OFTHK University of California, OIP^TT OK Mrs. SARAH P. WALS WORTH. Received October, 1894. fiAccessions No, sS^^Oy^ Class No. Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2008 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arcliive.org/details/demonstrationoftOOkeitricli K^y" Of THX TTiriVBRSITTj DEMONSTRATION THE TRUTH CHRISTIAN -RELIGION. BY ALEXANDER KEITH. D.D. AUTHOR OF "the EVIDENCE OF PROPHECY," «&C. " Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord." — Isa. i., 8. " Where is the wise ? where is the scribe ? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?" — 1 Cok.i.,20. FROM THE SECOND EDINBURGH EDITION. X E W Y O K K : HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, y U A N K L I > S Q U A K E. 1855. [TJiriVBESlTTI (iTt/oi syrey TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD BEXLEY, 1« TESTIMONY OF CHRISTIAN ESTEEM, AND IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF PERSONAL QUALIFICATIONS, THIS TREATISE C» respectfully fnscvlfielr BY HIS lordship's FAITHFUL SERVANT, THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. In adducing aad applying the scriptural prediction and refutation of the great argument which scoffers in the last days have so strenuously urged against the credibility of miracles, the writer of these pages intimated, above seven years ago (Evidence of Prophecy, 6th edition), that it was his purpose to give a more full consideration to the subject in " a general and connected view of the Evidences of Christianity, which he was preparing for the press, and which he hoped to be able to compress into a small com- pass, in the form of a manual." His pen, however, was of necessity laid aside, owing to sudden and continued illness ; and long ceased to be, if it had ever been, that of a " ready writer." And it has only been at different intervals and in diverse places, to which the state of his health required his removal, that he has been enabled to complete the essay. Though the feebleness of the hand has, he fears, been often transferred to the page, yet the inadequate advocacy of the truth may happily serve so much the more to show that the strength rests solely in the cause. The frailty of an earthen vessel cannot deteriorate from the preciousness of the treasure which it bears. The author has simply sought to exhibit how speedily and §asily, when brought into close contact, truth triumphs over error. A " general" view of the evidence, as once he proposed, he has not at- tempted to give. And that task is less needful since the recent publication, in a very cheap form, of the excellent Lectures on the Evidences of Revealed Religion by minis- A2 VI PREFACE ters of Glasgow. But the author trusts that the view of the Evidences given in the following pages will be found to be 80 " connected," that the relative connexion and union of the separate parts will prove to be a multiplication of the power of each, as the compound far excels the simple lever. And were it to be the instrument of removing doubts from the skeptic's mind, and of confirming the faith of the be- liever, the writer would thankfully yield the praise which is ever due to the God of grace and truth, who alone can turn from darkness to light, and perfect strength in weak- ness. St. Cyrus, July, 1838. CONTENTS. Introduction Page 13-17 CHAPTER I. Existing Proofs of the Inspiration of the Jewish Prophets . . 18-52 CHAPTER n. The appropriation of Hume's Arguments against Miracles, as foretold and confuted in Scripture ; its Fallacy shown from the Fact that the Laws of Nature are not unalterable, but have been altered ; itself a Proof of Pro- phetic Inspiration, on the uniform Experience of the Truth of which rests the Testiinony of Jesus 52-83 CHAPTER III. The Antiquity and Authenticity of the Old Testament Scriptures, in four Sections ; concuaring Testimony from universal Tradition, existing Facts, Names of Cities and Persons, ancient Institutions, &lc. ; Objections drawn from Geology refuted by comparing the Mosaic Account of the Creation of the Heavens and the Earth with the Observations and Discoveries both of Astronomers and Geologists 83-150 CHAPTER IV. Connexion between the Old Testament and the New, as shown by the Tes- timony of the Prophets to the coming of a Messiah, and consequent Ex- pectation of his coming, throughout the whole East, at the Commence- ment of the Christian Era 150-160 CHAPTER V. The Origin and Progress of Christianity, according to the Testimony ol Heathen Writers ; Comparison of the Accounts given by them with those of Scriptures 160-180 CHAPTER VI. Genuineness of the New Testament Scriptures, as written by the Evange- lists and Apostles of Jesus. Continuous and numerous Quotations from the New Testament by Christian Writers ; their Testimony to the Facts recorded in Scripture, and its Confirmation by their Sufferings and Mar- tyrdom as witnesses to the Truth ...... 180-217 CHAPTER VII. Appropriation of the Arguments of Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian, in Proof of the Genuineness of the New Testament and the Messiahship of Je- sus 217-261 VIII CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. Of the Authenticity of the New Testament Scripturo^ . Page 261-283 CHAPTER IX. Testimony of the Prophets to the Messiahship of Jesus . 283-329 APPENDIX 331-33« LIST OF ENGRAVINGS. Map, Frontispiece, Page Illustrations of the Elevation of Strata •. 64 Jewish Brickmakers 101 Mount Hor, Aaron's Tomb 102 Arch of Titus , 120 Plate I. (Astronomical) 126 H 130 III . . . .132 Fossil Plants ' 136 Do ib. Fossil Tree ib. Plate IV. (Astronomical) . . .137 V 139 VI 146 DEMONSTRATION TRUTH OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION DEMONSTRATION TRUTH OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. INTRODUCTION. It may seem to be alike superfluous in itself and pre- sumptuous in the author to add another to the already nu- merous treatises on the evidences of Christianity. It needs, however, but little observation to discern that the subject is far from being exhausted. Though an imposture might be palmed upon the world, and many cunning devices may give it the semblance of truth ; yet, as these are successively de- tected and exposed, the investigation becomes complete ; and one hollow prop after another is subverted by rational inquiry, till the whole fabric of falsehood sinks into the darkness from whence it sprung. It is far otherwise with truth, which can never be disproved. Its own nature is not altered, however much men may disguise, misrepresent, or disbelieve it. The more rigidly and impartially it is scrutinized, the more clearly it is confirmed. Doubts and difficulties, engendered by igno- rance, disappear on a full investigation. The refutation of objections creates new proof. Whenever conviction is well- founded and sure, a reason, in respect to evidence, is ready to be given in answer to every question. In these days of inquiry and discovery, it has passed into an adage or proverb, that truth is great and will prevail. And, as truth cannot ul- timately be but on the side of truth, when any facts are stated as militating against it, their proper relation to the subject has only to be established, that they may add to the confirm- ation of the truth. And, after all the labours of unbelievers, it is even thus with the Christian faith. Every assault has served to strengthen it. No weapon against it has prospered. Every renewed investigation has rendered its evidence more complete. Time in its progress leaves many a witness on its behalf; and while the corruptions of Christianity may be successfully assailed, and their overthrow become an addi- tional triumph of the truth over error, all the powers of dark- B 14 INTRODUCTiON. ness cannot prevail against the light of the gospel ; but the evidence of its truth, like the path of the just to which it leads, is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. No sooner was Christianity promulgated, than the cross of Christ became a stumbling-block to the Jews, and was accounted foolishness by the Greeks. And, in the early ages, apologies, or pleadings in defence of its truth, were written in. refutation of the objections then urged against it by the inveterate hatred of the Jews, and the subtle philosophy which idoHzed a pompous paganism, and scoffed at the sim- plicity of the gospel. The arguments of the first writers who publicly attacked it — though known chiefly by the refu- tations with which they were speedily met — have been as confidently urged anew, in modern times, as if they had never been answered, and could not be confuted. And in the late age of infidelity, the darkness of which still broods over a great part of the earth, not a single field has been left unexplored wherein an objection could be gleaned ; and not an effort, from the most refined speculations to the coarsest ribaldry, has been untried against the Christian religion. Its enemies cannot say that it is from the want of numerous and powerful assailants that it has remained unshaken. Infidel- ity, in point of argument, has tried its worst ; though in start- ing objections it has led to the production of evidence, and in tampering with facts has unwittingly substantiated the truth. And, were it not that the praise is unmerited, because the service was unmeant, the friends of religion might well pay as thankful an acknowledgment to unbelievers for their abundant and beneficial labours, as to the defenders of the truth, for the truth's sake, who need not the commendation of man. But it were worse than mockery for the Christian to render thanks to either, if not deeply impressed with heartfelt gratitude to God, who, overruling all things, brings good out of evil, and, taking the cunning in their craftiness, brings light out of darkness, because, in his Providence, it has happened that the enemies of the truth have ultimately become its unconscious supporters, and that, in vindicating the Christian faith, the task is now easy and the time of apol- ogy is past. From other causes than want of evidence, it may be as impracticable as ever to convince gainsayers, who, as at first, will not believe the doctrine of Jesus, because it is truth. But their arguments must be refuted, and their mouths must be stopped. And it is not for those who have to contend, ear- nestly for the faith to act only on the defensive. Much of the Christian evidence is in its nature aggressive, and as such it should be used. But the truth has been assailed as if it had been a lie ; and infidels, by the frequency and boldness of INTRODUCTION. 15 their attacks, have assumed a seeming strength and triumph to which they'have no claim, except in leading captive the willing mind, deceiving and being deceived. Their victims have' been many. They have assailed every bulwark of Christian- it)^ and threatened to raze them, till, like the temple of Jeru- salem, not a stone should be left upon another. And assu- ming the victory of infidelity to be complete, they denomina- ted the period of its greatest prevalence the age of reason ! Christians may surely copy the zeal of their enemies, and realize against them their highest pretensions. The weap- ons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty, through God, to the pulling down of strongholds ; and they need but to be rightly wielded in order to put to flight the armies of the aliens. And, in the warfare of the enemies of Zion, under the banner of him who leadeth captivity captive, any " sol- dier of Christ" thus armed may brave the boldest of the chiefs of skepticism, and lead them captive in the cause of truth. After the utmost rage of the enemy has been exhib- ited, and all their strength exhausted, the faithful host that long withstood them unbroken, and repelled every assault, may in turn become the assailants, trusting to the God of truth in whose strength they stand, that the victory will final- ly be the more completely their own. Though Goliaths, as of old, have defied the armies of the living God, and dis- mayed the faint-hearted in Israel, yet at the last even they can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth ; by their own words they must be confuted, and by their own swords they must be slain. In order to come at once to common ground with gainsay- ers, it is best to meet them on their own, and to show both the right and the might by which Christians have and hold it. Nothing is to be assumed or supposed, where, however rea- sonable, nothing will be conceded; but adducing facts as proofs, and enemies as witnesses, and their very arguments as our needful reasons, the feeblest advocate of the Christian faith — beginning with admitted, positive, undeniable, existing, and visible facts reclaimed from our foes, and advancing con- nectedly from proof to proof at every point — may as freely disclaim all need, as the most unyielding skeptic would deny him all right, of commencing and conducting an investigation into th^ absolute verity of his faith, on any assumption or supposition whatever. And through means which God has given, and proofs which, in his overruling Providence, ene- mies have supplied, a body of evidence may be adduced which renders any supposition needless, and sets all objec- tions at defiance ; the gospel may be vindicated as the word of Him who truly said of his kingdom, " Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken ; but on whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder ;" and au^ht less than a dem- 16 INTRODUCTION. onstration of the truth of Christianity would be a disparage- ment of the faith that is nothing less than diwne. . Abundant as are the materials for the construction of such an irrefragable argument, yet additional evidence is still ac- cumulating. While the progress of physical science dis- closes the works of the God of nature, it illustrates also the truth of his word. The very objections of ignorance become the arguments of knowledge. And, as superstition is shaken, true i^eligion is confirmed. And the'iabours of all the ene- mies of the truth, in seeking to confound Christianity with its corruptions, or to subvert them together, is only the clear- ing away of the rubbish which has too long obscured the rock on which the church of Christ is built ; and that man must know but little of the spirit of the times, and be ill-instructed unto the kingdom of Heaven, who, in seeking to illustrate the truth of the gospel, could not readily bring forth out of his treasure things neio as well as old. " Things old" must necessarily be brought forth, though every Christian might rightfully reckon them in his treasures, and the Christian faith would be left without defenders if these were not still adduced, as they have been in ages past, times without number. But something " new" may be found in the arrangement, combination, and connexion of the evi- dence, in the application of many of the facts on which it rests, the introduction of others, and in the adoption and use of the arguments of our adversaries. So liberally have unbelievers unconsciously repaid in facts their idle scoffings against the prophecies, that they have fur- nished the means of demonstrating their inspiration, sufficient singly to form a sure foundation whereon to rest the whole superstructure of Christian evidence. In the following treatise, existing facts, which any man may witness, abundantly supply, in the first place, a palpable dem- onstration that the prophets of old spake by inspiration of omniscient God. The great infidel argument urged in modern times against the credibility of miracles, is next — as recorded and refuted in Scripture — appropriated and applied as Chris- tian evidence, and as involving the principle on which mira- cles give proof of revelation. The way is thus doubly pre- pared for illustrating the credibility of the Old Testament and of the New ; the former as heralding the Messiah, and preparatory of his coming ; the latter as recording concern- ing Christ and the Christian religion, the things which Moses and the prophets did say should come. The leading sentiment which pervades, connects, and illumines the whole, js, that the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. Associated with this theme, other proofs, not wholly destitute of novelty, are adduced in verification of the Jewish Scriptures. And the inspiration of these, together with the witness which thev INTRODUCTION. 17 bore of a coming Saviour, being manifestly set forth, the his- torical testimony borne to Jesus has only to take its proper place, and to be viewed in connexion with the testimony of the prophets, in order that not even a heathen could narrate facts respecting Christianity, or urge arguments against it, without thereby giving- proofs of the Messiahship of Jesus The Christian testimony, though assuming a lower position in the order of evidence than that which it generally occu- pies, is thus endowed with a far higher power than any testi- mony could exclusively possess, and is neither to be evaded nor resisted. And, finally, the authenticity of the records being established, a comparison between the prophecies and the gospel sets demonstration before the eye — as the Spirit by whom the prophets spake can alone bring conviction to the heart, in believing unto righteousness — that Jesus and the Messiah, as well as the doctrine of the gospel and the prom- ised salvation, are ahke one and the same. Instead of exhausting the subject of the evidence of Chris- tianity, scarcely a tithe of it is touched on in the following pages, as many excellent and voluminous treatises may tes- tify. It has been the writer's purpose to show that Christi- anity, in all reason, is accredited as divine so soon as it is rightly seen even in a single view, or in its due relationship, in part, to Judaism. Its adaptation to the nature, or its ade- quateness, when truly embraced, to the salvation of man, is a theme with which he purposed to close the present essay, as showing forth in still brighter form the Divine handiwork and heavenly beauty of the inner sanctuary. But even a step or two into the outer court affords demonstration that the workmanship is of God. If enabled to advance a step far- ther, it may yet be the author's privilege, as it is his hope, to cast another mite into the Christian treasury. If his present labour — often wrought out in much weakness, and always in conscious inadequacy for so great a cause — may be prized, at that rate, by Him who looked not unpityingly or unappro- vingly on the widow's mite, the commendation or the cen- sure, the flattery or the calumnies of man would be all alike un- worthy of a thought. And if any gain, however small, hence accrue to the Christian cause — if God's word hasin any way been magnified, while the wisdom, the pride, and the power of those who set themselves against it has been brought low, even to the ground — none can rejoice more than the writer of these pages in the renewed illustration thereby given to the Scriptural truth, that God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty, that no flesh should glory in his presence. B 2 18 EXISTING PROOFS OF THE CHAPTER I. EXISTING PROOFS OP THE INSPIRATION OF THE JEWISH PROPHETS. So abundant and obvious are thfe proofs of the want of true faith in a Redeemer from all iniquity, and so clear and conclusive, when impartially and fully investigated, are the evidences of Christianity, that it is infinitely more needful to urge on professing Christians compliance with the Scrip- tural precept, to examine themselves whether they be in the faith, than to ask the unbeliever to abate one jot of his skep- ticism, till, if not altogether inveterate, it yield to positive evidence and demonstrative proof. It is one great office of reason to distinguish between truth and error, to weigh the evidence which may be adduced on both sides of a question, and rejecting that which is false, and adhering to that which is true, to judge what is right, and, trying all things, to hold fast what is good. While the undisguised enemies of the Christian religion have main- tained, in contradiction to these Christian precepts, that it is not to be defended on the principles of human reason, nor fitted by any means to undergo such a trial, the decision may be left to the arbitrament of reason, whether the disbelief of the truth of Christianity be not of all things the most irra- tional as well as dangerous. Man has more understanding than the beasts that perish ; and, in the exercise of that high faculty of our nature, it behooves him, undeceived either by vain imaginations or false pleasures, to see that — in the way in which he is going or in which others would lead him — he neither go nor be led like an ox to the slaughter, or be as a bird that hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life. " A wise man," says Hume, " proportions his belief to the evidence :" and we ask no other rule for the confirmation of faith and the extinction of skepticism. Let us thus rea- son together from the first line to the last ; let faith be pro- portioned to evidence ; let the testimony of enemies be heard ; let facts be looked at ; and let the most direct infer- ences be drawn in the plainest exercise of unbiased rea son, and every reader may decide for himself, on the sound- est dictates of an enlightened judgment, on which side, to an absolute certainty and entire conviction, the truth must lie, in respect to the question here to be discussed, whether that which was spoken by the prophets of old has come or not, or whether they spake as the Spirit gave them utter- INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS. 19 ance, or out of the imaginations of their own hearts. We speak as unto " loise men,'''' judge ye what rvc say. Holding to the principle of rejecting, as entirely unneces- sary, any preliminary assumption or supposition, we begin with the ocular demonstration given by existing facts to the inspiration of the Old Testament prophets, whose writings were translated into Greek above three hundred and forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. Reason and Scripture alike warrant that the precedence in the Christian testimony should now be given to visible facts, which at the end do speak and cannot lie, and are not to be gainsaid. A divine doctrine might be taught, and yet the question be asked, Who hath believed our report ? Hu- man testimony may have been borne to it in ages past by a thousand tongues, and written by a thousand pens, and the same question be as often repeated. The light might shine in darkness, and yet the darkness comprehend it not. But though men will not judge what is right, nor, if told, believe what is true, yet if they close not their eyes, and wilfully choose the darkness rather than the light, they must see what is set before their eyes, not in abstract forms, but in palpable facts. It is thus that the truth of the word of the Lord by the prophets may be seen ; and the prediction more frequently repeated than any other, and affixed to many threatened judgments, may itself be thus verified — they SHALL KNOW that I am the Lord. " If by a prophet," says Paine, " we are to suppose a man to whom the Almighty communicated some event that would take place in future, either there were such men or there were not. If there were, it is consistent to believe that the event so communicated would be told in terms that could be understood." It is the purpose of this chapter to show that there were such men ; because the events com- municated to them were told in terms not only easy to be understood, but impossible to be misapprehended ; because the events were also such as no foresight or s;igacity of man could ever have discovered or conceived ; and because that, instead of having to be searched for in the records of a high antiquity, they have, in manifold instances, been re- cently or newly ascertained, so that all controversy may be here cut short by abundantly adducing existing facts end modern discoveries in literal fulfilment of manifold prophe- cies, the antiquity of which, as preceding these events, is altogether indisputable. To accumulate opposing facts is not the worst mode of subverting wild and baseless theories ; and positive proof may safely be set against unsubstantial and fanciful objec- tions. The prophets of Israel have all been stigmatized as " impostors and liars," and the book as " a book of lies ;" OF THB "^.^^ 20 EXISTING PROOFS OF THE their writings, those especially of Isaiah, have been desig- nated as " bombastical rant, full of extravagant metaphor, without application, and destitute of meaning." But, as every reader must see on comparing the predictions with their respective events, our enemies being witnesses, that which so far surpassed all conjecture as to be deemed ex- travagant metaphor, is uniformly made manifest to be the literal truth ; and words could not have a clearer meaning or more precise application than those prophecies, of which, after the lapse of many ages, we now see the fulfilment. In a guilty world, where his laws are transgressed and his word is disregarded, the Lord is known hy the judgment which he executes. In the development of them, so great a change in manifold instances has passed on human things, that these have become the reverse of what they were ; and, in token that mercy rejoiceth against judgment, they shall yet again, as predicted, be the reverse of what they are. From one extreme to another, their changeful forms are ever shaped, in their appointed time, according to the pro- phetic word. And, while past history is a corroboration of that word, when the desolations of many generations shall be raised up, all flesh shall know that He, who hath spoken it and caused it to be done, is the Lord. But, restricting our view to existing facts, the inspiration of the prophets of Is- rael may be visibly and vividly demonstrated. In the latter days we may consider it perfectly. And we may come and see the desolations which, because of iniquity, the Lord hath wrought in the earth. Ancient cities and kingdoms have borne " the burden" of his word. Before it, all the nations which in ancient times were the enemies of Israel, have been utterly destroyed, the Arabs excepted, who still dwell in the presence of their brethren. The Jews have been scattered among all nations, are yet dispersed in all countries, and distinct from every people ; and their unpar- alleled fate is a perfect parallel of the prophecies. Judea, Ammon, Moab, Edom, and Philistia, bear their brand in every feature. A plain, whereon fishers spread their nets, is the prophetic representative of princely Tyre. Cottages of shep- herds have supplanted the palaces of the lords of the Philis- tines ; and wherever the rest of the land has not been given up to the desert, folds for flocks occupy the places of the hosts of the enemies of Israel. The chief city of Ammon is a stable for camels ; that of Moab is a ruinous heap ; flocks lie down in the empty cities, and the wandering ten- ants of the desolate land flee for a refuge to the rocks. The temples of Petra are courts for owls ; and the word of the Lord against the capital of Edom, amid perpetual monu- ments of its ancient glory, is written with a pen of iron on the rock for ever. Babylon the great has been converted INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS. 21 into heaps ; and its walls, utterly broken, have been swept from off the face of the earth ; and not a phantom evoked by vain fancy, but the spirit of prophecy, sits on every ruin, and each, as addressed, is an echo of its voice ; and the whole diversified and yet discriminated scene is one of the rolls of its literal testimony spread forth before the world at this hour, although all the combined intelligence of Europe was unequal to the task, at the beginning of the present century, of depicting the ruins of Babylon with half the accuracy with which the prophets of Israel delineated the grave, as now it lies, of " the greatest city," as Pliny termed it, " on which the sun ever shone." While the multiplicity of predictions respecting Judea AND THE ADJACENT REGIONS OF Syria demands our primary consideration, Volney, from the copiousness of his details and the discriminating nature of his descriptions, as well as from his inveterate hostility to the Christian cause, has a right to be a leading witness. The prophecies are so lumi- nous and apposite, that a word to point out their meaning or apphcation would be superfluous. They are so numerous that, when viewed collectively, they in a great measure dis- claim the aid of farther argument to elucidate the inspiration of which they testify. And in regard to the facts which render their fulfilment obvious, they are so striking and abun- dant as to render complete the triumph of truth over error. And as no man has contributed to this triumph so greatly as an enemy of the faith has unconsciously done, it is only need- ful to prefix a remark or two respecting the validity of his testimony, before we bring those facts which he himself has stated to refute the arguments which he and all others have urged against the inspiration of the Old Testament prophets. The name of Volney is too well known as that of a most zealous partisan and successful promoter of infidelity for the possibility of his testimony ever being objected to as partial to the Christian cause. It assuredly was no inten- tion of his to elucidate Scripture prophecy. And, whatever his theoretical tenets may have been, his character is now universally established — and he stands indisputably in the very first rank — as an accurate and intelligent delineator of the various features of the countries which he visited, and the character, condition, and manners of the inhabitants. His Travels in Syria and Egypt are justly characterized as " a treatise on the country which he visited ;" " an admirable book," and of " extraordinary merit."* And the following " testimony of great value" is given by the Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone, late Governor of Bombay, in his " Account of * Edinburgh Review, No. 50, p. 417, 22 EXISTING PROOFS OF THE the Kingdom of Caubul." " Among many other talents, M. Volney possesses, in a remarkable degree, the merit of point- ing out what is peculiar in the manners and institutions of the East, by comparing and contrasting them with those of Europe. So far does he excel all other writers in this re- spect, that if one wishes thoroughly to understand other travellers in Mohammedan countries, it is necessary to have read Volney first."* And in reference to the fulness and ac- curacy of his descriptions, it must suffice to quote the follow- ing testimony of high and unqualified approbation, with which Malte-Brun, the first authority in geography, intro- duces his description of Syria and Palestine : " The countries belonging to Asiatic Turkey which re- main to be described have so frequently attracted the atten- tion of travellers, that a large library might be formed of the accounts of them vi^hich have been published. Two o^ three volumes could scarce contain the names of the pilgrims who have left journals of their travels in the Holy Land ; works full of repetition and puerility, yet claiming the examination of the enlightened critic. From these, compared with the writings of Abulfedaand Josephus, the learned Busching has formed an excellent geographical treatise. In modern times we have judicious missionaries, such as Dandini ; antiquarj.es, as Wood ; and naturalists, as Maundrel and Hasselquist, who have ably elucidated particular parts of these countries. It was reserved for the genius of Volney to combine their detached accounts with the fruits of his own observation and study ^ so as to PRESENT THE WORLD WITH A COMPLETE DESCRIPTION OP Syria, "t The description of Syria and Palestine given by Volney has not, therefore, to be considered as only that of a single eyewitness, but as the collation and combination of many accounts. But though he sojourned long in the land^ and saw what he described ; though he might have searched into journals of travels so numerous that it would require a vol- ume to contain their names ; although the substance of these was made ready to his hand, and although his description of Syria be justly esteemed " a model," and accounted com- plete ; yet even he, after all his observation and study, how- ever satisfactory may be the result to the geographer, pre- sents not information sufficiently discriminating and copious to satisfy the inquirer who seeks, but seeks in vain, for any description of Syria so full and complete as to supply of it- self every predicted fact, or to cope with the vision of the prophets. To the evidence of Volney that of other and more recent travellers must therefore be superadded. ♦ Edinburgh Review, No. 50, Elphinstone's Account of Caubul, p. 232. i Malte-Brun's Geography, toI. ii., p. 126. INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS. 23 It needs not a syllable to tell how clearly his description, which was written towards the close of the 18th century, and those of others, written in the present, accord with those prophecies, the latest of which were indisputably delivered at least several centuries before the Christian era, seeing that the perfect parallelism between the predictions and the events, in reference to Palestine and many countries besides, may be thus set before the sight. The generation to come of " I journeyed in the empire your children that shall rise of the Ottomans, and traversed up after you, and the stran- the provinces, which formerly GER THAT SHALL COME FROM A wcrc kiugdoms of Egypt and FAR LAND, whcn they see the Syria." " I wandered over the plagues of that land, and the country'''' — " I enumerated the sicknesses which the Lord kingdoms of Damascus and hath laid upon it, shall say, Idumea, of Jerusalem and Sa- Deut. xxix., 22. maria. This Syria, said I to myself, now almost depopu- lated, then contained a hun- dred flourishing cities, and abounded with towns, villages, and hamlets. What are be- come of so many productions of the hand of man? What are become of these ages of abundance and of life V &c. — Volney'^s Ruins, c. i., 11, p. 1, 2,7. Wherefore hath the Lord " Great God ! from whence done this unto this land 1 What proceed such melancholy rev- meaneth the heat of this great olutions ? For what cause is anger ? lb. 24. the fortune of these countries so strikingly changed 1 Why are so many cities destroyed 1 Why is not that ancient popu- lation reproduced and perpet- uated?"— J*., c. ii., p. 8. I will scatter you among the The Jews, as all know, have heathen, and will draw out a been scattered among the hea- s word after you : and your land then. " I have traversed this shall be desolate, Levit. xxxvi., desolate country," says Vol- 33. ney. Ruins, c. ii., p. 7. Then shall the land enjoy " Every day I found in my her Sabbaths (or rest, or be route fields abandoned by the untilled). plough."— id., c. i. "The art • of cultivation is in the most de- plorable state."— Volney^s Trav- els, V. ii., p. 413. 24 EXISTING PROOFS OF THE As long as it lieth desolate, " Why do these lands no and ye be in your enemies^ land ; longer boast their former tera- even then shall the land rest, v. perature and fertility ? Why 34. The land also shall be left have these favours been trans- of them, and shall enjoy her ferred, as it were, /or so many Sabbaths, or rest, while she ages, to other nations and dii- lieth desolate without them, v. ferent climes 1" — Volneifs Ru- 43. They (the Jews on their ins, c. xi., p. 9. final return) shall raise up the former desolations, the desola- tions of many generations, Isa. Ixi., 4. See, also, Isa. xxxiii., 15 ; Iviii., 12. Ezek. xxxvi., 24, 25, 33-36; xxxviii., 8. Dan. ix., 27. Hosea, iii., 4. Your land, strangers devour " Within two thousand five it in your presence, and it is hundred years we may reckon desolate, as overthrown by ten invasions which have in- strangers, Isa. i., 7. troduced into Syria a succes- sion oi foreign nations." — Vol- ney^s Travels, vol. i., p. 356. Destruction upon destruc- " Syria became a province tion is cried, Jer. iv,, 20. Mis- of the Roman empire. In the chiefshall come upon mischief, year 622 (636) the Arabian Ezek. vii., 21, 26. Tell your tribes, collected under the ban- children of it, and let your chil- ners of Mohammed, seized, or dren tell their children, and rather laid it waste. Since their children another genera- that period, torn to pieces by tion. For a nation is come up the civil wars of the Fatimites upon my land, strong and with- and the Ommiades, wrested out number, &c., Joel i. from the califs by their re- bellious governors, taken from them by the Turkmen soldiery invaded by the European cru- saders, retaken by the Mame- lukes of Egypt, and ravaged by Tamerlane and his Tartars, it has at length fallen into the hands of the Ottoman Turks." — Volney's Travels, p. 357. I will give it into the hands Judea has been the scene of strangers for a prey, of frequent invasions " which . have introduced a succession of foreign nations {des peuples etrangers).''