when they obviously reflect disgrace upon and compromise the interest of the writers? The innumerable coincidences in reference to persons, places, and events, occurring between writers who, living in different ages or in different countries, had no possibility of consultation, afford strong presumptive evidence of truthfulness; while on the other hand, and for a similar reason, the seeming, and perhaps we may say the real, discrepancies of those Bible writers who had the opportunity of mutual consultation and of thus making their writings exactly agree in every minutiæ, had they designed to impose a fraud on the world, plainly declare the honesty and straightforwardness of their intentions. For though there be circumstantial disagreement this only happens on points of inferior concern; on all matters of vital moment there is the most striking harmony and even identity. Honesty, thorough honesty, is stamped on the entire aspect and interwoven with the entire structure of the Bible. After subjecting it to the most searching examination and exhaustive critical analysis nothing can be educed to favour the supposition that the writers designed to foist upon the faith of men the lucubrations of their own minds as a revelation of divine truth.

If the Bible be a revelation from God, it may naturally be expected that it will exert a potent influence for good, where its influence actually operates, and that the practical result will be a standing witness to its divinity. Well, let this test be applied. Is it not an indubitable fact, that those nations whose spirit, and manners, and morals, have been imbued and governed by Bible influence, have, to the degree in which this influence has operated, been honourably distinguished among the other nations of the earth? And what is thus true of nations is equally true of individual men. Instances of the beneficent influence of the Bible upon individuals might be cited by millions. So extensively has this influence operated, that multitudes of men, in almost every age of the world's history, have been reclaimed by it from moral degradation and exalted to the holiness and happiness of a virtuous life. And it is too patent to admit of rational doubt that in proportion as men are brought under Bible influence their character is elevated, their condition is improved, their happiness is promoted. This influence tends, more than any other known power, to brighten the intellect, to regulate the conscience, to purify the affections, to enlarge the sympathies, to exalt the aims, to ennoble the purposes, and to invest the character of man with true dignity and grandeur. By imbibing the spirit and obeying the laws of the Bible men conduct themselves becomingly in all the relationships of life. If occupying positions of honour, they act with dignity and condescension; if in inferior positions, with integrity and respect. They are under a rule and swayed by a

spirit which constrain them to honour all men and to do to others as they would that others should do to them. And who can calculate the amount of consolation they derive from the Bible amidst the sorrows of life? It sweetens every cup of bitterness, it alleviates every burden of grief, it lights up a star of hope amidst every scene of gloom. It enables them to regard the painful dispensations through which they pass as the disciplinary means by which their heavenly Father is perfecting their character and preparing them for a higher state of being; and when at length they are called to cross the river of death, it forms for them a bridge of love over which their spirits pass in peace to their celestial home. The influence for good exerted by the Bible on man's character and condition has always been regarded as strong presumptive proof of the divine authority of the book.

As yet, however, we have merely touched the margin of evidence. The two main arguments upon which principal stress is laid are Miracles and Prophecy. On each of these a few observations are due.

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I. MIRACLES. A miracle, as understood by Christian writers, generally may be defined as a work effected in a manner unusual or different from the common and regular method of providence, by the interposition of God himself, in attestation of the authority of some particular person, or for the proof of some particular doctrine." Now, to vindicate and establish their claims to divine authority, the writers of the Bible were endowed with miracle-working power. It may not indeed be strictly correct to say they were endowed with this power, for the definition we have adopted expressly affirms that miracles are wrought by the interposition of God himself, and therefore, when we speak of men working miracles the language is used for convenience and in an accommodatory sense. God does not in any case transfer miraculous power to men. He works by them and through them, but in every instance the miracle-working power is retained in and wielded by his own hand. They appeal to him for a divine attestation of their mission, to set the seal of his own authority on their work, and immediately the miraculous power of God is displayed. At the stretching forth of the rod of Moses Egypt is smitten with plagues, the Red Sea is divided, and waters gush from the flinty rock. At the invocation of the name of God by Elijah fire from heaven descends on Carmel and consumes the prophet's sacrifice. By appealing to the name and authority of Jesus the miracles of the apostles were wrought. Whether "in attestation of the authority of some particular person" or "for the proof of some particular doctrine" miracles were performed by the direct and immediate interposition of God. This language, however, requires modification in reference to the miracles of Christ himself. The

fulness of the Godhead dwelt in him bodily, and hence the stupendous wonders he wrought were of himself and by himself.

Miracles, as evidences of the divine authority of the Bible, have been assailed on various grounds. Their very possibility has been denied. Baden Powell denies their possibility because they are at variance with the order of nature, leaving his readers to infer-nay, expressly affirming, or at least plainly insinuatingthat what is at present the order of nature has been the same in all past ages. But is not this mode of reasoning equally shallow and fallacious? The natural world, in its complicated network of physical laws, is at present orderly and equable, we allow. Fixed law rules everything. Fixed order appears everywhere. But on what grounds of reason or evidence can it be affirmed that the present order of nature has been the established order in all past times? How can we be assured of this? Is it not believed by that school of physical philosophy of which Baden Powell was a distinguished disciple that in ages long gone by eruptions and convulsions transpired by which the entire surface of the earth has been transformed? Are not the teachings of geological science explicit on this point? The order of nature, so far as it can be brought to bear upon the question of miracles, must be viewed not merely in the light of present observation but in that of past history as well; and if this be done the position of our enemies will be turned, and the objection against miracles, drawn from the order of nature, will become an argument in their favour. The fossil organisms entombed in the lower strata of the earth's crust, witnessing to the fact of pre-adamite revolutions and to conditions of vegetable and animal existence different in many respects from "the order of nature" present to our observation, may thus be legitimately used as an analogical argument in favour of miraculous interposition. If God was pleased to disturb the order of nature in remote ages that the earth might be prepared for the habitation of man, why may he not in more recent ages have interposed in a similar way for man's moral and spiritual education? Hume's argument against miracles is substantially the same as the one we have just noticed, though clothed in a different form. Archdeacon Paley has put Hume's argument concisely thus: "It is contrary to experience that a miracle should be true; but not contrary to experience that testimony should be false." Now it may be asked, To whose experience is it contrary that a miracle should be true? If it be to my experience, I readily assent. If it be to the experience of all men now living, that may also be true, though there is no possibility of getting to know it except by testimony, and testimony, Hume reminds us, may be false. But if, as is still more likely, the experience of all men in all ages be meant, this is simply begging the question in dispute. What is thus

