to digest it, and space adequately to review it.

Modern treatises on the evidences of Christianity are, for the most part, of necessity, compilations; but even a compendium may have its peculiar claims to attention. Where the materials are not new, there may be considerable originality, or at least peculiar appropriateness, in the mode of their disposition; and it is of no slight utility to place in a succinct or striking view, an argument which, might have failed to arrest attention or carry conviction, under a less happy aspect. The pertinacious attacks of infidels, especially of the anarchists of the last few years, who have cheapened down infidelity, like radicalism, to the purse and the capacity of an ale-house auditory, have given rise to innumerable sermons, essays, and treatises, on the evidences of the Gospel; most of which, being intended chiefly for persons who do not possess, or will not read, the accredited works on the subject, profess to do little more than retail the most powerful popular arguments. We might mention many recent works of this kind, highly useful in their sphere, and honourable to the piety, zeal, and sound judgment of their authors; but scarcely demanding a critical review of their contents.

There is a somewhat numerous class, especially of late years, of a different kind, who have applied themselves to the elucidation of some one particular argument auxiliary to the general body of evidence, but not intended to supersede it. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge, in particular, have produced admirable works of this description; the contents of which have not hitherto been sufficiently embodied in the popular disquisi

tions on the evidences. Some of these works have also another most praiseworthy feature,- that they exhibit the interior beauties, as well as the mere strength of the buttresses of the temple; thus proving

the truth of the Gospel by its Divine character, as well as by its extrinsic stability. And in truth, as it is with "the heart" that "man believeth unto righteousness," this method, while it is the most popular, is usually found to be also the most convincing; and where convincing it is far the most efficacious for practical utility; for what does it avail to acknowledge the force of an abstract argument, if the conviction be not followed up by those fruits of faith which alone prove our belief to be fraught with moral and spiritual power?

The work before us deserves peculiar notice, from its combining in a most forcible manner the two departments of evidence which we have mentioned, with the advantages derived from its having been compiled subsequently to the treatises to which we have alluded. It is, as it professes to be, a compendium of evidences, but in a shape for pulpit instruction; not ethical, but sermonlike; at once reaching the heart through the understanding, and the understanding through the heart. Mr. Wilson is not a mere theological professor lecturing upon the evidences; but a Christian pastor who, finding his flock requiring to be informed respecting them, promptly meets this want, both intellectually and spiritually, that they may not only ascertain that there is a mine of heavenly wealth, but may begin to dig deeply and find the inestimable treasures which it contains. We extract the following brief outline of the author's course of argument, as furnishing a useful syllabus of topics for our clerical friends.

"I shall take for granted in my argument the Being of a God, and those other truths of natural religion which the Deist is generally so ready to grant, and which he boasts of as all-sufficient for the guidance and happiness of mankind."

"In conducting this great argument upon these admissions of natural religion, the first question to be asked is, What is the temper of mind in which such a subject should be studied, and do unbelievers seem in any measure to possess that temper?

"We may inquire in the next place, What has been the state of mankind in all ages and nations where Christianity has been unknown, and of Christian nations, in proportion as it has been, inadequately, known and obeyed

"The succeeding topic will be to prove the authenticity and credibility of the books of sacred Scripture-that these books were really written and published at the time they profess to be, and contain a trustworthy narrative entitled to full credit and belief.

“Our books being found to be genuine and credible, we next open them to see what they contain; and finding that our Lord and his Apostles lay claim to a Divine authority, as bringing a revelation from the Great and Almighty God, we ask what credentials they produce of such a claim. This leads us to consider the undeniable and numerous miracles that were publicly wrought; the astonishing series of prophecies that has been fulfilled, and is now fulfilling in the world; the first miraculous propagation of the Gospel; and the prodigious effects it has produced and is producing upon the wel

fare of mankind.

"Having thus sufficiently established the Divine authority of the Scriptures, we must pause before we proceed to the internal evidence, which that authority would lead us next to consider, in order to inquire whether these books are, properly speaking, inspired, so that every part of them was written under the superintendence of the Holy Spirit, and is an unerring rule of faith and practice. In other words, we must shew the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures.

"We come next to the evidence arising from the internal excellency and efficacy of the religion; those marks which it presents to every humble inquirer, abstracted from its outward evidences, from its own peculiar nature. Here we shall shew that

to the sincere and devout student who

submits to the Christian doctrine on the footing of its undoubted credentials, there will arise the strongest confirmation of his faith from considering the suitableness of Christianity to the obvious state and wants of man as an ignorant and sinful creature the excellency of all its doc. trines the unspotted purity of its precepts-the inimitable character of its Divine Founder-and its tendency to promote, to the highest degree, the temporal and spiritual happiness of nations

and individuals.

