PREFACE. TRUE Christian faith is produced and maintained in the heart by the Spirit of God; but God works by means, such means in this case as a clear apprehension of the truth of the gospel. The believer is enjoined to be ready to give to every man a reason for the hope that is in him; a command which he can obey only when he distinctly recognises the grounds of that hope, and can say from the depths of his intellectual as well as his spiritual nature, "I know that the Bible is the very Word of God, the storehouse of eternal truth." To the young, and the unlearned especially, the present is a dangerous time. Speculations involving the veracity of the Scriptures are afloat, which wear such an aspect of superior knowledge, that those who are not aware of the uncertainties attending some, and the fallacies involved in others, |