assumed we deny. The experience of all men in all ages, as far as it is possible for us to ascertain that experience, has not been against miracles. On the contrary, the experience of many of the best sort of men in different ages has been in their favour. This, at least, is the witness of history, and by what other means than history can we become acquainted with the experience of bygone ages? It is true historic testimony may be false. What then? Have we, instead of sifting historic testimony to see how far it is trustworthy, to reject it in the lump, and abandon all history as a mass of delusion? Have we also to discredit the reports of scientific travellers and of Christian missionaries respecting foreign countries? Have we, in short, to refuse credence to everything not cognized by our senses or authenticated by our instinctive reason? And yet on Hume's principle this is the only consistent course to pursue. Stripped of its philosophical verbiage and tested by common sense, this principle is nothing more than a juggle of words, a transparent sophism.

But, admitting their possibility, it is further argued by Baden Powell that miracles are incompetent to prove the truth of doctrine. The only evidence proper to convince the reason of the truth of a proposition he affirms is, the reasonableness of the proposition. Now we allow that if a proposition be evidently false, or absurd, or selfcontradictory, a miracle cannot prove it true; and if a proposition be evidently true, a miracle is unnecessary to prove its truth. But what if God communicate to men some transcendent doctrine, which reason never could discover or verify-some doctrine to be received solely on the faith of His word? In that case the proper course to pursue is not to submit the doctrine to the ordinary test of reason, for by the supposition reason is incompetent to decide in such a case, but to make sure that the doctrine emanates from God by testing the divine credentials of the teacher. If the teacher of the doctrine authenticate the divinity of his mission by working miracles, then the truth of the doctrine he teaches, though transcending the limits of reason and therefore incapable of rational proof, ought at once to be received by faith. Reason herself, unless puffed up with vain conceit and regarding her own capacity as the measure of universal truth, will allow that this is the only reasonable course to pursue in the case supposed.

Now, that the miracles of the Bible, attesting the divine authority of its writers, were true miracles, and that they actually occurred in the manner and for the purpose stated in the Bible, we have all the evidence which the nature of the case allows of. The miracles of the Old Testament are vouched for by the virtual testimony of the whole Jewish nation as well as by the testimony of Christ and his apostles, and the miracles of the New Testament, by which the divine inauguration of Christianity was authenticated,

are proved by a mass of direct and collateral testimony such as cannot be out-matched by any historic facts of the ancient world. For an elaborate exposition and detail of this evidence we refer our readers to the works of Lardner and Paley.

II. PROPHECY. This is the second grand bulwark defending the divine authority of the Bible. Prophecy simply means the foretelling of events beyond the reach of human sagacity; consequently, prophecy transcends the laws which govern the human mind just as miracle transcends the laws by which the material world is governed. The two may indeed be reduced to the same category, the one being a miracle of power and the other a miracle of knowledge, and both attesting the agency of God. Now the Bible is full of prophecy. Almost every section of it contains more or less of this supernatural element. Some of the prophecies relate to events near at hand, though quite beyond the forecast of human sagacity, as, for instance, when Elisha predicted to the famine-stricken inhabitants of Samaria that on the following day "a measure of fine wheat should be sold for a shekel and two measures of barley for a shekel in the gate of the city;" other prophecies relate to events in a far distant futurity, as when Moses predicted the destinies of the Hebrew nation and Daniel the overthrow of the great empires of antiquity. Two things are requisite to establish the validity of Bible prophecies: they must have been uttered before the events to which they relate, and the predicted events must have occurred in the manner foretold. That both conditions hold good with regard to Bible prophecies is true beyond all rational dispute, as is abundantly proved by Newton, Keith, Elliott, and other writers on prophecy. So strikingly exact has been the fulfilment of some of Isaiah's prophecies, for instance, that in defiance of the most convincing evidence unbelievers have sometimes been audacious enough to affirm that they were written after the events to which they relate. But this cannot with any degree of decency be said respecting his prophecies of the Messiah. Isaiah lived about seven hundred years before Christ, and his book, as we have it now, formed part of the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, written at least two hundred and seventy years before Christ. Take, then, the fifty-third chapter of his prophecies, and examine it clause by clause with the corresponding facts of the evangelical history, and if there does not appear sufficient evidence of supernatural wisdom to convince any reasonable mind, we are lost to know what evidence would be sufficient for that purpose. Note especially the following points: the poverty of Christ's condition and the absence in him of all vulgar attraction; "He shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground; he hath no form nor comeliness, and when we shall see him there is no beauty that we should desire him:" the bitter con