"But it may be asked, in the next place, whether there is any test to which the serious inquirer may bring the practical effects of Christianity in his own case --can he obtain a share in its blessings and make a trial of its promises? This is a practical and most important part of the whole subject. And we shall shew that this may be done by submitting to

its directions, and making the trial for ourselves of its proffered grace and mercy." pp. 25-29.

The design, then, of the work before us, is to unite the internal and external evidences of Christianity; and to bring them both to bear upon the heart and conscience of the young and unestablished Christian believer. It is not so much to meet the open scofferMr. Wilson leaves him in the hands of Paley, Butler, the present Bishop of Chester, and other masters of the argument as to fortify that large class of persons, who with a fair average of literary attainment, are only half believers themselves, and are exposed to the shafts of ridicule. or scepticism from others, if they seriously maintain the Divine authority of Christianity.

After opening the subject in the first lecture, our author proceeds to state the temper of mind in which it should be studied, and the obvious want of such a temper in our infidels. This topic has been often discussed; but we know not that it has any where been handled in a more full, pointed, and uncompromising manner, than by our author. The present Bishop of Salisbury considered it of such importance, as to offer a premium for the best essay, pointing out the influence which the moral habits of the life, and the temper of the mind, have in influencing the judgment in matters of faith: and how forcibly the Deist feels the weight of such an argument, may be inferred from Sir Charles Morgan's angry preface, in reply to the late Mr. Rennell, the Christian advocate of Cambridge. He considers it "insolence not to be endured," that believers " arrogate to themselves a monopoly of virtue," and charge upon. "the Humes, the Gibbons, and the Bolingbrokes," "pride," "ignorance,"

or

"the indulgence of licentious habits," by which their moral susceptibility to truth is obscured. Mr. Wilson, however, urges the topic strongly. He thinks Christianity

has been unfairly treated; that believers have allowed the sceptic to employ against it ridicule and ribaldry-to raise petty objections— to exhaust all his powers of satire and vituperation; and have never fairly turned against his

cause

the very temper which he betrays. Mr. Wilson therefore exhibits the too-general spirit of the infidel, in order to warn the young and impressible student, and to shew that such a temper is an insuperable obstacle to the reception of truth. The following passage illustrates the vigour with which he pushes home his thrusts, to the very vitals of the infidel system :

"With such a temper apparent, I have a key to the secrets of their unbelief.

"I see one writer speaking of the life and discourses of our Saviour with the ignorance and buffoonery of a jester, and asserting that ridicule is the test of truth; -1 want no one to inform me that he is an unbeliever.

"I see another virtually denying all human testimony with one breath, and with another defending suicide and apologizing for lewdness and adultery;-I do not ask if he is dissatisfied with the Chris

tian evidence.

I see a third, after composing a work full of hypocrisy and deceit on the subject of religion, publishing it to the world on the persuasion of having heard a voice from heaven. I observe another explaining away the historical narrative of the Old Testament as a mere mystical representation of the signs of the zodiac. 1 see a late noble poet betraying throughout his profligate writings, caprice and vanity; self-conceit and misanthropy, together with an abandonment of all moral feeling. -I want no one to explain to me the sources of the unbelief of such writers.

"I turn to our modern historians, and I mark their blunders in whatever relates to religion, their inconsistencies, their misrepresentations, the impurities which defile their pages, their vanity and selfconfidence, and the malice and spleen with which they pursue the followers of Christ. I ask no further questions.

"I open the works of the German infidels, and find the index of their true temper in the follies and absurdities with which they are content to forsake all common sense in their comments on the sacred text, and to exhibit themselves as the gazing-stocks of Christendom.

"I cast my eye on the flippancy of the French school of irreligion, and see such entire ignorance of the simplest points of religious knowledge, such gross impurities,

connected with blasphemies which 1 dare not repeat; I see such an obvious attempt to confound truth and falsehood on the most important of all subjects, and such a bitterness of scorn, a sort of personal rancour, against the Christian religion and its Divine Founder, as to betray most clearly the cause in which they are engaged. I take the confession of one of their number, and ask whether, in such a temper of mind, any religious question could be soundly determined? I have their books, I have examined their several consulted our philosophers, I have perused opinions, I have found them all proud, positive, and dogmatical, even in their pretended scepticism; knowing every thing, proving nothing, and ridiculing one another.........' If our philosophers were able to discover truth, which of them

would interest himself about it? There is not one of them, who if he could distinguish truth from falsehood, would not prefer his own error to the truth that is discovered by another. Where is the philosopher, who for his own glory would not willingly deceive the whole human race?'" pp. 39–42.