^ — lb., p. 365. And into the wicked of the " When the Ottomans took ezxih for 9, spoil, Ezek. vii. i 21. Syria from the Mamelukes, they considered it only as the spoil of a vanquished enemy. According to the law, the life INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS. 25 and property of the vanquished behjug to the conquerors." — lb., vol. ii., p. 370. The robbers shall enter into " 'I'he government is far ii and defile it, EzeL vii., 22. from disapproving a system of robbery and plunder.'''' — lb., p. 381. The holy places shall be de- " The holy places were pol- filed, luted with the monuments of idolatry."— GtZ*. Hist., vol. iv., p. 100. The Mosque of Omar now stands on the site of the Temple of Solomon. Zion shall be plowed over " After the final destruction like afieldj/er. xxvi., 18. Mi- of the temple by the arms of cah iii., 12. Titus and Hadrian, a plough- share was drawn over the con- secrated ground as a sign of perpetual interdiction." — Gib- bon^ ibid. " At the time when I visited this sacred spot (Mount Zion), one part of it supported a crop of barley, another was undergoing the labour of the plough." — Mic. iii., 12. RichardsorCs Travels. I will bring the land into " So feeble a population in desolation ; and your enemies so excellent a country may which dwell therein shall be well excite our astonishment ; astonishedB.i'ii,Levit.xx\i.,32, but this will be increased if Every one that passeth there- we compare the present num- by shall be astonished, Jer. ber of inhabitants with that xviii., 6. of ancient times." — Volney''s Trav., vol. ii., p. 366. Your highways shall be " Everywhere one might desolate, Levit. xxvi., 22. have seen cultivated fields, frequented roads, and crowded habitations. Ah! what are become of those ages of abun- dance and of life !" — Ruins, c. ii., p. 7. " In the interior parts of the country there are nei- ther great roads, nor canals, nor even bridges, &c. The roads in the mountains are ex- tremely bad. It is remarkable that we never see a wagon nor a cart in all Syria."— Fo/zicyV Travels, vol. ii., 417, 419. C 26 EXISTING PROOFS OF THE The "wayfaring man ceas- " Nobody travels alone. Be- eth, ha, xxxiii., 8. tween town and town there are neither posts nor public conveyances," &c. — lb., p. 418. I will destroy your high pla- " The temples are thrown cesand bring your sanctuaries down, into desolation, Lcvit. xxvi., 30, 31. Amos ii., 5. The palaces sjiall be forsa- " The palaces demolished, ken, Isa. xxxii., 14. I will destroy the remnant " The ports filled up, of the seacoast, J?;?^^-. xxv., 16. I will make your cities " The towns destroyed, waste, LciK xxvi,, 31. Few men left, Jsa. xxiv., 6. "And the earth, stripped oj inhabifants, I will make the land deso- " Seems a dreary burying- late; yea, more desolate than place."* — Ruins, c. ii., p. 8. the wilderness towards Dib- lath, in all their habitations. Behold, the Lord makeih the *' Syria has undergone rcvo- land empty, and maketh it huions which have covfounded waste, and turneth it upside the different races of the in- down; and scattereth abroad habitants" — Volney's Travels, the inhabitants thereof. And vol. i., p. 356. it shall be as with the people, so with the priest ; as with the servant, so with the master, &c., Isa. xxiv., 1. The earth is defiled under " The barbarism of Syria is the inhabitants thereof, lb. complete." — Ibid., vol. ii., p. The worst of the heathen shall 442. possess their houses, Ezek. vii., 24. Because they have trans- " The pure Gospel of Christ, gressed the law, changed the everywhere the herald of civi- ordinances, broken the ever- lization and science, is almost lasting covenant, as little known in the Holy Land as in California or New- Holland."— Dr. Clarke's Trav- els, vol. ii., p. 405. Therefore hath the curse " God has, doubtless, pro- devoured the earth. nounced a secret malediction against the earth." — Volney's Ruins, c. ii., p. 11. ♦ In this single sentence, without the addition or exception of a word, Vol- ney thus clearly and unconsciously shows the fulfilment of no less than six predictions. INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHETS. ' 27 And they that dwell therein " I wandered over the coun- are desolate, Isa. xxiv., 5, 6. try and examined the condi- tion of the peasants^ and no- where perceived aught but robbery and devastation, mis- ery and wretchedness." — Volnei/, ib., p. 2. The vinelanguisheth,7J.,7. " In the mountains they do not prune the vines, and they nowhere ingraft trees." — Vol- ne-ips Travels, vol. ii., p. 335. The new wine mourneth ; " Good cheer would infalli- they shall not drink wine with bly expose ihem to extortion, a song, Isa. xxiv., 9. and wine to a corporeal pun- ishment." — Volney^s Travels, vol. i., p. 480. Strong drink shall be bitter " The wines of .Jerusalem are to them that drink it, Ib. most "execrable." — Jolliffe's Letters from Palestine, vol. i., p. 184. " The wine drank in Jerusalem is probably the very worst to be met with in any country." — Wilson's Travels, p. 130* All the merry-hearted do "The Arabs (in singing) sigh. Their shouting shall may be said to excel most in be no shouting. the melancholy strain. To hear his plaintive tones, his sighs, and sobs, it is almost impossible to refrain from tears." — Volney''s Travels, voX. ii., p. 440. The mirth of tabrets ceas- " They (the inhabitants) eth ; the joy of the harp ceas- have no music but vocal, for eth, Isa. xxiv., 8. they neither know nor esteem instrumental. Such instru- ments as they have, not ex- cepting their flutes, are de- testable." — Volney''s Travels, p. 439. The noise of them that re- " They have a serious, nay, joice endeth ; all joy is dark- even sad and melancholy ened ; the mirth of the land is countenance. The) rarely gone, Isa. xxiv., 8., 11. laugh ; and the gayety of the French appears lo them a fit of delirium." — Volney's Trav- els, vol. i., p. 476, 461. Many days and years shall " In Palestine you may see 28 EXISTING PROOFS OF THE ye be troubled, ye careless married women almost un- women. Tremble, ye women covered." — /6., vol. i., p. 361. that are at ease ; be troubled, ye careless ones ; strip you and make you bare, and gird sackcloth upon your loins, /5a. xxxii., 10, 11. Upon the land of my people " The earth produces only shall come up thorns and bri- briers itnd wormwood." — Vol- ers, lb., 13. nei/s Rums, p. 9. The foris and towers shall " At every step we meet be for dens for ever, lb. v., 14. with ruins of towers, dungeons and castles with fosses, fre- quently inhabited by jackalls, owls, and scorpions." — Vol- ney's Travels, vol. ii., p. 336. A pasture of flocks : there " All the parts of Galilee shall the lambs feed after their which afford pasture are oc* manner : and the waste pla- cupied by Arab tribes, around ces of the fat ones shall stran- whose brown tents the sheep gers eat, lb, and lambs gambol to the sound of the reed, which at night- fall calls them home." — Malte- Brun, vol. ii., p. 148. The multitude of the city " There are innumerable shall be left, lb. The de- monuments which depose in fenced city shall be left deso- favour of the great population late, and the habitation forsa- of high antiquity, such as the ken, and left like a wilderness, prodigious quantity of ruins Isa. xxvii., 10. dispersed over the plains, and even in the mountains, at this day deserted. '''' — Volney^s Trav- els, vol. ii., p. 368. When the boughs thereof " The olive-trees (near Ari- are withered, they shall be mathea) are daily perishing broken off ; the women come through age, the ravages of and set them on fire, Isa. contending factions, and even xxvii., 10. from secret mischief. The Mamelukes having cut down all the olive-trees, for the pleasure they take in destroy- ing, or to make^re*, Yafa has lost its greatest commerce." — Volney''s Travels, vol. ii., p. 332, 333. For it is a people of no un- " The most simple arts are derslanding, Isa. xxvii., 11. in a state of barbarism ; the sciences are Zo/aZ/y unknown," —lb., p. 442. INSPIRATION OF THE PROFHETS. ^9 Your cities burned with "A place lately ravaged fire, Isa. i., 7. with fire and sword would have precisely the appearance of this village (Loudd, Lydda). Ramla is in almost as ruinous a state."— /Z>., p. 332, 333. Many pastors have destroy- " Like the Turkmen, the ed my vineyard, they have Curds are pastoi-s and wander- trodden my portion under ers. A third wandering peo- foot, Jer. xii., 10. pie in Syria are the Bedouin Arabs. The Turkmen, the Curds, and the Bedouins have no fixed habitations, but keep perpetually wandering, with their tents and herds." Chap, xxiii. of Volney's Travels is entitled. Of the Pastoral or Wandering Tribes of Syria. — Vol. i., p. 367, &c. They have made my pleas- " With its numerous advan- ant portion a desolate wilder- tages of climate and soil, it ness, the whole land is made is not astonishing that Syria desolate, lb., 10, 11. should always have been es- teemed a most delicious coun- try. ^^ — Volney''s Travels, vol. i., p. 321. "I have seen nothing but solitude and desertion." — Volney''s Ruins, p. 7. The spoilers are come upon " These precautions (against all high places through the robbers) are above all neces- wilderness, Jer. xii., 12. sary in the countries exposed to the Arabs, such as Pales- tine, and the whole frontier of the desert." — Volney^s Trav els, vol. ii, p. 417. No fiesh shall have peace. " War, famine, and pesti- lence assail them at every turn." — Volney's Ruins, p. 9. They have sown wheat, but " Man sows in anguish, and they shall reap thorns ; they reaps vexation and care." — have put themselves to pain, /^»., 11. "They would not be but shall not profit. permitted to reap the fruit of their labours." — Volney''s Travels, vol. ii., p. 435. They shall be ashamed of " The annual sum paid by your revenues, Jer, xii., 13. Syria into the treasury of the Sultan amounts to 2345 pur- ses. C2 30 EXISTING PROOFS OF THE For Aleppo . . . 800 TripoU ... 750 Damascus . 45 Acre 750 Palestine . 2345 purses." (Or £112,135.)— Volney's Travels, vol. ii., p. 360. Thus saith the Lord God of " The peasants are every- the inhabitants of Jerusalem, where reduced to a little cake and of the land of Israel, they of barley or dourra, to onions, shall eat their ^ffarf with care- lentils, and water.'''' "Dread fulness, and drink their water prevails through the villages." with astonishment ; that her " The arbitrary power of the land may be desolate from Sultan, transmitted to the ALL that is therein, because pacha and to all his sub-dele- of the violence of all them that gates, by giving a free course dwell therein, Ezek. xii., 19. to extortion, becomes the mainspring of a tyranny which circulates through every class^ while its effects, by a recipro- cal reaction, are everywhere fatal to agriculture, the arts, commerce, population ; in a word, EVERYTHING whicji con- stitutes the power of the state." — Volney'^s Travels, vol. ii., p. 378, 379, 412,477. Ye shall be as a garden that " The remams of cisterns hathno water, /5a. i.,30. How are to be found (throughout long shall the land mourn, and Judea) in which they collected the herbs of every field wither, the rain water ; and traces of for the tmcA^e>ts? And seeing that the Great Creator crowned his works on earth by the creation of man, and placed him in a world prepared for his reception, why might he not, for the salvation of man, give proof of his Divine interposition in an after age by some changes in that order of nature which for man's sake he had established 1 Seeing that the most astonishing miracle re- corded in Scripture (a mystery till of late not otherwise un- folded) is a certain fact, it is not because of any infringement of the laws of nature that all the rest may not be proved to be true. Seeing that the order of nature was altered by the creation of a new thing upon the earth, what could hinder the same effecting power from altering at any time the things that are made, or from giving unto man, as a rational being, some proof of the interposition of his hand ? Surely making the deaf to hear, the lame to walk, the blind to see, feeding of thousands with a few loaves and fishes, staying a tempest with a word, raising the dead to life, and calling the buried from the tomb, and all scriptural miracles combined, are no more to be disbelieved from the very nature of the facts, than that, in the midst of a fair and faultless creation, the hu- man form was at first fashioned from the dust, and sight given to the eye, hearing to the ear, strength to the limbs, life to the whole frame, and a spirit put in man by the inspi- ration of the Almighty. The raising of a man from the dead is not more contrary to the order of nature, as subsisting now, than the creation of man was contrary to the order of nature which subsisted then, when a human being never had been seen. Recalling life to the body it had left is not more marvellous than giving life to that which before had none. And as so great a miracle was the origin of our race, it be- comes not mortal man, nor is it a right exercise of his reason, to say unto the Almighty, what dost thou 1 nor does it be- come the thing formed to say to him that formed it, there are laws which thou canst not- alter. The resuscitation of an organized frame is not less credible than the original for hume's argument. 71 matioii of the first animated body. And since the latter is an admitted fact,, though an infringement of an order pre- viously established, the other may be effected by the same cause, whatever the general law of nature may be ; since the one is indisputable, the other is not impossible. It shows not, therefore, perfect sanity of mind, nor is it a principle that will ever be established by reason, that'a miracle is in- credible from the very nature of the fact ; nor is it in reason, but in order to escape from its verdict, that men would ever be debarred from inquiring whether there be not full proof of the events recorded in Scripture, as the earth itself bears witness to one of the most astonishing of the miracles which it records. The girdle which the seer of Israel hid in the earth till it was profitable for nothing, was yet a sign to the House of Israel, more eloquent than the voice of the prophet, of which the significancy has not yet passed away. And the great argument which modern skepticism has discovered, though marred in like manner, and utterly unprofitable for its des- tined purpose, is reserved for a higher and better object, of which it was not in the hearts of its authors and abettors to think, and, without any design or desire of theirs, it will truly be useful as long as the world lasts. Their scoffing, their argument, its answer and its use, are all against them ; and may well rank in the fore front of Christian evidence. The scofl'ers themselves and their saying are not only visible and audible evidences of the truth of Scripture ; not only does the whole of their argument rest on a fiction, but, as it is from the general and established regularity of the course of nature that the absolute inviolabilty of its laws was un- warrantably assumed or illogically inferred, the very fact, which alone gave all its plausibility to that dogma of the scoffers, by which, in their estimation, all belief in miracles was to be for ever discarded by all men of sense, is precisely the principle on which miracles give full proof to all who will exercise their reason, and proportion, as wise men, " their belief to the evidence," that the doctrine, in confirma- tion of which they were wrought, is indeed of God. The laws of nature are not absolutely inviolable. But nature assuredly has its laws or an order which has been impressed tipon it all ; and therefore a violation of that order is His work. And a miracle, if true, from the very nature of the fact, proves that the doctrine is oi God, and is his own seal to his word. At all hazards, and in avowed rejection of all evidence, an inveterate hostility, from first to last, has been manifested against the holy religion of Jesus. And in striking demon- stration of the deceitfulness of sin in hardening the heart in unbelief, the testimony which God has given of his Son has 72 THE APPROPKIATION AND USE OF been discredited on allegations diametrically opposite and mutually subversive of each other. Skeptics, in these times, have scofted at miracles because of lh« ir knowledge of the regularity of all the operations of nature; while from ig- norance of such regularity throughout creation, unbelievers in early ages admitted the truth of the miracles, but rejected the doctrine. The ignorant pagan believed not, because he saw not the extent of the laws of nature ; the SHger philoso- pher does not believe, because he recognises the universality of these laws, and holds that they are absolutely inviolable. Of the latter assertion we have seen the fallacy; and in the present day it will not be urged anew that a miraculous event might be the sport of an inferior Deity, or take its rise from the agency of a demon or the power of magic. The true knowledge of the works of God rescues the mind that will be rescued, both from an indiscriminate perception of truth and error, and from a skepticism impervious to reason. In- stead of every rare phenomenon being accounted miracu- lous, or of miracles being held as wholly incredible, we need but to see, on the one hand, how regular laws predominate over the world, and, on the other, that, however uniform they be, they have been and may be altered, in order to know in either case that a miracle is the index of Divine power. Instead, therefore, of the regularity of the laws of nature sanctioning an utter incredulity of miracles, it is because of that very regularity that these give evidence of a commis- sion from on high. Were it not that all things are regulated by fixed and general laws, and that a uniform experience, as observable by man, has established these laws, there could be no violation or contravention of an order that did not subsist, and no event could be deemed miraculous. Were there not an order in nature, it would have no laws to be violated ; or were they to be suspended daily or by human means, they would cease to be laws. It is because the heavens and the earth stand as God hath established them of old, that they clearly show forth his eternal power and god- head. And it is also because there is an established order throughout his works, that its infringement gives direct mani- festation of supernatural power. That which, in any in- stance, controls the laws of nature, is above them. He who hath ordained them can alone suspend them. And to see that they have been violated in any manner is to see that the hand of the Lord has done it. Perfectly and absolutely unalterable, except by omnipotence alone, they can be sus- pended or changed only by Him who ordained them ; who changed the once settled course of things, and who may change it again whenever or in whatever way seemeth meet to that infinite wisdom which all his works display. Any alteration of the se laws, whether the pov^er which ef- HUME'S ARGUMENT. 73 fects it be immediate, delegated, or permitted, must emanate from the Lord alone ; and, as being an illustration of his pow- er, becomes also a credential of his will. It is thus that miracles, truly such, confirm the truth of Revelation. And the averment that there is universal experience against the proof of a miracle, or the saying of scoffers that all things have continued as they were at the beginning of the crea- tion, is founded on the fact that all nature is regulated by fixed laws, without which there could not be a miracle, and in consequence of which miracles, being proveable, give at- testation, for that identical reason, that the word which they were wrought to confirm is the word of the living God. it is an easy riddance of a holy faith to say that " the Christian religion cannot be believed by any reasonable per- son without a miracle ;" and that " the proof against a mira- cle is as entire as any argument from experience can possi- bly be imagined." Such reasoning, when unveiled, shows an undisguised resolution not to believe. But the human mind, even in its delusions, needs some semblance of reason on which to rest, though void of all substance, and incompe- tent to save as a " shadow on the waters." The perverse and fatal ingenuity of unreasonable men has rendered such a tedious disquisition needful to show — what cannot be denied but on principles subversive of all religion, and tending directly to atheism — that miracles admit of proof and give evidence of inspiration. The free inquiry of modern times, which stifles evidence and scoffs at proof, has nothing akin to the philosophic spirit of ancient Greece, Men there were, and Socrates and Plato were among them, who ended their lives in the hope of immortality, and crowned their la- bours in the pursuit of knowledge with the frank confes^'ion that it behooved mortals to wait till that which reason could but darkly know or faintly discover would be clearly re- vealed by some Divine person, who, for thai end, should vis- it the world. Many wise men did desire to see the things which we see and did not see them, and to hear the things which we hear, but did not hear them. They sought for some light in the midstof darkness, and hoped for more than they could find. And if they were philosophers — lovers of wisdom, worthy of the name which originated with them — who can pervert or profane philosophy more than do those who, in the midstof light, seek for darkness; who, on a false assumption, and vain imagination, and in wilful ignorance, " put in a general demurrer" against all inquiry and proof, as authoritative as any that ever issued from the Vatican, and who exert all their mental energy to disprove the possibility of revelation 1 It is not the mantle of Plato which has fallen on them. And it is another spirit than his of which they have a double portion. The treatment experienced by the G 74 THE APPROPRUIIUN AND USE OF gospel from those of the sect of the Epicureans is not a novelty, but, on the rule of like effects following like causes, has long been est iblished by uniform experience. And the world has never been without a proof that there may be " an end of connuon sense," from the hatred of holiness as well as from " the love of wonder." The acquisition of trutli is the object of religion as well as of science ; and whatsoever is subversive of it is preju- dicial alike to them both. It is an iti omen of the soundness of either to shrink from the freest inquiry or the fullest in- vestigation. " Come and let us reason together," is the lan- guage of Divine truth. We will not listen to reason nor re- gard any proof, is not the language of genuine philosophy. They that are not of the day love the darkness and hate the light. The same authority, acting on the same evil princi- ple, whicli sent Galileo to the dungeon for asserting that the earth revolved round the sun, exercised a deadlier hatred to those who maintained that the Bible is the only rule of the Christian faith, and could point, in unrighteous exultation, to the embers around many a stake ; which have left suffi- cient memorials to the world that the powers of darkness have no less hatred of the hghtwhiph hath come down from heaven, than of that which springs from the earth. But they that are of the day come unto the light. It leagues not with darkness; and knowledge or the perception of truth is the light of the mind, before which ignorance is dispelled. It is the duty of the Christian to join in common cause with every lover of the truth, against all error and delusion. In con- tending for the faith, he has to wage a warfare against the enemies of reason on every side ; against superstitious cre- dulity, as well as against an irrational skepticism. No lie is of the truth, whether it be a false metaphysical assumption, like the theory of Hunie, or a lying wonder, such as befits a popish legend. It is the business of the true believer to repudiate and reprobate, as hateful of itself and injurious to the cause of truth, as the experience of ages has shown, every mode of deception and every groundless motive of fear. These, ia the hands of impostors, have not only ovemwed the human mind, and debarred it from rational inquiry, even as skeptics now do, but they have operated so strongly, so widely, and so long in promoting error and repressing truth, as, by an almost unnatural revulsion, to have led, whenever reason was unfettered, to the disbelief of everything super- natural, and to the easy and fatal transition fmm one ex tremity of error to the other, or from superstition to infidel- ity. The eye that has long been deadened in a dungeon, on coming to the light, loses for a moment the right perception of objects, and is dazzled by the brightness beyond its pow- er of immediate and distinct discrimination ; and the limbs Hume's argument. 75 into which manacles have worn walk not steadily so soon as they are unshackled, and a rash trial of their strength may cause the freed man to stumble at the first step. It may be thus with the mind as with the body ; and right reason may interpose, for the sake of safety, that neither the mental nor the natural faculties be overstrained. The dark ages must, perhaps, be for some time passed away, before reason, on the one hand, maintain its dignity, and cease to be abused by the love of wonder and by idle fears ; and, on the other, before it abandon the love of experimenting with false the- ories, and know the true measure of its power, till it see at last that the cause of religion and of science is but one ; that of truth unmixed with error, or the genuine knowledge of the word and works of the God of truth. While maintaining that miracles are possible, most readily do we admit that " it is quite another question what ought to be the nature of the evidence to render miracles at all probable : and what may be the "accompanying conditions necessary to support a claim which, by its very nature, is subject to the greatest difficulties, and on which the bound- less fraud and folly of mankind have accumulated the great- est possible quantity of suspicion." Yet the implied chal- lenge which these words convey may be taken up in the de- fence of truth with unflinching confidence. The truth of miracles must be tried by a test which no- thing but miracles can abide, and which is fully competent to discriminate those works that are of God, and demon- strate the intervention of his power, from those which are of man, whether these be the delusions of wilful impostors, or originate in the reveries of misguided zealots. It is meet that there be a wide and clear separation and impassable barrier between any invention of an extravagant fancy or machination of a deceitful heart, between all that the art of man, by any possible combination or craftiness, could ever fabricate, the mind of man devise, the tongue of man tell, or the hands of man do, and the unerring counsel and holy pur- poses of an omniscient God, and the miraculous work of the hand of the Almighty. It is meet that, if the word be of God, the scriptural miracles should stand a test such as none but God could have supplied, such as should set at de- fiance all the fraud of mankind — seemingly boundless though it be — and mock the impious pretensions of daring and de- ceiving mortals, who would try to mimic the works of om- nipotence, and say that their word was the word of God. It is meet that there should be the fullest security against the belief of false or pretended miracles, and that what the Lord, hath wrought should be tried by a test which they never could abide. And here, as in all things else, true religion associates with true reason ; it is meet that there should 76 THE APPROPRIATION AND USE OF be such a test, and it hath seemed meet unto the Lord to give it. It has hitherto been our object to show that the prophets of Israel were inspired, and that miracles are proveable. And nothing more is needful, in the first instance, to be pre- mised, in order that it may farther be made manifest that, in imparting supernatural events, God hath not left himself without a witness to the sons of men, not only of the possi- bility, but of the absolute certainty oTthe truth of the Chris- tian religion, as inevitably deducible from the plainest exer- cise of unbiased reason. *" All prophecies ^''^ as Hume asserts, ^'' are real miracles^ Rnd as such only can be admitted as proofs Of any revelation. If it did not exceed the capacity of human nature to^oretel future events, it would be absurd to employ any prophecy as an argument for a divine mission or authority from Heav- en."* All prophecies, therefore, which are visibly true — in- stead of being " a subject of derision," as our scoffer, true to his character, affirmed — are, in his own words, " real mira- cles'''' — " proofs of revelation or authority from Heaven." Prophecy is a demonstration of Divine knowledge ; as mira- cles, in the restricted acceptation of the word, are a demon- stration of Divine power. Prophecies being true, revelation is established as a fact ; and there is thus full and decisive proof of revelation as there is also of a miracle. There is experience of the truth of both. What has been may be again. And experience, even on this general principle, pre- pares the way of the Christian evidence, and demonstrates that neither a miracle nor an exercise of Divine power, nor yet revelation nor the communication of Divine knowledge, would be a new thing upon the earth. It might fairly be argued from hence, if we could only resort to plausibility, that it is not improbable that miracles might have been wrought in confirmation of more full revelation of the Divine will than prophecy imparts. Prophecy, in a multiplicity of instances, is a revelation of the judgments of God. But in those scriptures of which the inspiration is attested by existing ruins, the name of God is thus proclaimed : "The I.ord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, and trans- gression, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty." Shadowy, preparatory, and avowedly temporaiy as was the Mosaic dispensation, yet its record bears frequent testimony to the evt rlasting mercy as well as to the perfect holiness of the Goi of Israel. God, it is written, hath no pleasure in the death of a sinner, but rather that he should repent and live. Mercy rejoiceth over judgment. And a more benig- * Hume's Essay on Miracles. HUME S ARGUMENT. 77 nant but not less divine commission was given to the proph- ets, than that of predicting the punishment of nations and the devastation of kingdoms. True it is that they revealed the greatest desolations that have come upon the earth, and described with minutest accuracy the issue of the unrepented iniquity of every people, whose criminality in the sight of Heaven they described, and whose doom they denounced. And, our enemies being witnesses, the once fairest portions of the globe bear the exact and defined impress, in a mani- fold variety of forms, of every mark with which the proph- ets of Israel stamped their destiny. The coming to pass of the things which they foretold shows that they were men by whom God hath indeed spoken ; and they are constituted thus, in the verdict of riglit reason, the servants and the prophets of the living and omniscient God, who ruleth over all, and who executeth judgment and justice in the earth. Yet the brand of the Divine judgments which it was given unto them to bear is but the badge of their inspiration, the seal of their great and chief office, and their warrant for bearing, before all nations and to all figes, the testimony which, by them, God has given of his Son. In accrediting their Divine commission, and in giving ocular demonstration of the truth of their word, every fulfilled prediction thus tes- tifies of those who testified of Jesus. The witness which they bear to him is more than man could have given, and such as never could pertain to any religious system of mere human origin. At sundry times and in divers maimers they spake as they v^^ere moved by the Holy Ghost ; and the same spirit of truth which revealed to iheni in distant ages the most momentous facts pertaining to the history of the world, such as were then unheard of, but are now obvious to the sight of all men, also made known to them the purpose of God, and his promise to the fathers concerning the " Mes- siah" and the new and everlasting covenant, foretold by prophets as well as confirmed by miracles, which he was to establish with the sons of men. The inspiration of the prophets once proved — even as skeptics have substantiated the proof beyond denial — they stand forth before the world not only as having been the faithful heralds of judgments that have fallen on the nations, but, now that the effect of every vision has been seen, they have a right to be heard, and, in all reason, to be believed, by all who, seeing, will see, or hearing, will hear — as heralds of the gospel of peace, and witnesses for God concerning the work of redemption — even as assuredly as they have been in the awards of his judg- ments on the earth. If, indeed, they testify of Jesus, they give a warrant for believing in his miracles and in his word, which owes not its origin to mere human testimony; and they give a peculiar sanction to that testimony, such as could G2 78 THE APPROPRIATION AND USE OF not have come from uninspired lips. If the words of mar- tyrs need confirmation in an unbelieving world, it surely may be given by the voice of prophets. Did men, who could not have spoken as they did speak save only by the Spirit of God, testify of Jesus, then, were it even true that mere human testimony, if it stood alone, would be incapable of proving a miracle, such a task is not, in fact, exacted of it ; it does not stan 1 alone, but, though Jt were the highest that men could impart, other testimony more than human, which no sophistry can shake, is conjoined with it ; testimony in guaranty of the gospel of Jesus, even that of the word of God by his prophets, which must ever baffle all human power to invalidate or overthrow, even as it infinitely surpassed all human ingenuity to have invented or conceived. Aiid thus at once a line of demarcation, such as no mortal hand could have traced, may be drawn between all pretended miracles, in support of any cunningly-devised fable, though wrought with all deceivableness of unrighteousness, and the works of Him who came to do the will of the Father, and to finish his work. And looking to the word of God by the prophets, seeing that he hath spoken by them, it may rightly be asked, before faith be yielded to the testimony of man, What saith the scripture 1 That the prophets did testify of Jesus is another and dis- tinct portion of the Christian evidence, afterward to be touched on. The fact, as attested both by heathen and Jew- ish authors, that, from the writings of the ancient priests or prophets, the expectation of the coming of a great Deliverer, who, arising from Judea, was to triumph over the nations — was not only prevalent, but universal over the whole East at the very time of the commencement of the Christian era — if it be not enough to stagger the boldest skepticism, is enough to show that the presumed connexion between the prophecies of the Old Testament and the events recorded in the New is not a mere gratuitous assumption, but demands, in its proper place, the closest attention and the most candid scrutiny or search on the part of all who seek to found their convictions on reason, and who are not so devoid of all ra- tionality as to be careless of disowning the testimony and rejecting the counsel of God. But the prominent point — admitting not of debate — which has here to be specially regarded, is that the miracles of Christ are represented as wrought in confirmation of the truth that he was the Messiah, of whom all the prophets had testified. From the words of an apostle we have seen the ref- utation of the modern argument against miracles, or the denial of the saying of the scoffers of the present age. And from the words of Christ himself, when he was questioned concerning his Messiahship, we learn the true connexion between proph- Hume's argument. 