God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whether ye go ye go to possess it. Keep therefore and do them: for this is your wisdom, and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say surely this great nation is a wise, and understanding people. For what nation is there so great who hath God so nigh unto them as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for? And what nation is there so great that hath statutes and judgments so righteous, as all this Law which I set before you this day? Only take heed to thyself and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thine heart all the days of thy life; but teach them thy sons, and thy son's sons: Specially the day that thou stoodest before the Lord thy God in Horeb, when the Lord said unto me, gather me the people together and I will make them hear my words that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth and that they may teach their children. And ye came near and stood under the mountain and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness." (See Exod. 19th, and 20th chapters.) "And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of the words but saw no similitude only ye heard a voice. And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform even ten commandments and he wrote them upon two tables of And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments, that ye might do them, in the land whether ye go over to possess it. Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves, (for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire,) lest ye corrupt yourselves and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female: the likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air," &c. &c. "Take heed unto yourselves lest ye forget the covenant of the Lord your God which he made with you, and make you a graven image, or the likeness of any thing which the Lord thy God hath forbidden thee. For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God,"

stone.

&c. "Ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee since the day that God created man upon the earth, and ask from the one side of heaven unto the other, whether there hath been any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it? Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire as thou hast heard and live? Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of another nation by temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm, and by great terrors according to all that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? Unto thee it was shewed, that thou mighest know that the Lord he is God; there is none else besides him. Out of heaven he made thee to hear his voice that he might instruct thee, and upon earth he shewed thee his great fire, and thou heardst his words out of the midst of the fire, &c. Know therefore this day and consider it in thine heart that the Lord he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth be neath; there is none else. Thou shalt keep therefore his statutes and his commandments which I command thee this day that it may go well with thee, and with thy children af ter thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth which the Lord thy God giveth thee forever." The two following chapters may also be read for the same purpose, in which Moses continues to rehearse those awful manifestations of power, and majesty, displayed at the promulgation of the Law in order to the obedience of Israel. He urges the parents, in the following impressive manner, to instruct their children: "Thou shalt teach them (the commandments, statutes, and judgments) diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up-and thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes." The reader will observe the same method, both of revelation in words, and evidence consisting in miracles, and signs, and wonders, employed by the teacher who came from God (Jesus Christ) in his method of instruction, and establishing his character, and authority in the Gospel: Nicodemus said unto him, Rabbi, we know that

shou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do these miracles that thou dost, except God be with him: By these he established his authority with Nicodemus as a teacher, and by his instruction, which were in the words of the spirit of God, (I will put my words in his mouth, &c. Deut. 18. 18.) he converted him to the christian faith, as appears from the subsequent history of Nicodemus, given by John.

5. It may also be considered as proven, that the truth of revelation is established by revelation itself, as the existence of the natural sun is best proven by the influence of the sun itself; it being as impossible that the ideas, and knowledge communicated by revelation, could have been of human device or invention, or that they could have existed in the human mind without revelation, as that the eye could create the natural light, or see the objects of sight without the aid of light.

6. It may be considered as proven, that the word of God sustains, in its relation to the human mind, no other than an instrumental character; serving only to communicate those ideas, and that knowledge upon spiritual, and invisible objects, and subjects, which it would be ignorant of without, and that it is no more to be identified with the objects of which it informs the mind, or with the spirit of God, whose word it is, than the words of a man are to be converted into his persona! identity, or the light through which the eye sees visible objects, is to be considered as the objects themselves. The word of God is the medium of intelligence upon spiritual subjects; and as it is only through that word, as the stipulated signs of ideas, (stipulated by God himself,) that spiritual, and invisible things are seen, or can be learnt, so it is only through, and by the use of those signs, composed of God's word, that they can be thought about, talked of, and meditated upon.

