Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1846,

By JOHN AMORY LOWELL,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

ODLEW!!

SIR,

то

JOHN AMORY LOWELL, ESQ.

THAT these Lectures were written is owing to you. Having had no personal acquaintance with you, nothing could have been more unexpected than your invitation to lecture before the Lowell Institute; and at that time nothing could have been farther from my thoughts than the preparation of a volume on the Evidences of Christianity. To you, also, it is owing that the Lectures are published. For these reasons it would seem fit that they should be inscribed to you; but my chief reason for wishing this, is the opportunity it gives me to express the sense I entertain, not only of the liberal spirit which prompted the appointment, but of the candor and kindness by which your whole course respecting them has been characterized.

With sincere sentiments of respect and esteem,

WILLIAMS COLLEGE, April, 1846.

I am yours,

MARK HOPKINS.

PREFACE.

THE following Lectures are published as they were delivered. Perhaps nothing would be gained on the whole, by recasting them; but they must be expected to have the defects incident to compositions prepared under the pressure of other duties, and required to be completed within a limited time.

When I entered upon the subject, I supposed it had been exhausted; but, on looking at it more nearly, I was led to see that Christianity has such relations to nature and to man, that the evidence resulting from a comparison of it with them may be almost said to be exhaustless. To the evidence from this source I have given greater prominence than is common, both because it has been comparatively neglected, and because I judged it better adapted than the historical proof to interest a promiscuous audience. It was with reference to both these points, that, in the arrangement and grouping of these Lectures, I have departed from the ordinary course; and if they shall be found in any degree peculiarly adapted to the present state of the public mind, I think it will be from the prominence given to the Internal Evidence, while, at the same time, the chief topics of argument are presented within a moderate space.

the argument.

The method of proof of which I have just spoken has one disadvantage which I found embarrassing. If Christianity is compared with nature or with man, it must be assumed that it is some specific thing; and hence there will be danger, either of being so general and indefinite as to be without interest, or of getting upon controversial ground. Each of these extremes it was my wish to avoid. That I succeeded in doing this perfectly, I cannot suppose. Probably it would be impossible for any one to do so in the judgment of all. My wish was to present This I could not do without indicating my sentiments on some of the leading doctrines of Christianity up to a certain point; and if any think that I went too far, I can only say that it was difficult to know where to stop, and that, if I had given the argument precisely as it lay in my own mind, I should have gone much farther. It is from the adaptation of Christianity as providing an atonement, and consequently a divine Redeemer, to the condition and wants of man, that the chief force of such works as that of Erskine, and "The Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation," is derived; and I should be unwilling to have it supposed that I presented any thing which I regarded as a complete system of the Evidences of Christianity, from which that argument was excluded.

But if, in some of its aspects, the evidence for Christianity may be said to be exhaustless, it may also be said that several of the leading topics of argument have probably been presented as ably as they ever will be. Those topics I thought it my duty to present, and in doing so