79 ecy and miracles ; we see that the credibility of the gospel, in reference even to the external evidences, stands not alone on the testimony of man ; and we hear his appeal to reason, his claim to be believed, his own reference to the testimony of the prophets as well as to the miracles which he wrought. In direct answer to the question, Art thou he that should come 1 Jesus answered in the words of the prophet Isaiah, and appealed to his miracles in confirmation of their fulfilment. " And John, calling unto him two of his disciples, sent them to Jesus, saying, Ari thou he that should come? or look ive for another ? And in the same hour he cured many of their infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits, and unto many that were blind he gave sight. And Jesus answering, said unto them. Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard ; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached. And blessed is he whoso- ever shall not be offended in me." John vii., 19-23. Jesus, the author of the ('hristian faith, is explicitly rep- resented as directly and expressly referring to the testimony borne to him by the prophets, as hence founding his claim to be believed, and as charging those with being inconsistent and inexcusable who professed to beheve in the prophets and who did not believe in him. "If," says he, in language as unlike to that of every impostor as were all his words and all his actions, " I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. There is another that beareth witness of me ; and I know that the witness which he witnesseth of me is true. Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness unto the truth. But I receive not testimony from man ; but these things I say, that ye might be saved. But I have greater witness than that of John : for the works that the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do bear witjiess of me, thai the Father hath sent me. And the Father himself which hath sent me hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time nor seen his shape. And ye have not his word abiding in you : for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not. Search the Scriptures ; for in them ye think ye have eternal life : and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me that ye might have life. I receive not honour from men. How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only ? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father : there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me : for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words V John v., 31-47. Christ did not bear witness of himself; he did not receive testimony from man ; nor did he receive honour from men. 80 TUB APPROPRIATION AND USE OF The truth of his religion has primarily to be established on other and surer principles tlian the mere isolated testimony of man. If men hud the love of God in them, tiiey would be- lieve in iiim who cometh from God. If they had the love of truth, they would believe the truth. If ihey sought for the honour that cometh from God only, his word would have been its own witness, and they would have believed him who came in his Father's name. VVithout here claiming faith in the tes- timony borne by Scripture concerning the heart of man — though the words are those of a prophet who described the is- sue of national iniquities, as he laid bare the source of all sin in the human brea.st — it may not be altogether irrutioiial to ex- press a doubt whether the history of our race gives sirongdem- onsiration that the love of holiness has there its seat, and that moral and spiritual truth, without any repelling power from within, finds always in the heart of man an open entrance and ready reception. Such, at least, was not the testimony of Je- sus, who, it is said, knew what was in man. And he proffered not his faith to mortals, as Mohammed did, on the simple alle- gation thai it was from God, or with the command to believe, without any reason assigned, without any evidence given. Nor does he appeal to the testimony of man, exclusive of the witness of God. His claim was that of being the Mes- siah, of whom the Scriptures testified; of whom the Father had borne witness by the mouth of his prophets, and who spake not of themselves, but whose voice proclaimed, as the truth of their word hath proved, thus saith the Lord. It was to establish the truth that he was the predicted Messiah that all his miracles were wrought. And his allegation was not that he, but that Moses, in whom they trusted, accused the unbelieving Jews unto the Father; that faith in Moses was identified with faith in him; that to believe in the prophets was to believe in him ; and that it was want of fiiilh in the writings of Moses which had a disqualifying efficacy in their disbelief of his words. And such and so close is the alleged connexion between belief in Jesus and belief in the prophets, that it is recorded that he said unto two of his disciples as they communed and reasoned after his resurrection, " O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he ex- pounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concern- ing himself."* The credibility of the Christian faith avowedly rested from the first on the testimony of the prophets, conjoined with the evidence of the facts. We read in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, that so soon as they were endowed with power from on high, and opened their mouths to preach * Luke xxiv., 25, 27, Hume's argument. 81 the gospel, they made their first appeal to a prophecy ; and that from hence the theme of their first discourse was the proof from other prophecies that that same Jesus who had been crucified, being- dehvered by the determinate wisdom and foreknowledge of God, as revealed in the scriptures, was both Lord and Christ, or the predicted Messiah.* And, as the record in the next chapter bears, no sooner was their first miracle wrought than they declared, " The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath mag nified his Son Jesus ; and those things which God before had showed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled."! And it iB the recorded declara- tion of Paul, that he witnessed "both to small and great, saying none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come."J In entering, then, on a more direct inquiry into the truth of the Christian faith, we appeal not alone to the testimony of man, nor look on that as the primary warranty of our creed. We ask not, as the charter of a heavenly hope, for the re- corded testimony of men who lived eighteen centuries ago, in order to show from thence that a Divine Being, unheard of before, visited the earth in human form, and taught a new doctrine, of the nature and of the truth of which their record is the only voucher; and wrought miracles in its confirma- tion, of which their word is the only witness. If the doc- trine of such imagined teachers were farther supposed to be • holy, and if it be true that man is a sinner, assuredly their report would not he believed. But it is not thus that the cre- dentials of Christianity are presented to the world, without corroborative proof, worthy alike of all acceptation on the part of man, and of a revelation from Heaven. For there is a record, substantiated in every age by a higher and more in- fallible testimony than that of man, which bears on its fron- tispiece not only the indelible, but the bright and ever-bright- ening, stamp of inspiration. And wath that in his hand, and open to the view of all men, and ni a language that none can misunderstand, every advocate of the Christian faith may, in the words of a Jew of old unto a Gentile, ask of any man who has ears to hear or eyes to see, Believest thou the Prophets 1 Their hne, it may well be said, hath gone throughout all the earth, and their word to the world's end. The world hath felt its power, and every past convulsion attests its truth, as every coming change must finally give new mani- festations of its unchangeableness. And the proof of the in- spiration of the prophets being thus visibly set before all men, the same question comes home as closely to all as to * Acts ii., 17, 23-36. t Ibid, ill., 12-18. % Ibid, xxvi., 22. 82 THE APPROPRIATION AND USE OP the Jews on the first promulgation of the Christian faith, Believest thou the Prophets ? Let this question be answered — as the enemies of the gos- pel have taught all to answer it — and nothing more is needed to prove that the witnesses of Jesus are entitled to a hearing in the court of reason. Their testimony, then, bears a new and a different character from what any testimony of man cjuld otherwise have borne. And in contending for the truth of the gospel, the controversy is then the same with all men in every nation under heaven, whether Jesus be the Christ of whom the prophets testified. That is the doctrine of the New Testament to which the witnesses of Jesus bear their testimony. It is not of an unknown or unexpected Messiah that they speak, but professedly of Him of whom all the prophets before them since the world began had testified. This is the true light in which their testimony has to be viewed, the immoveable position which it maintains. If the wisest of the heathens could have expressed a hope that a Divine Being would visit the earth to enlighten the spiritual darkness of man, which they were wise enough to discern and to feel, was not the sure word of prophecy, con- firmed as such, competent to show that such a Saviour would appear! And if it did bear witness of Jesus and his gospel, rs there not then the strongest presumptive proof, antece- dent to human testimony, that such a Saviolir would appear, ■ and that such a religion would be promulgated in the world ? And even on the supposed truth of the averment of the first of those scoffers in these latter times — who have urged the argument against miracles, the fallacy of which may thus be delected, and the use of which may thus be appropriated and applied — that " it is experience only which gives authority to human testimony," does not the experience of the truth of prophecy, than which nothing could be more evidently mi- raculous, give authority to human testimony, if otherwise complete and unimpeachable, when it relates those things which prophets had revealed ] However incredible it might otherwise have been deemed, yet when it goes but to show how the testimony of God concerning Jesus was fulfilled, it becomes of all things the most credible, and, in the words of our adversary, " no room is left for any contrary supposition," established as the truth of prophecy is by " a uniform and unalterable experience." After affirming that all prophecies are real miracles, Hume, upon the whole, concludes that " the Christian religion even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without a miracle. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity : and whoever is moved by faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his und<^rstanding, and HUMES ARGUMENT. b3 gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience."* It is not a miracle that those scoffers in the last days do not " believe the Christian religion," whom " reason is insufficient to convince of its veracity !" If not thus irrationally hard- ened against conviction, men would be moved to assent to it by every evidence of its truth. But that man surely " sub- verts the principles of his understanding" who argues against facts, of which he is willingly ignorant. It is not without a reason of our faith that a hundred and forty prophecies — all of which, literally true even at this day, are real miracles — form the basis of a demonstration of its veracity. All of these bear (as previously shown in the Evidence of Proph- ecyf) against the argument of Hume. But one prophecy alone from the New Testament is not "insufficient" to transform the subtlest arguer against the Christian miracles, and each sage in his train — by his own predicted character and argument, even at this day or in the last days — into "a continued miracle in his own person," which may be suffi- cient to subvert all the fallacies of a vain imagination, and give every wise man a determination to say, My soul, enter not thou into their counsel ; rush not with a reed against the thick bosses of the buckler of the Almighty ; for although there may, as thus seen, be strong delusion to disbeUeve the Christian religion and to believe a lie, there is demonstration to believe, as invariably accordant with experience, in that word which never faileth, and which is indeed of everlast- ing use. CHAPTER m. ON THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. On comparing a portion of a single chapter of the Book of Daniel with the various histories of the successive kings o^ Syria and Egypt, Porphyry, an ancient enemy of the gospel, could not otherwise escape from the conclusion that the rec- ord was inspired, than by alleging that it must have been written subsequently to the events. Unaccustomed to the precision of Scriptural predictions, and versant only in the ambiguous responses of the Pythian oracle, he adduced the * Conclusion of Hume's Essay on Miracles. + P. 359-370, 84 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY extreme defiiiiteness and accuracy of the description as a substantial proof, in his estimation, that it could only have been drawn from the actual historical facts which it so tersely concentrated and so truly defined. No such alternative is now left for the skeptic who would deny the inspiration of the prophets of Israel. For in the gradual development of prophetic truth, which shows how all ages are at once open to the view of the Eternal, even as his eyes behold all na- tions, there stands in mere human view so long an interval, embracing so many generations of our race, from the time that the visions were seen by the prophets till each separate word has had its perfect work, or from the beginning, when it was declared, to the end as now seen by the naked eye, that every such cavil is at last silenced ; and it is alike be- yond all question, that no historian ever wrote with more ac- curacy than the prophets, and that their writings long prece- ded those events, which, in these latter times, proclaim their inspiration to the world. In entering, then, on the subject of the antiquity and au- thenticity of the books of the Old Testament, we have not to take them up and to try their genuineness, as if they were records newly discovered among ruins of which we had no antecedent knowledge, and on which no other writing was legible than that which the hand of man could have formed. But, whatever regord as to other things they may bear, this at least is certain, that prophecy is ingrained throughout the whole, and that they are the charters which God has chosen as testimonials to all men of his omniscience. If the word of those men, who spoke with undeviating truth of things infinitely surpassing all human foresight, should yet be found in fault, testifying of falsehoods while they spake of things plainly cognizable by their senses ; and if the truth of God should thus be found to be commingled in the same page with the lies of men, it may of a verity be said that the human un- derstanding never solved such a problem nor disentangled itself from such a dilemma as to account for the seeming sanction that Heaven itself would thus have given to a rec- ord founded on fable and tarnished with lies. It is scarcely the sagest of creeds, that they who are found faithful in having written in a book what man of himself could have never known, thereby lose the credibility attached to common witnesses, in testifying that which they saw or which they did : or that their testimony should sink below that of all other men, and their record below that of ordinary and falli- ble historians, in proportion as God has exalted them as his witnesses, and marked them out, from among all that had been born of woman, as the men who spake by inspiration of his Spirit. Were such monstrous absurdities to be urged with all the semblance of profound reasoning and all the OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 85 solemnity of oracular wisdom, they would only befool the name of philosophy. Appealing, on the other hand, to the plain understanding and unbiased and unbewildered judgment of every rational inquirer after truth, may it not, in ingenuous reason, be asked whether the faithfulness of the prophetic record does not give some warrant for trusting in the historical narrative, seeing that both have been penned by the same hands l Abstract- edly from all other considerations, the testimony of a man who relates a miraculous event may be held extremely questionable, and is only to be credited after scrutinizing in- quiry, and on independent testimony corroborative of its truth. But when it is demonstrated by existing and undeni- able facts that men were inspired of God to declare his will and foretel his judgments, it seems difficult, if not impossible, to conceive what other claim could be so strong for putting faith in the testimony which they bear to events that are in- timately connected with the gradual rise and development of the same everlastmg covenant, ordered in all things and sure, of which the fulfilment of geographical and historical predictions forms but a testimonial and subsidiary part. That a foot should show that the statue was a Hercules, was an ancient proverb. And in the science of comparative anatomy, such is the mutual adaptation of part to part, the regularity, order, harmony, and wisdom which the structure of every creature of God displays, that the form and due proportions of any animal may be, and have been, discovered and defined, according to the fairest deductions of reason, from the fossil remains of a limb or even the portion of a single bone. In like manner, or much rather, we may at once deduce from a demonstrated inspirati(m — the proof of the reality and genuineness of which has come into our hands and is open to our sight — that this manifest portion of Divine truth has also its relative parts and its due proportions, the existence of whicli may as reasonably be inferred from thence as that of a body from a limb. There is a direct and immediate, as well as avowed con- nexion between the Old Testament history and ihe prophe- cies which are written in the book of the Lord. Not only were both, in a great measure, written by the same persons, and often intermingled or associated in the same page, but future things were drawn and declared from their relation to things then present, and prophecy may be said to have sprung up from the history, and to have been ingrafted on it as on a root. And while the end was declared from the be- ginning, whether in reference to the successive empires of the world or the specific fate of cities, countries, and king- doms, the subject was, in continuation, one and the same. Egypt, Judea, Babylon, Tyre, Philistia, Ammon, Moab, and 86 THB ANTIQUITY AND AUTIl KNTICITV Edoin are the scenes of those transactions which Scripture records ; and these are also the local fields which prophecy has marked out as its own peculiar province. It was the ancient intercourse hetween the Israelites and the people of these cities and nations which led to the denunciations of the prophets. They looked, in supernatural ^sion, from the beginning to the end, as now we see it ; and assuredly we may now look back from the end to the beginning with some presumptive trust in their word, in reading their joint narration of those facts from which their sure word of proph- ecy originated. The primary history recorded by Moses and the prophets thus bears a sanction, if not a seal, such as no other historian ever pretended or dared, or, without braving the sure reproach of being a false prophet, could have at- tempted to claim ; and that sanction, without a parallel, can never cease while the visible prophetic result, which is coupled with the Scriptural narrative, exhibits the strictest conformity to the words of the sacred penmen, and carries on from age to age that history which, as such, Moses and the prophets began. Prophecy fulfilled is the continuation of Scriptural history. And is it not infinitely more likely that a succession of men should have handed down the connected history of their own people and country from generation to generation, and executed the task of faithful historians, than that they should, in an age so far remote from their own times, be unques- tionably approved as true prophets, whose words never de- viated from the facts in foretelling those events that have happened in all intervening ages, and those also which are now to be seen"? Sober reason, in such a case, would be slow in deciding that skepticism savours of wisdom. Nay, in reference to the credibility of the miraculous facts recorded in the Old Testament, even when viewed apart from their peculiar evidence, afterward to be considered, a miracle of power is only set, in perfect conformity, beside a miracle of knowledge. The Divine legation of Moses, for instance, is as clearly proved at this hour, by actual, visible, and un- deniable execution of the judgments which he denounced against the Jews and against their land, if they would not listen to the voice of the Lord nor obey his ordinances and his statutes to observe and do them, as it could have been at the time by all the recorded miracles in the land of Egypt, and by all the thunderings, and lightnings, and the flames, and the shaking of Sinai. The execution of the law shows the authority of the law, and that the lawgiver had his com- mission from on high. The warnings, the threatenings, and the punishments denounced against trangression, which were set before the Israelites, were, as the event has proved, the infallible word of God ; and any other record than that which OP THE OLD TESTAMENT SCR PTURES. 87 declares the Divine origin of the Mosaic dispensation would be belied by the whole prophetic and actual history of Israel, and the fate of the Jews in every age and in every country under heaven. The miracles which Moses wrought were but the counterpart of the prophecies which he delivered. The former were the work, as the latter were the word of God ; and the man who was the organ of communicating the one, could as well be made the instrument of executing the other. The separate parts of a system professedly, and, in one respect at least, demonstrably Divine, are thus only adapted to each other. And instead of any incongruity to shock belief, the fact of inspiration uv of Divine interposition being once admitted, there is — when needful alike in either case, for the confirmation or execution of the same Divine plan, and for separating things Divine from all that is merely human — the analogy and the harmony of miracle with mira- cle, guarantied by experience, integrated into one system, and confirmatory of the same word of God. And, while miracles are recorded in the Old Testament, it has, at least, to be borne in mind that prophets, whose words as such are true, were the historians ; and thus far their testimony may rightly be as much distinguished from that of other men, as the events of which they testify, in any case, are different from those which form the common history of our race, not of one peculiar people, and are recorded by ordinary and un- inspired historians. They who assuredly revealed what the Lord did say, by whom the Spirit of the Lord spake, and his word was in their tongue, have a right to be heard in record- ing what the Lord had done. And standing forth thus as the accredited witnesses of God, there is as little wisdom as safe- ty in refusing them a hearing, or in denying, without inves- tigation, that their Heaven-appointed commission extended to the history which they wrote, as well as to the prophecies with which that history is interwoven. But, even in a preliminary view, not only does the existing fulfilment of prophecy reflect back the light of Divine truth upon the history re-corded in the Old Testament, but the peo- ple—bearing every mark of the prophetic truth of their scrip- tures ; preserving them age after age with a scrupulosity and carefulness such as never was bestowed on any other book, and looks as if the very letters were their idols ; and observ- ing, in general, the ritual of their laAv, so far as they faintly can in any other lands than Judea — continue to this day the broken and scattered remnant of Jacob ; and while, in regard to the future, they are still " the prisoners of hope," spread throughout the world and numbered by millions, they are also the memorials of the past, neither the like nor any semblance of which is anywhere to be found as pertaining to any of the greatest kingdoms on earth, which are but as things of yes- terday compared to the Kingdom of Israel. 88 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY A nation having reached its zenith, men, in haughty self- complacency, are prone to reckon on the stability of human things, and to judge both of the past and of the future by the present. But it would need only a little scrutiny to show that, while the hosts of Israel went forth to conquer, the bar- barian inhabitants of central and northern Europe, clad in skins, had their warfare with the wolves ; and that the Temple of Solomon was garnished with precious stones and overlaid with pure gold long before the palace of Romulus was covered with rushes. On examining the authenticity of the records and history of the Hebrew race, the question is, did God deal with them in ancient as in modern times, even as he hath not dealt tvith any nation ? or were they a people set apart from the nations then as they are now ] The judgments denounced against other kingdoms have been realized in their destrucj^ion or an- nihilation. But though the Jews have been cast away, and have not been numbered among the nations, they have not been cast off for ever. And as we see them, their covenant broken^ their privileges forfeited, and themelves scattered among all na- tions, bearing their judicial sentence from age to age ; and their very land, according to the same sure word of prophecy, lying desolate for many generations ; may we not from hence look back to the time which preceded their dispersion, ere their cit- ies were laid waste, and before their judgments fell thus heav- ily upon them, and when they were a people (as even the pro- phetic Scriptures declare) not cast off, but chosen ; a people whom the Lord chose for his own, and called himself by the name of the God of Israel 1 and would it not, in such a case, be an impeachment alike of his power and of his goodness, and little else than atheistical, to deny that the mercy of God may then have been as wonderful, while his covenant with them did stand, as his declared judgments visibly have been, because they have transgressed the law, rejected the Mes- siah, and broken the everlasting covenant] In the same page in which we read of the curses that should come upon them and overtake them, and be accumulated, be- cause of multiphed transgressions and impenitence, with sev- en-fold severity age after age upon their race, till they should become what for ages they have been ; we first read of all the blessings that were promised if they would hearken to the voice of the Lord, and how he would establish them as a peo- ple unto himself. And the experience of eighteen hundred years, especially as confirming unto the letter the denuncia- tions of the prophets, may well pronounce it irrational to expect a commonplace history in that of Israel. it must at least be universally admitted — except the eyes of skeptics be literally closed, and their ears deaf to all tes- timony — that the Jews do exist, and that their history, if gen- OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTDRES. 89 wiie, must, in some respects, like themselves, be peculiar. And with the facts and evidence before us of the inspiration of their ancient prophets ; of the experience and credibility of miracles ; of the relative connexion between those events which were told, now liternlly true, and those which are re- corded in the Hebrew Scriptures; and of the continued ex- istence of the Jews, and the peculiarity in past and present times of their fate, according to the prophecies which of old declared it ; the way being thus cleared of any debarring dogmatism, and open to a right apprehension of the true na- ture of the subject, we may come more closely to the strict investigation of the antiquity and authenticity of the Old Tes- tament Scriptures, and see whether these be not as clearly and completely borne out, by such evidence as the case ad- mits of or requires, even as the inspiration of a portion of these very Scriptures is infallibly demonstrated by positive, palpable, and existing facts. That the Jews were for many ages the inhabitants of Ju- dea, before their dispersion by the Romans, is a fact uni- formly attested or acknowledged by history, and is admitted as beyond dispute.* All question respecting the high an- tiquity of their Scriptures is as completely set at rest by the undeniable fact that they were translated into Greek more than two centuries and a half before the Christian era, during the reign and by the order of Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of ♦ The very lowest date to which their acknowledged existence as a peo- Ele has ever been even pretended to be brought down, so far as the writer as read or heard, is the era of their captivity in Babylon. For, in the manifestation that no opinion can be so absurd as not to find some advo- cate, he once heard a notorious infidel dogmatically maintain th«t " there is no evidence of the existence of the Jews on earth previous to the Baby- lonish captivity, and that it is not therefore to be believed by wi^e men." It is. perhaps, somewhat strange, on so sage a supposition, that such hap- less visitants, lighting on our inhospitable world from the clouds, the air, the moon, or the planets, or some unknown region in the void of space, should at once, having had no previous existence on earth, have found themselves ensconced as captives within the walls of Babylon. How or from whence they were taken must be left for those "wise men" to deter- mine who can draw theories from the air, and have a right, by special li- cense and tried qualifications, to recognise at a glance the quondam inmates of the moon. But the humble inquirer after truths to be believed, not doubting of the existence of a peop'e previous to their captivity, in tracing them from some region on earth, is inclined to think that jhey may possibly have come from that very country to which, on the expiry of their captivity, they returned, with authority to repossess it and to build their temple, Ju- dea, their fatherland, called by their name, and claimed as their own, their absence from which they had long pathetically bewailed, and to which they turned, as their descendants still do, whenever they pray unto the God of their fathers ; a land, it may be added, to which their race still look, in fond hope of a " second" and last return, not after a captivity of seventy years within the walls of a single city, but after a dispersion for more than seventeen centuries throughout all the nations of the earth. H2 90 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY Egypt, and hence became a public document in a national li. brary — the first in the world. Never was any book handed down with more fidelity, or preserved with greater care from age to age, than the Bible. For the space of eighteen hundred years, Christians and Jews, alike holding it sacred, have been its guardians. And each has been a witness against the possibility of its having been altered or corrupted by the other. Maintaining in other respects a'^mntual aversion and enmity ill becoming the pro- fessed disciples either of Christ or of Moses, here only have they been actuated by one common sentiment, feeling, and purpose ; and the monk in his cell and the rabbi in his cave, when driven from the habitations of men, were occupied in the task of transcribing and comparing the same Scriptures. The ancient Jews held it an " inexpiable sin" to alter a let- ter of their sacred volume. And down to modern times the preservation of the integrity of th§ text, and their minute knowledge of the letter of their Scriptures, may be said to have been the passion and the pride of some of the Jewish rabbis. With a strictness the most punctilious, and a zeal the most persevering, it has in past ages been a practice among the Jews to number how often each Hebrew letter recurred in each and in every book, or how often in the be- ginning, middle, and end of a word ; and every varied mode was tried by which the fidelity of a manuscript could be as- certained.