/mysterious facts of revelation, yet by his own admission he has assented to the far more portentous positions of natural religion, with all their formidable, and, if Christianity be false, unexplained, anomalies. If he can succeed in persuading himself that the recorded miracles of one period are the inventions of a barbarous people, or the fabrications of imposture, he has still to prove the same proposition in like manner of the next, and of the next after them, or he does nothing. If he deny the authenticity of the Jewish records in all their parts, he still has to account for the remarkable fact of the past and present existence of the Jews themselves. If he make a like attack upon the authenticity of the Christian Scriptures, he has again to explain, as he can, the undeniable phenomenon of the first origin and growth of the Christian community itself, challenging inquiry, as we know that it did, in the face of an enlightened and inimical age, as to the reality of the miracles to which it appealed for its warrant, and persevering in its faith in defiance of the outstretched arm of secular power. If, finally, taking the whole records of revelation to pieces, he can establish a seeming detached and occasional improbability in some one part severed from the rest, he has still to explain how and why, by what accident, for contrivance is evidently out of the question, these apparently anomalous members, so astounding when considered separately, should thus happen to combine into one continuous and consistent whole; from what cause is it that, in a retrospect made at this moment of the entire annals of our religion, no contrariety of purpose should be observable in the series, no one link in the chain of contrivance be missing; but that all; from first to last, should appear as the work of one single author, the elaborate developement of one single pervading idea, which, though never forming the ostensible subject matter, should still be traceable alike through the history, the poetry, the ritual, and the prophecies of the Jew ish nation, till it finally expanded into the completion of the presumed great scheme of Providence in the form of the Christian revelation. Whilst such are the acknowledged difficulties attendant upon theistical scepticism, it surely is not for its professors to pride themselves in their own clear and consistent views, and to charge their believing opponents with credulity and superstition. CHAPTER XVIII. Consistency between the Covenant of Moses and that of Christ, as having an expiation for Sin as their leading object. The Levitical expiations were confessedly ineffectual. It must be presumed, therefore, that the great purpose of the Gospel Dispensation was to correct this deficiency. The popular Objections to the Doctrine of Christ's Atonement examined. THERE is this very striking and obvious distinction between the Mosaic covenant and that of Christ, that, while both claim equally to be a communication from heaven, the former is confessedly, and by its own express admission, a mere preparatory arrangement, adapted to the habits of a single people, for the introduction of a more perfect system; whilst the latter, addressing itself to the whole human race indiscriminately, is declared to be absolutely final, the grand summary of all such theological knowledge as man in this world can ever hope to attain to, and the completion of his reconciliation with God. It is thus that, from their relative position, the one dispensation bears reciprocal evidence to the authenticity of the other. When considered as the nurse and forerunner of Christianity, Judaism acquires a consistency of character, which, if adduced as a dispensation complete and entire in itself, it manifestly could lay no claim to. Its perfection is altogether of a relative and not of a positive character. It is precisely what might have been expected of the Divine wisdom, when con descending to legislate for the temporal, no less than for the spiritual, concerns of an unpolished people, and intent upon occupying a certain, otherwise completely dark, portion in the moral history of our nature, by the establishment of provisional institutions, especially adapted to that peculiar emergency. On the other hand, it bears no one characteristic which would justify us in considering it as intended for the benefit of the whole human race, or for any nation very far advanced in spiritual holiness. Christianity, then, thus considered, comes to us as the continuation and completion of a course of Divine agency, which had been in operation from the very beginning of the world, and which, after a long series of delays and impediments, the result of the opposition afforded to it by man's vices and ignorance, was at length fully developed at the earliest period which would admít of its promulgation. It is thus that the same miracles which originally bore evidence to the truth of the Mosaic mission serve to confirm also that superior form of religion which grew out of it, and finally superseded it; whilst to that strong weight of previous testimony must be added, as accessory and accumulative proof, all the recorded miracles connected with the coming of Christ; those declared to have been performed immediately by himself, and all those stupendous events which were subsequently borne witness to by his first followers and the primitive Church. If, then, the evidence of the authenticity of the Mosaic law, when considered singly, is strong, and strong assuredly it is, that of the certainty of the religion of Christ is still more so, whether we look to the number of miracles to which it can appeal, the intrinsic purity of its precepts, the more spiritual character of the devotional feeling which it inculcates, the advanced state of human manners and knowledge which prevailed at the time of its first establishment, and the much more extensive theatre of human society in which the phenomena of its promulgation were enacted. Considered, then, retrospectively, as the slow developement of a long series of elaborate contrivances, purchased often by a suspension of the established laws of the universe, and uniformly conducted by the fostering care of its Divine Founder, through every seeming fluctuation of fortune to its final establishment, it suggests a truly awful and appalling idea of the vast importance of the institutions which were thus solemnly introduced. Providence, for the most part, moves onward so quietly and imperceptibly toward the accomplishment of its designs, that we cannot but deem such a striking departure from its usual simplicity of execution, as that here contemplated, as arguing a far more imposing solemnity of purpose than is referable to the ordinary course of events. The vast length and majestic character of the approach which leads to the shrine of Christianity is the strongest possible proof of the sanctity of the mysterious edifice itself. If that dispensation, then, be authentic, it manifestly is one which implies no trivial routine of moral duty or common-place assent of the heart and understanding on our part, nor, in fact, any thing which could, in the course of the workings of Divine wisdom, be produced by a less intricate, and, humanly speaking, more natural process. The inference resulting from this last observation is one of vast importance in the discussion of the question,-what the main object of the Gospel is? because it enables us confidently to pronounce (and that in exact accordance with the most explicit and literal declarations of Scripture) what it is not. Its main end and purport, then, assuredly, is not any thing which fell within the competency of the law of Moses to attain: for, as that law proceeded from the same Divine source, it is selfevident that it would never have been superseded by its Almighty framer, had it contained within itself the means for the effective accomplishment of that result which a revelation from heaven must be pre sumed to have had in view. "If righteousness could have been by the law," says St. Paul, "then it had not been by faith." This argument is perfectly unanswerable. It is evident, therefore, that if we would arrive at what must, necessarily, have been the great and foremost purpose of the scheme of Christianity, it must be found, by examining what was the specific point which, notwithstanding the holy source from which it proceeded, was left unaccomplished by the ritual law of Moses. Now that mere morals, and, in addition to what usually passes under that denomination, a deep impression of the worship and reverence due to the Supreme Being, were inculcated by the Levitical law, almost as fully as in that of Christ himself, is manifest upon the slightest perusal. If we add to the declarations of the Decalogue the numerous beautiful exhortations to acts of mercy and brotherly love, and forgiveness of enemies, which we find interspersed through the Jewish code, some specimens of which have already been extracted in the preceding pages, we arrive at a system of duty with reference to God, and of practical morality with regard to man, very little inferior to the most perfect injunctions comprehended in the New Testament. And even though we admit, as in some respects we are bound to do, the inferiority of the former institutes to the latter in that respect, still, at all events, we see no reason why mere moral and devotional precepts, even of the highest possible perfection, might not, if that were the sole object of the scheme of revelation, have been included in them, without that vast expenditure (if we may venture to use the expression) of continuous miracle which is recorded in the whole series of Scripture, both Jewish and Christian. No conclusion, then, can be more certain than that, as there is no superfluity in the workings of Divine wisdom, the Christian dispensation must have comprised some ulterior object, higher even than that of the instruction of mankind in its most imperative |