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It is time we should say something of the reprint which has just been issued by the Philadelphia press. Clearness and beauty of typography have certainly been secured. In comparing this with Collins's three-volume Glasgow edition, of 1830, which is a sightly book, we give the preference to the American copy.

As pruned of those popish errors which hung about certain parts, but which lay chiefly in unessential phrases, the "Moral Reflections," are eminently fitted to be useful in our day and country. As Doddridge said of Leighton, we may say of Quesnel, that we never read even a few pages of his writings without elevation of mind. Bishop Wilson's commendation of the work is justly cited by Dr Boardman. We may add of another Bishop Wilson, of Sodor and Man, not only that he caught much of the good Jansenist's spirit, but that he again and again borrowed from him in his well-known Sacra Privata, a manual of devotions, which is highly valuable when purged of those passages which inculcate the doctrine of merit.* It is not our purpose to quote from the volumes before us. They contain passages so fraught with genuine gospel truth, and such assertions of the sovereignty of the divine choice, the efficacy of grace, the inability of the sinner, the justification of the ungodly by faith, and the loveliness of the Lord Jesus Christ, as make us forget, during the perusal, that the author acknowledged any allegiance to Rome. Such truth and such holiness, from whatever pen they come, should be welcome to every Christian mind.

ART. V.-1. Dr Wordsworth on the Canon and Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures.

2. Mr Lee's Donnellan Lectures on Inspiration.

WHAT are called Christian Evidences grow naturally out of the circumstances and conditions under which Christianity exists in the world. At the very beginning it was subject, of

cellor."-"Letter of Father Quesnel to Port Royal de la Chaise."-" Letter to an Archbishop."."-" Letter of a private person to a friend."-" Letter to a friend touching what is abroad in the name of His Catholic Majesty," 1704.-" Declaration and Protestation against the Placard of the Archbishop of Mechlin."-" General Idea of the Libel of the Fiscal of Mechlin," 1705.-" Letter concerning the Process or Motif de Droit," 1705.-" Anatomy of the Sentence of the Archbishop."-" Memoir in Vindication of Father Quesnel's Resort to the King," 1702.- Father Bouhours, Jesuit, Convicted of his old calumnies against the Port Royalists, 1700.-" Answer to Two Letters of Archbishop Fénélon," 1711.-Numerous other titles are preserved, but of publications less concerning our general subject.

We refer to the original folio edition of Bishop Wilson's works, or to some unaltered reprint, as, for instance, that of Oxford, (John Henry Parker), 1853, 12mo.

course, to the attacks of unbelievers, and it had to meet doubts and questionings on the part of those whose assent it challenged to itself. "It was placed by its founders on an argumentative basis; i. e., it was to rest its claims on proofs and evidences addressed to the reason. It is not meant, of course, that all individuals alike could comprehend the force of these proofs, or were bound to examine them in detail, before they received the gospel. All that is meant is, that the gospel was provided with rational evidences of its truth.”* And these arguments and proofs, addressed to the reason, were brought by the early Christian apologists to bear with great force upon the three systems which in the outset opposed the Faith, namely, -Philosophy, Heathenism, and Judaism. The line of defence is unbroken, from the Apology of Justin Martyr down.

As the ages rolled along, these attacks on Christianity changed their form, indeed, and proceeded from different quarters, but they neither diminished in number nor became less violent; while all periods of mental activity were characterised by their abounding presence. In our own day these attacks are multiform. Some are direct, and others indirect. Some strike at one point, others at another. While in addition to direct denial and unbelief, we are in the midst of at least three systems which clearly destroy that whole ground of rational proof on which the great doctors of the ancient church rested the defence of Christianity. Romanism destroys it, by substituting, as the ground of our belief, the infallible authority of the existing church; thus cutting under, not only all appeals to the reason, but also all direct individual responsibility. So that nothing is more absurd than for a Romish writer to attempt to argue for the truth of Christianity as the ancient apologists argued. He has no logical basis for any such position. Rationalism destroys it, by asserting that no man is bound to accept, on any evidence whatever, any doctrine as revealed by God which his own reason does not recognise; and by rejecting as empirical all arguments from facts, it thus thrusts evidence to one side, and employs itself at once on the substance of the Revelation. Mysticism destroys it, in superseding all rational examination of proofs by some inner sense or inspiration, which it makes the sole arbiter of truth. This, let us observe in passing, is a perversion, or an imitation, of a most dear and cherished principle, to which we shall have occasion hereafter to refer.+

Such, then, has been the case in all past times; such it is now; and such, doubtless, it ever will be, in reference to the evidences of Christianity. The time never has been, and pro

* Palmer on Development, p. 5, c. i, sec. 3. In a previous section he draws out the proof from the New Testament.

+ See Palmer on Development, c. ii., iii., iv.

bably never will be, when all subtilty of logic, and all power of rhetoric, have not been employed against the faith. Whence it follows, as matter of course, that counter forces must be employed in its defence. But it appears to us that on this important subject several errors have more or less prevailed, the tendency of which has been greatly to weaken the Christian cause, and to place its defenders on false, and therefore dangerous ground. To two of these we shall venture to call attention.