* On the discovery of the slightest error, what- ever the previous labour, the parchment was committed to the flames. A perfect copy of the Scriptures was often the work of years. And many ancient manuscripts are embel- lished with such an elegance and nicety as may cope with any other works that ever were directly executed by the hands of men. But if the fact that the Old Testament Scriptures have been faithfully handed down from remote ages to the present day stood in need of any fuller illustration, that superabundant demonstration may be given, till every surmise against it must be lost in the conviction of their genuineness. For, in a word, it may be said that not only did the Septuagint transla- tion alone lay the Bible open to the world above twenty- one centuries ago, in the best and most perfect language ever spoken by man, the language of Greece, and known by all the learned in Rome, and warrant the identity of the record to the Gentiles in all future generations ; but the Bi- ble was also translated into Chaldee, and commented on by Jewish writers before the Christian era, as if purposely des- tined in all future times to cut short, in like manner, all con- troversy concerning the sacred text between Christians and Jews. * Allen's Modem Judaism, OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 91 Scarcely, indeed, had the Jewish Scriptures been com- pleted, when the Hebrew language, after the Babylonish cap- tivity, ceased to be the spoken language of the Jews. After the prophets had left unto the world direct and infallible means of testing their inspiration in every future age, and had unfolded, in prophetic vision, the fate of many king- doms and the history of the world from that period to the end of time; and after they had also, as remains to be seen, fully discharged their high office of testifying of Jesus, their testimonn was closed, the vision and prophecy were sealed up ; and a seal in confirmation to everj'^ future age was also put upon the antiquity of the record, by the almost simulta- neous cessation of the Hebrew as a living language. From the significancy of its names and terms, derived from natural objects or qualities, it bears intrinsic marks of being a prim- itive language, and is esteemed as the most ancient, and, by many, the first in the world. But, leaving that matter un- touched, it is an unquestionable fact that it ceased to be a language in common use on the closing of the Old Testa- ment Canon, and was thus sealed up as sacred — the lan- guage of their fathers in all former generations — the lan- gu;ige in wliich their laws and ordinances were conveyed — and in which the Scriptures, which the Jewish nation held as the oracles of God, were written. Whatever traditions, in other tongues, they might add unto their law, the word itself once completed, and the language set apart for it, was not to be touched. The pure Hebrew tongue was in every after age studied for its sake. It was held as the fixed, un- challengeable law^ of Israel ; of the minutest rites of which the Jews, while a people, were, as they often are to this day, punctiliously observant. And as connecting the evidence of the antiquity of the Old Testament vScripiure and of their genuineness as the sacred writings of the Jews, it may be suf- ficient, in so cursory a sketch, finally to observe, that on the undeviating and universal testimony of the Jewish na- tion, who, as a people, rejected the gospel before they were themselves rejected of God ; and more especially on the tes- timony of the priests and scribes, to whom especially the custody and guardianship of the Scriptures were committed, and whose office it was to read and to expound them unto the people in the synagogues or assemblies every Sabbath day; and who, moreover, were the.bitterest enemies of the Christian faith, at whose instigation Jesus was put to death, as their descendants still execrate his name, there stands the period of four hundred years between the time of the Old Testament and commencement of the Christian era. The fact, established on incontrovertible evidence, that so long a period intervened from the time that the Hebrew Scriptures were completed, and the sun had gone down over 92 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY the prophets, until their word concerning the Messiah began to be fulfilled, might alone suffice for showing that the Old Testament dispensation, as preparatory to the "new cove- nant," of which it speaks, and which is predicted or pre- figured from its commencement to its close, had accomplished its main object when the testimony was sealed, and when the law was perfected for fulfilling the office of a school- master to bring men unto Christ. And the priority to the Christian era of the prophetic redOrd being clear beyond the mooting of a doubt, the inquiry, without any fartl^r pream- ble, would be open for free discussion, on the unchallenge- able testimony of the prophets, whether Jesus, the author of the Christian faith, be, as he himself professed, and as his disciples preached unto the world, or be not, the Messiah, whose coming the Jews in every age have expected, and of whom all the prophets, whose inspiration is as indubitably demonstrated as the high antiquity of their testimony, had testified in preceding ages. And, without starting to an ab- rupt or illegitimate conclusion, the Christian evidence might be speedily summed up by turning at once from the antiquity of the Old Testament Scriptures to the authenticity of the New. It may not, however, be an unprofitable task to take up the controversy for a moment with those aliens of Israel and adversaries of the gospel who have made the credibility of the Old Testament the chief object of their attacks ; and who, having directed against it all the power of ridicule and the formsof philosophical research, have boldly vaunted of their triumph against the law and the testimony, as professedly given by Moses and the prophets. That vain boast must at least be greatly moderated, if not wholly overborne at once, by the palpable fact that its antiquity alone being admitted or demonstrated, the Old Testament throughout is stamped by heaven and certified by earth as the record of predictions Divine as they are true. Yet even the momentary semblance of a triumph, in respect to the Scriptural history of any age, or to any portion of holy writ, is far too much to be inno- cently or rationally conceded to the inipugners of its truth. And in testing the genuineness of the history contained in the Bible, the trial may be made whether, after the severest scrutiny on the part of gainsayers, and the fiery ordeal which even the most ancient portion of scripture has of late years been made to pass thro.ugh, the Bible does not come forth approved as the word of the Most High, even more mani- festly, though not more truly than before, like those ser- vants of the Lord of whom it tells, who were cast bound into the midst of a burning fiery furnace, but who walked in the midst of the fire and had no hurt, and upon whose bodies, on their coming forth, the fire, as every witness saw, had no power, nor was a hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor had the smell of fire passed on them. OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 93 SECTION I. Whether history fulfil a nobler office in recording, as its ultimate design, the deeds of heroes and the revolutions of empires, over which every enlightened moralist must mourn, or in transmitting, though unconsciously, from age to age, the testimonials of a presiding Deity, by the verification of his prophetic word, may be left to the decision of every man who truly believes in the existence of a God, without wait- ing for the time when the pride of all glory shall be stained, and the Lord alone shall be exalted. 'I'here can be no con- troversy that it was only about the time when the Old Tes- tament iiistory was closed, that, as in contradistinction it is termed, profane history, generally acknowledged and re- ceived as authentic, began. Nehemiah, the last of the scrip- tural historians who described the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity, was contemporary with Herodotus, the reputed father of history. From that period, when the one class of historians succeeded to the other, and when facts, in merely human records, began to be divested of fable with which they had previously been darkened and disfigured, we have to look downward with the light of prophecy on the successive changes influential on the fate of the world, till the final unseahng of the vision and the consummation of all things; and from the same period, as if raised upon an eminence from which the whole history of our race may be both prospectively and retrospectively seen, we can look back, guided by the clear light of scripture history amid all the profound darkness around, till, by a continuous and un- broken line, the eye of shortlived mortals can reach to cre- ation itself revealed to our view ; so that from thence it may be manif St that "God's word is perfect," as engrossing in itself the history of the world, as well as in proffering salva- tion to man, and in placing before him an eternal state. In reference to the most ancient portion of the Hebrew Scriptures, it whs alleged by Hume that the Pentateu(jh, or the five books of Moses, has to be considered as " the pro- duction of a mere human writer and historian ; a book pre- sented to us by a barbarous and ignorant people, written in an age when they were still more barbarous, and, in all prob- ability, long after the facts which it relates, corroborated by no concurring testimony, and resembling those fabulous ac- counts which every nation gives of its origin."* A mere human (or uninspired) writer never foretold events, before * Hume's Essays, vol. ii., p. 137. 94 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY unparalleled, and whicli have proved literally true after the lapse of three thousand years. The more barbarous and ignorant that the Israelites were, it becomes the more incon- ceivable that such a production as the Bible could have ow^ed its origin, as a mere human composition, to such a people or to such an age. The earliest of the facts vv^hich it records avowedly preceded the days of Moses 2500 years, as others were anticipated for a longer period. And if the facts which he records concerning the origiir of nations not only re- semble the accounts given by every nation, but entirely con- cur with them, then, instead of none, they are corroborated by the concurring testimony of all nations. In very truth, the writings of Moses stand alone, without any other record to cope or to compare with them. From among all the books in the world, not one is to be found that comes within reach of them in point of antiquity ; and all those of a later date which have any reference to those pri- meval ages, come as far short of the definiteness, coherence, and precision of the Mosaic record. The Bible, without a competitor and without a rival, may well be said to contain the only history of our race ; the origin of which would, without it, be involved in impenetrable oblivion. And while some ])resumptive evidence, on behalf of the authenticity of the Pentateuch, may be deduced from the averment of an adversary, they who are as prone to cavil at the lack of tes- timony in corroboration of the Old Testament as to disavow the authority of any and of all testimony in confirmation of the New, may find that there is evidence corroborative of facts related by Moses far more conclusive than any con- curring testimony alone, handed down by tradition or unin- spired writings, could possibly have supplied. The " book of the Lord" needs not the voucher of a book by man. Although no contemporary record is to be found, Hume might have learned from Grotius, and others who preceded him, that concurring testimony to many facts recorded by Moses would not, if sought, have been searched for in vain.* The genuineness of the Pentateuch was acknowledged by Porphyry and by Julian, and the denial of it was left to the boldeP and less scrupulous objectors of modern times, who have thus called forth on its behalf a higher vindication than the lestiitiony which was borne to it by the early enemies of the gospel. The history of the Jews was scarcely a theme which, ex- cept by an occasional passing glance or allusion, lay within the scope or province of the I^atin writers, till Tacitus re- corded their war with the Romans and the destruction of Jerusalem And it is not from Greece that Christians would » See extract from Grotius in the Appendix. OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 95 ask for, or skeptics admit of, testimony fully corroborative of facts then ancient. Grecian authors could practise to perfection the art of moulding a tale to the Athenian ear with all the polish and precision with which Phidias could set before the eye the image of a heathen god. But neither was historical or antiquarian research a passion with the Greeks, nor was the simplicity of truth a virtue. That was often freely sacrificed in the worship of the graces. And all that can reasonably be extracted from them is the infer- ence of the fact from the fiction which they had raised on it as the foundation. Though intermediate, in time as in place, between the Hebrews and Romans, their communication with the former was not general or direct till after the com- pletion of the Old Testament Scriptures : and it was only by tidings of ancient events transacted in a foreign land that their historians could have become versant with the Israeli- tish history, or with the origin and rise of the Hebrew race. And it is not to the historians of Greece that we have directly to look for corroborative records of a people whose inter- course and warfare were limited to the surrounding nations, who spoke a language to them unknown, and who denied the existence of the gods whom they adored. The more ancient kingdoms of Egypt, Phoenicia, and Chal- dea came into more direct and immediate contact with the kingdom of Israel; and their archives may supply more abundant and less exceptionable illustrations of the truth of that book which alone contains a continuous history of the world. And the first of these kingdoms which held Israel in bondage supplies, as if in expiation, less perishable memo- rials of the fact than the papyrus of the Nile, which afford not only a concurring, but even contemporary testimony. But the scriptures of truth, professing to be the word of the living God, and courting all scrutiny while fearing none, stoop not to claim the feeble and imperfect testimony of one or two witnesses, or of one or two nations, as the exclusive vouchers of their veracity. But since they have been im- peached with falsehood by scoffers in the last times and modern ingenuity has adduced arguments against them un- heard of before, the God of truth has so ordered it that the appeal on their behalf may now be made to authorities and credentials formerly unknown : and they can call for wit- nesses to bear " concurring testimony," from the one ex- tremity of the globe to the other; they can summon them out of the ancient temples of idolatrous Egypt, as if a dead language had come to life again, and had found at their call a responsive voice ; they can appeal to the most recent dis- coveries to attest the most ancient facts which they record, and bid the heavens and the earth at last bear witness to truths which they alone have hitherto revealed. 96 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY Whenever simple facts dissipate vain imaginations, there is a dazzHng brightness around every portion of the Chris- tian evidence, the light of which, from the very multiplicity of the rays, it is difficult to concentrate. Here, as else- where, the labour lies, not in seeking and finding, but in se- lecting and condensing the evidence, which, like that of the fulfilment of prophecy, is still accumulating. Yet, even in the sm;dl space to which, in a brief and summary view, the condensation of the authenticity of the Old Testament Scrip- tures must necessarily be limited, it may be easy to show how triumphant is the refutation of the charge, that the Pen- tateuch is corroborated by no concurring testimony. The knowledge of any remarkable event, calculated to excite the wonder or amuse the fancy of a people eager af- ter novelties, may have passed from Judea, the scene of their transaction, into Greece ; and, notwithstanding the as- sumption of other names attached to the agents, and the addition of the decorations i^f fancy, the similarity may be such as to render presumptive their Israelitish origin. The remembrance of those more important, but alike memorable events, which involved the interests of other nations besides the .Tews, especially of the kingdom of Assyria or Egypt, would naturally have been transmitted, without the bounds of Judea, from one generation to another, till they should find a place in less obscure and historical records ; and direct references to them may be found in such memorials as ex- ist of the history of those ancient kingdoms with whose in- terests those of Israel were at times involved. The knowl- edge of those things which are written in the Bible, that per- tained to the general state of the world, or affected equally the whole family of man, would naturally become the fun- damental traditional inheritance of all nations, however diverse their subsequent character, and however extended their ultimate dispersion throughout the world. And fixed monuments, supplied by nature, may be found, which bear testimony independent alike of human tradition or record. And from such plain and independent means of comparison and modes of proof, the trial may be made whether— not- withstanding the darkness which overspread the whole pa- gan world in the times of Moses and the prophets, and the meagerness of all the detailed events that have come down from thence to this far distant period — the sacred writings of the Jews and the facts which they register are not cor- robiirated by concurring testimony, not only more copious, apposite, and clear than the reader, if unused to such an in- vestigation, could have surmised or conceived, even on the supposition of the perfect truth of the Bible, but also suffi- cient to give the lie to the supposititious and unsubstantiated assertions of hostile declaimers ; and enough, where their OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 97 allegations are the boldest, to refute the calumnies, and, where their boastings are the loudest, to put to silence the ignorance of foolish men, who speak evil of the things that they do not or will not understand. It is, unhappily, the more needful to adduce or recapitulate# such testimony at a time when, forgetful that judgments on nations are not yet passed away, and that the judgment of each individual is yet to come, men are to be found in a land professedly Christian who desecrate what even pagans revered ; and who, renouncing the scriptures as they are given for instruction in righteousness, convert them into themes for profane ribaldry and matter for impious exhibi- tions, and turn the recorded terrors of the Lord into scenes of theatrical mockery and merriment, as if God had left the ruins of guilty cities and the wreck of a former world to tes- tify in vain of the certainty of judgments and the truth of his word, and as if men were vindicating the renewal of his wrath by defying his right hai^ to take hold on vengeance again. Towards the close of last century, and in the beginning of the present, many, full charged with infidelity, went forth from France, and some from England too, in unholy pil- grimages to the scenes of scriptual history. It was easy for such ingenious sophists, by the construction of a theory from strata of lava, or paintings on a wall, to show, as if with mathematical demonstration, that these things had existed for thousands of years before the Mosaic date of the creation. Unhappily for such fancies, the discovery has soon followed that similar successive strata cover ruins first entombed af- ter the Christian era, and that scarcely a higher date can be assigned to the wall from which the proof was taken of the antiquity of the world. But, in a matter of evidence, we may turn from imaginary theories to the facts which dissipate them, though they were multiplied beyond the power of enu- meration. And if science, in these respects, he so far per- fected that the truth can be elucidated, then the objections against holy writ, however forcible, singly or in combina- tion, they may seem to every eye that is turned aside from a doctrine according to godliness, need but to be brought to the Hght that their inherent hollowness may be discovered ; and without specifying their nature or reckoning their num- ber, if they stand not, like the facts recorded by Volney, pil- lars of the faith, their pretensions need but to be contrasted with their fallacy, that they may remain, till their remem- brance perish, the memorials of the truth of the favourite maxim of those who framed them, that, as to them, ridicule • is the test of truth. Truth is immutable. And the Scriptures profess to be the word of Him who changeth not. Falsehood, on the other 98 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY hand, is fluctuating and perishable. And the arguments of skeptics against the credibility of the Mosaic histoiy have shown their chameleon quality, atid varied not a little in their form and substance, since Voltaire, fcMful of admitting a fact illustrative of the truth of the deluge, denied the existence of any fossil remains. It may suffice for our present purpose, and be best suited to our limited space, to combine in a sin- gle view the various evidence draxyn from sources the most independent of each other that can possibly be conceived, corroborative of the Old Testament history, in reference specially to facts which have been keenly controverted. SECTION II. In respect to the creation of the world from a state ol chaos, and the formation of ftian from the clay or dust of the earth, though alike antecedent to all human testimony, the concurrence of the scriptural narrative with that which had come down from the earliest ages is such that Ovid, recount- ing it, seems to be the paraphrast of Moses. Long prior to the most ancient of records, the great events which involved the destiny of our race were necessarily such as could not but be transmitted, though in a faint and fabulous form, from generation to generation. And the golden age, in which holiness and happiness prevailed, denotes the primeval inno- cence and bliss, when all things were good as God had crea- ted them. The garden of the Hesperides, bearing golden apples, is a picture of the garden of Eden, where grew every tree that is pleasant to the sight ; while the serpent that is reputed to have guarded them, together with the prevalence of serpent-worship throughout the wrorld, is too faithful a testimony that there was a serpent there. Testimonies to the same fact may be drawn from the New World as from the Old. " It is quite notorious that serpent- worship was the great characteristic of Mexican mythology. If the ser- pent symbol at Palenque conveys a strong indication of Tultican affinity with Syria, there are numerous others of a still more convincing nature. Dupain exhibits a silver med- al, found in one of the sepulchral monuments, which indeed points to the source of the whole Ophitic (serpent) worship. A man and woman are represented in a garden with a ser- pent near them. This is obviously a picture record of the first pair in Eden, the serpent, and the fall."* Pandora's box, on the opening of which, by the hand of a woman, all evils spread throughout the world, is a significant emblem of the * Foreign Quarterly Review, No. xxxv., p. 60, 61. OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTDRES. 99 origin of evil ; while hope, at the bottom, was as significant a symbol of the prophetic promise, that, by the seed of the woman, evil would finally be destroyed. " Nature," says Cuvier, " distinctly informs us that the commencement of the present order of things cannot be da- ted at a very remote period ; and it is very remarkable that mankind everywhere speak the same language with na ture."* The memory of the deluge was not lost by any nation from the one extremity of the globe to the other ; and in proof that the tradition was maintained through many ages, evidence of the same fact has been borne in modern times from China, Hindostan, the islands of the Pacific, Mexico, and Peru, which concurs with the testimony, remote in time as in place, which Chaldea, Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome anciently supplied. " The people of Mechoacan have pre- served a tradition, according to which Coxcox, whom they call Tezpi, embarked in a spacious acalli with his wife and children, many animals and grain, the preservation of which was dear to the human race. When the Great Spirit com- manded the waters to retire, Tezpi sent forth from his bark a vulture. The bird, nourished by dead flesh, did not return on account of the great number of carcasses which were scattered upon the newly-dried earth. Tezpi sent out other birds, of which the humming-bird alone returned, bearing in its beak a branch covered with leaves. After which Tezpi, seeing that the soil began to be covered with new verdure, left his bark near the mountain of Colhuacan." " Every- where," adds Humboldt, " the traces of a common origin, the opinions concerning cosmogony, and the primitive tra- ditions of nations, present a striking analogy even in minute circumstances. Does not the humming-bird of Tezpi call to mind the dove of Noah, that of Deucalion, and the birds, ac- cording to Berosus, which Xisutrus sent forth from the ark, to try if the waters had subsided, and if as yet he could erect altars to the gods of Chaldea V— Humboldt, Vues des Cor- dilleres, p. 227. The raven no less than the dove, and the order no less than the name ; the first, the ravenous bird not returning ; the second, for ever afterward the bird of peace, reappearing and re-entering, identify each narrative as that of the selfsame fact with a speciality of circumstances which sober reason cannot misinterpret or mistrust. And the leafy twig in the bill of a Httle bird needs but to be traditionally brought back again from the extremity of the globe, where, without the possibility of being transplanted anew, it had flourished for many ages, in order to prove, at last, as fresh a testimony, to the old world and to the new, of the truth of * Cuvier's Theory of the Earth, ^ 32. 100 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY the fact, as at first it was a sure token to the inmates of the ark that they should soon tread on the renovated earth. How, but as coming from the only surviving family of man, could the tradition have been preserved simple and uncor- rupted, in the midst of the remotest regions so long undis- covered. One half of the world was unknown unto the other, but the twig that a bird did bear was remembered by both ; nor was the leaf forgotten. It survived like the ark in a deluged world ; and it alone may show that faith may bud again where afore it was blasted. While the prophetic fate of the sons of Noah is visible to this hour, the very names of several of the earliest nations — such as the Canaanites, Assyrians, Elymceites, Lydians, Medes, and Hebrews* — cor- roborate to the letter the historical facts recorded by Mo- ses, that Canaan, Ashur, Elam, Lud, Madai, and Eber were justly numbered among the descendants of Noah, by whom the nations were divided in the earth after the flood. " The period of seven days, by far the most permanent division of time, and the most ancient monument of astronomical knowl- edge, was used by the Brahmins in India with the same de- nominations employed by us, and was alike found in the cal- endars of the Jews, Egyptians, Arabs, and Assyrians. It has survived the fall of empires, and has existed among all suc- cessive generations, a proof of their common origin."! While the destruction of Sodom, synchronical with the call of Abraham, did not pass unnoticed by ancient writers, the Dead Sea, a bituminous lake, unlike to any other, is a stri- king corroboration of the recorded judgment on the cities of the /j/mw, which its waters have since filled: and the recent and remarkable discovery, that the Jordan, before its course was stayed, passed through the plain and flowed into the Red Sea, is strikingly illustrative of the scriptural narrative, as Colonel Leake, the learned editor of Burckhardt's work, has observed ; and that fact has since been amply elucidated by the scientific Leon Laborde, and the evidence is set before us by a chart of the channel, or of the valley through which the Jordan flowed, and which still retains its name, El Ghor, where the Jordan once flowed as where it still flows on. And while the alleged want of a contemporary history is thus newly supplied, a still more recent discovery presents a contemporary picture, coeval with the birth of Moses, and copied by Rosselini and Wilkmson, which may be said to be a commentary on the first chapter of Exodus, and to set the Israelites before our eyes actually engaged in the hard bond- age in mortar and brick as Moses described them. The Egyptian taskmaster is set over them with a rod in his hand; * Bochart. &c. t Mra. Somerville on the Physical Sciences, p. 104. [TJ»I7EESITr] # tirarTtij^l^A, [TJiriVBESITT] OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 101 the diversity of colour as well as of their countenances distin- guish the oppressed Hebrew slaves; and the whole process of their labour is seen till the tale of bricks maybe counted. " Their countenances are as perfectly Jewish," according to the Literary Gazette, " as those of any old clothesmen from St. Mary Axe who now perambulate the streets of London. Neither Lawrence nor Jackson could have painted more real Jews ; the features so changeless and so peculiar to that peo- ple. And then their occupation ; the several portions of the process of brick-making, their limbs bespattered with the mud, and their Egyptian taskmasters with the scourge super- intending their labour. The whole seems to us to be a clear and decisive evidence, not only of the captivity, but of the actual circumstances related in the history of Moses. The Egyptians in the orignial are paii ted in the usual red ; the Israelites of a shIIow colour; and when we reflect that, throughout all the other subjects figured in these sepulchres of Beni-Hassan, the utmost regard is paid to individuality, and eveil to minute accessories, we cannot imagine a reason to induce us to question the truth and application of this re- markable discovery."* " Rosselini's last livraison of illustra- tions brings those Jews before our eyes who were captives in Egypt under the eighteenth dynasty, and previous to the Exodus Independently of other evidence drawn from the phonetic la'ngUHge to prove that they are Jews, no cursory reader who glances at their lineament#or persons will for a moment doubt their identity. These Jews are employed under the dynasty of the very kings contemporary with Moses, in the specific act of shivery, which he and Manet ho both de- scribe, viz., making bricks and working in the quarries. An Egyptian taskmaster superintends the work ; and the bricks, according to their delineation, are precisely those which are fojund in walls constructed of bricks, the date of which is as- signable to the era in question."! The Egyptians set over them taskmasters to afflict them loith their burdens, and made their lives bitter with hard boyidage, in mortar arid in brick, and in all manner of service in thefield.% Exclusive of the brick- makers set before our eyes by Rosselini, a small picture is also introduced in the annexed plate, which was kindly fur- nished by Mr. Wilkinson. The outline of some of the heads and features are exactly engraved of the full size of the original drawings. The temporary triumph of the Egyptians over the Jews in a subsequent age has also, in that land of their enemies, a striking memorial. Shishak, or Sheshouk, king of Egypt, is represented in another of Champollion's drawings as "drag- * Literary Gazette, No. 943, p. 99. t Foreign Quarterly Review, No. xxxii., p. 318. t Exodus i., 11,14. 12 102 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY ging the chiefs of above thirty conquered nations to the feet of the idols of Thebes." One of these is represented in hieroglyphic characters as Joudaha Malek, the king of Judah.* And in the chronicles of the kings of Judah we read that Reh()boani (the son of Solomon) forsook the law of the Lord, and ;ill Israel with him. And in the fifth yearof King Rehoboam, Shishak, king of Egypt, came up against Jerusalem, and took the fenced cities of Judah, and came to Jerusalem. Then came Shemaiah the propheUto Jiehoboam and to the princes of Judah that were gathered together to Jerusalem because of Shi.«shak, and said unto them, Thus sailh the Lord, Ye have forsaken me, and therefore have 1 also left you in the hands of Shishak. So Shishak, king of Egypt, came up against Jerusalem, and took away the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king's house : he car- ried away also the shields of gold which Solomon had made.f Rehoboam, the king of Judah, is still to be seen, as for a time he was left, according to the word of the proph- et, in the hand of Shishak, king of Egypt. The history of the Jews needs not any other concurring evidence to show that their prophetic fate was portrayed by Moses as faithfully as a painter could depict their visage. While he is thus set forth as the prophet of the Highest, it may be mentioned, as Grotius and others have shown, that pagan writers in ancient times failed not to pay sbme tribute of respect to the Iff islator of Israel. As a writer, he was deemed worthy by Longinus of honourable mention in his treatise on the Sublime. As the promulgator of a new reli- gion wholly divested of idolatry, Strabo describes him as abandoning Egypt, followed by those who worshipped God alone, and planting his people and his faith in that land of which Jerusalem was afterward the capital.^ The name of the desert, El Tih, or the wandering, is yet a testimony of i]^e wanderings of the Israelites. And in reference to the his- tory of Moses, Laborde, who partly traversed the same route, states that the Bible is so concise and so precisely true, that it is only by a close attention to each word that all its merit can be discovered.^ The tomb of Aaron, on the summit of Mount Hor, is one of the most conspicuous objects in the land of Edom, and, surrounded as it is by many an evidence of prophetic truth, still bears testimony to the death and burying-place of the first high-priest of Israel. Aaron died there on the top of the mount. Though, till within these * See the Saturday Magazine, No. 81. t 1 Kings xiv., 25, 26. 2 Chron. xii., 1-9. i Strabo, 1. xvi., torn, ii., p. 1082, 1083, ed. Falcon. ^ " La Bible est si concise, mais en m^me temps d'une precision si vraie, que c'est avec une attention fix^e sur chaque mot qu'on pent en retrouver tout \e m6rite. — Voyage de L' Arabic Petrde, p. 39. A h ■H # ^'^^ Of TOM [TJiriVBESITT) OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 103 very few years, unheard of and unknown, and situated in the midst of the land of the enemies of Israel ; though for many ages possessed by the wild Arabs, neither of Israelitish nor of Christian faitii, yet there, on the top of Mount Hor, where he died, is the tomb of Aaron, a memorial on the spot. In contradiction to positive evidence and existing facts, skeptics have denied the ancient fertility of Palestine. But as the fruit of the land was of old shown unto the Israelites, similar evidence may be adduced from " the gleaning of the grapes," though the vintage is done. " Galilee," says Malte- Brun, " would be a paradise were its inhabitant* an indus- trious people under -An enlightened g(»vernmeMt. Vine-stocks are to be found here a fool and a half in diameter, forming by their tw^innig branches vast arches and extensive ceilings of verdure. A cluster of grapes, two or three feet in length, will give an abundant supper to a whole family."* From the opposite extremity of Palestine, Laborde thus presents us with a grape or two of an enormous cluster. The progress of population in America has supplied a prac- tical refutation of the objection which skeptics theoretically adduced against the Mosaic account of the rapid multiplica- tion of the human race, and the early establishment of king- doms after the era of the deluge. " As regards the actual progress of population in the prim- itive ages, the example of the United States furnishes a very important experimental parallel. The white population of these provinces amounted in 1790 to 3,200,000, and has been * Malte-Brun's Geography, vol. ii., p. 148. 104 THK ANTIQUITY AND AUTHBNTIClTr ascertained by the censuses of 1800, 1810, 1820, and 1830, to have doubled itself within a quarter of a century, and to be still proceeding at that rate, as appears by the American Almanac for 1832. Mr. Malthushad arrived at a similar con- clusion before the census of 1820. Should this progress con- tinue unabated for 160 years longer, the number would be 800,000,000, which is nearly equal to the estimated popula- tion of the world ; while reverting to the mean date of plant- ing, A. D. 1065, the same principle of4ncrease, which the last- mentioned writer (an undeniable authority for information and data, however we may be disposed to disagree with his general system) concludes to have been in force for a cen- tury and a half preceding the year 1800, would suppose a population of 100,000 only at that period ; and ascending, for the sake of the parallel, 325 years higher, we should arrive at the number twelve, being that of the sons of Noah with their wives, supposing their number to have been doubled, in agreement with the principle we are speaking of, within two years after the flood, the date of the birth of Arphaxad (Gen. xL, 10). " Thus it appears that, according to the American progress, twelve males and females might increase to 100,000 in 325 years, to 3,200,000 in 450 years, and to 820,000,000 in 650 year.. But supposing the primitive population to have doubled itself in fifteen years, of which we are not without examples in modern states — such has been the progress in the back settlements of America, according to Dr. Price — then mankind might have arrived at the number of 400,000 in 225 years, the interval which the Hebrew account supposes be- tween the deluge and the middle data of Peleg's life, and have increased to the maximum of 820,000,000 in 390 years, when Abraham was about forty years old."