divine grace to sinners; and yet there are hundreds of millions who have never heard of it, and it is asked, why, since God is infinitely good and merciful, as well as mighty, such an immeasurable blessing has not been communicated to all mankind? This question is often put as a strong objection to the divine origin of the gospel. Were it taught in the scriptures that those who had never had the gospel will be judged by its law, the objection would have force. But there is no such doctrine. The objection is reasonable only so far as there is reason in a creature's requiring the Creator to explain His ways, and admit him to His councils, before he will believe them. Does a philosopher stand on such grounds? Does he doubt the immense difference between the gifts and blessings, the privileges and improvements, of a native of England, and those of a savage of Kamtchatka, because he knows not for what reason it was so ordained? Does he deny that the former are inestimable, because not universal? Will one refuse to believe that he has a mine of gold in his field, or that the gold is worth his seeking, because all men are not equally favoured? Shall a husbandman despise the genial rain upon his grass, because his neighbour's fleece is dry? If God has not seen fit to reveal the reasons for which He has distributed the gifts of nature, of providence, or of grace with an unequal hand, I find nothing to complain of. I can still believe that those gifts are from above, and are excellent, and distributed under the guidance of infinite wisdom.

That there are no difficulties connected with the scriptures, and with the doctrines of revealed religion, it would be saying too much for the intelligence, education, and study of the general reader, to assert. Until all shall be candid, studious, patient, and humble, some will find many difficulties in christianity. If a child, instead of beginning arithmetic in the elements, should dive at once into the midst of a calculation of algebraic roots and powers, he would scarcely escape being stifled with difficulties. Thus, however, do most objectors to christianity endeavour to appreciate its doctrines. Instead

of learning first the first principles, they plunge without ceremony amidst the deepest mysteries of the gospel. Is it wonderful that they come out, exclaiming: "Who is sufficient for these things?" It is well said: "Objections against a thing fairly proved are of no weight. The proof rests upon our knowledge, and the ojections upon our ignorance. It is true that moral demonstrations and religious doctrines may be attacked in a very ingenious and plausible manner, because they involve questions on which our ignorance is greater than our knowledge; but still our knowledge is knowledge; or in other words, certainty is certainty. In mathematical reasoning, our knowledge is greater than our ignorance. When you have proved that the three angles of every triangle are equal to two right angles, there is an end of doubt; because there are no materials for ignorance to work up into phantasms, but your knowledge is really no more certain than your knowledge on any other subject.”

If it be a valid objection to religion that, to some minds, it presents difficulties which cannot be solved, then there is no department of human knowledge that may not be legitimately condemned. What is more certain than the existence of a material universe? or of the necessary connexion of cause and effect? But even in these, wise heads have succeeded in discovering difficulties which it would puzzle much more sensible people to remove by a process of reasoning. That matter is infinitely divisible, is assumed in science as fundamentally certain. That the doctrine, however, involves very great difficulties, is palpable to all common sense, inasmuch as, to suppose a foot measure divided into an infinite number of parts, requiring an infinite number of portions of time to pass over them, and yet to be passed over in a moment, is to make a moment infinite, in other words, eternal; for although it should be said that the portions of time would be infinitely small, still they would be portions of time, and an infinite number of any portions of time must make an infinite duration. Who will pretend that in this, there is no room for

perplexity and doubt? In the mean time, the operations of science, in which the infinite divisibility of matter is assumed, proceed with as much confidence as if there were no difficulty connected with it.*

Much is said of the certainty of mathematical demonstrations; but if difficulties that cannot be solved are sufficient objections, even here also must sentence of condemnation be pronounced. It might be shown how trifling are even the definitions of geometry, the most exact of all the mathematical sciences. Its definitions might be alleged, upon no inconsiderable grounds, to be nonsensical and ridiculous; its demands or postulates, plainly impracticable; its axioms or self-evident propositions, controvertible, and controverted indeed even by themselves. But why are not these things objected to the truth of mathematics? What is there in the religion of Jesus more encumbered with difficulties?

