refined, the virtuous and the vicious, the young and the old, of every generation and tribe of men. Yet these books proceeded from the Jewish nation, a people rude and ignorant, and more narrow and bigoted than any other, and from writers chiefly drawn from the least educated classes. Surely they must have been moved by the Spirit of God.
15. How may the divine origin of Christianity be argued from its moral character ?
It is neither a well-founded nor a safe position for the advo- cates of revelation to assume that they are competent to form an d priori judgment of the kind of revelation that God ought to make. Yet let it be considered that, although we cannot always know what it is wise for God to do, nor see the wisdom of all he has done, yet we can infallibly discern in his works the presence of a supernatural intelligence. Precisely so we cannot prescribe what it is right for God to do, nor always understand the right- eousness of what he has done, nevertheless we can infallibly dis- cern in his word a moral excellence and power altogether super- human.
The moral system taught in the Bible is —
1st. The most perfect standard of righteousness ever known among men. (1.) It respects the inward state of the soul. (2.) The virtues which it inculcates, although many of them are re- pugnant to human pride, are, nevertheless, more essentially excel- lent than those originally set forth in any other system, e. g., hu- mility, meekness, long-suffering, patience, love the fulfilling of the law, and the intrinsic hatefulness and ill desert of all sin.
2d. This morality is set forth as a duty we owe to an infinite God. His will is the rule, his love the motive, his glory the end of all duty.
3d. It is enforced by the highest possible motives, e. g., infi- nite happiness and honor as the objects of God's approbation, or infinite misery and shame as the objects of his displeasure.
4th. This moral system is perfectly adapted to the whole na- ture of man, physical, intellectual, moral, and to all of the multi- form relations which he sustains to his fellow-men and to God. It includes eveiy principle and rules every thought and emotion, and provides for every relation. It is never guilty of the least
60 EVIDENCES OF CHKISTIANITY.
solecism. It never falls below the highest right, and yet never generates enthusiasm or fanaticism, nor does it ever fail in any unexpected development of relations or circumstances.
Hence we conclude —
1st. That this system necessarily presupposes upon the part of its constructors a supernatural knowledge of man's nature and relations, and a supernatural capacity of adapting general princi- ples to the moral regulation of that nature under all relations.
2d. This system, when compared with all others known to man, necessarily suggests the possession by its constructors of a supernaturally perfect ideal of moral excellence.
3d. Bad men never could have conceived such a system, nor having conceived it, would they have desired, much less died, to to establish it. Good men never could have perpetrated such a fraud as the Bible is if not true.
16. How is the divine origin of Christianity proved by the character of its Founder ?
That character, as it is known to us, is the resultant of the biographical contributions severally of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They evidently write without concert, and each with a special immediate object. They, in the most candid and inarti- ficial manner, detail his words and actions; they never generalize or sketch his character in abstract terms, nor attempt to put their subject, or the word or action related of him, in an advan- tageous light.
Yet this character of Christ is —
1st. Identical, (see Paley's Ev, Part II., chap, iv.,) i. e., these four different writers succeed in giving us one p'erfectly consistent character in every trait of thought, feeling, word, and action. They must have drawn therefore from the life. Such a composi- tion by four different hands, writing in their inartificial, unsyste- matic way, would be the most incredible of all miracles.
2d. Unique and original. There have been many other redeemers, prophets, priests, and incarnate gods portrayed in mythology ; but this character confessedly stands without the shadow of competition in universal history or fiction. And Jews, of all men, were the authors of it.
3d. Morally and spiritually perfect, by the confession of all
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friends and foes. This perfection was not merely a negative free- dom from taint; but the most positive and active holiness, and the miraculous blending of all virtues, strength, and gentleness, dignity and lowliness, unbending righteousuess and long-suffering patience and costliest grace,