are human language, and the expressions of a father's heart. See, again, how, in order to give us joyful ideas of the glory that shall be revealed, Christ adapts Himself to our conceptions, by borrowing His imagery from our human delights and earthly recreations, when He speaks of that glory as a feast for invited guests, a marriage supper, a dwelling in His Father's house, in a city with beautiful streets and buildings; an adorning with precious stones and shining metals; a partaking of pleasant fruits; repose in paradise beneath the tree of life. Why is all this?—because our present condition, compared with that in futurity, is only as childhood compared with manhood."

SECTION V.

GENESIS vi. 6." It repented the Lord, that he had made man."

NUMBERS XXiii. 19.—“ God is not a man that

he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent."

PROVERBS Xxvi. 4, 5.-" Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit."

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ACTS ix. 7.-" The men, who journeyed with him, stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man."

Acts xxii. 9.—“ And they that were with him saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me."

ROMANS iii. 28.-" We conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the

law."

JAMES ii. 24.-" Ye see, then, that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.”

I have set down these apparently contradic

tory passages, as examples of such apparent contradiction. Others might have been selected, but these will be sufficient. Nor is it my purpose to reconcile them, for this has often been done before; but merely to bring them before the reader as instances of a particular class of objections brought by sceptical writers against revelation.

We are too apt to take assumed contradictions as real, and to argue from them against the truths of Scripture; as if there were no apparent anomalies in nature also, and as if the same system of acting would not destroy natural religion.

It is well observed by Mr. Gyles, in his Attempt to ascertain the meaning of Luke xxi. 28, (p. 39)-"To reconcile a seeming contradiction, or to explain a peculiar fact in a narration, is sometimes of the utmost importance, and furnishes a strong evidence for the truth of the whole. In the works of nature, and in the volume of Revelation, we recognise the same divine hand. Apparent anomalies, upon closer investigation, are found to confirm more strongly the general law."

The apparent contradictions to the goodness and mercy of God must be admitted to be many.

When we see a spider darting on a fly; a fly starving in a spider's web; a worm cut in two by the spade; a wounded bird crawling famished in a wood; a cow incessantly stung by a multitude of flies on a summer's day; a man agonized by the stone or tic-douloureux-we are constrained to confess that there are anomalies in the government of God which often baffle our attempt to explain them. Then the wisdom of God is sometimes at apparent variance with many things which take place in the world: as the vast tracts of country which for centuries are traversed by none but barbarians and noxious animals: the feuds and wars between man and man: the imperfection of our knowledge: the deception of mankind by the appearance of the heavenly bodies: and the fact that there should be a single being in the world who should dare to deny the existence of its very

Maker.

Then what can be greater contrasts to each other than what are continually occurring before us? View and compare together the festivities of a marriage and the gloominess of a funeral: a beautiful young maiden, and a decrepit wrinkled old woman: a fine day in June, and a murky day in November: a thickly-peopled

metropolis and a barren wilderness:-these and numerous other comparisons may be made, which we might à priori think it vain to attempt to harmonize, and to bring under the government of one and the same Author.

There are, then, many anomalies and seeming contrarieties in the natural world; and yet these do not cause us to doubt the existence, or question the goodness and wisdom, of the Divine Being. Let us then be consistent, and not be caught by the first intimation of apparent contradictions in the Scripture; still less let us have a feverish desire to find them out, and to glory in them as giving us a pretext for throwing off the obligations of the word of God. Let us patiently investigate before we condemn : and, even if we cannot always extricate ourselves from difficulties, let us distrust ourselves, however, and reason concerning Revelation as Dr. Paley has reasoned concerning Nature: "The uncertainty of one thing does not ne cessarily affect the certainty of another thing. Our ignorance of many points need not suspend our assurance of a few."*

It may not be foreign from the subject to notice that there are not only difficulties in

* Nat. Phil. ch. v.