life must have had a parentage; they look over the gorgeous wealth of creation, and infer that here are the scatterings of a treasury that can never fail; the path of the planet through the heavens, and the poise of the insect upon the flower, are both lessons upon God, which it is much easier to receive than to reject, To deny God-why, this is to deny ourselves; and then, says the reasoner, from the nature of his work we infer the nature of his character, and upon this ladder we climb until we reach the throne of the Almighty, and see him as he is.

But now, what fact in nature ever proved the unity of God, and how know you, that in place of this one throne, and this one Deity upon it, there may not be many thrones, and many gods, each with subjects, and each with empires of his own? You talk of the oneness of God, and reason from it as a certain and admitted truth; but when did nature prove that, and where is the demonstration? The heathen knew as much, aside from revelation, as you know upon this point; and they settled upon the conclusion that there was a plurality of gods. And what argument or proof can you bring from nature, to prove that they were wrong and that you are right? Nay, what means this conflict that is going on in the world-the conflict of truth with falsehood, right with might, good with evil; and what less is it, in its sweep and power, than the great battle of the gods, each contending for mastery and for empire? Would one god thus war with himself—thus permit his own laws to contend with one another, and his own territory to be the scene of strife?

The truth is, that the Deist has not a single reason for believing in the unity of God, aside from those which he has unconsciously borrowed from revelation. All these notions concerning truth, and morality, and conscience, and Deity, which men term their religion, and by way of excellence "the religion of reason," a faith which they set against revelation, and call it enough, is, in truth, but an off-shoot from the Word; it never did, and never can prove itself. This is the position of one who professes to believe in God, while he rejects the Gospel of his Son; he has not an argument for his own faith, which is not stronger in its testimony to that which he rejects, than to that which he admits.

Now, as to the evidence which proves the creed of the Deistnot in that which it denies, but in that which it affirms-there is not a point in that evidence which does not prove Christianity just as conclusively as it proves Deism. If the latter is true, the former is true-the evidence which reveals the Father reveals also the Son. What fact in nature, illustrating any one of the attributes of the Father, that has not its parallel in the history of the Son-existence, knowledge, power, works, all are godlike in the Son, even as they are in the Father. We may, indeed, dispute the

record, and affirm that the testimony of our senses is far more reliable than the testimony of these witnesses-that we see and know ourselves of the Father, while the knowledge of the Son comes to us through history. But we meet this objection by asking, What certainty attaches to the evidences of our senses that did not attach to the senses of these men of a distant day, and why, if there were deception or mistake then, may there not be both also now? The testimony has to us all the force of experience, and the facts which it affirms are as reliable as any thing within our own observation. When, then, the Deist professes to believe in one god, and to rest his belief upon evidence, while at the same time he rejects revelation, he thereby places himself in a most involved position, because his own proofs carry revelation along with them; the very line of argument which proves what he believes proves also what he rejects, and if the argument be not good for both it is not good for either.

The world, in its wondrous powers, asserts and proves its divine origin, and when we ask if wonders quite as great did not cluster about the birth and about the cradle of Christianity, the question is its own evidence, it answers itself. The world is wondrous in its history, and what but wonders have made up the story of our faith from the beginning until now? If, therefore, creation in its origin and in its history proves the being and the parentage of God, redemption, in its origin and in its history, proves the same; the other could no more have taken form and life without God than the one. Indeed, I would as soon assume the task of proving that man made the world, as that man made Christianity; and I could as readily tell you how human powers wrought for the hanging of the sun in the heavens, and for the sending forth of this earth upon her journey, as for the production of that which was manifest in the life and in the person of the Son of God. If we hold both to the strict line of demonstration, one without God is as incomprehensible as the other, while human powers are inadequate for the production of either result.

But we come to a second consideration. It is manifest, after all that may be said, that the Deist finds but little use for his reason in the shaping of his creed. Passion, and desire, and wickedness, are the things which give form and substance to his opinions. He imagines that he is better off, that he has higher and better chances under the religion of Deism, than under the religion of Christianity. He imagines that there is less of punishment implied and asserted in the system of nature than in that of grace; that there is more liberty of sinning and less danger from its consequences. Indeed, the threats of Christianity are his strong reasons for not believing in it. But in this case his passion is as wrong as was his reason in the other. Christianity is a better

friend to him, even in his sin, than Deism. In his blindness he clings to the system which is most against him, he flies to the refuge of a rock which will fall upon him and grind him to powder. Deism is, in fact, Christianity, with all its threats and with none of its promises; it is law without Gospel, judgment without mercy. It makes us conscious of sin without opening the way of escape; it preaches of our immortality, and we fear lest that should be our curse, while all around this horizon are hanging clouds and muttering thunders, making life an awful thing to one who sees it as it is. The fear of the Deist, if in truth he lives upon his creed, predominates over his hopes; the very mysteries and uncertainties of his state and destiny induce those anxious forebodings, which are known to all, as among the darkest of human sorrows,

It is not the man who stands in the pulpit who alone preaches of judgment and of punishment, neither are these laws and consequences which attach especially to the Christian system; there are preachers within us whose sermons we must hear, and these things are in the Bible of nature as well as in the Book of grace. То suppose that we escape the threat and the fear of punishment by denying the authority of the Bible, is simply one great mistake. There is punishment in natural religion as surely as in the revealed, and we can as readily banish from the latter as from the former. The distinction at this point between the religion of nature and that of the Bible, is, not that the latter threatens while the former does not, but, that the religion of nature is a religion of judgment without mercy, while the Bible cannot warn of danger without pointing to the refuge.

