from them upon those of the latter dispensation also, as integral portions of the same continuous process of Divine interference.

To this consistency, then, of the whole design, we would appeal, for the purpose of removing from every candid and impartial mind any involuntary prepossession occasioned by the survey of isolated and detached parts. It is unfair to the infinitely accumulated evidences of our religion to consider it as depending for its proofs upon a series of unconnected interpositions of Providence, each requiring to be separately vouched for by its own peculiarly and entirely distinct arguments. The proper point of view in which it ought to be regarded is that of one great continuous miracle, to which, until the period of its final completion, generation after generation of eyewitnesses bore their successive but really concurrent testimony.

There is, however, it must be at the same time observed a degree of contemporaneous evidence attaching to the miracles recorded in the New Testament, still more cogent if possible, even than that which obliges us to assent to the authenticity of those related in the Jewish Scriptures. That is to say, from the circumstance of their having been performed at a later period of the world, and in an age of more advanced literature, the idea of explaining them away by referring them to mistake or deception is rendered still more completely untenable. These things," as St. Paul observed of them, were not done in a corner;" but the publicity to which they were exposed, and which he so confidently challenges, was that of jealous adversaries rather than of friends. That they were able to stand the test of this searching scrutiny is certain from the fact of the rapid spread of the doctrines, in confirmation of which those miracles were appealed to. Such is the obvious conclusion which we are compelled to arrive at, when we look to the singular transactions related in the

66

historical books of the New Testament, and compare them with what we there read respecting the otherwise inexplicable growth, at the period referred to, of the infant Christian Church. But it is not from these perhaps partial sources alone that we are obliged to derive our evidence. The allusions of contemporary profane writers to the as yet small, but rapidly increasing, community of Christians is exactly what might be expected, on the supposition that the account given by the New Testament is the true one. They are merely incidental, indeed, and give their testimony rather by implication than by express and direct assertion, but this very circumstance only renders it more intrinsically probable. In the first place, the broad outline of facts, as we find them occasionally referred to in the works of that period, though often vague, are all at least perfectly in harmony with the Scriptural account. We know, for instance, as assuredly as we do any of the transactions of modern history, that towards the close of the reign of Tiberius a peculiar sect grew up amongst the Jews, who confidently asserted that occurrences of the most extraordinary description had taken place at Jerusalem, and in the surrounding territory, within an extremely short period from that time, some of them in the presence of large multitudes of witnesses, and one, the most remarkable, in the face of the whole assembled population of Judea. We know that, notwithstanding this appeal to public notoriety, which, if the statement were untrue, carried with it its own refutation, these accounts were received as authentic by vast numbers of persons competent to judge of the reality of the facts, many of whom bore testimony, by their blood, to the sincerity of their belief. We know that the doctrines thus originating pervaded, within a very short period of years, considerable portions of Asia, of Greece, of Italy, and most probably of Spain and Gaul; and that though the most terrific persecutions

awaited their professors, vast numbers were found even in Rome itself, who submitted to endure the most cruel deaths rather than abjure their faith. But, as has just now been observed, some of the casual circumstances, related incidentally, and without any intended reference to the circumstances of the early Christians, by contemporary profane historians, afford, where they least intended it, a singular collateral confirmation of the truth of the Gospel history. Thus we find, in the fourth book of Tacitus's history, a strange anecdote related of the Emperor Vespasian (who, be it remembered, had passed a considerable portion of his military career in Judea,) that when he visited Egypt, subsequently to his accession to the empire, he cured by a touch a man afflicted with total blindness. It is impossible to read the original account of this transaction without observing its strong resemblance to some of the miracles performed by our Saviour. How, it naturally occurs to us to ask, could so strange an idea occur to a Roman Einperor, the occupier of a throne which had so recently been filled by such profligate characters as Vitellius, Otho, and Nero, as that of attempting to perform a preternatural cure of this description? None of the most insanely arrogant of his predecessors had ever made the like experiment. We surely cannot doubt but that Vespasian's long residence in Judea had made him familiar with the recorded facts of our Saviour's history, and with the more recent miracles of his disciples, and that he was led by vanity, or curiosity, to attempt performing the like wonders. That he succeeded we of course cannot believe; though it is most probable that plausible testimony would not be wanting to support the claims of an emperor ambitious of this peculiar kind of reputation. To the same effect are the two memorable passages which occur in Tacitus and Suetonius, where those writers apply to the person of Vespasian the ancient Jewish prophecy

respecting the Messiah, whose advent was looked for about that period. The words of the latter historian are very remarkable. "Percrebuerat Oriente

toto vetus et constans opinio esse in fatis ut eo tempore Judæa profecti rerum potirentur. Id de Imperatore Romano quantum postea eventu patuit, prædictum Judæi ad se trahentes rebellarunt." In this statement it is impossible not to recognise the expectation then prevalent among the Jews respecting the approaching accomplishment of the seventy weeks of Daniel, which we learn from Josephus to have led to those many insurrections, under the guidance of fanatics and impostors, which eventually caused the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jewish nation.

But (to return from the indirect testimony of profane to the direct evidence of sacred history) we shall not, we conceive, be chargeable with the fallacy of proving a thing by itself, if we appeal to the inspired writers themselves, as affording the strongest possible confirmation of the truth of the miracles they record. It has been already observed, that the prophetic character, with the exception of the apocalypse of St. John, attaches much less to the books of the New than to those of the Old Testament. That there are however, predictions contained in the Christian Scriptures, the fulfilment of which has been so literally accomplished as to leave no possibility of doubt respecting the inspiration of their authors, provided we admit the genuineness of the works in question, is, on the other hand, perfectly certain. Those of St. Paul, which allude to the corruptions which would one day prevail in the Christian Church, and which so accurately describe some of the leading abominations of Popery, cannot indeed be got rid of even by the presumption of their being a forgery, as they are, at all events, demonstrably of a much earlier date than can be assigned to the first origin of the abuses which they denounce. But

going farther back in time, and referring to the prophetic denunciations of our Saviour respecting the approaching destruction of Jerusalem, we may confidently assert of them, that if the date assigned to them be accurate, they prove to demonstration that he who uttered them was possessed of more than human knowledge. It is impossible to read the twenty-first chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, and other similar passages in the four Evangelists, respecting the fearful calamities which were in preparation for that devoted city, and then to compare them with the account given by Josephus of what actually passed during the horrible circumstances of the siege by which it was overpowered, without assenting to the certainty of this conclusion. In the twenty-third chapter of St. Luke we read, for instance, that our Redeemer addressed the following words to the women who followed him with their lamentations to the place of his crucifixion:-" Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and your children; for, behold! the days are coming in which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, fall on us, and to the hills, cover us." If we wish to understand the allusion contained in the latter part of this address, we have only to turn to the seventh, eighth, and ninth chapters of the sixth book of Josephus's Wars of the Jews, and we there find that when the siege of Jerusalem, under Titus, was drawing to its last crisis, many of the mutineers within the walls, who had first stirred up the rebellion against the Roman power, and who had exercised, in the course of the war, the most atrocious cruelties against their own countrymen, desperate of pardon from either party, betook themselves, as their last resource, to the excavations formed under the town by the working of the quarries, and there perished to the number of more than two thousand by suicide, by mutual