There have been those, and especially within the last century, who have seemed to entertain the idea that it was the duty of all Christians to make themselves masters of the whole field of Christian evidences. Sometimes, indeed, the position has apparently been assumed, that thus much must be done before a man could honestly be received into the Christian fold, and participate in Christian privileges! And then, on the other hand, revolting from one extreme only to rush into another, there have been those who have decried the study of these evidences by any body, even by persons who were in training for the sacred ministry; as if any cultivation of the logical faculty, in connection with Christianity, were so far forth destructive of a simple faith. Now, each of these extremes contains elements of truth; but because they are not held in conjunction with, and as modified by other truths, because they are pushed into an undue prominence, and are thereby disturbed, they cease to be living truths, and therefore become errors. The correct view, doubtless, is, that while there does exist this vast body of Christian evidences, to which all who choose may have access, and with which, to some considerable extent at least, all those who are ambassadors for Christ are bound to make themselves acquainted; still inasmuch as Christianity was not intended to be a philosophy for the learned, but a religion for all, there will be many who cannot, and who ought not to be expected to give any logical account of their belief. On various grounds, for various reasons,-it matters very little what, they have a belief in Christianity, which has been confirmed to them by the progress of their Christian life and experience. To use the words of Athenagoras, "They could not, by reasoning, demonstrate the usefulness of their profession, but they exhibit it in practice and by works; they do not recite words, but are examples of. good works." Indeed, it must not be forgotten that logic can be no substitute for the Christian life; though the Christian life -not, let it be observed, the pietistic persuasions of mysticism, but the actual, living, working, struggling life of obedience, securing the seal of the Holy Ghost-does stand very sufficiently in place of logic. But all this does not destroy the fact, that Christianity has a vast body of rational evidence on

which it stands; which they especially who are pledged to be its defenders are bound to know, and at proper seasons and in proper methods to employ.

We add the caveat of proper seasons and proper methods, because we do not wish to be understood as recommending that any great amount of preaching should be devoted to Christian evidences. The Romish confessional has suggested probably more sins than it ever put a stop to. And sermons on Christian evidences often present to the minds of people doubts of which they never dreamed before; and in dwelling on which they forget or do not hear the answer. It is related of a living English prelate, that while a curate, being desirous to try his hand at extempore preaching, he selected for his topic, the existence of God. He argued the matter as he would have done in a prelection in dogmatic theology, and entirely to his own satisfaction. On his way home from church, however, he questioned a plain man among his hearers as to the impression his discourse had made; and received the somewhat startling reply: "A very good sermon, parson; but somehow I do think there be a God, for all you said against it." The moral is obvious and pregnant.

Again: Christian evidences constitute a sort of science in themselves. They are not properly a part of the science of theology, for theology rather presupposes them. They are in the nature of propaedeumata; but not on that account any the less necessary to a well-instructed theologian. Now, a science, or any thing of the nature of a science, implies, of course, the possibility of an arrangement of topics, which shall settle and adjust them, in due order and proportion. It implies, also, that the science may, and indeed ought to be studied in view of this arrangement, else it will be studied at hap-hazard, and with the loss of that completeness, connection, and unity, which it possesses, and which ought to be preserved. Herein lies the second error to which we alluded above; namely, in treating the evidences in a disjointed and unscientific way. Its results have been specially mischievous in the case of those who, being expected to be the guides of others, ought to have these topics at hand, in an orderly arrangement.

Our idea, then, is, that all this body of Christian evidences, arguments, proofs, facts, has been long enough in the world to admit of a scientific arrangement of its topics. New facts, new proofs, new arguments, will doubtless, from time to time, be discovered and developed. But these are matters of specific detail, not of generic arrangement. They will be relegated as they come up, to their several and proper positions, under the topics to which they belong. And then, over and

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above all this, and the neglect of this patent fact has led, we think, to a good deal of confusion,-there are a great many valuable, but subsidiary lines of thought which lie outside of the science itself. Such are ethnological, geological, and physiological inquiries, designed to examine and refute conclusions in these several sciences, which are at variance with fundamental principles, or specific declarations, of revealed religion. Every science has these outlying regions of subsidiary inquiry and investigation, which do not form a portion of her direct and proper domain.

It is necessary, however, to declare, that we by no means intend to intimate that an arrangement of the topics of Christian evidences can be made adapted to all occasions and circumstances. In every science, arrangement and classification vary, according to the point of view from which it is surveyed, and the purposes with which it is approached. This must plainly, in the nature of things, be so. But then, over and above these specific arrangements, which men make for themselves when they have specific objects in view, there is always, in any science, some general arrangement, which they employ for purposes of study, examination, and instruction. And it is this latter that we propose to consider.

Now, a careful examination of facts bring us to the conclusion, that in this matter of Christian evidences, men's minds. have on the whole run in three great lines. Some have dwelt not only mainly, but even entirely, on the internal witness of the Spirit. Others have rested on the existence and authority of the church. And others still have insisted on the critical, historical, and other proofs of the genuineness and authenticity of the New Testament Scriptures. Thus the individual, the institution, the sacred book, have all been made, severally and in turn, the stand-points whence this vast subject has been surveyed. In all these lines, moreover, important trains of thought and argument have been developed, which must enter into every sufficient and well-connected view of the evidences. We do not mean that these lines should be kept distant from each other, and separately worked out; but that they should all be recognised, and their separate principles incorporated.

Starting, then, from the positions here laid down, namely, that Christianity rests on a body of rational proof, which they who are specially intrusted with its defence are bound to make a subject of study, while its study is open to all, and challenges the attention of all; and that this body of proof is susceptible of being scientifically arranged on the principles and in the way noted above; we shall next proceed, even at the risk of incurring the charge of presumption, to offer some suggestions in reference to that arrangement, and to enter on a detailed

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