These points premised, the author proceeds to argue the indispensable necessity of a Divine revelation from the state of the heathen world before the coming of Christ; from the state of unbelievers scattered through Christian lands; from the Pagan nations now in different parts of the world; and from the countries of Christendom themselves, in proportion as they do not practically obey the revelation they profess. The first part of the argument is common; but the latter is in a good measure new. Mr. Wilson had ad

mirably developed this line of thought in his valuable essay prefixed to Butler's Analogy, reviewed in our volume for 1825, p. 769. The following passage offers a specimen of the argument :—

"And, what adds force to the whole argument, do we not see an uniformity in the vices of all the heathen nations now, with those before the promulgation of Christianity, stamping on fallen man one impress of degradation and woe? Is not the multiplication of deities in India the same as in Rome and Greece? Are not like monstrous and impure fables attached to them? Is not the infanticide of China of a similar character with that of the old world? Is there any essential difference between the detestable practices, the horrid cruelties, the impure rites of heathenism in all ages and places, from the dispersion of

mankind to the present hour? In Christian countries, indeed, the god of this world hides his more hideous features, and sceptics frame ingenious theories of religion; but, in pagan lands, he displays his true character, he marks his progress with ferocity and blood, he whitens the plain of Juggernaut with the bones of pilgrims crushed under his car, or lights the lurid flame which consumes the widow on the funeral pile of her husband, or assembles his devotees around the human sacrifice; whilst his mysteries and his morals are frightful for their fierceness, and disgusting for their offences against nature. The offer ing of animals in sacrifice, the voice of oracles, and the other pretended communications with the Deity, have been lost or silenced since the coming in of Christianity; and paganism now retains only the dregs of its old traditions. She exhibits no religion but that of terror, no representations of the Deity but those of cruelty and lewdness, no hold on the original revelation to Adam, but the faintest pp. 80, 81. At the close of this lecture, Mr. Wilson is honourably indebted for some valuable thoughts to Mr. Davison's able work on prophecy, to which he refers in a note. The use which Mr. Wilson has made of recent publications connected with his subject, adds very much to the richness of his argument. Every work on the evidences of Christianity, written antecedently to the treatises of such writers as Benson, Franks, Faber, Davison, Erskine, Miller, Gurney, and, above all, the present Bishop of Chester, must of necessity want much interesting

traces of distorted fear.

matter.

The authenticity and inspiration of the Scriptures next follow, and have evidently cost the writer great labour. His object respecting the authenticity is to give a young person, without much furniture of knowledge, a clear and solid hold of the argument popularly considered. How do we know that books, said to have been published eighteen hundred years since, were really so published? How is it possible to prove a thing after such an interval? Our author begins by shewing in what manner other ancient works are proved to be genuine; as the English Prayer-book, in the sixteenth century; the DoomsdayCHRIST. OBSERV. No. 334.

book, in the eleventh; the Institutes of Justinian, in the sixth; the writings of Seneca, in the first. In each case, we trace from the present hour backwards through each preceding age, by a series of distinct and uncontroverted testimonies, till we arrive at the work in question. Next, the author shews that the marks by which critics detect spurious writings are well ascertained, and that not one of these applies to our sacred books. In the third place, he evinces by facts, that the forgery of a work of such a magnitude, and on such a subject as the Christian record, was from the circumstances of the case impossible. It could not have been after A.D. 200, when the books were read in all the churches: but the Apostle John lived till quite the close of the first century; his own disciple, Polycarp, beyond the middle of the second; and Irenæus, the disciple of Polycarp, to the commencement of the third; when Tertullian, and a host of witnesses, put the supposition of forgery quite out of the question. It is difficult to add any thing strictly new on this oft discussed topic; but Mr. Wilson has given an air of freshness to it by his illustrations; as for example, in shewing that men practically act on very slight grounds as to the mere authenticity of writings, where the contents commend themselves to their judgment and taste, he alludes most cogently to the recent discoveries of Angelo Mai.

