the discussion stands, and to comment on the peculiar features which at any particular epoch it most prominently presents, as indicative of strength or weakness of the advance and security of the cause -if, in accordance with the real progress of enlightenment, its advocates have had the wisdom to rescind what better information showed defective, and to substitute views in accordance with higher knowledge; or, on the other hand, inevitable symptoms of weakness and inefficiency, if such salutary cautions have been neglected. To offer some general remarks of this kind on the existing state of these discussions will be the object of the present Essay.

Before proceeding to the main question we may, however, properly premise a brief reflection on the spirit and temper in which it should be discussed. In writings on these subjects it must be confessed we too often find indications of a polemical acrimony, where a calm discussion of arguments would be more becoming as well as more consistent with the proposed object; the too frequent assumption of the part of the special partisan and ingenious advocate, when the character to be sustained should be rather that of the unbiassed judge; too much of hasty and captious objection on the one hand, or of settled and inveterate prejudice on the other; too strong a tendency not fairly to appreciate, or even to keep out of sight, the broader features of the main question, in the eagerness to single out particular salient points for attack; too ready a disposition to triumph in lesser details, rather than steadily to grasp more comprehensive principles, and leave

minor difficulties to await their solution, and to regard this or that particular argument as if the entire credit of the cause were staked upon it.

And if on the one side there is often a just complaint that objections are urged in a manner and tone offensive to religious feeling and conscientious prepossessions, which are, at least, entitled to respectful consideration; so, on the other, there is too often evinced a want of sympathy with the difficulties which many so seriously feel in admitting the alleged evidences, and which many habitual believers do not appreciate, perhaps because they have never thought or inquired deeply on the subject; or what is more, have believed it wrong and impious to do so.

Any appeal to argument must imply perfect freedom of conviction. It is a palpable absurdity to put reasons before a man, and yet wish to compel him to adopt them, or to anathematize him if he find them unconvincing; to repudiate him as an unbeliever, because he is careful to find satisfactory grounds for his belief; or to denounce him as a sceptic, because he is scrupulous to discriminate the truth; to assert that his honest doubts evince a moral obliquity; in a word, that he is no judge of his own mind; while it is obviously implied that his instructor is so-or, in other words, is omniscient and infallible. When serious difficulties have been felt and acknowledged on any important subject, and a writer undertakes the task of endeavouring to obviate them, it is but a fair demand that, if the reader be one of those who do not feel the difficulties, or do not need or appreciate any further argument to enlighten or support his

belief, he should not cavil at the introduction of topics, which may be valuable to others, though needless, or distasteful to himself. Such persons are in no way called upon to enter into the discussion, but they are unfair if they accuse those who do so of agitating questions of whose existence they have been unconscious; and of unsettling men's minds, because their own prepossessions have been long settled, and they do not perceive the difficulties of others, which it is the very aim of such discussion to remove.

Perhaps most of the various parties who have at all engaged in the discussion of these subjects are agreed in admitting at least some distinction between the influences of feeling and those of reason; the impressions of conscience and the deductions of intellect; the dictations of moral and religious sense, and the conclusions from evidence; in reference especially to the questions agitated as to the grounds of belief in Divine revelation. Indeed, when we take into account the nature of the objects considered, the distinction is manifest and undeniable; when a reference is made to matters of external fact (insisted on as such) it is obvious that reason and intellect can alone be the proper judges of the evidence of such facts. When, on the other hand, the question may be as to points of moral or religious doctrine, it is equally clear, other and higher grounds of judgment and conviction must be appealed to.

In the questions now under consideration, both classes of arguments are usually involved. It is the professed principle of at least a large section of those

who discuss the subject, that the question is materially connected with the truth and evidence of certain external alleged historical facts; while again, all will admit that the most essential and vital portion of the inquiry refers to matters of a higher—of a more internal, moral, and spiritual kind.

But while this distinction is clearly implied and even professedly acknowledged by the disputants, it is worthy of careful remark, how extensively it is overlooked and kept out of sight in practice; how commonly-almost universally, we find writers and reasoners taking up the question, even with much ability and eloquence, and arguing it out sometimes on the one, sometimes on the other ground, forgetful of their own professions, and in a way often quite inconsistent with them.

Thus we continually find the professed advocates of an external revelation and historical evidence, nevertheless making their appeal to conscience and feeling, and decrying the exercise of reason; and charging those who find critical objections in the evidence with spiritual blindness and moral perversity; and on the other hand we observe the professed upholders of faith and internal conviction as the only sound basis of religion, nevertheless regarding the external facts as not less essential truth which it would be profane to question. It often seems to be rather the want of clear apprehension in the first instance of the distinct kind and character of such inquiries, when on the one side directed to the abstract question of evidence, and when on the other pointing to the practical object of addressing the moral and religious feelings and affec

tions, which causes so many writers on these subjects to betray an inconsistency between their professed purpose and their mode of carrying it out. They avow matter-of-fact inquiry-a question of the critical evidence for alleged events-yet they pursue it as if it were an appeal to moral sentiments; in which case it would be a virtue to assent, and a crime to deny : if it be the one, it should not be proposed as the other.

Thus it is the common language of orthodox writings and discourses to advise the believer, when objections or difficulties arise, not to attempt to offer a precise answer, or to argue the point, but rather to look at the whole subject as of a kind which ought to be exempt from critical scrutiny and be regarded with a submission of judgment, in the spirit of humility and faith. This advice may be very just in reference to practical impressions; yet if the question be one (as is so much insisted on) of external facts, it amounts to neither more nor less than a tacit surrender of the claims of external evidence and historical reality. We are told that we ought to investigate such high questions rather with our affections than with our logic, and approach them rather with good dispositions and right motives, and with a desire to find the doctrine true; and thus shall discover the real assurance of its truth in obeying it; suggestions which, however good in a moral and practical sense, are surely inapplicable if it be made a question of facts.

If we were inquiring into historical evidence in any other case (suppose e.g. of Cæsar's landing in Britain) it would be little to the purpose to be told that we must look at the case through our desires rather than our