7. It may be considered as proven, from the nature, and powers of the human mind, and the character of spiritual things as they stand distinguished from natural, and sensible ones, and the use, and end of revelation in communicating spiritual knowledge, that all the ideas, and notions which have been possessed by the pagan world, have been obtained from revelation, traditionally communicated, and that every

mode of Gentile worship was some divine institution per verted; truth never changing but for the worse, and origi nal falsehood being a contradiction, and impossible. A practical example of these truths we have in the origin of Mahometanism, or of the Alcoran, which is the Mahometan Bible; the history of which stands thus, as detailed by the eloquent Maurice, the learned historian of Hindoostan. He observes that "Mahomed was himself utterly illiterate; he could neither read nor write; and that it was by the secret, assistance, as has been fully proven, of two eminently learn'ed persons, his tools in this dark business, the one named Abdollah, an apostate Jew, and a native of Persia, well versed in the abstruse mysteries of the Talmud, and the other styled, by christian writers, Sergius, a Nestorian monk, well acquainted with all the heresies, and divisions, at that time prevalent in the christian world. With this aid, Mahomed composed that inconsistent jargon of discordant doctrines, denominated the Alcoran; a work which, with shameless effrontery, he affirmed was penned by the finger of God, and brought in detached portions from the golden table, deposited from eternal ages by his throne in the highest heavens." Without the Jewish, and Christian revelations, scriptures, and traditions, neither Abdollah, and Sergius, nor any other man could have written the Alcoran-these furnished the materials, as far as the book contains supernatural ideas, for the composition. Of the same origin, and character, are all the systems of mythology, though, for the most part, less manifestly derived from written revelation. Mahometanism. is Christianity perverted; the polytheistical systems were formed from traditional revelations before the christian era. I now proceed to shew the effects of believing, and teaching natural religion, in preventing the belief of the scriptures as the word of God, &c. Revelation, in its primary, and proper meaning, is making something known that before was secret; and, therefore, the very end of divine revelation is, to discover to us, by a supernatural light from heaven, those truths which we are naturally ignorant of; and not the truths which we naturally know, or by the powers of the mind, and light of nature, we could discover. It is the character of the word of God, as the word of God, dwelling in

the view of the mind as supernatural, and divine, which gives it its divine authority; as it is by that character only, that it stands distinguished from the devices of men; but natural religion, (or the natural powers, and resources of the mind for spiritual discernment, and perception without spiritual light, (which is revelation) upon which natural religion is bottomed,) lowers the word of God to the level of human invention, and thereby, robbing it of its divine credibility, makes it rather a matter of whim, and caprice, than of rational necessity to believe it. Hence, it is as impossible that it can be believed as supernatural, and divine at the same time by the same mind that believes natural religion true, as it is to believe that the inventions of men are supernatural; and hence, too, when professed to be believed by natural religionists, it is not believed by its proper evidence; nor, through the right medium, apprehended in its proper character. By this inconsistent, and contradictory association of truth, and falsehood, the christian religion appears but in a very doubtful light, at times, to many who seem to be strict professors of it; how can it be otherwise? for when it is not received in its proper evidence, that it is supernatural, and divine, there cannot be a full, and strong assent of faith. Whatever be said about the ease or difficulty of believing any tenet, or proposition true, one thing may, without the fear of contradiction, be asserted, and that is, that they can only be believed as true, by the evicence the mind has that they are so. If the proposition is divine, nadl supernatural, the evidence must be so too. If the proposi tion, or tenet, is addressed to the mind in intelligible terms, and claims a divine character in the belief of the mind, the evidence by which it would sustain this claim in the mind must be presented in intelligible terms, and of a supernatural, and divine quality: natural religion precludes the possibility of this, by clothing the mind with the capacity of discovering supernatnral things by its own powers, with the use only of natural light, and thereby supersedes the necessi ty of revelation as the mean of those discoveries. This is one reason why a great portion of mankind, who are indif ferent to any principles of religion, discard christianity as unsupported by the right rules of evidence, and the analo

may