"M. Angelo Mai, not five years since, discovered in the library of the Vatican at Rome, one of the long lost works of Cicero, the valuable and elaborate Dialogues on the Republic. I find a notice Cicero: but his contemporaries, and the of such a work in the other writings of authors of the following ages, afford me no testimony to its authenticity. I am told that the tyranny of the emperors, jealous in that treatise, silenced Seneca, Quintilof the great principles of liberty asserted lian, Pliny, Tacitus. Be it so. For thirteen or fourteen centuries I see nothing of it, except in the very few quotations Macrobius. found in Lactantius, St. Augustine, and In the year 1822, the work is discovered, with a Commentary of St. 4 L

Austin on the Psalms, written over it crosswise, probably in the sixth century, as was frequently practised at that time, to avoid the expense of parchment. M. Mai publishes it-a French scholar of the first reputation (M. Villemain), eagerly makes a translation, and tells us, it is sufficient to cast an eye on the simple and learned account which M. Mai gives of his labours, to be convinced of an authenticity materially, I will almost say, legally demonstrated.' But,' adds the critic, for men of taste, this authenticity will shine forth yet more in the great characters of patriotic elevation, of genius, and of eloquence, which mark the work. This kind of moral proof is more agreeable to the reader than dissertations on the orthography of an old work, and on the probable dimensions of a letter.' 'The immortal character,' he concludes, ' of the writer of genius and the Roman consul, which shines in every page, and in the least traits of the work, gives it a sublime authenticity.'

"On such narrow grounds of external testimony do men proceed. Might I not, then, boldly appeal to the sacred sublimity, the divine wisdom, the unequalled discoveries of grace, the dignity and yet naturalness of style, the clearness and force of the arguments, the circumstantial character of the narrative, the unnumbered incidental agreements, the whole cast and impress of truth which characterizes, as we shall see hereafter, the New Testament; and might I not leave it to the practical common sense of every pious mind, to determine whether, even if the external testimony to its authenticity were ever so slight, we might not be permitted to repose securely on the inward character of genuineness, the holy stamp and seal of truth, the native impress of veracity and trust-worthiness, which commend our sacred books, not to the taste and judgment of a critic merely, but to the enligh tened understanding, the best informed feelings, the conscientious admiration of every candid and serious reader." pp. 116-118..

Equally original, and highly important, is the following argument derived from the practice of a profession in which the balancing of testimony is reduced to a regular science.

"The burden of proof lies on the objector. If he take it into his head to deny the authentic origin of the Scrip tures, let him marshal his distinct witnesses to a falsification; let him shew clearly when and where and by whom and why these writings were forged, and what are the marks which they exhibit of fiction and imposture. A mere doubt thrown out in the nineteenth century is rather too late.

"It is thus men uniformly act in all their most important concerns; the burden of proof lies on him who would disturb the beneficial possession of others. The voice of our ordinary laws warrants such a conduct. It goes, indeed, still further. If a legal deed be of only thirty years' standing, and has conveyed an estate, and the estate has been enjoyed by the party to whom the conveyance transmitted it, such a deed is said, in the language of the profession, to prove itself; that is, you are not required to call any attesting witness to prove the handwriting of the party who executed it, nor any one to prove that of the attesting witnesses; but the deed proves itself, because the concomitant facts are held to shew sufficiently its authenticity.

66

Now, how much more forcibly may the Christian church employ such an argument in the case of the deeds of its spiritual inheritance, the books of the New Testament-an inheritance which has been enjoyed from age to age, for seventeen or eighteen hundred years-an inheritance, the records of which may be traced distinctly upwards from the present to the apostolic times, an inheritance, where no one mark of a fictitious title has ever been shewn, where the circumstances under which it was conveyed make a falsification morally impossible; and in the very language and style of which conveyance, all the shining characters of truth are apparent." pp. 119, 120.

In lecture V. our author pursues the question of the authenticity to its particular proofs. First, he gives a specimen of the manner in which testimony may be traced back, in our own country, from the present day to the Reformation-to Wicliffe, to Grosseteste and Anselm, to Alfred, to Bede, and thence to Gregory the Great, who sent over the monks;-which unites us with the continental testimony through Theodoret, in the sixth century; Austin, in the fifth; Ambrose, in the fourth; and so on, till we reach the Apostles. The progress of the settlement of the canon is next traced; after which it is shewn, that whatever specimen we may take from the mass of evidence exhibits marks of truth. Beginning with

Clement in the first century, selections of testimony are adduced, irresistible. The critical edition of the aggregate strength of which is the New Testament by Jerome, published fourteen hundred years