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life, would also seem to indicate some alteration of a permanent character in the condition of man's abode upon earth, less favourable to our animal powers. That change, we may observe, though immediate in a very great proportion, was not total and complete, till after the lapse of a considerable time subsequent to Noah: a circumstance which well accords with the hypothesis above stated, since it is natural to suppose that the stronger stimulus of vitality would not yield immediately to the operation of changes in climate or other similar causes, but would adapt itself gradually, and through successive generations, to its new position, until it had reached the maximum of depression, at which it would remain stationary. This, however, with all the foregoing conjectures, be it remembered, we give strictly and simply as such. Most probably, after all, they are very far from meeting the real difficulty of the case. The real and substantial proofs of the Mosaic deluge are the records of its occurrence indelibly and unanswerably impressed upon the earth's surface; and they are completely satisfactory. If we have ventured to add any confirmatory suggestions of our own, let them be considered as intended rather to show the utter futility of the objections of the infidel, than to throw light upon what, at least in the present state of science, must be considered an inexplicable mystery.

The confusion of languages at Babel is the first important event related in Scripture, as occurring after the period of the deluge. The Mosaic statement is altogether so mysterious as scarcely to admit of any explanatory conjecture. It may, however, be incidentally observed, that if we take into consideration the known instinctive attachment of mankind to their native soil, their tendency to congregate together in large communities, and the destructive feuds which would arise in an overcrowded population, where each person would be rather disposed to expel his neighbour, at any cost, than to remove the incon

venient pressure by his own voluntary emigration, we can scarcely imagine any means so well adapted to counteract what, at that peculiar period of the world, would have operated as a mischievous propensity, and to promote a voluntary colonization in other districts without either animosity or bloodshed, as the introduction of the momentary inconvenience resulting from the misapprehension of each other's language. Scripture, it is true, does not assign this or any reason, for the miracle; of course, therefore, it can be mentioned only as a mere surmise, founded upon the known propensities of human nature, and upon the assumption that Providence avails itself, for the most part, of existing secondary causes, for the furtherance of its ends, which it would be absurd to advance with any degree of confidence.

CHAPTER IX.

Of the internal Probability of the peculiar Revelation of the Divine Will contained in the Jewish Scriptures, and of the moral tendency of that Revelation.

IT is certain that the natural tendency of the human heart, in the absence of any external religious stimulus, such as that of a positive Divine revelation existing under solemn and authoritative sanctions, is to fall into a total forgetfulness of its Creator, and an indifference to all but corporeal objects. This is one of those truths, for the reality of which we may confidently appeal to the whole past experience of mankind. Man, from the period of his first existence, appears necessarily to have stood in need of some mode of direct communication with his Maker, it being perfectly demonstrable that there is nothing in the resorts of unassisted reason capable of filling up that void in our moral and intellectual faculties which would be left by the substraction of the aids of reve

lation. When this last help is wanting, the total degradation of our nature is the invariable consequence. On the other hand, we must be prepared in Candour to admit, that as such a systematic communication with the Divine Being, as that now assumed to be necessary, implies nothing less than the operation of a continuity of miracles, there is certainly, at first sight, a semblance of improbability, and, as it would almost appear, of clumsiness of contrivance, in a system which would seem to require the constant direct interference of its Author for the preservation of order, or the prevention of derangement. Here, however, as before, we are precluded from the adoption of our own more plausible theories, as to what things ought to be, by the obstinacy of unanswerable facts. In discussing the arguments for and against revelation in general, we are reduced to the necessity of choosing between two alternatives. We must either, in the one case, suppose human nature to have been left by its Creator entirely to its own moral and intellectual resources, in which event we see nothing before us but the most fearful state of spiritual abandonment and degradation; or, on the other hand, we must be ready to admit the probability of some direct interposition of Providence, inculcating some positive code of moral laws; and thus coming, to a certain degree, into collision with man's free agency, and the seemingly established order of the universe. Actual and uniform experience, we repeat, has shown the total untenableness of any intermediate theory. It is evident, however, that the difficulty here is full as great (if not infinitely greater) on the side of scepticism as on that which assumes the necessity of a system of revelation for our spiritual guidance. We see, it is true, no à priori reason why man should have been created such as he is, but being such, our course of argument, in order to be correct, must adopt that admission as an elementary truth. Now, if the report of Scripture be correct, the

course which Providence in its wisdom has pursued from the first, has been to arrive at its important object, the elevation and instruction of our species, by the least possible deviation from the ordinary course of events, and by interfering, in the smallest degree possible, with the free-will of man. A revelation, under some form other, appears from the commencement of the world to have been offered to, but never obtruded upon, mankind. The human race have ever been left free to adopt or to reject, to make their election between good and evil. In every successive age, accordingly, the primitive distinction between the sons of God and the children of men seems to have existed. The Almighty has uniformly disclosed himself sufficiently to be found out by those who seek him, but insufficiently for the apprehension of those whose minds have been otherwise employed in the selfish pursuits of mere worldly enjoyment. Such, according to the Mosaic account, was undoubtedly the condition of the antediluvian generations; such was that of the early patriarchal ages; such was that, on a more extended scale, of the Jews, under the Levitical institutions; and such it is at the present moment in the consummation of revelation under the Christian covenant. In no one period has God left himself without some record of his existence and attributes; the blessing, indeed, has been unequally diffused, and whilst a large portion of mankind have been allowed to continue with no other spiritual guidance than that of their own instinctive moral sense, some few select communities have been set as a beacon on a hill for the diffusion of the light of revealed truth to all who were disposed to profit by it.

Now it were indeed presumptuous to say that Providence has selected this as the only possible course between conflicting difficulties: but it is at least incumbent upon those who calumniate this arrangement as both partial and inadequate for the occasion, to show how the first elements of sound religion

could have been kept alive during a long course of ages of comparative barbarism, with any thing less than this presumed degree of direct Divine interference, or how human free agency, which constitutes the basis of every rational notion of religion, could have been compatible with more. Truth we know to be uniform and self-consistent, but the human powers of the apprehension of truth vary with every modification of society, and with every progress of knowledge. What exact degree of revelation, therefore, is adapted to meet the circumstances and wants of our nature, under all its possible varieties of aspect, is a problem much too intricate for mortal wisdom to solve. The divine mind, which knows all the internal machinery of our hearts, is alone equal to that task. One thing, however, even we may venture to assert, namely, that the brightest effulgence of revealed truth is not fitted for the earliest and rudest state of human existence. Under such circumstances neither could its momentous value be duly appreciated, nor its records adequately and correctly transmitted, to succeeding times. The very immensity of the importance of Christianity, then, as a final and complete system of revelation, would obviously seem to require that its first communication to mankind should have been postponed until the world, from the more advanced state of knowledge, should be prepared to receive it. But, upon this supposition, what might not be the pernicious effects produced by a total suspension of the communication of Divine knowledge upon the religious habits of society in the ages antecedent to such a communication! We know sufficiently, from past history, to what a thoroughly debasing state of irreligion and idolatry the human mind necessarily descends, in the absence of the adventitious help of revelation. Here, then, appears the absolute necessity of some intermediate form of revelation, of some provisional system less perfect than that destined ultimately to supersede it, but still worthy of Divine

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