Were the dispositions of the human heart and the idols. of a sinner's devotion as much opposed by the demonstrations of mathematics, as by the doctrines of christianity, it would be just as difficult to convince men of the truth of the former, as of the latter. The folly of speaking of a something that has length without breadth; of a point that has no parts; of lines for ever approaching and never meeting, &c.; the futility of basing a certain demonstration upon elements so unintelligible and impossible, would be trumpeted to the ends of the world. The wicked would no more believe a proposition of geometry, than they will now, a doctrine of redemption. The scoffer would find as much to ridicule in Newton's Principia as in Paul's Epistles.†

* "The divisibility, in infinitum, of any finite extension, involves us, whether we grant or deny it, in consequences, impossible to be explicated, or made in our apprehensions consistent; consequences that carry greater difficulty, and more apparent absurdity, than any thing that can follow from the notion of an immaterial substance."-Locke on Human Understanding.

+ See an interesting piece of reasoning, apropos to the above, in one of the tracts of the American Tract Society, entitled "Conversation with a Young Traveller," No. 203.

But we do injustice to the good cause in which we are engaged by standing exclusively on the defensive. Infidelity has too long been indulged with the privilege of attack. It is the stratagem of weakness, to put on a bold front and make a desperate assault. Any arm can strike, but not every breast can repel a blow. It is high time infidelity were accused and brought to the bar. What proof of a single feature of doctrine or of moral principle can it produce, after having rejected such evidence as that of christianity? What satisfactory argument for the obligation of any thing connected with natural religion; what reason for believing in a future state; what proof even of the existence of God, can be offered as worthy of reliance, without a shameful inconsistency, by men who, in the immense power of evidence sustaining the divine authority of the gospel, can find nothing to convince them?

We have shown that the argument for christianity is strictly philosophical, because entirely experimental. It might easily be shown that every system of infidelity, so far as it pretends to any religious doctrine or precept, is wholly destitute of all claim to such a character. What a catalogue of theoretical assertions, and unsustained conjectures, and positive contradictions, and gross absurdities, and inexplicable difficulties, might be drawn up against the most rational of the infidel systems! The Deist professes to believe that the light of nature is sufficient for human guidance in all matters of moral obligation; and yet he believes that notwithstanding such all-sufficiency, some among those who have attempted to follow it have contended for the immortality of the soul, and others have denied it; some have maintained that God created all things, others that matter is as much from eternity as Himself; some, that He governs and will judge the world, others that He does not concern himself about it; some, that God should be worshipped, others that all worship is weak superstition; some, that virtue is virtuous, and vice vicious, others, that there is no distinction in principle between them;

that sin is but a matter of custom and opinion, and that the indulgence of the lowest passions is no more to be blamed than the thirst of a fever or the drowsiness of a lethargy.

Some infidels deny that Jesus ever lived, and yet they believe that the whole nation of the Jews, bitter enemies of christianity as they have always been, acknowledge that they put him to death on the cross. Some confess that there was such a person, but accuse him of a most barefaced system of fraud and imposture; and yet they cannot but concede that his character was eminently pure and excellent. Others, to escape such a contradiction, maintain that he was a pure, but weak and visionary enthusiast; and yet they acknowledged that he composed and inculcated a system of morals very far superior to that of the wisest of the ancient philosophers. Infidels profess to believe that the apostles of Christ were instigated by mercenary considerations, and yet that they willingly suffered the loss of all things; by ambitious considerations, and yet they submitted cheerfully to all ignominy and shame! According to infidels, they were devoted to a selfish scheme of personal benefit, and yet were always going about doing good, without the least regard to their own convenience or pleasure. They were gross deceivers, it is said, and yet they endured all sufferings, and sacrificed their lives, in confirmation of their sincerity. They were weak fanatics, and yet the strongest and most learned minds could not resist the power and wisdom with which they spake. Infidels deny that Jesus ever wrought miracles, but cannot deny that his bitterest enemies, who had infinitely better opportunities of judging than they can boast, confessed the contrary. Infidels pretend that the prophecies of the Bible were nothing more than guesses, and that all correspondence between them and subsequent history was a mere matter of chance; and yet they cannot find, among all the guesses in the Bible, a single failure; while they cannot deny that many of its guesses have succeeded, in the minutest particulars, in spite of a proportion of chances against them