* Though populous kingdoms may thus be of recent origin, and spring rapidly, like Rome, from small beginnings, pride is natural to nia.i ; and the race of antediluvian and post- diluvian patriarchs prior to the establishment of kingdoms, supplied an easy means to the primitive nations of gratifying the pride of ancestry, and attributing their origin to a high antiquity, simply by appropriating peculiarly to each what was alike common to all. The following lucid exposition of this topic also is here thankfully adopted. "It is commonly urged that the times of the gods, heroes, priests, or by whatever other names they were called, which are found prefixed to the histories of all primitive nations, and to whom the foundation of cities and kingdoms is too com- monly attributed, requires the utmost latitude which the bib- * Foreign Quarterly Review, vol xii.» p. 328. OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 105 lical computation of time will allow. Such is the theory which assumes, without a shadow of authority from any ancient writer, that successive hierarchies, devoted to the worship of Hephaestus, Helius, Cronus and Osiris, laid the foundation of Thebes, and erected its most enormous edifices in ages long preceding Menes and the Egyptian dynasties. These views, originally the offspring of infidelity, but unac- countably sanctioned by too many enlightened inquirers, are, as we have shown, opposed by the concurrent evidence of the Jewish and Gentile writers of the first ages, and they are for ever annihilated by the important series of discoveries which has distinguished our times. Not only the Jews and Egyptians, but the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Chaldeans, and other nations', have prefixed this priestly suc- cession, under different names, to their annals ; a community of system that at once resolves itself into the patriarchal stem from whence all nations radiated, and which recognises the monarchical as the common form of government adopted by mankind when separated into distinct societies. The last- mentioned fact, conspicuous in the Mosaic record, is ren- dered indisputable by the almost identical epochs of primi- tive monarchies, so far as history or tradition has preserved them. All, however widely separated, have reference to a common epoch ; and all are preceded by one or more eras belonging to the priestly or patriarchal ages, which identify themselves with the Mosaic accounts of the same series of events. This will clearly appear if the reader will take the trouble to compare the following table with the former one.* References to Text. Cli.'vl- dea. II. Chi- nese. III. Hin- doo. VII. Egypt. V. VI. Sicyon. IV. Hin- doo. (lods, or Antedihivians, B.C. Demigods, or posldiimiaiis 3673 3490 ■2233 2952 2357 2207 3164 2204 3389 2405 2988 2185 2.376 2171 aioi 2102 " The circumstance most worth)- of notice in reference to these dates, and a most important one, is, that all the epochs of primitive kingdoms, from China to Peloponnesus, fall in with Peleg'^s lifetime., according to the Hebreio. It hence becomes self-evident, that all have reference to the common stem and * " We here insert a table of the deluge and of the birth and death of Peleg, together with the mean date of his life according to the Hebrew, Samaritan, and the Greek authorities, adding the mean date of the flood fixed only by Klaproth in his ' Asia Polyglotta,' from a comparison of the Samaritan, the Chinese, and the Hindoo elements. We also insert the Egyptian eras of Champollion and Rosellini in their proper places, adopting the received and demonstrable date of the birth of Abraham, B.C. 1996, as fixed by ail the versions, and subscribed to by Champollion, for the basis ol the whole." i06 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY common era of kingdoms ; and this furnishes another pow- erful argument that the Hebrew numbers, thus confirmed by widely-separated witnesses, coiUain the original computa- tion of sacred history."* While an important series of discoveries which have distin- guished our times, has annihilated for ever skeptical theories in this instance as in others ; and the origin of primitive king- doms is traced to a common era, identified with that of the lifetime of Peleg, his name is not only thus linked in cor- roborative testimony, but it is associated also with a series of internal proofs, which, from the beginning, distinguished the history of the Hebrew race from that of all the families among which the earth was divided. SECTION III. The name of Peleg, the son of Eber, and an ancestor of Abraham, has a literal significancy worthy of the place which it occupies, and the importance of which may now be appre- ciated. The Hebrew word Peleg signifies division. And that name was given to him ; '^''for in his days was the earth di- vided" " among the famines of the sons of Noah, after their generations in their nations."! Or. in other words, as mod- ern discoveries or researches show, " all the epochs of primi- tive kingdoms fall in with Peleg's lifetime," whose name denotes their division. Coeval with the days of Peleg was the building of Babel ; and up to the period when the great family of man was di- vided into distinct nations, and spread over the earth, may be traced the diversity of tongues. And combining historic with prophetic truth, the earliest of cities supplies, from the first as to the last, its concurring testimony. "While the judgment-stricken Babylon, cut down to the ground because it had striven against the Lord, is spread forth as a tablet on The deluge ceases B.C. . . . Egyptian era of ChampoUion Egyptian era of Roseliini . . Birth of Peleg Mean date of Peleg's life . . Death of Peleg Birth of Abraham Hebr. 2347 2247 2127 2008 1996 2997 2597 2477 2358 LXX. Cod. Rom. 2997 or 3097 2597 or 2697 2427 or 2527 2258 or 2358 1996' 1996 1996 3127 2597 2427 2258 1996 3047 264*7 1996 Klap. 3076 2782 2712 » Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. xii., p. 384. tGen. X., 25-32. See Appendix. OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 107 which the spirit of prophecy has set its seal, and has stamped with many indelible impressions, as its own, the name {Babel or Babylon, i. e., confusion*) yet remains an undecaying me- morial of the confusion of tongues. And while the walls of the greatest city on which the sun ever shone have long ceased to be the wonder of the world, except m their being utterly broken, the name of Babel or Babylon, no longer a terror to the nations, is a proverb to the people, and in all the ends of the earth still bears concurring testimony to the cause of the original dispersion of our race. The next great event, alike influential on the fate of the world, and calculated ultimately to bring all mankind into one family — the household of the faith — was the call of Abraham, and the covenant of God with the patriarch, whose name is no less renowned than that of Babylon. And like another nail fastened in a sure place, that name was given by the Lord. God talked with him, saying, As for me, behold my cov- enant is ivith thee ; and thou shall be a father of many nations. Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram; but thy name shall be called Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee. And I will make thee exceeding fruitful ; and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee.] While the whole history of the Jews, in every age and in every land, is a perpetual proof of the inspiration of Scrip- ture, a still existing progeny, "numerous as the stars of heav- en," and scattered over the earth, even as these bespangle the firmament, is an existing proof that none but the Omnis- cient could, in truth, have given to their primogenitor the name of Abraham, i. e., the father of a multitude. To whom else, since his days, can the name so appropriately pertain, as to him whose descendants peopled Palestine, Edom, and Arabia ; and whom the Arabs, with their multitude of tribes, and the Israelites, dispersed throughout the earth, both alike still numbered by millions, have claimed, for more than a hundred generations, as their common father ? And whose prophetic name yet awaits its full significancy, till all the families of the earth shall be blessed in his seed, and all na- tions shall call that man the father of the faithful ; to whom the Lord thus spake, " Thy name shall be Abraham ; for a father of many nations have I made thee ;" and of whom he said, " 1 am the God of Abraham." Not a word can come in vain from the mouth of the Lord ; and as this word has not returned void, but is still proved by millions, or multitudes of the seed of Abraham, so that name itself, literally under- stood, cannot be repeated without perpetuating the testimony which it bears to the call of Abraham. But the name of Abraham was not the only patronymic ♦ Gen. xi., 9. t Ibid, xvji., 4-6. 108 THE ANTIQUITY AND AiJTHENTICITT first given on that selfsame day, but to be held in everlast- ing renieinbrance. The change of a syllable and of a letter gave a prophetic significancy to the names of Abram and Sarai, and, in their new names Abraham and Sarah, imbod- icd the promise of the Lord, of which future ages have man ifested the fulfilment. Nations have called her mother who was then known only as aged and childless: and races of kings in Jerusalem and Samaria, after the lapse of a thou- sand years, gloried in their pedigree from the venerable pair that pitched their tent in the plain orMamre many centuries before there was a king in Israel. Prophecies yet unfulfilled speak of their descendants, when finally restored to Zion, as those for whom the isles shall surely wait, unto whom the kings of the Gentiles shall minister, and whom the nations and kingdoms shall serve or be destroyed. But the name of Sarah or princess^ as given by the Lord, has received such illustrations of its significancy in ages past, as naturally star tied, on their announcement, the faith of Abraham. And God said unto Abraham^ as for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be. And I will bless her and give thee a son also of her : yea, I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations ; kings of people shall be of her. Then Abraham fell upon his face and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is a hundred years old ? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear ?* The incredu- lity of man may ever be overruled for the confirmation of the word that is of God. And while the covenant, which, whether in its observance or its breach on the part of the Israelites or Edomites, has been ratified by blessings and by judgments, such as no other covenant but that made with Adam ever was, has stood for nearly four thousand years, and yet awaits its final and everlasting confirmation, the laughter of Abraham, though he had fallen on his face, and of Sarah who subsequently laughed within herself and de- nied it with her tongue, has from that hour been comniemo- rated, though unconsciously, in the name of Isaac. And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed ; and thou shalt call his name Isaac (i.e., laughter); and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.-\ Never were names so indelibly affixed to any covenant between man and man, as those which may thus be identi- fied as originating in the covenant of God with Abraham. There was not then another man upon the earth of whose descendants even the existence is now known, or to whom such a promise could, in truth, have been given. And is there a man upon the earth who knows not at sight the He •Genesis xvii., 15, 16, 17. flbid. xvii., 19. OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 109 brew race ? or who may not see from their existence and their number that God alone could have given to Abram the Hebrew the name of Abraham 1 In no country on earth could we search in vain for living commentaries on that name. And there was not then, besides Hagar, another wo- man upon earth but Sarah only, whom any nation or any in- dividual now calls mother, or of whom it is recorded that kijjgs were descended. But to her unchangeable name, when once it was given by the Lord, is attached the unre- pealed promise, kings of the nations shall be of her. And if belief be founded on experience, as our enemies maintain, and as Christians may fearlessly concede, millenaries or thousands of years go far by their testimony to prove that that covenant was everlasting, the apparent and natural im- possibility of the ratification of which, even for a single year, gave rise to the incredulity, even in the breast of Abraham, which has yet its memorial in every enunciation of the name of Isaac. It needs no proof that human compacts are dis- solved by time, as their seals of wax melt before the fire. The longer that is the declared term of their validity, the more surely, in general, are they ultimately valueless, or pass away as if they had never been. Who can tell how great is the number — the numbers without number — of compacts be- tween man and man, or of treaties between nation and na- tion, which have never been heard of, or are nothing now ? And how many, though designated perpetual, are ever van- ishing away like bubbles on the ocean 1 But the declaration that the covenant of the Lord with Abraham and with his then unborn son was to be everlasting, is now, after the lapse of thirty-eight centuries, a strong confirmation that it was the covenant of Him who changeth not, and with whom all things are possible ; for who but God, setting up the very name as a witness that it was then deemed incredible, could have said that it would have lasted till now? And to that covenant in that selfsame day, as may here be passingly noted, there was affixed a perpetual seal, which, throughout all intervening ages, has set apart the seed of Abraham from the uncircumcised Gentiles. While the Arabs, the descendants of Ishmael, the eldest son of Abraham, " armed against mankind," have ever main- tained their prophetic character, and still continue unsub- dued and wild, till " Kedar's wilderness afar" shall make its voice to be heard in the harmonious symphony of all na- tions, the name of Ishmael, i. e., the Lord shall hear,* testifies to the fact that, when his mother, Hagar, harshly dealt with by the envious Sarai, fled from her face, and sat houseless, disconsolate, and forlorn by a fountain of water in the wil- ♦ Genesis xvi., 11. K 110 THB ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY derness, the fountain in the way of Shur, the Lord heard hei affliction, and named, by his angel, her yet unborn son, and there gave the promise wliich he has fulfilled, in despite of all the efforts of Persians, Grecians, Romans, Moguls, and Tartars, who in vain have sought to subjugate the seed of Ishmael. And as the promise has thus its proofs that it was given by the Lord, the name of Ishmael testifies that the Lord did hear when a friendless and lonely outcast cried at a fountain in a wilderness ; and that fountain had from thence its name — Becr-lahai-roi, i. €.\ the well of him thai liv- eth and seeth me* — and thus became another witness or me- morial of the fact, to be added to the name of Ishmael. The name of Beer-sheba, the well of the oath, brings us back to witness, in all the simplicity of patriarchal times, the cov- enant between Abraham and Abimelech.f There, where Abraham planted a grove, Isaac; built a city, which was long famous in Israel as forming the termination of Judea on the south, and which subsisted under the same name, at least, till the fifth century of our era; J and the name, yet marking the spot, is still a memorial of that covenant which itself was to last but for three generations. Abraham left not the mountain where his hand was stay- ed, after it was stretched forth to slay his son, without con- secrating the place, by a new name, to the glory of God, who had provided a burnt-offering in the stead of Isaac — Jehovah- jireh, the Lord will provide. In desolate Edom we see the proofs that the judgments pronounced against the Edomites, because of their hatred against the children of Israel, were indeed of God : and in the very name of Edom, i. e., red, therefore given unto Esau,^ we see the colour of the dear-bought mess for which he forfeited the birthright he despised ; and the line of pron>- ise was transferred from him, when wilfully renounced, to his younger brother. The name of Zoar, little, which long subsisted as a town after the great and guilty cities of the plain were buried in the waters of the Dead Sea, is a comment on the words of Lot as he fled from the impending destruction. This city is near to flee unto, and it is a little one ; therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.|| As the land and cities of Moab, desolate and broken down, plainly show at present that the prophets of IsraeK literally foretold their fate, so the name of Moah, i. e., of the father, has ever told as plainly in its literal significancy the incestu- ous origin of the son of Lot, who was the father of the Mo- abites.^ * Genesis xvi., 14. t Ibid, xxi., 27-32. % Hieron, t. iii., 174. ^ Genesis xxv., 30. II Ibid, xix., 20-22. f Ibid, xviii., 37. OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. Ill Neither diversity of condition, nor change of place, nor distance of time, has obliterated the marks by which the Jews were distinguished as a peculiar people, and even the fashion of their countenance testifies the common origin of the Hebrew race. The family hkeness of the seed of Ja- cob is clearly traceable between the Israelitish bondsmen in the days of Pharaoh, and the Israelitish creditors of Euro- pean kingdoms in the present day ; and their fate in every age and in every land, as foretold by the prophets, is of itself a standing miracle. And, in Hke manner, the history of the father of the twelve tribes of Israel is not only recorded in scripture with all the precision of a tale of yesterday, but names which are as famihar as those of a friend, or of the place of our habitation, may serve to set the chief facts of that history before us. Whether at his birth he took his twin but elder brother by the heel, or in his manhood supplanted him and obtained from his father the blessing of the firstborn, as indicated by the name of Jacob,* signifying both the heel and he that supplanteth, even as his race, according to express predic- tions and to fact, has supplanted and survived that of Esau ; or whether the childless Jacob, then a houseless wanderer, in danger of his life, having fled from the face of his angry brother, lay down at night to sleep, with nothing but the earth for his couch and a stone for his pillow, and saw in his dream a ladder set up on the earth but reaching to heaven, and saw the Lord stand above it, and heard the promise that he, the God of Abraham and of Isaac, would give to him and to his seed the land whereon he lay, and that his seed should be as the dust of the earth, as still they are ; and that he should spread abroad to the east and to the west, to the north and to the south, as they have been ; and that in his seed all the families of the earth should be blessed, as now they may ; and Jacob, awaking, said. Tins is none other than the house of God, and set up the stone for a pillar, and poured oil on it, and called the name of that place Bethel, i. e., the house of God,\ whence originated that celebrated city and everlasting name : whether he made a covenant with Laban, and de- sired his brethren to take stones and make a heap, and call- ed it Galeed, or the heap of witness,t as a witness between them ; or, appealing to the Lord to watch between them, he called it Mizpah, i. e., the loatch-toiver,^ as the city of that name more than the heap did in future ages testify, and as the history of his race and the yet auspicious prophecies respecting them bear witness that the Lord is the watch- tower of Israel : whether, on his return to Canaan, the an- * Gen. XXV., 26. t Ibid, xxvii., 18, 19 X Ibid, xxxi., 48. <^ Ibid, xxxi., 49, 112 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY gels of the Lord met him on his way, and he called the name of that place — also in after ages a city long famous in Is- rael — Mahanaim, or two hosts ;* or whether, soon after the Lord appeared unto him, on his agani settling in that land after an absence of many years, and said unto him. Thy name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel, i. e., a prince of God,^ shall thy name be, for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed : whether he called the name of that place Peniel, i. e., the face of God,X because he had there seen God lace to face ; or bought, as his first purchase in Canaan, a parcel of a field near to She- chem, and erected there an altar, and called it El-eloi-israel, God the God of Israel :^ whether, on journeying to Succoth, he built him a house and made ^ooihs for his cattle, he therefore called the name of the place Succoth, or booths ;\\ or, removing to Bethel to dwell there, he built an altar and called it El-bethel, the God of Bethel : ^ whether twelve sons were born to Jacob or two to Joseph, all of whom were fa- thers of the tribes of Israel, the name of each had a signifi- cant appellation : whether Deborah, Rebecca's nurse, died and was buried under an oak, and the name of it was called Allon-bachuth, i. e., the oak of weeping ;** or whether the em- balmed body of Jacob, as we read in the last chapter of Gen- esis, was brought up from Egypt to be buried in Canaan by Joseph and his brethren, accompanied by all the elders of the land of Egypt, who mourned with a great and very sore lamentation for seven days at the floor of Atad, and the Ca- naanites called the name of the place Abel-mizraim, or the mourning of the Egyptians ;\\ each of these events, besides being committed to a written record, had an express and ap- propriate designation in the literal significancy of the names which still represent or describe them. The sites of cities in Israel marked the wanderings, and their names told the chief acts of Jacob, the father of the fathers of its tribes. And while the facts which these names set forth are guaran- tied by their association with the repeated renewal to Ja- cob of the covenant of the Lord with Abraham and Isaac, and with prophecies hitherto accomplished, and while it re- mains yet to be seen, whenever the " set time'' shall be come, that the Lord did give the name of Israel unto Jacob, and that, at the last, as at the first, it is he who, as a prince of God, shall prevail with God and with men, we may look back to the days of his pilgrimage on earth as it is recorded in the Bible, and see, in the history of Jacob, how the names of persons and of places were the constituted memorials or * Gen. xxxii., 2. t lb. xxxii., 28. % lb. xxxii., 30. f) lb. xxxiii., 20. || lb. xxxiii., 17. f lb. xxxv., 7. ♦* lb. XXXV., 8. tt lb. 1., 11. OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 113 testimonials of facts, in a manner or to a degree unparallel- ed, we will say, in the history of all other men, from the creation of the world to the present hour. Moses, a name familiar to all, is not without its significancy, but plainly tells us that the leader and legislator of Israel was once a helpless babe draivn out of the waters,* for such — drawn out — is the literal meaning of the word. At the time when the children of Israel increased abundantly, and multi- plied, and waxed exceeding great in the land of Egypt, and a new king arose who knew not Joseph, not only were task- masters set over them to afflict them with their burdens — as a picture shows — but Pharaoh commanded that every son that was born among them should be cast into the river. And, as the name imports, one drawn out of the river by Pharaoh's daughter, and hence so named, avenged on the King of Egypt and his host the wrongs of Israel. Of his two sons, the name of the one was Gershom, i. e., a"5^raw^erhere,"f and the other Eliezer, i. e., my God an kelp,'l expressly denote how he was a stranger in the land of Midian, and how his God was an help and delivered him out of the hand of Pharaoh. The prophets declared of old that the Lord will yet lift up a stand- ard for his people Israel, and will help and deliver them from the hand of their enemies ; and when the first of the nations that fought for the first time against the Israelites were dis- co.iifited while Moses lifted up his rod, he erected there an altar, and called -it Jehovah-Nissi, i. e., the Lord my banner.^ Though places in the desert, Massah, signifying temptation; Merihah, chiding or strife ,'|| Taberah, burning ,-^ and Kibroth- hattavah, or the graves of them that lusted,** became responsive to the rtiemorable scriptural facts, that the Israelites tempted the Lord ; that they did chide or strive with his servant Mo- ses ; that in the fierce anger of the Lord many of them were burned ; and that, after they had gotten the meat for which they lusted, a great plague came upon them, and turned the place of their repast into a field of graves. After the desert, from the long wandering of the Israelites, had merited the name it still bears, the altered name of Joshua,^-\ i. e., the Sa~ viour, more worthily applied than that of Ptolemy Soter, des- ignates the man who led them into Canaan, and planted the wanderers in the land of promise. While there is abundant proof that Judea, though long deso- late, was once a land of vines, the name of Eschol, a cluster of grapes,XX marked to ages, then future, the brook or valley from whence a branch with a cluster of grapes was brought by the spies in token of the fertility of the Land of Promise, so * Exodus ii., 10. t lb. ii., 22. % lb. xviii., 4. § lb. xvii., 15. II lb. xvii., 7. % Num. xi., 3, ** Num. xi., 34. ft lb. xiii., 16. tt lb. xiii., 24. K 2 114 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY Boon as the wandering Israelites first approached its borders. "When the iniquity of the Amorites was full, Homiah* i. e., utter destruction^ was the new name of the monumental city, that needed no inscription to tell the utter destruction of the Canaanites and their cities. Cities of Israel arose where the pilgrim Jacob had journeyed ; and new cities, with new names, were built where those of the Canaanites had stood. To this day, as Burckhardt relates, and as every traveller sees, " The ruins of Eleale, Heshb»n, Meon, Medabon, Dibon, Aroer, still subsist to illustrate the history of the Beni-Israel." And while iheir ruins testify that the word of prophecy is sure^ the same Hebrew names attached to each spot illustrate the history of their origin. " And the children of Gad built Dibon and Aroer, dfc. And the children of Reuben built Heshbon, and Elealeh, and Nebo, and Balmeon {their names being chan- ged), and gave other names unto the cities which they builded. And Jair, the son of Manasseh, went and took the small toivns of Gilead, and called them Havoth-jair. And Nobah ivcnt and took Kenath, and the villages thereof, and called it Nobah, after his own name.^''^ No sooner, as it is recorded, was the Jor- dan passed, twelve stones set up for a memorial, and the children of Israel circumcised a second time, and the re- proach of Egypt rolled away, as the Lord said unto Joshua, than, according to the word, the still well-known name of Gilgal, i. e.,rolling,X was given unto the place of the first en- campment in Judea of the victorious Israelites, who afore- time were despised bondsmen in the land of Egypt. While a mark was set from the beginning on the first cities of Is- rael, times yet future are destined to bear testimony to the predicted fact, that the desolations of many generations shall be raised up, and that they shall all be the cities of Israel again, and for ever. And the word has thus a witness in it- self for more than a hundred generations. That judgments have fallen on the Jews and on their land because of their iniquities, all these facts and all the features of their land give proof. And that trouble, from the first, oame on Israel when there was an Achan in the camp, the valley of Achor, i. e., trouble,^ from that time forth was an enduring memorial. And the name of Bochim, i. e., weeping,^ designated the place where the children of Israel lifted up their voices and wept when, charged with disobedience and threatened with pun- ishment, they were told that the inhabitants of the land whom they had not driven out would be a sore in their sides and a snare unto their souls. The place where Samson was avenged of the Philistines afterward witnessed by its nmme Lehi, a jawbone,^ by how * Num. xxi., 3. Judges i., 17. t Num. xxxii., 34-42. X Josh, v., 9. (j Josh, vii., 26. II Judges ii., 1. if lb. xv., ft. OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 115 slender an instrument deliverance was wrought to Israel; and Ramath-lehi, the casting away of the jawbone * still more significantly marked the place where it was cast away. Though the lips of Hannah spake not, while in her heart she prayed that she might have a son, the name of Samuel literally tells that he was asked of God.] Many days and years, as the prophets foretold and be- wailed, have the daughters of Judah trembled and lamented, and the whole house of Israel has long remained without ephod, teraphim, or sacrifice. And the name of Ichabod% — there is no glory — shows that of old there was a tmie when grief for the loss of the ark of the Lord prevailed in the heart of a mother in Israel over that for the death of a hus- band, and would not be allayed by the birth of a son; to whom her last words, at his hrst breath, gave that memora- ble and melitncholy name. But Israel's help can come only from Him who is mighty to save as to smite. And when the man, whose name im- ports that he was asked of God^ having gathered Israel to- gether, saw their enemies again flee before them, he wrote the fact upon the spot where he stood by erecting a pillar and calling it by the name — ever endeared to every Christian as to any Jew — Ehenezer, the stone of helpj) in grateful and enduring memorial that the Lord had helped him. The earliest portion of scriptural history being full of sig- nificant names, is thus corroborated by manifold memorials, such as no other history, to an equal or comparable degree, ever possessed. The names of persons and of places need but to be translated, as in the margin of the Bible, to an- nounce or intimate the facts from which they originated. Each name has its meaning, and was the representation of a fact. The land of Judea was studded with memorials ; and the most prominent events in the early history of the He- brew race were told, generation after generation, by renown- ed names, of which no Israelite could have been ignorant, and which none could have falsely imposed in after ages upon any people, as those of their patriarchal forefathers or ru- ■ lers, or those of the cities which they knew, or in which they themselves did dwell. What stronger proofs of ancient facts are to be found than that cities, as living witnesses, should have declared or confirmed them by their very names ! But if such credentials of Israelitish history be sought for, they are supplied by existing memorials that have been spread throughout the world. Positive institutions or rites were also ordained to be observed in every generation, as express memorials of the wonders which the Lord wrought in Israel * Judges XV., 17. 1 1 Samuel i., 20. X 1 Samuel iv., 21. ^ lb. vii., 12. 116 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY His everlasting covenant was not without an enduring seal. His work was not left without a witness on earth ; but or- dinances were established to perpetuate its remembrance ; even as the spirit of prophecy stamped his word as divine, and has given to his judgments a visible manifestation. The novelty of the preceding topic (so far as known to the writer), as forming a connected testimony, though too obvious in repeated instances. to escape the notice of com- mentators, may be a plea for the* tediousiiess with which it has been treated ; if, after all, it be not too briefly touched on. But the admirable and well-known treatise of Leslie, to which every reader is here specially referred, may well limit, to the narrowest bounds, the consideration of the evidence deduced from the Mosaic institutions, the laws, ofdinancfes, and memorials that were established in Israel. ^ After the lapse of more than two centuries, k mere holy- day in England, without any commemorative institution, is sufficient, on the return of the 5th of November, to recall the fact of the Gunpowder Plot, with as little doubt of its re- ality as if the day of its last anniversary had been its date. The martyrdom of Charles I. and the restoration of his son, though events which many now slightly regard, are set forth as facts, year by year continually, on the return of a par- tially recognised holyday. Public customs readily become the habit of a people, and assume the power of a law. But, the sacred ordinances of baptism and the Lord's supper alone excepted, there is no parallel in our land, nor, in some re- spects, in any other, to those ordinances which were en- joined in the Mosaic law, and have been actually observed by the Jews to this day, or for a period of more than three thousand years after their institution, and nearly eighteen hundred years since that people have been scattered among all nations of the earth. Circumcision was a token of the covenant between the Lord and Abraham. My covenant, saith the Lord, shall be in your jiesh for an everlasting covenant* and each circumcised child bears through life that "token of the covenant." The passover was instituted as commemorative of the deliverance of Israel from Egyptian bondage ; and as the blood of the Lamb was for a token upon the houses where they were, and the Lord passed over them^ and the plague loas not upon them to destroy them,] so the lamb slain year by year continually in the families of Israel while they remained in Judea, where alone sacrifices were to be offered up, and all the peculiar observances of the passover, were, for many ages, memori- als of the great deliverance which God wrought for Israel on that selfsame day on which the passover was kept. The * Gen. xvii., 13. t Exod. xii., 13, 14, 17. OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 117 feast of weeks or of pentecost was instituted on the giving of the law. And the third great annual festival of the Jews was the feast of tabernacles, during which* all that were - Israelites born had to dwell in booths seven days, that all their generations might know that the Lord made the chil- dren of Israel to dwell in booths when he brought them out of the land of Egypt. Each of these feasts was " a holy convocation," at which all the males had to present themselves before the Lord. Though the Jews observed not the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith, they tithed mint, anise, and cummin, and were not, while a united people, and are not yet, though scattered among all nations, unobservant of the festivals enjoined in the law of Moses, so far as according to that law these can yet be kept. The more punctiliously that they regarded the ritual ordinances of the law, while they looked to it for righteousness, they confirmed the testimony the more. And while every man and male child of the He- brew race bears in his body the " token of the covenant" which the Lord made with Abraham, every Jewish festival observed to this day, after the extinction of a hundred gener- ations, is a memorial of the fact, in confirmation of which it was ordained as an ordinance for ever. It is recorded that on the selfsame day in which the names of Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac were given by the Lord, circumcision was instituted. And that on the self- same day in which the Israehtes were delivered from bond- age in Egypt, the passover was instituted and observed. And could the children of Israel in any after age have been per- suaded that they and their forefathers, from the days of Abra- ham, had been circumcised, if such had not been the facti Could a nation at any future period be persuaded that they had lived under laws_ and observed institutions which they had never heard of "or known 1 Could the passover and other ordinances have been observed and perpetuated from age to age, if they had not been instituted at the time, and under the circumstances which Scripture records? Or how •could they have been instituted at the first, if the facts in which they originated, and of which they were commemo- rative, had not been seen and believed on at the time T Were the Israelites to be told, if the fact had not been true, that they had heard wailings for the firstborn in every Egyptian family while the Lord passed over them (as the name pass- over indicates), and there was not in Israel one mother who wept for her child ? Were they to be told that they had passed through the Red Sea as on dry grounu, while all the host of Egypt was destroyed, if they had not seen with their * Lev. xxiii., 42, 43. 