for instance, will not have the same results; but they will have and here comes the application of our maxim-they will have results, and results accordant with the impulses from which they proceed.

Still, we say then, let us judge of religion as we judge of other things. True religion will bear the test; that which cannot bear it, is false. I am certain, that true religion would rise from this examination, if it were properly conducted,-it would rise clothed with new light and beauty; that its arguments would appear doubly strong, and that its principles and precepts would be commended with two-fold force, to the minds of men. If indeed, we could persuade men to be as rational in religion as they are in other things, if we could make the children of light as wise as the children of this world are in their generation, we should gain a great advance beyond all former attainments.

How quickly, for instance, does that too common excuse for indifference, founded on the disputes of christians, fall to the ground, when we compare religion in this respect, with other objects! There are disputes about agriculture, about the best methods of tillage. Do men, therefore, neglect to cultivate the soil? There is much difference of opinion about the principles of trade, and the most promising courses of business. Does it slacken the zeal of the merchant? Does he determine to let his ships decay at the forsaken wharf, till all these questions are settled? The physicians differ among themselves, quite as much as theologians. Do we therefore, take no med

icine? The Law is a science of conflicting claims, and its processes are founded on precedents of litigation. But do not men believe that there is a right and a wrong; and strive to obtain the one and to avoid the the other?

But let us proceed to consider some of the distinct and important departinents of religious inquiry. In the present number I shall consider,

THE EVIDENCES AND RECORDS OF OUR RELIGION.

And in the first place, the evidences of our religion. These are to be weighed, as other evidences are weighed. And they are in fact just such proofs as may be rendered familiar to us, by what passes in every Court of justice. In the first place, there are the christian witnesses; and such witnesses, indeed, as were never produced in any other cause; men not only of unimpeachable character, of great and acknowledged virtue, but who have given in their writings the most extraordinary example of the absence of all enthusiasm, that the world can show-men, I say, and such men, who spent laborious and painful lives, and suffered bloody deaths in attestation, not of some fancy or imagination in their own minds, not of their belief that they were inspired merely, but in attestation of certain manifest and miraculous facts. And then in the comparison of their testimonies, we have the strongest corroboration of their honesty and truth. On the one hand, there are a few slight discrepancies between them, just sufficient to show that there could

have been no collusion; and on the other hand, numerous and evidently undesigned coincidences, both with themselves and with contemporary profane writers, which put the strongest stamp of verisimilitude upon their narrations. And, then, again the moral character of these productions is such as to set their authors above all suspicion of disingenuity-such as to show that dishonest and bad men could not have given birth to them, and such, in fact, as to constitute a strong, independent argument for their divine origin. But I confine myself now to this one branch of the evidence, the testimony; and I say that if such a weight of testimony were produced in a court of justice, all the records of judicial proceedings could show nothing stronger, or more satisfactory. I say that men are every day deciding and acting upon a tythe of the evidence that is offered to support the christian religion. What if there is not any thing amounting to the force of mathematical demonstration? The case does not admit it. And in the ordinary affairs of life men do not demand it. Why shall they not, in religion as in other things, act upon the evidence they have? Suppose that it is less clear to some than to others. Suppose, that it amounts with them only to a strong probability. Suppose that they have doubts. Do doubts paralize them in other cases? Does not a man make all sorts of sacrifices, become an exile, tread dangerous coasts, breathe tainted climes, for a distant and uncertain fortune? But has any body told him, that the wealth he seeks, waits for him? Has

any miracle been wrought before his eyes? Has God assured him, beyond any doubt, of the fruition of his hopes? Yet he ventures much, ventures all, for the chance of worldly fortune: can he venture nothing for the hope of heaven? Let him walk in the way of the christian precepts. That cannot harm him, whether Let his conduct follow

there be a future life or not. their weight of evidence. No reasonable being can gainsay, or condemn him for being governed by what he allows to be the strongest probability. This is the only safe or wise course. "Let him do the will of God, and he shall know of the doctrine whether it be from God." If he will not do this, if he is averse to the strictness of christian virtue, he has cause enough to suspect the source of his scepticism.

So also are the Scriptures to be regarded,—being admitted, as by most persons they are, to be a divine revelation they are to be regarded, in some important respects, as other books are. Men, for instance, are not to take up the Bible and read it, as if they expected it to do them good, or give them light, in any unusual or unknown way. They are not to expect any illumination in perusing the Scriptures, other than that of reason and piety. Some other, may be given in extraordinary cases, but they are not to require miracles. They are not to expect to understand this book because it is the Bible, in any other way, or upon any other principles of interpretation, than they would use to gather the meaning of any ancient book. And as many portions of the Bible, the speculative and con

troversial parts, particularly, are clothed in the polemic phraseology of the age, and have taken their hue and form, from ancient disputes, states of mind, customs of society &c.—as all this is true of some portion of Scripture, the unlearned reader cannot without more information, than most persons possess, reasonably expect to understand those parts at all. Suppose that a plain reader, totally unacquainted with the systems of Plato or Aristotle, or with the Manichean philosophy, should, in perusing an ancient book, meet with a passage crowded with the terms and modes of thought borrowed from either of these systems. Can you doubt, that with the aid of any common sense he would at once say, "I do not understand this!" Would he not justly conclude that he must read other books, and make himself more acquainted with the speculations of that ancient period, before he could understand the passage which had fallen under his notice?

So he would judge of ancient profane writings, and so he ought to judge of ancient sacred writings. The wisdom that speaks in the two cases, is different; but the method of interpreting that wisdom is the same in both. But so, most christain readers do not judge. They read the Bible, as if it were a modern book. Or, they feel as if it would dishonor the Bible, to suppose that any part of it were necessarily obscure or unintelligible to the unlearned reader. They look upon the Scriptures, as a direct revelation, or as the immediate and express word of God himself, rather than as a series of messages declaring, after the man