CHAPTER XXVII.

Of the Evidence of the Truth of Revelation afforded by the low Condition in Life, the absence of Literary Acquirements, and the impossibility of Confederacy in its respective Promulgators.

THE character and condition in life of the first preachers of Christianity, and of revelation in general, suggest, again, another argument in favour of the truth of their doctrines, which it would perplex the Infidel to overthrow. The following reply of Lactantius, to the assertions of one of the early impugners and persecutors of our faith, may be appositely applied, not to the case of Peter and Paul only, but to that of almost all the respective authors of the inspired books, both Jewish and Christian. "Tantum abest a Divinis literis repugnantia, quantum ille (adversarius videlicet) abfuit a veritate et fide. Præcipue tamen Paulum Petrumque laceravit ceterosque discipulos, tanquam fallacia seminatores, quos eosdem tamen rudes et indoctos fuisse testatus est; nam quosdam eorum piscatorio artificio fecisse quæstum : quasi ægrè ferret quod illam rem non Aristophanes aliquis aut Aristarchus commentatus sit. Abfuit ergo ab his fingendi voluntas et astutia, quoniam rudes fueAut quis possit indoctus apta inter se et cohærentia fingere, quum philosophorum doctissimi Plato et Aristoteles et Epicurus et Zenon ipsi sibi repugnantia et contraria dixerint? hæc est enim mendaciorum natura, ut cohærere non possint. Illorum autem traditio, quia vera est, quadrat undique, ac sibi tota consentit; et ideo persuadet quia constanti ratione suffulta est." This observation, which carries with it great weight, when directed to the various component parts of Scripture individually, is perfectly unanswerable when applied to the entire and consistent scheme of revelation as a whole. Seldom,

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if ever, is any one single impostor entirely accordant with himself: a succession of impostors, writing at separate and remote periods the one from the other, cannot by any possibility be so. And yet where, from the fall of Adam downwards, to the final close of the work of inspiration, can we detect one single violation of unity of purpose in the theory of God's interferences for the redemption of mankind,— where point out one absent link from the chain of connected consequences? The whole is obviously the grouping and calculated contrivance of one mastermind.

Had the self-same tenets, with those promulgated in Holy Writ, been first taught by any of the great moral sages of Greece or Rome, it is evident that, although that circumstance ought not in reality to have operated against the value of their instructions, it would certainly have suggested a plausible argument against the Divine authority attaching to them, of which the sceptic would not have failed to take advantage. No reason, it might have been said, can be adduced to show that a first rate understanding, taking into consideration all the anomalous features of man's moral constitution, might not, by a lucky accident, have lighted upon such a plausible vindication of God's Providence, in his dealings with the human race, as the Christian theory supposes. The great superiority of such a theory over those invented by the several founders of the other great schools of philosophy, it might have been urged, no more proves the Divine inspiration of its promulgator, than the superior beauties of the works of Homer or Shakspeare, to those of most other poets, would necessarily oblige us to attribute their peculiar degree of genius to a like Divine source. Undoubtedly it would have been difficult to meet successfully objections of this nature. As there is no assignable and definite limit to the inventive powers of the human mind, it is evident that the production of any one work, of

even unprecedented merit, by one individual, would only be another and a new measure afforded us of what the intellect of man can achieve, and would supply no proof whatever that such individual was inspired. But the whole canon of Scripture, as we possess it, is a complete refutation of this objection in every form in which it is capable of being put with respect to the inspiration of the Bible. Nothing can, it is true, be more entire and consistent with itself than the scheme of revelation as a whole, but on the other hand, it is equally certain that nothing can be more seemingly desultory, can bear more positive proofs of the absence of any thing like confederacy, or be less set off by elaborate splendour of composition, than the greater part of those writings through the medium of which that revelation is conveyed. One strong internal proof of the real inspiration attributable to the sacred authors, for instance, is the fact, that many of them are not only known to have been ignorant men in general, but also appear, on several occasions, to have been perfectly unaware of the value of the very facts which they were communicating. With reference to one another, so far from appearing to be united in a common combination to deceive, they often seemingly, though perhaps never substantially, contradict each other's statements, in minute particulars, and sometimes even in momentous points of doctrine. Not only do they not appear to wish to theorize, but it may even be doubted how far many of them, at the moment that their works were composed, possessed any definite theory beyond that of the single fact of the promised redemption of the Israelitish people. In order to understand what Christianity, in all its parts, really is, we must study not one Gospel only, nor even the whole four Gospels, but the entire book of the New Testament, from the beginning to the end and even then our conclusions would be incomplete, as to its vast importance and the elaborate contrivance of Providence for its

production, unless we extend our researches backward, from the last book of the Old Testament to the very first page of Genesis itself. And yet among the great multitude of writers whose respective compositions constitute that single and consistent work which we call the Bible, only two individuals, namely, Moses and Paul, could for a moment, under any circumstances, be suspected of a tendency or disposition to set up what might justly be denominated a system. But Moses, if he systematized at all, must obviously have had an eye to the permanence of his own institutions, and have striven more to establish his own efficiency, as a legislator, than to act in the capacity of a mere forerunner of a code of doctrines by which his own were to be eventually superseded : -whilst, again, Paul, however disposed he may have been to concentrate the facts and doctrines connected with Christ's advent into one consistent series of propositions, at all events came after those facts upon which he builds his conclusions had already taken place, and after the greater portion of those doctrines had been promulged and commented upon by others.

If, then, there is, as there assuredly seems to be, a traceable consistency in Scripture, which marks the agency and dictation of one predominating mind, it certainly is not to the ostensible authors of its several component parts that such consistency can be referred. If their pens were so guided that each individual performed exactly his own necessary share in the construction of the work, and no more, and if, without natural eloquence, without the acquirements of literature, and without any of the known qualifications by which sages and legislators have been occasionally enabled to impress a new character upon society, these men have operated the greatest change in human manners recorded in history, we must surely look elsewhere than to themselves for the great moving principle. It is in vain for us to examine the

Divine Scriptures with the fastidious eye of critics, and to attempt to show that the work might have been better and more systematically done. The best answer to such objections is, that the work is done: that the Bible has been the instrument, which has rendered the manners of modern times, not excepting those of many unbelievers themselves, more humane, more polished, and ten thousand times more pure, than those of the best periods of antiquity: and that if, upon reference to the writings which have wrought such wonders, we seem often to miss that elegance of style and those nice accomplishments which mark the highly-finished productions of professional men of letters, it is, in fact, only one miracle the more, and the more manifestly "the Lord's doing."

Those persons who are disposed to believe that Providence has, from first to last, superintended the developement and promulgation of Christianity, taking care that the most important of all communications should be made as accessible as possible to the whole human race, will probably be disposed to consider the singular fact that the whole of the New Testament has descended to us in the Greek and not in the Aramaic language, as another internal proof of the Divine benevolence and wisdom. Certain it is, from the history of mankind subsequent to the commencement of the Christian era, that no other language would have supplied so universally convenient a vehicle for the general transmission of truth as the one which, for many centuries since the coming of Christ, was that of the predominant power of Europe, and which is at this moment, as it is likely to continue to be, one of the foremost objects of the study of men of letters throughout the civilized world.