever pretended to doubt, however they might account for them, it was left for a Volney and for his less learned but not less reckless pupil Robert Taylor, and some others of the same school, now in this last age of the world, to call in question! This is like the attempt of Spinoza against the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch. It is quite too late. But the Ruins and the Diegesis are their own condemnation. So replete with historical error, contradiction and palpable absurdity, they can have no influence except on very ignorant minds, or those desperately diseased with that jaundice and leprosy of sin, for which infidelity is the only sovereign panacea. Such writings evince not only the utter weakness of infidelity, but that he who sets up a formal pretence against the historical facts of Christianity, is of all men living the most credulous.