the supernatural influence of the Spirit, would lead them to cordially embrace the truth, repent of their sins, and accept of Christ as their Saviour. We conclude that they would not thus believe, not only because the Jews as a nation did not, but because also Jesus assures us that miracle, as distinct from the Divine influence accompanying the truth itself, would not be thus effective: “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead."1 If such men hear not "Moses and the prophets," or, in other words, the Scriptures, the simple and plain reason why they would not be convinced by miracle, or hear and heed the statements made by One risen from the dead is, that God has purposed that His Word and Spirit alone shall be the means by which the necessary spiritual light and knowledge shall be communicated to men. His blessing, therefore, accompanies Bible truth, and it alone, as the instrument of bringing men to a knowledge of themselves, of their God, and of eternal realities. And as nothing can be effectual against the purpose of God, we see how utterly impossible it would be, though all hell should arise and go through the earth weeping and wailing, for men to be brought to a saving knowledge of the truth through their instrumentality. It would be converting and saving men in a way that is contrary to the declared plan and purpose of God, which is impossible. It would furnish them with a head knowledge of things, but from the absence of the Divine power and blessing that attends the Divinely appointed means alone, it would no more move them to genuine repentance and obedience, than it would thus move devils. 1 Luke xvi. 31. CHAPTER XVII. INFIDELS AND INFIDELITY, ROMANISM AND RITUALISM. "has no NOTHER of the notable sayings of our French philosopher is the following: "Jesus," he says, more authentic followers than those who seem to deny Him." Deluded man! Those to whom M. Renan refers, not only seem to deny Him, but really deny Him, and are therefore to be classed with the common stock or family of infidels who are "without God, and without hope in the world," and the general profligacy of whose lives, not denying an occasional virtuous exception, is notorious. This, however, is but the necessary result of their principles. The young and sincere inquirer, therefore, and those who are not blinded and enslaved by habits of immorality and vice, would do well to consider. the general character of those who have taken it upon them to write or speak against the truth of the Bible, and to remember that the profligate character of the generality of them, and the general licentiousness of their creed, are presumptive evidence against them, and strongly in favour of the holy cause they oppose. That such corrupters of society should arise, Peter, inspired by God, foretells us. "There shall come," he says, "in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts." On these lusts, infidels know that the Bible makes war, and hence their "scoffing," or shallow, irrational * 2 Peter iii. 3. attempts at making war on the Bible. Cecil says of them : "There is nothing in them like sober serious inquiry. They are the wildest fanatics on earth." And after having read Paine's " Age of Reason," a poet wrote on a blank leaf the following stanza : "At every page divine his rancour teems, This hour he reasons, and the next blasphemes; That gives his practice, or his pride, the lie.” Paine was a man of an ungovernable temper, and a sot. Gibbon was a man of unsteady principles. He did not hesitate to qualify himself for office by partaking of the Lord's Supper in the established Church of England. He was first a Catholic, then a Protestant, and then an infidel, and then again a Protestant. Hobbs maintained that the law of the land was the sole foundation of right and wrong. Godwin, by his own confession, both defended and practised lewdness; and Chesterfield, says Dr. Johnson, "taught the manners of a dancing-master and the morals of a prostitute." Emerson was an habitual and beastly drunkard. And Hume was the unblushing advocate of adultery and . suicide. 66 Deny thyself," was to him a "monkish virtue." Vanity was a leading characteristic of his life, and his vain speculations carried him to such absurd and fanciful lengths as to fully justify the conception entertained of him by the person who inscribed on the circular slab over his grave the following lines :- "Beneath this circular idea Vulgarly called a tomb, Impressions and ideas rest, Which constituted Hume." Voltaire's temper was violent and ungovernable. He was habitually intoxicated with vanity, was guilty of the sin of Sodom, and was a man of mean principles. To gain favour, he would profess anything “At London, he was a Freethinker; at Versailles, a Cartesian; at Nancy, a Christian; at Berlin, an Infidel." D'Alembert, at the request of Voltaire, told a palpable falsehood by denying that Voltaire was the author of the Philosophical Dictionary. Rousseau lived a life of infamy, and confessed that as occasion served he was through life both a thief and a liar. What a phalanx of iniquity is here presented! What a picture of corruption and depravity! Truly it must be a system of iniquity of which such men are the leading moral representatives. There may be exceptions on both sides, but this must be clearly manifest to an honest, reflecting mind, that whilst the true adherents, and particularly the leading defenders of Christianity, are holy and God-like, the adherents and most distinguished exponents and defenders of the principles of infidelity are unholy, un-Christlike, and depraved. The Head Centre of Infidelity, therefore, is the Devil, the bond which surrounds the entire circle is a bond of iniquity, and all will be hurled together, in God's set time, into the place whence it originated. Is it at all surprising that when such men come to die they frequently exhibit feelings of remorse, and a foreboding dread of coming evil? This was the case in the dying experience of Voltaire and other leading French infidels, as well as in that of Newport and others in England and America. "I am abandoned by God and man," said Voltaire when on his death-bed, and added, “I shall go to hell, and you [addressing his physician] will go with me." Hobbs, who had been tormented with fear, as death approached said, that he was "about to take a leap in the dark." And Newport's last words were, "Oh, the insuffer able pangs of hell and damnation!" Miserable, indeed, are the deaths of infidels-a horrible darkness and a dread uncertainty creeping over some of them, while others are in an agony of fear and torment by reason of impending terrible evils which they then believe are awaiting them in the next world; while others again, seized with alternate paroxysms of prayer and blasphemy. sometimes cursing the God that made them, and at others hopelessly calling upon Him for help-seem to have the fires of hell enkindled within their agonized bosoms, the remorseful woes of the damned burning to their inmost being, even before they have departed this life and realized what it is to have a personal abode in the regions of unquenchable torment! Not, perhaps, that the inhabitants of that dreadful abode will be literally enveloped with fire and brimstone, although for anything we know, or reason can determine to the contrary, they may be; for they must live in some element, and God can as easily decree that it shall be in an element of fire and brimstone, vapour of smoke," etc., as in any other. These are the terms, at any rate, by which God has been pleased to designate the condition of the place; and these elements, therefore, the painful effects of which we know, must, in any case, be taken to represent the terrible condition and extreme sufferings of the lost. But if, as in the dreadful death-bed experiences of Voltaire, Newport, and others, the bare beginning of the felt "wrath of God," or a mere conscious approaching of their everlasting torment, is so unbearable to those to whom God, as a warning to the world, gives a glimpse of it in time, what must the full, the ceaseless, the eternal realization be? But there are exceptions to such deaths; and the infidel Hume is held up as one of them. Hume, say the sceptics, Ꮓ |