118 THE AUTHENTICITY eyes, as Moses appealed to them, the wonders which the Lord had wrought in the midst of them ? Did a whole peo- ple commemorate, at first, a national deliverance such as ne- cessarily implied that every individual experienced it, but which never took place ■? Have hundreds of milhons of Jews, throughout successive generations, borne the token of a covenant which never existed ? " Was there ever a book of sham laws which were not the laws of the nation, palmed upon any people since the world began 1 If not, with what face can Deists say this of the books of the law of the Jews'? Why will they say that of them which they confess impos- sible among any nation or any people ]"* The demonstra tion of the fallacy of such allegations may best be found in the reductio ad ahsurdum, or resolving them into an absurdity. It has been alleged that the " Bible was presented to us by a barbarous and ignorant people, and was written in an age when they were yet more barbarous." Whence, then, came the only theocracy — the only unmixed theism — the only re- ligion, may we not say, on earth during many ages, in which the only living and true God was worshipped, .and human sacrifices never burned or bled 1 By what rude hand of bar- barous man was ever a pure, enlightened, and comprehen- sive moral code or decalogue written, like that of the two tables of stone which Moses cast down and brake at the sight of an act of idolatry in Israel 1 How would the most barbarous among any of its tribes have blasphemed the Holy One of Israel, and renounced their faith, by mingling in the idolatrous and impure orgies or festivals, and rites reputed sacred, wherewith the gods of the heathens were honoured among the most civilized, as well as savage, nations of the earth ? Whether does a barbarous age, as respects religion, lay better claim to the temple-worship of Jerusalem, or to the saturnalia of Greece and Rome, and their imitation still throughout great part of Europe, under the auspices of the latter city ? If an age or people are to be reprobated as bar- barous in a religious and moral sense, let Judea, in the days of Joshua and the precepts of the law, which every father had to teach unto his children, stand up in judgment to con- demn Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland, and the authorized "commandments of the (Romish) Church," in which thou- sands are instructed, if instructed at all, in the nineteenth century. Who, in the whole w^orld and throughout many ages, stood erect before an idol but Israelites alone ? What other people was ever stigmatized by idolatrous nations as impious, because of their hatred of idolatry, and of the truth and purity of their creed, as all science confirms, and all na- ture ratifies it, " The Lord our God is one Lord, besides whom * Leslie's Short Method with the Deists. OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 119 there is no GodV^ Of what other people does any ancient geographer or historian speak as Strabo speaks of the ex- clusive purity of the worship practised by Moses and his fol- lowers, who went forth from Egypt to establish their faith in Canaan? What other people have ever been set apart from the nations as the custodiaries of the law, the testi- mony, and the oraclesof truth, the writings of those prophets, before whose word the mightiest nations have disappeared and the greatest cities have fallen \ And in what other book, confirmed by past history and existing facts as the word of the living God, could the promise of a Messiah have been given, but in the Bible alone % Do our adversaries twit us with the incredibility of the " arbitrary choice of one people as the favourites of Heaven," we bid them read the history of that people in ages past, and look to them as they are, and say if the God of Israel be a respecter of persons. And have they never heard or read that, before Abraham was circumcised or Isaac was born, the promise was given that in him all the families of the earth shall be blessed ? And have other nations to complain that Abraham's seed was set apart from the beginning to be a blessing to them all 1 If a wild olive-tree be grafted in among the natural branches, and partake of the root and fat- ness of the good olive-tree, has it reason to murmur against the branches that have been broken off that it might be graft ed in ? Was Jacob " two flocks" on returning to Jordan, which he had passed with his staff in his hand \ It was be- cause the Lord had prospered him, though Laban had dealt deceitfully with him, and had changed his wages ten times. Was Canaan the lot of the inheritance of the Israelites, and were its inhabitants rooted out before them I It was not till the iniquity of the Amorites was full ; and even then a guilty Achan in the camp paralyzed the strength and stayed the victories of Israel. Was the youngest son of Jesse, while a pious shepherd in Bethlehem, chosen, as a man after God's own heart, to be king over Israel 1 Once was he dispos- sessed of his throne, and became a wanderer in his king dom ; and, again, destruction before his enemies, or the fam ine, or the pestilence, was the only choice that was givei: him, because of his iniquity. Judgments came down upon the ©hosen of the Lord for deeds such as those for which the gods of the heathen were glorified. And here, as in all things else, it is manifest that the Holy One of Israel is the Lord. But even when Jerusalem was destroyed, and the land smit' ten with a curse, and the prince of the people, who, accord ing to the same sure word of prophecy, did come and tri umph over the ruin of the Jewish dispensation, the testimony was preserved while many prophecies were fulfilled ; the 120 THE AUTHENTICITY sacred memorials of Israelitish history, and symbols of a preached gospel, and of a light that alone could enlighten the nations, were taken from the temple of Jerusalem to be car- ried in procession before the conqueror, and were sculptured in a yet enduring testimony on the Arch of Titus. SECTION n The subject of the genuineness of the Old Testament Scrip tures might suffice to fill volumes with superabundant illus- trations. But in closing this brief survey — composed of frag- ments—which may serve to show the fulness of tlie matter, as a single cluster of grapes shows the goodhness of the land, it may not be unprofitable to some that we touch on another topic, to which our adversaries lead us in search of new tes- timonials of the truths which they assail ; and in respect to which, instead of the barrenness ihey look for, they may find, on the very spot, the richness of the earth and the dew of heaven from above, and plants which the Lord's right hand alone could have planted. Skeptics, like Hume, were wont, in former days, to hold in derision the scriptural record of creation as necessarily fictitious, the event described being absolutely and incontest- ably beyond the reach of human experience or observation, as any event could possibly or conceivably be. But facts, it seems, are now resorted to ; and in this philosophical age, which has itself given birth to ephemeral cosmogonies that are already forgotten, the Mosaic account of the creation, after having survived so long, must needs be disproved and dissipated by geological discoveries ! '' Some drill and bore The earth, and fronn the strata there Extract a register by which we learn That he who made it, and revealed its date Td Moses, was mistaken in its age." COWPER. The satire may be just, though some may not own it as philosophical. But, since the days of Cowper, the sciwce of geology, truly such, has risen from infancy with a rapidity which promises an early manhood. And when of full age, its full testimony may be given. So soon as the existence of fossil bones could no longer be denied, skeptics, who be- fore derided tlieir existence, then sought their aid, and claimed geology as their own. And now, after all its advancement — as 111'? writer lately witnessed in the midst of the fossil re- mains collected by Cuvior — a youthful sage shakes his head AI^ CIS ©3' -TUTCU'. I'uijiifs paitt? restored . VJUK.H'VHi'i.a Xr ]iUt)'l '/^i^ of THF ^ OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 121 at the sight of a huge bone disentombed from an old world, and, when asked how the fact accords with the narrative of Moses, answers with a sneer. But the Mosaic account in- cludes the creation of the heavens and of the earth, and our appeal from a false verdict or a senseless sneer may be made alike to them both. The days of astrology, which was suited to monks and akin to legendary tales, are past, and tiiose of astronomy are come, in which the velocity of light is measured, and the mo- tions of satellites, unseen by the naked eye, are marked to a moment, as accurately as the eclipses of the sun or of the moon. And the telescope in the hands of the Herschels has subjected to the inspection of man new firmaments of stars, and many hundreds of nebulcB, or luminous masses of mat- ter, spread over the illimitable void of space in avast variety of forms, compared to which our solar sy.-stem is scarcely a point, and the starry heavens, of which that is a unit, is but one of the unnumbered works of God. In their multitudin- ous, varied, and progressive forms, they seem to show that it may yet be said by Him whose name is the Word of God, " My Father worketh hitherto and I work. In n>y Father's house there are many mansions. And places are preparing still." In ages comparatively not remote, men, in their fancy, sought for an Atlas, an elephant, or a tortoise on which to rest the earth ; but the Bible, in the first book, perhaps, that was ever written, declared that the Lord stretched out the north over the empty space, and hangeth the earth upon no- thing.* Natural philosophy has newly discovered that " there is a wisdom which presides over the least as well as the greatest things, and an omniscience which not only numbers and names The stars, but even the atoms that compose them." But from the beginning it was declared in the word of God, that " he maketh the weight for the winds, and weigheth the waters by measure." And secrets of naiure, as well as the destiny of nations, were known to the prophets of a people despised as barbarous. " Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance ? Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or, being his coun- sellor, hath taught him 1 Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the bal- ance. All nations before him are as nothing, and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity. Have ye not known 1 have ye not heard 1 hath it not been iold you from the beginning ] have ye not understood/rom the foundations of * Job x.xxvi., 7. I. 122 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY the earth ? It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers ; that stretch- eth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in ; that bringeth the princes to nothing . he inaketh the judges of the earth as vanity. He shall blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble. Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number ; he calleth them all by names, by the great- ness of his miglit, for he is strong in power ; not one fail- eth.* By his Spirit he hath garnished the heavens. Lo, these are parts of his ways ; but how little a portion is heard of him I but the thunder of his power who can understand I"! "Praise ye him, sun and moon ; praise him, all ye "stars of light ; Praise him, yc heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens. Let them praise the name of the Lord ; for he commanded, and they were created."| Far as the telescope can reach, the word of the Lord, in describing the power and perfections of Jehovah, goes before it, and describes what it cannot discern. And high as history can ascend, the Bible rises higher, till it gives men to under- stand the order in which God laid the foundations of the earth. And having seen by inspecting ruins, and heard by interrogating them, how each is a manifestation of the truth of his word, and answers to its prophetic text, and shows that he brings princes to nothing, and that kingdoms before his word are as chaff before the whirlwind, nmy we not also lift up our eyes and see, and *' interrogate the heavens," and ask whether the analogy of nature does not give " concur- ring testimony" to that which hath been told from the begin- ning, and which, from the record put into our h^ds, might have been understood from t he foundations of the earth ? And beholding whai philosophers, worthy of the name, have ex- hibited to our sight, and what the telescope sets forth to the view of every observer, may not plate after plate be set par- allel with the first words of the fJible, as verse after verse is descriptive of the creation of the heavens and the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars which we see, and the globe which we inhabit ] And may we not see whether those very things are not now visibly true of oiher firmaments which the Bible reveals concerning the formation of our ownl In treating this theme in the briefest manner, the reader is specially referred to the Philosophical Transactions, partic- ularly for the years 1811, 1814, 1828, and 1833, and to Nich- oVs Architecture of the Heavens, to which work the writer is indebted for the facts and discoveries which supply the illus- trations, as well as for the plates. The design of the philo- * Isa. xl, 12-26. t Job xxvi., 13, 14. t Psal. cxlviii., 3-5. OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 123 sophical writers was purely scientific. And their testimony to the facts, which any one may not only examine, but witness, is therefore divested of all suspicion of having been given with any design of illustrating the Mosaic record of the cre- ation, to which they have not hitherto made any reference or allusion. The plates alone, without any comment, illus- trate the respective texts. But a few notes, explanatory of these modern discoveries, may be affixed, which may farther tend to show that astronomers, however unconsciously, are privileged to illustrate the word of God, as well as to lay open to view, in the most extended sphere, the wonders of creation. And their discoveries, or the facts which they have disclosed with wonderful minuteness and unwearied in- dustry, need only to be simply appropriated and applied in order to form illustrations of the. inspiration of Scripture scarcely less conclusive or complete than those which geog- raphers have supplied. It is worthy of remark, that, towards the close of last century, while infidelity was rampant and phantasms abound- ed, travellers were gleaning facts in Palestine and other countries ; geologists raising them from the bowels of the earth ; and astronomers bringing them down from heaven ; and truth was thus preparing its avengements on error. Nearly fifty years have elapsed since the elder Herschel be- gan his observations and discoveries, which the scientific world has hitherto chiefly monopolized, and which Dr. Nichol has newly presented to the public in a popular, interesting, and accessible form. The subject itself is thus not a novel one. In commencing his admirable treatise,* as it may be termed, detailing his astronomical observations relating to the construction of the heavens, the purpose of which was to throw new light upon the organization of the celestial bod- ies, Sir William Herschel states that a knowledge of the construction of the heavens had always been the ultimate object of his observations, in which he had been /or many years en- gaged in applying his forty, twenty, and large ten feet tele- scopes, of great space-penetrating power. And most ably was his purpose fulfilled of '• arranging these objects," which by such telescopes he discovered, " in a certain successive regular order," that they might be viewed in a new light. That light is now clear where previously all was compara- tively, if not absolutely, dark and unknown. Sir John Her- schel, with hereditary talent nnd zeal, has finished in the northern hemisphere what his illustrious father began. Nor do their names stand alone as surveyors of the heavens. The Brisbane observatory was not inactive in the southern hemisphere, whither Sir John Herschel went to complete his * Philosophical Trans., 1811. 124 THE ANTIQUITY AND AUTHENTICITY observations, after having presented the scientific world with a detailed list of two thousand five hundred nebulae and clus- ters of stars. None the least versant in the rudiments of astronomy can doubt that our sun ranks in the order of the stars. And as a knowledge of the construction of the heavens^ from num- berless observations of existing objects, has been the ulti- mate purpose to which astronomers have so successfully de- voted mjny years, ample means are* prepared for instiluting a comparison between the result of their discoveries and the only record of the creation of the heavens and the earth to which a philosopher or any man of sense would now attach a shadow of credibiliiy. By assorting, in thirty-four distinct articles, those- astro- nomical objects to which.his ob.servations were devoted. Sir William clearly showed " the most gradual affinity between the individuals contained in any one class with those con- tained in that which precedes and that which follows it," so that from thence their " nature and construction'''' may be suc- cessively seen, from the most diflTused nebulosity, occupying a space of inconceivable extent, to a luminous point or star. " It will be found," as he states, " that those contained in one article are so closely allied to those in the next, that there is, perhaps, not so much difference, if I may use the compari- son, as there would be in an annual description of the hu- man figure, were it given from the birth of a child till he comes to be a man in his prime."* Such being the result of astronomical observations, may we not compare the account of the construction of the heavens, or that which is discovered and seen eighteen centuries af- ter the Christian era, with that which was written fifteen cen- turies before it 1 Can any analogy be traced, or is any simi- larity apparent, on comparing the " construction of the heav- ens," as described by Herschel, and the creation of the heav- ens, as recorded by Moses 1 Is there any analogy, from first to last, between the respective accounts of the same sub- ject ? And as skeptics have condemned the Mosaic account, may not the " observations of the heavens" confirm it to our sight 1 The^r*^ of the articles with which Herschel begins his classification of astronomical objects, as exhibiting the rudest or first form in which matter is to be seen, is entitled, " Of extensive diff'used Nebulosity." And the first words of the Bible are, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earfh. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep : And the Spirit of God moved * Philosoph. Trans, for 1811, p. 271. OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 125 npon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light, and there was hght, Gen. i., 1-3. (See plate I.) " In the first and rudest state, the nebulous matter is char- acterized by great diffusion. The milky light is spread over a large space so equably, that scarcely 3.ny peculiarity of con- stitution or arrangement can be perceived. The perfectly chaotic modification here illustrated is perhaps the nearest to the original state of this matter of anything now remain- ing in the firmament."* " By nebulous matter," says Sir W. Herschel, " I mean to denote that substance, or, rather, those substances which give out light, whatever may be their na- ture, or of whatever different forms they may be possessed."! After giving a table of fifty-two extensive nebulosities, ^vith an account of each, he remarks that, " when these ob- servations are examined with a view to improve our knowl- edge of the construction of the heavens, we see, in the first place, that extensive diffused nebulosity is exceedingly great indeed ; for the account of it, as stated in the table, is 151.7 square degrees ; but this, it must be remembered, gives us by no means the real limit of it, neither in the parallel nor in the meridian ; moreover, the dimensions in the table give only its superficial extent ; the depth may be far beyond the reach of our telescopes ; and it will be evident that the abundance of nebulous matter diffused through such an ex- pansion of the heavens must exceed all imagination. "J These nebulosities, like many nebulae, are of an " irregular figure" or " unshapen masses of nebulous matter." The neb- ulous matter is compared by Herschel to a " curdling liquid;''"' and it is described as a " shining fluid," "a nebulous fluid shining of itself;"^ and the first, or incipient form in which it is described, as in plate 1, and "in all the other numbers re- ferred to," is that of a "diff'used milky nebulosity. "|| Such is " the first and rudest state" in which matter is seen by telescopes of the highest power. In the beginning (the period is wholly undefined) God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void, like " void^ formless, and diffused'"' nebulous matter now. Darkness was upon the face of the deep. The depth of the nebulosities may be far beyond the reach of our telescopes. " The breadth and DEPTH of the nebulous matter are probably not very dif- ferent." It is described as fluid, or liquid, or vaporous, not in a consolidated form : And it was on the face of the wa- ters that the Spirit moved, even as these, not then gathered * Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens, p. 133. t Philos. Trans., 181 1. p. 277. % Ibid., p. 275. i) " The space filled by a nebula of only 10' in diameter, at tlie distance of a star of the eighth magnitude, would exceed the vast dimensions of our sun at least 2,208,600,000,000,000,000 times." U Philosophical Transactions, 1811, p. 277. L2 126 THE AUTHENTICITY together, were void or vaporous. And it may be remarked that, as marking things of the same nature by the same name, a scripture connexion or affinity may be traced be- tween the original matter from which the earth was formed, and elements described as subsisting still; for; in the enu- meration of tlie works of God that are above all things on the earth, are classed the stars and the heaven of heavens, and the waters* which are above th§ heavens, which are in- voked to praise the Lord, for he commanded and they were created. t The nebulous fluid is evidently "luminous" or " shining," for hsrht alone renders it visible to us : and while the earth whs without form and void, God said, Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light that it ivas good : and God divided the light from the darkness, v. 4. While extensive diffused nebulosities are numerous, with- out form and void^ in many of them some parts appear more luminous than others ; the nebulous matter, according to Sir W. Herschel, and as its appearances indicate, becomes con- densed, or less diffuse or void, and the light, as may be seen, is divided from the darkness. The object, occupying an immensity of space, which is represented in plate i, is de- scribed as an "extremely faint branching nebulosity; its whiteness is entirely of the milky kind, and it is brighter in three or four places than in the rest."| in the "diffused nebulous matter," which forms the great nebula in Orion (p. 1, f. 2), " we may see, in one and the same object, both the brightest and faintest appearance of nebulosities that can be seen anywhere'"^ in the northern hennsphere. It is visible to the naked eye. " The more that the power of the telescope is increased, the more diffuse and strange the ob- ject, and the illumination (light) is extremely unequal and irregular." It is compared by Sir John Herschel to "a cur- dling liquid," which is not an inapt description of water with- out form and void ; or " to the breaking up of a mackarel sky, when the clouds of which it consists begin to assume a cirrous appearance, and is not very unlike the mottling of the sun's disk, the intervals being darker;''' not inapt illustra- tions of the light divided or dividing from the darkness. It is a " chaotic" mass, " void, formless, and diffuse. "|| In large portions of nebulosities the light in some places is compar- atively extremely faint, while in other parts it shines with * Nebula, or nebulous matter, i. e., cloud or cloudy, may be said to be identified with waters, designated as without form and void. Water in a void or diffused state is vapour or cloud ; hereby denoting a harmony, even of expression, between the term which designates a state of matter, for which, as astronomers have affirmed, human language has no proper name. f Ps. cxlviii,, 3-.5. t Ph. Trans, for 1811, p. 273, 295. - tinuous light, the sun itself was not formed into a condensed and distinct luminary. We see, in fact, that light exists in the heavens independent of th(5 sun ; and phosphorescent, igneous, and other bodies, or chymical com- binations, give multiplied proofs on earth of the sajne truth. And the duration of the primary cycles of the light and darkness was regulated by a measure unknown, because unrevealed to man. After the fourth day (the light being uniformly called day), till the work of creation was finished, and the present order of nature perfected, the successive periods of light or of the day are necessarily of unknown duration. The rotation of the earth on its axis in twenty-four hours now; determines the length of the light and darkness, and, consequently, of the dav. But can it be said that that was always the same as it is now ? Or, rather, does not the Nebular Hypothe- sis (m strictest accordance with the scriptural record of the formation of the earth, from waters without form, and void) seem to demonstrate that the rotation of each planet, like that of the sun, began with a slow and almost imperceptible motion, which gradually increased as the globe consolidated? And was there not thus a time when, in the progress of its " augmenting velocity," the rotation of the earth on its axis occupied the same period as its revolution m its orbit ? Such, in fact, is the actual motion of the moon. And according to the Nebular Theory, and because of this once increasing ro- tary motion, by which the waters or nebulous fluid were separated from each central condensing mass, the nrroon bears the same relative origin to the earth that the planets bear to the sun.— (See Dr. Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens, p. 173.) " Such globes [after being divided from the cen- tral mass and gathered together into one place] would likewise invariably fol- low the law of rotation, or necessarily rotate on thiir axis in the direction of their revolutions ; and every one of the secondary masses might, during the phenomena of its subsequent condensation and augmenting velocity of ro- tation, throw off rings corresponding m all respects to the rings around the primary nucleus ; these condensing in their turn, and, according to the fore- going laws, into solid annuli and satellites, or moons."— (Ibid.) Is it not therefore supposable, or, rather, may it not be inferred, that there was a time when, in respect to its motions, the earth revolved round the sun as the moon now revolves round the earth, or that a similarity of origin may have been accompanied by similar relative motions ? And if the rotation of the earth on its axis ever occupied as much time as its revolution in its orbit, whatever the duration of that time, it is manifest that, in such a case, of wiiich there is so direct and visible an analogy in the motions of the moon, which thus uniformly pre.^ents one side to the earth, day, as defined in scripture, would have signified a period without any apparent end. Who- ever can read the aljihabet of astronomical science must perceive that un- interrupted light shone over one half of the earth, while the other was un- visited by a ray of the sun so long as this order was unaltered ; nor was a shade of evening seen, nor could the day come to a close, until the laws of nature, which are the Word of God, evolved the essential fundamental change. The light of the earth has shone only on one side of the moon for six thousand years ; and how long the sun may have shone uninterruptedly OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 129 icancy as if all the elements of matter were to be scattered into chaos again. And God said, Let there he a firmament — literally, as in the margin of the Bible, expansion — in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the fir- mament, and it was so. And God called the firmament or expan- sion heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. " The number of compound nebulae," says Sir W. Herschel, " being so considerable (a hundred and fifty being noticed in the three preceding articles), it will follow that, if they owe their origin to the breaking up of some /ormer extensive neb- ulosities of the same nature with those which have been shown to exist at present, we might expect that the number of separate nebulae should far exceed the former, and, more- over, that these scattered nebulae should be found not only in great abundance, but also in proximity or continuity with on one side of the earth, before the heavens and the earth were finished, it is not for mortal man, who is but of yesterday, to determine. So long as there was continuous light, so long was the day. And each day — as now — was defined as determined by the light ; the seventh returning succession of which, when the heavens and the earth were finished and the present order established, connected the Sabbath of the Lord with the begmning of the creation, and was ever to be remembered and kept holy to the glory of the Creator, in whose word it is written by an apostle, as he looked from the beginning of the creation to the dissolution of the lieavens and of the earth. Be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 2 Peter iii., 8. And looking alone to the scripture definition of the successive days of creation, or measuring the day by the light, then we see that if the light continued for but an hour, that hour was the day ; or if it lasted uninterruptedly for a thousand years, or so long as each rotation of the earth round its axis corresponded with its revolution in its orbit, the same face, so to speak, be- ing always presented to the sun (as that of the moon is to the earth), con- cerning that period or any other, this, and this alone, was the word of God, he called the light day, and there was evening and there was morning each suc- ceeding day. The Hebrew word translated evening literally signifies mix- ture or mingling. D''D"\l?n V3» between the evenings, or, more literally, be- tween the mixtures (PavkhuTst). The origianl or primary meaning of the term evening thus implies greater changes in the previous order than that of the absence of light. Its significancy may be seen in the successive changes during the progress of creation, and in the different strata conjoined in the same " series" of formations, or in the transitions from one series to another. There was evening (literally mixture) and there was inorning in the six days of creation. The term morning or the dawn (Gesenius), equiv- alent with to see or to behold, implies the return of the light, the darkness be- ing ended, or the mixture or transition being accomplished. The day was measured by the light, and not the light by the day ; and except skeptics define the duration of the light before the sun existed and also before the work of creation was finished, even as scripture defines the duration of the day by that of the light, they are free to talk of millions of years. But knowing in whom they have believed, Christians may retain their faith, that, at once, or even in a m.omerit, the waters brought forth living creatures ABUNDANTLY at the word of the Lord. 130 THE AUTHENTICITY each other, according to the different extents and situations of the former diffusions of such nebulous matter. Now this is exactly what, by observation^ we find to be stated of the heavens.''''* *' Parting with these diffused and amorphous nebulosities," says Dr. Nichol, " structure, as governed by law, begins to ap- pear" (or another word of God was another law to nature). " Even its first visible indications are very emphatic. The winding nebulosity in Plate XV. (II.), for instance, exhibits a congregating or condensing of the filmy matter into two distinct places, which look like bright nuclei, surrounded by a corresponding dark ring, precisely as if it had been formed by an actual condensation of the diffused matter, under con- trol of the law of universal gravitation. This is no anoma- lous appearance, for in every case the seeming commence- ments of structure* are of the same kind. This aggregating power, indeed, without the interference of any other, appears to lead to the entire breaking up of the amorphous masses."! The same instructive nebulosity shows how the light is di- vided from the darkness, one part being extremely faint ; and the nebulous or luminous matter is condensed and compara- tively bright, or so concentrated from that of its original dif- fused and void or vaporous state, that it may be seen how nebulae, by a new law, begin to grow out of a nebulosity. One change, or the word that causes it, may be said to pre- pare the way for another, as observable in all the works of God ; and the dividing of the light from the darkness is suc- ceeded, as may be seen in the same figure, by the dividing of the waters from the loaters ; and the shapeless mass begins to be broken up or subdivided. The dividing of the waters from the waters, or the division of one nebulosity into separate nebulje, may best be interpreted and understood by other figures in the same plate, which form the objects of the ob- servation of astronomers ; and which they have set forth to show the next step in the visible progress of the construction of the heavens, by comparing together many hundreds of nebulae. " The present state of the heavens presents us with sever- al extensive collections of scattered nebulae, plainly indica- ting by their very remarkable arrangement that they owe their origin to some former common stock of nebulous mat- ter."t " The expansion of the nebulous matter in general may be considered as consisting of three dimensions." " The class of nebulae which are chiefly extended in length, but, at the same time, have a considerable breadth, is very numerous. * Phil. Trans, for 1811, p. 280. t Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens, p. 133, 134, X Phil. Trans, for 1811, p. 291, 292. F/yM. UP OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 131 This kind of expansion (firmament) admits of the utmost va- riety of lengthened form and position ; and from the great number of nebulae to which I have referred," says Sir W. Herschel, " the existence of such nebulosities is fairly to be deduced."* " The appearance of an irregular round figure necessarily requires that the extent of two dimensions of the nebulous matter should be nearly equal in every direction at right angles to each other. Except an irregular cylinder or cone, placed in a particular required situation, no expansion of the nebulous matter but an irregular globular one can be the cause of the irregular round figure of these nebulae."! The term expansion (as the original Hebrew word, trans- lated firmament, literally means) of nebulous matter is of repeated occurrence in the writings of Sir W. Herschel, in describing different forms of nebulae, and it appropriately des- ignates the sphere of each. By the breaking up of former extensive nebulosities, the loaters, or by whatever name the nebulous fluid be designated, were divided from the waters. Each separate nebula had its own firmament in the midst of them. And if, as Sir W. Herschel states, and as appearances indicate, " the separate and scattered nebulae owe their ori- gin to the breaking up of some former nebulosities," the neb- ulous fluid under the firmament, or within the expansion of each nebula, was thus divided from that above or beyond it, till the word had its perfect work. And it was so ; and over the mighty space, throughout which matter in "its rudest state," or without form and void, was previously diflfused, the expanse of heaven was stretched out, and God called the fir- mament heaven ; and there ivas evening and there was morning the second day. And God said. Let the waters under the heaven he gathered together i?ito one place, and let the dry (landj) appear : and it was so. And God called the dry (land) earth ; and the gather- ing together of the waters called he seas ; and God saw that it was good. Gen. i., 9, 10. The diffiise nebulous matter, without form and void ; the dividing of the light from the darkness ; and, subsequently, the dividing of the waters (or the nebulous fluid) from the wa- ters ; and, next, the gathering together into one place of the diff'used elements of matter, may be seen, as, in the wonder- ful progress of astronomical science, " the construction of the heavens," in all its grades, is brought before the " obser- vation" of man. The same law of gravitation, or word of God, manifests its power over all. The gradual condensa- ♦ Phil. Transactions for 181 1 , p. 294, 295. t Ibid., p. 297. X Not in the original. The sarrie fluid or waters once void became con- soidated ; and that which was once liquid became dry, and, formerly cov- ered or unseen, it appeared. 