Natural religion is like the cataract at midnight and in a storm -the awful rush and the dull thunder of the falling waters blending with the howl of the winds, and the black drapery of the darkness; a picture that of relentless power, going forward without sight or hearing to do its work of death. And what shall we say of that same cataract when, in the still day of summer, the sun rests upon its waters and transforms the terrible into the beautiful, when the timid flower leans over its verge, and lives in the baptism of its spray, when that bow of heaven watches around the flood like a spirit, now sleeping upon the foam bubbles at its base, now climbing the sheet of silver, and resting midway in its ascent, and now poising upon the edge of the fall, and lending its prism to the drops as they hurry into unknown depths, thus playing with the stern and awful as if love had triumphed over power!

What shall we say of this but that this is a picture of God, when in wrath he remembered mercy, when, over the hurrying waters of passion he placed the bow of pardon, and told us not to tremble as we looked upon the rushing tide! Oh! the believer in a mere natural religion, where he finds one thing to inspire

hope, finds many things to inspire fear; the actings of his reason and of his conscience are toward the terrible, and he looks into eternity with a solemn awe, not knowing the things which shall befal him there. The effort to escape the idea of punishment by a rejection of the teachings of the Bible, is simply self-destructive, for punishment enters as certainly into the creed of the Deist as into the creed of the Christian, while with the Christian there is a hope and promise of which the other has none. To the natural man come warnings of wrath and signs of judgment which he can no more beat back than he could the in-rushing tide of ocean. He knows that there is punishment somewhere, for he feels it in hir daily life, and he has secret prophecies which are as dark as the shadow of the grave. Why, this notion of punishment was as firmly rooted in the minds of men before the Scriptures were known, as it is now-the Bible did not originate it-the Bible did not declare it as new truth, it did but reaffirm it, and give shape, and precision, and authority thereto. The new truth of the Bible is nearly all love and mercy; here is the burden of its revelation, not punishment, because punishment was revealed before, and hence the mission of the Savior was one of salvation! Oh! the world knew and groaned under the knowledge, that the curse was upon itself; it did not want a revelation to tell that, for human misery voiced that lesson in its cries, and death looked it from its fixed eye until the demonstration rose into awfulness. That for which the earth pleaded, in the low wail of its sorrowing population, was something quite different from this.

The stifled voice of the weepers as it rose in broken accents from the misery in which it had its birth-the cry which entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth-was a cry for help. It was a cry for some way of escape, and when the Son of God heard that cry, and saw that none save himself could answer it, he said to the spirits who waited about his throne: "Lo, I come." He did come, and there, in the volume of the book where all is written of Him, are treasured his sayings and his acts, He came-not to make more certain the punishment, for that was certain enough before -but to show us a way of escape. To open this way did he travail in the greatness of his strength; he laid hands upon the bolts and fastenings which frowned upon us,, and wrenching them from their holdings, said to the captives: "Go forth." His great work was one of deliverance, a work of mercy and of love. He came seek and to save that which was lost," and here is the distinction between his system and the religion of nature; the one is redeeming and saving in its principles, while the other promises nothing but judgment and condemnation. Here is the fulness and the glory of God in the Son-that in the Son, God is revealed in his mercy and in his love,

to

What a foolish and fatal struggle is ours when we resist and reject this scheme of salvation which brings hope, and hold to another revelation which has none. It takes us up at the very place where natural religion leaves us-and that place is sad and dark-and conducts us on into a region of promise and of hope. It has threats, and fears, and punishments, but it has something more with them, and we affirm that to reject it because these are in it, and hold to another system which has nothing but these, is a folly which verges upon madness. This is the folly of the Deist, and here is the reason why, if the mortal has hope in God, he must obey the injunction of the text: "Ye believe in God, believe also in me;" and here, too, quite at the close of our remarks, we touch the very feeling which the words of the text, as first spoken, were intended to produce. They were spoken as words of comfort: "Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me."

The stern attributes of the Deity which nature declares and proves, are balanced by those milder attributes which are revealed in the Son; the judgment and the justice of the one being tempered by the mercy and the love of the other. And yet, in the rejection of the Son, men seek a refuge for themselves as sinners, while here, in the Son, is their stronghold in the day of wrath. The religion which tells of pardon and forgiveness, is not the religion of nature, but the religion of the cross; the system that should be rejected on account of the terrors which it preaches, and the doom to which it sternly points, is that to which men hold as a substitute for Christianity. The darkness which of old was upon the nations was a darkness full of terror; in the uncertainties of that night, men pictured forms more awful than we see in dreams, and now all that the Bible says, is little more than the reaffirming of truths which nature was the first to utter. The light which Christianity threw aslant that darkness, when its ray rested like a belt of fire upon the night, was a light which, while it disclosed dangers, also revealed a way of escape. The shadows, as they moved before its power, rolled away like a curtain, that had shaded mighty things, and there in the dimness stood a cross, with a man stretched upon it, a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. Here was the picture and the fulness of redemption, and about this cross scene gathered promises which were to abide after the passing away of the heavens and the earth.

Thus far, not one jot or title has failed; these promises are now in the course of fulfilment, and they tell you how, in the midst of wrath, you may find mercy. Why reject God's word because it speaks of danger, when it has power to save from these dangers, this being its great design?

The dangers are revealed, that with the more earnestness you