common and uncommon phenomena may alike he traced up to questions which we cannot solve, so the solution of them would probably open to us new prospects, where our reasoning would be again perplexed, and conjecture itself at a stand.

By those who seriously recollect the limited strength of human reason, the foregoing observations will not be hastily controverted. They prove, doubtless, the existence of the most important facts to be compatible with our ignorance of all their real causes, and all their possible consequences. They point out to us the method in which God is pleased to act, where the noblest interests of his creatures are deeply concerned. They may teach us not only to acquiesce in the reality of that method, but even to infer the propriety of it, from the relation that subsists between our intellectual powers and our moral agency.

Whether the Deity manifest himself to us by his word or his works, the design is not to amuse but to improve us; not to gratify our curiosity but to exercise our faith; not to communicate, with a wild and useless prodigality, the knowledge of times and seasons, which is justly reserved to him who alone can regulate them, but to put us into a state of probationary discipline. That state, too, invariably exists at the very moment in which the will of God is proposed to us, be it attended by many proofs, or by few, be it consonant to our preconceived notions or repugnant to them, be it ultimately admitted or rejected. Hence it is, that the Christian Revelation seldom addresses us but in a tone of authority.

Without bewildering our minds in curious and profound speculations concerning the modes of the divine government, and the abstract fitnesses of things, it plainly records facts, which we are at liberty to believe or disbelieve, just as it inculcates precepts which we may obey or violate. When the fulness of the time was come, God, says the apostle concisely and peremptorily, sent forth his Son.

But if Christianity be attended with difficulties which baffle our reason, it is also supported by evidences on the force of which that reason may decide. If it be the property of the former to impede our assent, it is equally the property of the latter, when clear and apposite, to engage it. If our conviction be built upon dispassionate and laborious inquiry into that which can be known, it ought not to be shaken by imaginary and unknown possibilities. Much less will it be staggered by the arguments of those who would disprove the truth of the Christian Revelation, because the circumstances of it do not coincide with their ideas, either of the proofs that are necessary to authenticate, or of the occasion that is sufficient to produce, a divine interposition. For while there is any proof, we have no right to presume that it is impertinent—if there be any occasion, we see too little of the proportion between means and ends to pronounce it utterly inadequate.

Many of the objections which are made against the time and the manner in which the Gospel was revealed, are rested upon those arguments à priori, which usually require no other qualification in

those who employ them, than the habit of torturing invention and of wresting facts. But such arguments are as delusive in matters of religion as in science. They are unsatisfactory to every inquirer who wishes to be guided by his judgment rather than transported by his imagination; they are impertinent and highly unbecoming, whether they be employed by the friend or the adversary of revelation. The former, in consequence of internal and of external proofs, may admit the excellence of Christianity in the reasonableness of its precepts, the forcibleness of its sanctions, and the miraculous circumstances of its publication. The latter has an unquestionable right to examine any evidences upon which a revelation professedly founds its pretensions. But when either of them, from the stores of his own observation, draws forth criteria by which all revelations, howsoever circumstanced, and whensoever made, must be tried, he treads, surely, upon treacherous ground. The Christian injudiciously assumes in all cases, what he may properly urge in the form of an inference from evidences actually existing in a particular case. The infidel as injudiciously endeavours to destroy those evidences by general assumptions, which are not supported by any direct proof in the cause where he decides, and which may be opposed by many indirect proofs drawn from the works of God.

Upon the topics of religion the opinions of men take a colouring from their wishes, from their prepossessions, from settled habits of thought and action, and from peculiar casts of temper. But from

whatsoever source those opinions are derived, and to whatsoever consequences they may lead, the conduct of God, as we know from experience, is in many respects far different from what we should in theory suppose it likely to be. While the world is under a moral government, we might suppose it just, because we feel it desirable, that, amidst the devastations of the sword and the pestilence, some distinction should be made between the righteous and the wicked. Under a wise and kind Providence we might expect that the order of time would be coincident with the order of dignity in the communication of temporal blessings.* We might hope that the arts by which the evils of life are mitigated, or its comforts are heightened, would be cultivated more successfully and more diligently than those, which flatter our vanity and contribute to our amusement. It would perhaps be more beneficial, and therefore we conclude that it should have been more easy, for us to understand and draw out into use all the productions of the earth, than to ascertain the essential properties of matter, or speculate upon the excentric motions of comets. But if the procedures of God be not analogous to our notions of fitness, even in the ordinary course of things that are seen, there is a still greater probability of error in our conjectures upon those extraordinary appoint

* See Butler's Analogy ;-some of the arguments employed by that learned prelate naturally occurred to me in the course of these observations, and I readily adopted them, because I knew them to be just and apposite.

ments which more immediately respect the things that are not seen.

To reason, I mean the very limited and wayward reason of man, it has seemed expedient that God should accompany the revelation of his will with evidences so illustrious that no carelessness could overlook, so peremptory that no sophistry could confound, so forcible that no perverseness could resist them; and thus too, in respect to the commands and prohibitions of the Gospel, they might be expected to have worked a reformation almost instantaneous; to have roused the supine; to have softened the obdurate; to have extirpated every vice, and cherished every virtue to its utmost maturity. In the career of hypothesis we might venture one step farther, and contend that Redemption would be necessary for no man, or be conferred indiscriminately upon all men who are capable of being redeemed. But God's ways are not Our ways; and if the reverse of these flattering suppositions appear upon the first appeal to facts, what course must a believer take? His course is plain and safe. He must retire to the appropriate and professed evidences of his religion, which form, as it were, a bulwark to his faith. Here he must take his stand, though a host of collateral objections should start up, just as in the daily intercourse of life he is compelled to chuse and to act, where the difficulties from the opposite side may be infinitely multiplied by a prolific imagination, and where many of them are real and unanswerable.

But will not such behaviour be exposed to the