132 THE AUTHENTICITY tioii of the nebulous matter, " as shown in hundreds of in- stances, is rendered so evident," to use the words of Sir W. Hersehcl, " as not to admit of a doubt ;" and is thus gathered together into one place. " Instead of inquiring after the na- ture of the cause of the condensation of the nebulous matter^ it would indeed be sufficient," in the words of Sir W. Herschel, "to call it merely a condensing j/rinciple; but since we are already acquainted with the centripetal force of attraction which gives a globular figure to planets, keeps them from fly- ing out of their orbits in tangents, and makes one star re- volve around another, why should we not look up to the universal gravitation of matter as the cause of every condensa- tion, accumulation, compression, and concentration [gathering together into one place] of the nebulous matter? Facts are not wanting to prove that such a power has been exerted; and as I shall point out a series of phenomena," he contin- ues, " in the heavens, where astronomers may read in legi- ble characters the manifest vestiges of such an exertion, I need not hesitate to proceed in a few additional remarks on the consequences that must arise from the admission of this attractive principle."* Plate III. Sir Isaac Newton was the first to discover, in modern times, the law of gravitation. But in one of the first verses of the Bible the origin of that law, as giving a being and a form to every globe, may here be read in the word of its Author, as that of the Legislator of the Universe. Let the waters be gathered together into one place, " The gravitation of matter" may be looked up to as the cause of every concentration, or gathering together into one place, of the nebulous matter. But, in respect specially to the origin of planets, of which our globe is one, the theory of La Place, incomparably the simplest, the most scientific and profound, which has ever been promulgated, and which is perfectly accordant with the views of Sir W. Herschel respecting the gradual condensa- tion of nebulae, strikingly illustrates how, throughout the whole circle or orbit in which the earth annually revolves round the sun, the scattered elements of our globe, under the firmament or heaven, were gathered together into one place, or concentrated into a single globe. Whenever the theories of philosophers are inferences from facts or deductions from the known laws of nature, they are justly entitled to strict examination and high regard, while the vain speculations of imaginative theorists are destitute of any claim to the slightest consideration. La Place was never excelled by any mortal in the study and knowledge of the mechanism of the heavens. And he who calculated the utmost perturbation of the planets in their orbits, according * Phil. Tran.s. for 181 1 , p. 284. JI?IVBRSIT7] nir i^m OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 133 to existing relations and laws, was the man above all others entitled to present to the world a theory of their origin, such as harmonized with his calculations, and was evolved from the profound knowledge of the motions and of the laws by Avhich they are regulated. . If any testimony be lacking to connect " the construction of the heavens," as deduced from the observations of astron- omers, with that of the successive formations which the earth presents to geologists, there cannot be a more unexception- able witness than the man who gave his great name to the argument of Hume ; and there cannot be a more competent witness than " the philosopher whose knowledge of celes- tial mechanism was complete, and whose capacity to trace elementary laws to their remotest consequences has never been surpassed !"* La Place's theory, founded on philosoph- ical principles, and lucidly illustrated by Professor Nichol, is, that, in the gradual condensation of the nebulous fluid, the substance of the planets was separated by the rotatory mo- tion of the mass (in the same manner as loose matter is thrown off from a revolving wheel) ; and its original motion being preserved, the separate parts were combined by their relative attraction, " the whole solidifying into T»ne consid- erable globe."! The theory which accords with and explains many astronomical facts, otherwise unresolvable, is not less accordant with the Mosaic record, and may be said to show at once how the nebulous fluid or waters were first divided., and afterward gathered together into one place, and also how the existence of light and the formation of the earth preceded that of the sun and of the moon. The largest telescopes, penetrating an inconceivable dis- tance into space, have power to bring within the vision of the human eye luminous objects three hundred and eighty times more distant than Sirius, the distance of which is so great that the diameter of the earth's orbit (one hundred and ninety millions of miles) is comparatively a point, and forms not a line wherewith to measure it. But in such a field of view, a dark globe like ours, that shines not by its own light, may comparatively be deemed a microscopic object, coil- cerning which, in remote regions, it need not be wondered that the telescope has little or nothing to tell : and with all its powers it cannot show in any case the incipient changes or growing divisions of a distant globe, from which some anal- ogy might be traced as to the origin of our earth. The task belongs to geologists : and the earth itself is their field. So soon as the dry land appears., their testimony may begin ; and though their work be incomplete, their labours have been ♦Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens, p. 177. t Nichol, p 173. M 134 THE AUTHENTICITY abundant, and some results are sure. They have discovered an order, or a succession of changes in the structure of the earth, as distinct in some respects as that which astronomers have observed in the " construction of the heavens." And so far as geology is perfected as a science, a comparison may be also instituted between what was written of old and what has been newly discovered. 'The general accordance is obvious, and has been repeatedly referred to : but the term day, its scriptural definition, having been overlooked, has been a stumbling-block, as if it had been defined by hours and not by the light. It would tend to the " oppositions of science," falsely so called, rather than to the elucidation of indisputable truth, to institute a comparison between the scriptural account of the creation of the earth, and those alleged facts relative to its structure, concerning which geologists are not themselves agreed. The science is both new and avowedly imperfect. Of the distribution of organic remains in the earth. Profes- sor Phillips, in his able treatise, states, " that accurate results on the subject are yet collected from a very small part of the surface of the globe."* In respect to ascertainable facts, the science must be perfected before the comparison can be completed. But between the Mosaic record and the writings of some geologists, who exclude it from their view or keep it wholly apart from their investigations, the analogy might be traced far more closely than some systems of geology agree with each other. " In geology, the whole period included between the limits (of the different epochs) is, and, perhaps, must ever be, abso- lutely unknown; yet the succession of occurrences is, in general, clearly ascertained. "f The periods measured by the succession of light and darkness in a yet unformed or unfinished world, and, except as thus alone defined, the whole period from the time that the earth was loithout form and void^ till the heavens and the earth luere finished, and all the host of them, must perhaps, in like manner, be ever absolutely un- known : but a succession of occurrences is detailed in the written word, as well as ascertained in fact. And geology aflbrds the means of a kindred comparison with that which astronomy first supplies. As in former instances, the con- nexion may, on high authority, be traced between the one " series of new discoveries" and the other. And the testi- mony of astronomers and geologists may be thus linked to- gether. " La Place and Herschel have presented, as the result of their profound reflections, the speculation of this globe origi- ♦ Phillips's Geology, in new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Beparately published, p. 51. t Phillips's Geology, p. 291. OP THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 135 nating from the condensation of a gaseous expansion in space ; a notion often extended to the other planets, and supposed to be in harmony with the common direction of their motion round the sun, the nearly coincident planes of their orbits, and other less striking circumstances. That such gaseous or vaporous expansions exist in spaces is known both by observation of comets and of nebulae."* La Place, it is said, was asked by Bonaparte why he never extended his views from secondary causes to the first great cause. That, it was replied, does not come within the field of our observation. But beyond what man could see, in re- spect to the condensation of our globe, from a void or vapor- ous mass to a consolidated form, we read what philosophers have not always considered. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven he gathered together unto one place, and let the dry (land) apfear: and it was so. The gathering together unto one place is the law of each globe, by the condensation of the nebulous mass, and may be said to be visible in every degree of condensation. And the whole earth, as astronomers and geologists are agreed, was, as the most probable inference from existing phenome- na, once a liquid mass, and covered all over with waters, or in a fluid form. And as at first the earth was without form and void, and astronomical observations show that such is the rudest and first visible state of matter ; so geological dis- coveries, previously adduced in refutation of the saying of scoff'ers, that all things have continued as they were from the beginning of the creation, here supply as clear a com- mentary on the first scriptural description of the earth, when the waters had been gathered together into one place, and the dry and consoHdated crust of the earth began to appear. That the (so termed) primitive rocks, which formed the high- est mountain ranges, were elevated, by whatever cause, from below the level of the ocean into their present position, is held by geologists as an ascertained and undoubted truth. When the previous progress of creation had converted amorphous, or formless and void, or vapoury matter, into a consolidated globe, on which the dry land appeared, a new act of creation covered it with verdure, and, with a word, God clad with beauty the world he had made. AtLd God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, and herb yield- ing seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth : and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit whose seed ivas in itself after his kind: and God saw that it ivas good. And there luas evening and there ivas morning the third day. Ver. II, 12, 13. * Phillips's Geology, p. 257. 136 THE AUTHENTICITY Man, though not. then the witness, was from the beginning the object of the Creator's bounty. Gniss, herbs, and trees are now nowhere so abundant on the earlJi, as are still the collected remains of those which lie entombed within it, after the lapse of thousands of years since they flourished on its surface, when the grass was untrodden and the fruit untasted by man or by beast. Now ripened into produce, rich as apples of gold and of silver, the universal benefit they yield is a universal proof of their primeval existence. The vegetable origin of coal may be held as now an in- disputed fact. " It is worthy of attention," says Phillips, " that, after the coal was deposited, reptile life began to be mani- fested, and, finally, to predominate ; while, on the other hand, vegetable life, though the land was much more extensive, and apparently much more lowered in temperature, never yielded og(0i such thick and extensive carbonaceous deposites y* " An abundance of distinctly preserved vegetable remains occur throughout the coal-fields of Great Britain. But the finest example I have ever witnessed," says Buckland, "is that of the coal-mines of Bohemia. The most elaborate imitations of living foliage upon the painted ceilings of Ital- ian palaces bear no comparison with the beauteous profu- sion of extinct vegetable forms with which the galleries of these instructive coal-mines are overhung. The roof is cov- ered as with a canopy of gorgeous tapestry, enriched with festoons of most graceful foliage, flung in wild irregular profusion over every portion of its surface. The eff'ect is heightened by the contrast of the black coal colour of these vegetables with the light groundwork of the rock to which they are attached. The spectator feels himself trans- ported, as if by enchantment, into the forests of another world ; he beholds trees of form and characters now unknown upon the surface of the earth, presented to his senses al- most in the beauty and vigour of their primeval life ; their scaly stems and bending branches, with their delicate appa- ratus of foliage, are all spread forth before him ; little im- paired by the lapse of countless ages, and bearing faithful records of extinct systems of vegetation, which began and terminated in times of which these relics are the infallible historians. Such are the grand natural herbaria wherein these most ancient remains of the vegetable kingdom are preserved in a stale of integrity little short of their living perfection, under conditions of our planet which exist no more."t In these great natural herbaria are treasured up for the use of man the grass, and herbs, and trees which then decked the earth, and still enrich it; and yet remain to bear concur- * Phillips's Geology, p. 119. t Buckland's BridgWRtcr Treatise, vol. i., p. 458, 459. mi. a^jxim^ir sm c:;®iL2L„ /y Ain. BrogmarL ~-^-.x ^ THI' "^ y/ix. Lwdfy's Fd'ssU FWj P/.X, SIvETni of the FOSSIL STEM OF A TREE. ti'iiiitlut thejfpth of4Ht;ithi^m.<:. ABOVE THE VOM. . 'icale of huhes ''^■illFf' n.TV. OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 137 ring testimony to the record of the fact of their creation af- ter the dry (land) appeared, and God called the dry land earth. But other and distinct acts of creation succeeded before the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And from the first foliage of auewborn world in its pristine beauty, we may lift up our eyes and see, from the analogy which other firmaments present, how nebulous mat- ter may be traced in all its forms, as exemplified by a vast variety of objects, till specks in our firmament, few of which are discernible to unassisted human vision, appear " clusters of stars" as bright and numerous as the stars around us that are seen by the naked eye. And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heav- en, to divide the day from the night ; and let them he for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years : And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth : and it was so. And God made two great lights ; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to ride the night : he made the stars also. See Plate IV. An able and lucid illustration of this topic, in the successive order of creation, may, as the best exposition, be quoted at length from Dr. Shuttleworth's excellent treatise on " The Consistency of Revelation with Human Reason.''"' " Every person conversant with the scriptural account of the creation must have been to a certain degree perplexed by the fact that Moses asserts light to have been called into ex- istence on the first day, and yet expressly declares that the sun and moon were not created as luminaries until the fourth. This statement, at first sight, has the air of singular and gla- ring inconsistency, which it would seem to be impossible to reconcile with truth. If we consider the writer of the Book of Genesis as an impostor or a fanatical theorist, attempting to im'pose his own wild speculations upon the world, we can- not possibly imagine a statement less likely to suggest it- self to the author himself, or less calculated to secure prose- lytes. And yet the observations of the late Sir W. Herschel afford us reason to believe, as is well known, that a process is at this moment going on in the system of the heavenly bodies precisely analogous with this statement of the Mosaic writings. That celebrated astronomer, in his papers address- ed to the Royal Society in 1811, on the subject of the celes- tial nebulae, has given the history of his own observations carefully followed up during the course of a long life. He has there shown that those irregularly-shaped and widely-dif- fused masses of light, which, under the name of luminous nebulae, had long attracted the notice of scientific men, and which are known to exist in vast numbers in various parts of the heavens, are, by a regular process of gradual conden- sation, made to approach more and more to a spherical form, M2 138 THE AUTHENTICITY until, having acquired a bright stellar nucleus, and losing their remaining nebulosity, they finally assume all the definite brightness of a regular fixed star. From the uniformity of this operation, so far as it has been remarked, and from the vast multitude of instances in which it has taken and is still taking place, it seems natural to infer that a large portion of those stars, whose places have been recognised in the heavens from time immemorial, derived their first origin from the same process. But it is also the generally received opinion, that the sun of our own planetary system is a star precisely of the same nature with the rest ; and, if so, it seems not im- probable, from analogy, that it derived its present form from the same cause of condensation, and that its original state of existence was that of a thin luminous fluid, occupying a vast portion of the orbits of ttose planetary bodies of which it is now the centre. It is surely not a* little remarkable, that what might a century ago have been quoted as a seeming ab- surdity and oversight in Scripture, should be found thus sig- nally to accord with one of the most curious discoveries of modern astronomical science."* " A middle state," says Sir W. Herschel, " between the pro- gressive condensation of a globular nebula and a cluster of stars can have no existence ; because a globular nebulosity, when condensed, can only produce a single star ;"t and con- cerning the double stars, which form a numerous class. Sir "W. Herschel stales, that "it seems as if we had these double objects in three different successive conditions : first as neb- ulae ; next as stars with remaining nebulosity; and, lasd]/,ns stars completely free from nebulous appearance. "J He classes the heavenly bodies, with many subdivisions, into nebulosities, nebulae, stellar nebulae, planetary nebulae, stars, a^d clusters of stars. Between the result of his " observations" in seeking to as- certain the construction of the heavens and the Mosaic ac- count of the creation of the heavens, no indistinct analogy, we apprehend, may be traced from first to last, till from the most diffused nebulosity, without form and void, the sun, the moon, and the stars in oiir firmament shone bright in the heavens, and gave light unto the earth, and lite void fluid from which they were formed was condensed in them all, and its original diffusedncss subsisted no more. 1. The fluid nebu- lous matter w^as diffused, or without form and void. 2. The waters were divided from the waters^ or "the whole amorphous (shapeless) mass was broken up," and one vast nebulosity was converted into many nehula, and in the sphere of each an ca:- /?an.sion or firmament was stretched out. 3. The waters were gathered together inio one place, till each in its order became * P. 52, 53, 54. t Phil. Trans. 1814, p. 261. t Phil. Trans. 1814, p. 251. PLY. OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 139 a consolidated globe. And, 4, Other suns and systems being simultaneously formed, the word of God had effect, and from the once void and formless mass, which in the beginning con- stituted the substance of the unformed heavens and earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars (See Plate V.) were brought forth in their order ; and the heavens were garnished by the same Spirit of the Lord which moved at first upon the face of the deep. And God said, Let the waters* bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every loinged fowl after his kind : and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them., saying. Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. Ver. 20, 23. God created great whales. The prophet Ezekiel compares Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to the great dragon (thaiiim) that lieth in the midst of his rivers. And these and other living crea- tures that moved, which the waters brought forth abundantly, may thus be identified with crocodiles, sea-lizards, and the race of reptiles. *' The species of fossil saurians" (lizards), to adopt tlie words of Buckland, " are so numerous, that we can select only a few of the most remarkable among them for the purpose of exemplifying the prevailing conditions of animal Jife at the periods when the dominant class of animated beings 'were reptiles ; attaining, in many cases, a magnitude unknown among the living orders of that class, and which seem to be peculiar to those iruddle ages of geographical chronology which were intermediate between the transition and tertiary formations, " During these ages of reptiles, neither the carnivorous nor lacustrine mammalia of the tertiary periods had begun to appear ; but the most formidable occupants, both of land and luater, were crocodiles and lizards, of various forms, and often of gigantic stature, fitted to endure the turbulence and con- tinual convulsions of the unquiet surface of our infant world. " When we see that so large and important a range has been assigned to reptiles among the former population of our planet, we cannot but regard with feelings of new and unusual interest the comparatively diminutive existing or- * •'Who can tell," says Dr. Nichol, speaking of the Nebula in Orion, " but this amorphous substance may bear within it, laid up in its dark bosona, the germes,the producing power of that life which in coming ages will bud, and blossom, and effloresce into manifold and growing forms," &c. The word of the Lord did give l\\z.i ■producing power to waters once without form (amorphous) and void. And the waters brought forth abundantly. 140 THE AUTHENTICITY ders of that ancient family of quadrupeds, with the very- name of which we usually associate a sentiment of disgust. We shall view them with less contempt when we learn from the records of geological history that there was a time when reptiles not only constituted the chief tenants, and also the most powerful possessors of the earth, but extended their dominion also over the waters of the seas. " Persons to whom this subject may now be presented for the first time will receive, with much surprise, perhaps al- most with incredulity, such statements as are here advanced. It must be admitted, that they at first seem much niore like the dream of fiction and romance than the sober results of calm and deliberate investigation ; but to those who will examine the evidence of facts upon which our conclusions rest, there can remain no more reasonable doubt of the former exist- ence of these strange and curious creatures, in the times and places we assign to them, than is felt by the antiquary who, finding the catacombs of Egypt stored with the mummies of men, and apes, and crocodiles, concludes them to be the re- mains of mammalia and reptiles that have formed part of an ancient population on the banks of the Nile." Immediately continuous to this account of fossil saurians, Buckland selects in the first instance, and describes the ich- thyosaurus, or, as the word signifies.f sh-lizard. " If," as he remarks, " we examine these creatures with a view to their capabilities of locomotion [the living creatures that moveth which the waters brought forth, or marine saurians], and the means of offence and defence, which their extraordinary, structure afforded to them, we shall find combinations of form and mechanical contrivances which are now dispersed through various classes and orders of existing animals, but are no longer united in the same genus. Thus, in the same individual, the snout of a tortoise is combined with the teeth of a crocodile, the head of a lizard with the vertebrae of a fish, and the sternum of an ornithorhynchus with the paddles of a whale. Some of the largest of these reptiles must have exceeded thirty feet in length.''^* The plesiosaurus (nearly a lizard) is "nearly allied in structure to the ichthyosaurus, and coextensive with it through the middle ages of our terrestrial history. To the head of a lizard it united the teeth of a crocodile, a neck of enormous length, resembling the body of a serpent, a trunk and tail having the proportions of an ordinary quadruped, the ribs of a chameleon, and the paddles of a whale. Such are the strange combinations of form and structure in the plesio- saurus, a genus the remains of which, after interm^^nt foi * Buckland, ibid., p. 169. OF THE OLD TEST'AMENT SCRIPTURES. 141 From Sir Charles Bell's Bridgwater Treatise on the Hand. {Conybeare.) thousands of years amid the wreck of millions of extinct inhabitants of the ancient earth, are at length recalled to light by the researches of the geologist, and submitted to our examination in nearly as perfect a state as the bones of the speties that are now existing upon the earth. The plesio- sauri appear to have lived in shallow seas and estuaries. We are already acquainted with five or six species, some of which attained a prodigious size and length^'''' &;c.* The megalosaurus, or great lizard, which ranks in the same order and era, was an enormous reptile measuring from forty to fifty feet in length, and, according toCuvierand Buckland, " partaking of the structure of the crocodile and the monitor."t " It probably fed on smaller reptiles, such as crocodiles and tortoises, whose remains abound in the same strata with its bones. "J Identified as the same word of the original He- brew is with the dragon or crocodile of the Nile, a clearer commentary caimot besought to show how closely, in char- acterizing the animals and specifying the relative era of their formation, the scriptural record bears upon the fact. " The peculiar feature in the population of the whole se- ries of secondary strata was the prevalence of numerous and gigantic forms of saurian reptiles. Many of these were exclusively marine ; others amphibious ; others were terres- trial, ranging in savannas and jungles, clothed with a tropi- cal vegetation, or basking on the margins of estuaries, lakes, and rivers. Even the air was tenanted by flying lizards,^ under the dragon form of pierodactyles. The earth was probably at that time too much covered with water, and those por- tions of land which had emerged above the surface were * Buckland, vol. ii., p. 202, 203. f Ibid , p. 234. t Ibid., p. 237. § " We are already acquainted with eight species of these flying sau- rians, varying from the size of a snipe to that of a cormorant." — See Buck- land's description of them, vol. ii., p. 221-223. Besides these, the remains or footsteps of other birds have been discovered in strata of the secondary series. — Ibid., p. 86. 142 THE AUTHENTICITY too frequently agitated by earthquakes, inundations, and at- mospheric irregularities, to be extensively occupied by any higher order of quadrupeds than reptiles."* And God created great whales, amphibious animals, fish- lizards, or great lizards, or crocodiles, and everything that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly^ after their kind, and every winged fowl after'his kind : and God saw that it was good. The reader may not have failed to mark the testimony of geologists, given in their own words, that " after the coal was deposited" [after the third day (as measured by the hght), in which the trees which formed them grew], " reptile life began to be manifested, and finally to preponderate" [on the fifth day]. "The middle ages of geological chronology that were intermediate between the transition or tertiary for- mations [even as the fifth period of light was intermediate between the third and the sixth] are denominated ' the ages of reptiles.' And, again, during the ages of reptiles, neither the carnivorous nor lacustrine mammalia of the tertiary period had begun to appear." But it is farther written, in reference to a distinct and suc- cessive (or the tertiary) period, And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creep- ing thing, and the beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and every- thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind : and God saw that it was good. "The tertiary series introduces a system of new phe- nomena, presenting formations in which the remains of ani- mal and vegetable life approach gradually nearer to species of our own epoch."! " ^^ appears that the animal kingdom was thus early established on the same general principles that now prevail ; not only did the four present classes of vertebraia exist ; and among mammalia (animals which suckle their young), the orders pachydermata (thick skin- ned), carnivora, rodentia (animals that gnaw), and marsupi- alia (having pouches for their young) ; but many of the gen- era, also, into which living families are distributed [after their genera or hnJ], were associated together in the same system of adaptations and relations which they hold to each other in the actual creation. "| " The recent origin of man is not controverted by any ge- ologist." Nor, it may be said, is there a doubt that man was the last of created beings on the earth. That fact, which physical science has only newly disclosed, ever had its rec- * Buckland, vol. i., p. 76. t Buckland's Bridgwater Treatise, vol. i., p. 74, 75. t Ibid., vol. i., p. 87. OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 143 ord, like the rest, in the first chapter of the Bible. For, as a distinct, and separate, and last act of creation, diverse from all that preceded it, we read : And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our like- ness ; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image ; in the image of God created he him. &c. Ver. 26, 27. It maybe remarked that iYve fish of the sea, here enumer- ated as the first in order, are specifically mentioned by name for the first time after their creation. And the only geological doubt or difliculty (perhaps only yet unresolved) respecting the order of successive creations, compared with the scriptural record, arises from the fact that some marine fossils of the earliest origin are to be found in the strata in which the vegetable world was entombed. But it is worthy of notice, that " not a single species of fossil fishes has yet been found that is common to any two great geological for- mations, or living in our present seas ;" and that the forma- tions of magnesian limestone, shell limestone, and variegated marl, in which the seas were filled with marine animals, are conjoined, in the secondary series, with the lias and oolite formations which mark the era of amphibious animals or reptiles, were undoubtedly subsequent to the carboniferous or coaly strata, in which vegetables were as closely imbedded. A neiv and great creation, characteristic of the period, and in- cluding the tenants of the land as of the deep, might well have been recorded, though some species of fishes which had tenanted the seas, but were then extinct, found not a place in the record of creation. The question is not whether that record might not have been more full and complete if its purpose had been to teach geology to man, but whether, as scoffingly termed, "the few touches" which have been given do not show that Moses moved the pencil by a higher knowledge than his own. And appealing to the most recent discoveries, both in astronomical and geological science, we may ask whether there be not a visible resemblance in the great lineaments of each, as presented and hterally painted to our hand, with the Mosaic portraiture of the creation of the heavens and of the earth. The scriptures speak of the waters which are above the heavens* as subsisting still ; and Christians, in their sacred psalmody, call on them to praise the Lord, who commanded and they were created. The first chapter of the Bibde nar- rates how, from waters without form and void, the heavens and the earth were formed, till all were finished. And need * Ps. cxlviii., 4. 