The manifestation through Christ of the Infinite Being, and of his purposes toward us, still leaves us, without doubt, in great ignorance. We are still surrounded by difficulties which we cannot solve, and questions press upon us which we cannot answer. But it has taught us all that it is necessary for us to know as the foundation of the highest virtue and the most glorious hopes. All correct conceptions of religion, of the moral nature, the relations, and the duties of man, all which constitutes the highest philosophy, that philosophy which concerns the noblest objects of thought and the most important interests of man, — must rest on those realities which the revelation of God has discovered to us, and of which we can in no other way have assurance. All speculations concerning religion in which God's miraculous revelation of himself through Christ is not recognized, may be compared to the speculations of one who should form a theory concerning the probable motions of the heavenly bodies, without adverting to the fact, that the laws to which those motions are conformed have been demonstrated.

THE Gospels are the history of this miraculous revelation of God to man. But they are not its history alone. They are permanent evidences of

the fact, that such a revelation has been made. This evidence appears in the very constitution of

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those books, in their actually possessing the characteristics which have been insisted upon by unbelievers (like Strauss) as a main ground for disputing their credibility, and which many believers have most unwisely been disposed to disguise or deny. It appears in what to human apprehension may, at first view, seem their marvellous incongruities.

The Gospels are rude works of certain Jews, men belonging to a despised race, themselves very unskilled in writing, having no literary or philosophical culture, and not distinguished by any uncommon natural powers of mind. They are stamped with the character of the nation and the age in which they were written. But whatever they may discover of human incapacity or imperfection appears in intimate union with conceptions, which I do not say that the minds of their uninstructed writers could not have attained, but which no human mind could have attained without being supernaturally enlightened by God,-conceptions, of religion and duty, of all that is most sublime in character, views of God and man, of life and immortality, far transcending all which mere human philosophy has reached. Considered only as liter

ary compositions, the Gospels are precisely such works as we might expect from their authors, - a fisherman of Galilee, a tax-gatherer of Galilee, and two other Jews, their associates. Yet in these works, when we pass through their outward form to their contents, and contemplate the accounts which their authors give of their Master, we find the exhibition of a character to which there is elsewhere no parallel and no approach in history or fiction; for these accounts form a consistent representation of one singled out from the rest of men to sustain peculiar relations to God and to the world, and thoroughly fulfilling these relations. It is impossible that this character should have been an invention of those in whose narratives it appears.

"God," says St. Paul, "has chosen the foolish things of the world to put wise men to shame.”

My discourses and my preaching," he tells the Corinthians, "were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but were accompanied by the manifestation of God's spirit and power." The first preachers of Christ were intrusted with that treasure of truth which he revealed. "But we have this treasure," says the Apostle, " in earthen vessels; so that our exceeding strength is from God, and not of ourselves." In these passages, and often elsewhere,

he refers to the inability of the first preachers of Christ to have originated his religion, or to establish it in the world through any natural powers or human wisdom which they possessed. Weak instruments indeed they were. To the apprehensions of many, it may seem incongruous that God should employ such ministers; but this wonderful contrast between their human insufficiency and what they taught and what they accomplished, establishes the truth of the Apostle's declaration, that their sufficiency was from God. "We are not able of ourselves," he says, "to make account of anything as our own work, but our ability is from God."

Conformably to this, the union of human error and imperfection in the Gospels with their great essential characteristics, renders those books a standing miracle in evidence of the truth of Christianity. I use these words not loosely, not in the way of declamation, nor in any metaphorical sense, but in their literal meaning. The Gospels bear with them a supernatural character; for they present most striking and apparently contradictory phenomena, which cannot be accounted for by what we call natural causes; and thus they are in themselves a permanent miracle, an evidence to men of

all ages.

CHAPTER VI.

STRAUSS'S PROPOSED SUBSTITUTE FOR CHRISTIANITY. — REMARKS ON MODERN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY.

THOUGH it is something like passing from clear air and bright sunshine into a chilling and pestilential congregation of vapors, yet we will return once more to the speculations of Strauss. The purpose in view is sufficiently important to justify our doing so. The "Concluding Dissertation" of his book is full of instruction, but instruction of a wholly different kind from what the writer proposed to impart.

In this Dissertation he gives his readers to understand, that, in his own opinion, he has accomplished a great work. He begins by saying:

"The results of the inquiry which we have now brought to a close, have apparently annihilated the greatest and most valuable part of that which the Christian has been wont to believe concerning his Saviour Jesus, have uprooted all the animating motives which he has gathered from his faith, and withered all his consolations. The boundless store