144 THE AUTHENTICITY we now to ask if there be not some analogy between what scripture told from the beginning and what science has at last discovered 1 Astronomers have written on " the Construction of the Heavens," "the Mechanism of the Heavens," "the Archi- tecture of the Heavens,"* while geologists have described the successive formations in the crust of the earth. Moses records the creation of the heavens and of the earth. Their conjoint subjects are the same as his. Astronomers have designated the first and rudest form in which matter is visible, as nebulosities and nebula:, i. e., cloudi- ness and cloud, and have termed their component substance the nebulous (or cloudy) fluid. And how else could wafers without form and void, or vapoury and uncondensed, be more appropriately designated 1 The nebulosities are without form and diffuse, or void. And so also were the heavens and the earth, after their light rendered them visible. As exhib- ited by the great brightness in some parts, and extreme faintness in others, of the same nebulosity, the lighf may be seen divided from the darkness. And there loas evening and there was morning the first day . Astronomers next speak of different forms of nebulous expansion. And in the same nebulosity may be seen the division into separate parts of the luminous fluid, or the breaking up of the whole amorphous or shapeless mass. And there was an expansion, or firmament, in the midst of the heavens, and the tvaters were divided from the waters. And there was evening and there was morning the second day. The gradual condensation of the nebulae, as seen in every form, gives evidence of the recognised and universal law of gravitation ; the centripetal (centre-seeking) force, as Sir Isaac Newton termed it. And the great modern master of the higher geometry, who has trod farthest in the path in which Newton first led, and who was so versant with the motions of the planets as to trace them by a profound saga- city to an origin befitting the majestic and divine simplicity of the laws which regulate them, has shown how, as afl'ect- ing our globe and every other, the waters were gathered to- gether into one place, and the earth was consolidated. And as the dry land appeared, the task of geologists be- gins. To the oldest of formations they have given the title (not undisputed) of primitive rock ; and with the magic wand of truth they have brought back again, after the lapse of thousan4s of years, the springtime of our earth, and showed * The reader is specially referred to the very interesting and able work of Dr. Nichol, Professor of Practical Astronomy, Glasgow University, in which the subject is elucidated both in a philosophical and popular manner. OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 145 how it was clothed with the luxuriance and decked with the beauty of paradise itself. They more than restore the grass, and the herb, and the fruit-tree, which the fancy of man never thought of, and the eye of man never looked on as they grew. And thare was evening and there was morning the third day. Geologists having shown us the beauty of the earth, while yet unblighted because of sin, astronomers invite us to look up again to the heavens and see how the nebulous fluid, gradually conden.sed to a far narrower space than the orbit of the earth, is consolidated into a sun, and, only sUghtly tinctured with nebulosity, shines a light in ihe firmament of heaven; while, in like manner, La Place illustrates how the formation of the moon also was necessarily posterior to that of the earth. And, together with our sun, the other stars of our firmament were, by the operation of the same word of God or law of nature, simultaneously formed. And there ivas evening and there was morning the fourth day. Geologists again take up the task and tell of a time — the fifth day, defined like the rest by the succession of light and darkness, but else of undefined duration, and succeeding that of the origin of vegetables, and preceding that of terrestrial animals, whether wild or domestic — when the waters were filled with living creatures, and the air tenanted with birds : and they bring forth from the depositories which the God of na'ure has formed, those amphibious animals, or race of ma- rine saurians, which they also designate by the name which the original scriptures assign them in their precise charac- ter, magnitude, tnultiplicily, and place. And there was even- ing and there teas morning the fifth day. And, lastly, the tertiary or latest formations (except those of diluvial or more recent volcanic deposiies), succeeding the age of reptiles, and preceding that of man, set forth finally to view the beasts of the earth, and the cattle, and every creep- ing thing af:er their genera or kinds, till the whole work of animal creation was finished. And by a separate and last act of creative power, magnified as such, the topstone, once pointing to heaven, was formed and put over the whole earthly fabric; and the work of creation here below was crowned by that of man, when, though formed of the dust, the Lord breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it ivas very good. And there was evening and there was morning the sixth day. The following diagram from Phillips's Geology (p. 44) will convey an idea of the relative position and order of succes- sion of unstratified rock gg, of the primary strata e d, of the secondary c b, and of the tertiary a {t trap). N 146 THE AUTHENTICITY Comparing these independent accounts, respectively writ- ten at the interval of three thousand years, and guarantied by observations of the heavens and demonstrations in the earth, may we not conjoin the last verse of the first chap- ter of Genesis with the first verse of the second, and em- phatically say, Thus the. heavens and the earth ivere finished^ and all the host of them * And whose word is this but that of their Creator T The stars of our firmament are indeed a host, of which a small part only is seen by the unaided human eye. Astron- omers, so far as they can, have shown its form, so as best to accord with and explain the appearance of the heavens, as faintly represented in Plate \l.\ But He who from the be- giiming told man of their creation, can alone name them by their names, as he created them by his word, and brings them forth in their order. And from a diffused nebulosity, waters without form and void, spread throughout an inconceivable immensity of space, to a numberless cluster of stars, as we read the word of God and look on the operation of his hands, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament * Without any special regard to the scriptural definition of the term day. Christian writers since the days of Athanasius have repeatedly interpreted the days of creation as periods of undefined duration. 'I'he modern hy- pothesis is supported by great names, " which supposes the word 'begin- ning,' as applied by Moses in the first verse of the Book of Genesis, to ex- press an undefined period of time which was antecedent to the last great change that afflicted the surface of the earth." But the record itself does not seem to be limited to this last great change, nor even to the creation of the earth alone, exclusive of the heavens. The earth is described as with- out form and void, which is apparently, if not obviously, fatal to the idea of anterior formations. On the second day the firmament was made, which God called heaven On the fourth day (and not before the first) God made the sun, the moon, and the stars, and set them m the firmament of heaven. And after the record of the work of the sixth and all the preceding days, it is said, Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made, &c. And it is added, These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth, when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. So manifestly does the creation of the heavens and of the earth, frwn waters without form and void, to the hosts of heaven in their order, sesm to be included, according to express declaration, in the Mosaic Rec ord. + Bnnvster's Encyclopaedia, art. Astronomy, pi. 41. pr.YY. OF rwf ^^ airiVBESITT] OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 147 showeth his handiwork. But the law, also, of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul ; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The heavens are our witnesses ; earth is full of our depos- itaries; truth must spring up where the Creator hath sown it ; and philosophers at last must be its tributaries. The Christian may well rejoice in the progress of science, and gladly give it a free and unfettered course. Knowledge shall be the stabihty of the times of the Messiah ; and the mind of man, enlightened in the knowledge of the word and works of God, shall be freed from the nebulosity which enshrouds it, and the light shall be divided from the darkness. And then shall the greatness of his works be seen, and the truth of his word be made manifest. But although, compared to that full flood of light, only the first flush of dawn may seem to be arising now over all the subject before us, whence, we ask, came this light, were it far fainter than it is 1 Is it not enough to scare away the children of darkness from the field which they have assumed as their own ? What invention of man ever bore a simili- tude to truths ever previously unknown and only newly dis- covered, like tliat very record which skeptics have assailed ? And how are all imaginative cosmogonies of former ages swallowed up by that of Moses, as were the rods of the Egyptian magicians by that of Aaron '? Can our great cal- culators tell what is the sum of the improbabilities that such an analogy, if not founded on fact, would have subsisted or could be traced from first to last between the observations of Sir W. Herschel, the opinions of La Place, the accumulated and classified discoveries of geologists, and the short and simple record of Moses ] Before Herschel handled a tele- scope, or La Place had studied the laws of planetary motion, or Cuvier had touched a fossil bone, what Vulcanist, or Nep- tunist (combating whether the crust of the earth was of aque ous or igneous origin), or other uninspired mortal, could have described the order of succession,m\\\e creation of the heav- ens and of the' earth, and marked in six successive periods the rank of each, in so close conformity with the recent dis- coveries both of astronomy and geology, when the name of science can be attached to these words, like the man who, three thousand years ago, could humanly know nothing of either from the mud of the Nile or from the sands of the desert 1 What man on earth, from the beginning of the cre- ation, ever recorded its history with such conformity to ex- isting observations and discoveries, as did He of whom the scripture saith, God made knoion his ivays unto Moses 1 And has not this word its visible illustration in the first page of the Pentateuch, as well as in every prophecy which he uttered ? And may we not finally ask whether the testimony, borne 148 THE AUTHENTICITY by the fate of the Jqws and by the desolation of Judea, that Moses was a prophet of the Highest, be not repeated by the record of the creation, and also, most shghtly as we have glanced at either, by the whole Mosaic history and dispen- sation 1 In contending for the faith on any ground to which our adversaries bring us. it is not epough that our cause pass scHtheless. When Nebuchadnezzar cast the faithful ser- vants of the Lord into the seven-times heated fiery furnace because they would not worship a golden image, and when they came out uninjured by the fire that slew those who touched them, the king's word was indeed changed; and he blessed the God of Israel, and issued a decree that none should speak anything against their God, "because there is no other God that could deliver after this sort." And when the suriplur<-s come forth uninjured from the fire which slays those who touched them, may not the words of those be changed who speak against the Bible 1 may it no be receiv- ed where before it was ridiculed, and be studied where for- merly it was slighted 1 And may not every golden idol be abandoned for the worship and service of the Creator of Heaven and of earth, as whose word the Bible is approved ; not only because it has passed unhurt through the firey or- deal to which the idolaters of blinded reason subjected it, but because it is thus manifest that no uninspired man could have written after this sort, as Moses wrote ; and that no other God but the Lord by whom he spake created the heavens and the earth, as it hath thus been told from the be- On the whole, even from 'the limited and imperfect view contained in the preceding pages, it may be seen that the seal of God is demonstrably affixed to the Old Testament. Every country, and city, and spot on which the word of the Lord lighted, bears its vivid impression by a reahzed judg- ment : and while these speak in a language universally in- telligible, the Jews are living witnesses of " the divine lega- tion of Moses" in every country under heaven : and the Bible is thus " the Book of the Lord," in which those things aie written that God alone could have revealed. Universal tradition supplies its concurring testimony to some of the earliest historical events recorded by Moses ; and others are corroborated by new discoveries, and even by pictorial rep- resentations. Cities by their names bore the inscription of scriptural facts, which is yet as legible as ever in their ruins. And to name the patriarchs and primogenitors of the He- brew race is virtually to repeat facts, thus consigned from the beginning to everlasting remembrance. Positive insti- tuti'ons were ordained for memorials in all generations ; and from their prophetic as well as commemorative nature, they OF THE OLD VESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 149 set a mark upon the Jews to show what they were and what they shall be ; and constitute them the witnesses of wonders wrought in Israel of old, and " the prisoners of hope," who look to Zion yet. Though, as Moses foretold, they now grope at noonday as the bhnd gropeth in darkness, of old they were set apart in another manner from the nations; and the Mosaic dispensation, ere a better covenant appeared, stood alone for many ages before the law was made void by traditions, as the sole witness and the sole word of the one living and true God, and was singularly and gloriously dis- tinguished from all the debasements and abominations of idolatrous paganism. And, finally, exclusive of manifold strong confirmations besides, whether Moses in the first words of the Bible recorded the creation of the heavens and the earth, as their construction and formation are at last sci- entifically deduced from existing phenomena, or Malachi, in closing the vision and prophecy, foretold that the land of Ju- dea would be smitten with a curse which is yet unrepealed, the Old Testament Scriptures, from first to last, are not left without a witness that they are the Word of God. • If the eyes of men be closed against visible facts, and if the truth and inspiration of the Old Testament Scriptures be denied, farther inquiry would be alike unavailing, and all reason would be lost on the inveterate enemies of faith. Could demonstration of a revealed word be stronger than that the Lord hath done the very things which he said 1 and may it not in all truth and soberness be aflSrmed, that if men do not believe Moses and the prophets, neither would they be •persuaded though one arose from the dead. The latter would tell of judgments to come, but the former tell also of judg- ments that are seen. God has accredited the fact that he spake by them, as none but the Omniscient could have spo- ken. He has shown the interposition of his power accord- ing to their word : and he has thus manifested and magnified that word as his own. And ap[)ealiiig to the understanding and senses of men, his controversy with gainsayers is whether they will believe or not : whether they will close their ears against the truth and their eyes against the light ; whether any evidence will convince them ; or whether, when the wrongs of reason shall be avenged, they shall see at last that they themselves had good cause to " lay their hands upon their hearts," and say that these are hardened in unbelief and steeled against conviction, till the experience of judg- ment — not others', but their own — be finally the resistless reason of a hopeless faith. But " if the heart be capable of comprehending the lan- g lage of argumentation ;" and if truths that present them- selves to the sight be seen, and belief in the inspired word of God be thus substantiated in every mind opened to con- N2 150 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS victiou by the Spirit of Truths then our task may happily approach to its close before it be seemingly begun, as the demonstration of the truth of the Christian religion follows hard on the demonstration of the inspiration of the prophets. In passing from the existing proofs of the inspiration of the prophets, and of the authentiqity of the Old Testament, to the consideration of the credibility of the New, the way of the Lord is prepared, and the highway of our God is made straight by testimony not human, but Divine. Jesus himself said unto the unbelieving Jews, " Do not think that I ac- cuse you to the Father : there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me ; for he wrote of me." " Moses," says Paul, '•'■verily was faithful in all his house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after." He who revealed the fate of the Jews to this day, and wrote the history of the world from the beginning of the creation, accuseth those before God who believe not in Jesus. The Author of the Christian religion and his apos- tles appeal to the scriptures as testifying of him. And as mercy rejoiceth over judgment, so the predicted judgments that have fallen on guilty nations are the roitified credentials of those prophets who, as witnesses of God, bear testimony of Messiah the Saviour, as they testified beforehand the suf- ferings of Christ and the glory that should follow. CHAPTER IV. TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS TO THE COMING OP A MESSIAH; AND CONSEQUENT EXPECTATION OF HIS COMING AT THE COM- MENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. That the Old Testament Scriptures, authenticated as pro- phetically an inspired record and as historically true, contain promises and prophecies concerning a coming Saviour which gradually develop the anticipated history of the Messiah and of his kingdom, a selection of such prophecies, to be after- ward more fully adduced, may serve as an ample demonstra- tion. And I will put enmity between thee (the serpent) and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed ; it shall bruise feliv head, and thou shall bruise his heel.* And I will make of thee- (Abraham) a great nation, and I will bless thee, and * Genesis iii., 15. rO A MESSIAH. 151 make thy name great ; and thou shalt be a blessing : and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.* And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.f And in thy seed (Isaac's) shall all the nations of the earth be bless- ed.J And the Lord said, I am the Lord God of Abraham th3^ father, and the God of Isaac ; the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed : and thy (Jacob's) seed shall be as the dust of the earth ; and thou shalt spread abroad to the west and to the east, and to the north and to the south ; and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth beblessed.<^ The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, untij Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.|| I shall see him, but not now ; I shall behold him, but not nigh ; there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and de- stroy all the children of Seth.^ff I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren like unto thee (Moses), and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words, which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.** And thine (Da- vid's) house and thy kingdom shall be estabhshed for ever before thee : thy throne shall be established for ever.ff I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David my servant, thy seed will I establish for ever, and build up thy throne to all generations. Then thou spakest in vis- ion to thy Holy One, and saidst, I have laid help upon one that is mighty ; I have exalted one chosen out of the people. ^ I have found David my servarft ; with my holy oil I have anointed him ; I will set his hand also in the sea, and his right hand in the rivers ; also I will make him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth. My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. Once have I sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David. His seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before me. It shall be established for ever as the moon, and as a faithful witness in heaven. J| Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against tlie Lord, and against his Anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us : Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will de- clare the decree : the Lord hath said unto me. Thou art my Son ; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall * Genesis xiL, 2, 3. f lb. xxii., 18. t lb. xxvi., 4. ^ lb. xxviii., 13, 14. || lb. xlix., 10. if Num. xxiv., 17. ** Deut. xviii., 18, 19. ti 2 Sam. vii., 16 Jt Psl.xxxix., 3, 4, 19, 20, 25, 27,34-27. 362 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession, &c.* My heart is in- diting a good matter; I speak of the things which I have made toucliing the king. Thou art fairer than the children of men; grace is poured into thy lips; therefore God hath blessed thee for ever. Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre. Thou lovest righteousness and hatest wickedness ; therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. I will make thy name to be remembered in all generations. f He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment. He shviU have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him ; and his enemies shall lick the dust. He shall spare the poor and the needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. His name shall endure for ever. The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek.J For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given ; and the government shall be upon his shoulders ; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his gov- ernn>ent and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice; from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this.^ And there shall come forth a root out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots : And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and un- * derstanding, the spirit of counsel and might, tlie spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord ; and shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord ; and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears ; but with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth ; and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people ; to it shall the Gentiles seek ; and his rest shall be glorious.|| Behold my servant whom I uphold; mine elect in whom my soul dehtfhteth ; 1 have put my spirit upon him ; he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift ♦ Ps. ii., 1-3, 6-8. t Ibid, xlv., 1, 2, 6, &c. % Iliid. Ixiii. and ex. ^ Isa. IX., 6, 7. II Ibid, xi., 1-5, 10. TO A MESSIAH. 153 up, noi cause his voice to be heard in the streets. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench. He shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He shall not fail nor be discouraged till he have set judgment in the earth ; and the isles shall wait for his law, &c. I, the Lord, have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hantl, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles ; to open the blind eyes ; to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-houses.* Is it a light thing that thou shouldst be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel ; I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayst be my salvation unto the ends of the earth. Thus saith the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth, to a servant of rulers, kings shall see and arise, princes also shall worship, because of the Lord that is faithful, and the Holy One of Is- rael, and he shall choose thee.f The Lord shall give me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word to him that is weary ; he wakeneth morning by morn- ing ; he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned. The Lord God hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back. I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. I hid not my face from shame and spitting. For the Lord will help me ; there- fore shall I not be confounded ; therefore have 1 set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.| Be- hold, my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high. As many were astonished at thee (his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men), so shall he sprinkle many nations ; the kings shall shut their mouths at him ; for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they consider.^ Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord ' revealed ? For 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. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid, as it were, our faces from him ; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows ; yet we did esteem him stricken, smit- ten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our trans- gressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him ; and with his stripes we are heai- * Isa. xlii., 1-7. t Ibid, xlix., 6, 7. ± Ibid. 1., 5-7. $ Ibid, lii., 13-15. 154 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS ed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray ; we have turned every one to his own way ; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflict- ed; yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter; and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment ; and who shall declare his generation 1 for he was cut off out of the land of the living ; for the trans- gression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death ; be- cause he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him ; he hath put him to grief ; when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in fils hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied ; by his knowl- edge shall my righteous servant justify many ; for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong ; because he hath poured out his soul unto death ; and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.* The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek ; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound ; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God ; to comfort all that mourn ; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness ; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.! Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a king shall reign and prosper, and execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell in safety ; and this is the name whereby he shall be called. The Lord our Righteousness. | Turn again, O virgin of Is- rael, turn again to these thy cities. How long wilt thou go about, O thou backsliding daughter? for the Lord hath created a new thing on the earth, a woman shall compass a man.^ Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.|| Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah ; not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt (which * Isa. liii. t Ibid. Ixi., 1,3. t Jer. xxiii., 5, 6. ^ Jer. xxxi., 22. Il Isa. vii., 14. TO A MESSIAH. 155 niy covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord). But this snail be my covenant \/ith the house of Israel ; after those days, saith the Lord, 1 will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts ; and be their God, and they shall be my people.* And this is the name wherewith iie shall be called, the Lord (Jehovah) our righteousness t And I will set up one Shepherd over ihem, and he shall feed them, even my servant David ; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd. And I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David a prince among them : I the Lord have spoken it.;}: I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the heathen, which ye have pro- faned in the midst of them ; and the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, saith the Lord God, when I shall be sancti- fied in you before their eyes. I will also save you from all your uncleannesses.^ And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed. H And the kingdom and dominion, and greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.^ Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people, and upon thy holy city, to finish transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy. Know, therefore, and understand, that from the going forth of the command- ment to restore and to build Jerusalem, unto the Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks ; the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself; and the people of the Prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanc- tuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined. And he shall con- firm th^ covenant with many for one week ; and in the midst of the w^eek he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it des- olate, even unto the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.** And they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall takfe away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate. And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall he cor- rupt by flatteries ; but the people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits. And they that do under- stand among the people shall instruct many ; yet they shall * Jer. xxxi., 31-33. t Tbid. xxxiii., 16. t Ezek. xxxiv., 23, 24 ^ Ezek. xxxvi., 23, 29 || Dan. ii., 44. f Ibid, vii., 27. ** Dan. i^., 24-27. '66 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS fall by the sword, and by flame, by captivity, and by irpoil, many days,* For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and witliout a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim. Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days.f And thou, Bethlehem-Ephrala, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of ihee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel ; whose goings forth have been of old, from everlasting.^ And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come ; and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of Hosts. ^ Thus speaketh the Lord of Hosts, saying, behold the man whose name is the Branch ; and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord; even he shall build the temple of the Lord ; and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne ; and he shall be a priest upon his throne ; and the counsel of peace shall be between them both.|| Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion ; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem ; behold, thy king cometh unto thee ; he is just, and having salvation ; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.^ And I took my staff, even Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break my covenant which 1 had made with all the people. And it was broken in that day; and so the poor of the flock that waited upon me knew that it was the word of the Lord. And I said unto them. If ye think good, give me my price ; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said unto me. Cast it unto the potter; a goodly price that I was prized at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them unto the potter in the house of the Lord.** And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications ; and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced ; and they shall mourn for him as one that mourneth for his only Son, and shalt be in bitterness for him as one that is in bitterness for his first- born. ft Awake, O sword, against my Shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts ; smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered ; and I will turn my hand upon the little ones.|| Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me ; and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant whom ye delight in; behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts. But who » Daniel xi., 31, 33. f Hos. iii., 45. J Mic. v., 7. ^ Hag. ii., 7. II Zech. vi., 12, 13. f Ibid, ix., 9. ♦• Zach. xi., 10-13. t+ Ibid, xii,, 10 tt Ibid. «&., % TO A MESSIAH. 157 may abide the day of his coming ? and who shall stand when he appeareth 1 for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap ; and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in right- eousness.* Behold, I will send unto you Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord; and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to the fathers, lest I come and smite the earth (land) with a curse. f The Scriptures of the Old Testament thus explicitly testify of the Messiah. And hence the expectation of his coming has been the common faith of the Jews in every country and in every age. A minute comparison will subsequently be instituted between those things which were foretold con- cerning the Messiah, and the history of Jesus and the doc- trine of the gospel. The fact is clear that a Messiah was foretold ; and so unquestionably was this the faith of the Is- raelites before the coming of Christ, that in " the Chaldee paraphrase now extant, which was translated and read in the synagogues long prior to the Christian era, there is express mention of the Messias in above seventy places, besides that of Daniel. "t It was not the exclusive purpose of the oracles of God to show that his soul would be avenged on guilty nations. Nor was the seed of Jacob chosen as a peculiar people, to be called by his name, that the Gentiles should have rule over them, that the Israelites should be carried captive into Assyria, and the Jews be scattered among all nations. Jerusalem was not chosen by him for a city that he should place his name there, in order that it might be trodden down of the Gentiles. Nor did God give ordinances and statutes for his worship, and institute a priesthood to offer sacrifice, and love the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Judah, in order that finally not one stone of the temple should be left upon another, and that the abomination of desolation should stand at last in the holy place where the God of Israel was adored. The history of the creation was not revealed to Moses, nor did the Lord bring his people by a strong hand and by a mighty arm out of the land of Egypt, and lead them through the Red Sea and through the desert, giving them bread from heaven to eat and water from the smitten rock to drink, and place them in the land promised to their fathers, and set his statutes and his judgments among them, that the end of all might be that the Romans should come and take away their place and nation. Nor yet was the law given in thunder und lightning from Sinai, that it might eventually be superseded • Mai. iii., 1-3. f Ibid, iv., 5, 6. % Pearson on the Creed, art, 2. o 158 TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS by the edicts of Caesar, or of the prince of the people that should take atoay the sceptre from Judah. These things, in verification of his word, showed that there was a God in Is- rael ; but they were not the end of the work of the Lord. Kings of the earth were raised up to be the executioners of the Divine judgments ; but the prophets, by predicting these, were installed into their office over the ruins of cities that strove against the Lord, in order to bear witness of the Mes- siah that was to come. The Jewish dispensation, as a frame- work, did not fall till a sure foundation was laid in Zion. The sceptre was not to depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, till Shiloh should come. The second temple was not to be laid in ruins till the desire'of all nations should come into it. The genealogies of the families of Judah were not to be lost till a branch should spring forth from the root of Jesse, and a son be raised unto David, whom he called Lord. Bethlehem was not to be given up to the Gentiles till out of it he should come forth who was to be iniler in Israel. The covenant with Israel was not to be broken till a new and everlasting covenant was revealed. The city and the sanctuary were not to be destroyed, nor sacrifice and oblation to cease, nor desolations determined, until the consummation, until the Messiah should be cut off, and the covenant confirmed with many ; and also till the time determined upon the Jews and upon Jerusalem had come, to finish transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy. The promise of a Messiah is conjoined with the first de- nunciation against sin, and with the last threatening of judg- ment, recorded at the commencement and close of the Old Testament. It is the great and glorious theme of all the prophets. His coming is the creed of the Jews in every age and in every country. The assurance of it is ingrained throughout the whole Mosaic dispensation, which, without it, would have been a mass of unmeaning ceremonies and an intolerable yoke of bondage ; a religion more limited even in its purposed range than any other: and the voice of prophecy would have been nothing but an anticipated tale of desolation ; and, contrary to the whole analogy of nature, a work in which the hand of God is manifest would yet have been left imperfect, if abrogated statutes that merely in them- selves were not good had not been succeeded by an everlasting righteousness; it sacrifice was to cease, and yet no atonement had been made for sin ; if the vision and prophecy had been sealed, and yet no Messiah had come : and the worship of the God of Israel, whose word by the prophets shows that he is Lord, would, together with the precious salvation, have ceased for ever, if they had been limited at once to the seed TO A MESSIAH. 159 of Jacob and to the land of Judea. To abjure the behef of a Messiah would, on the part of any Jew, be to renounce the faith and the hope of Israel; and to deny it would, on the part of any Gentile, be to deny the proved inspiration of the prophets. Irrespective of the testimony given in the New Testament as to the fulness of the time of the Redeemer's advent, other ■fevrdence plainly shows that the opinion was prevalent over the whole East that the predicted time of his appearing had come at the beginning of the Christian era. Tacitus, in describing the fearful signs which preceded the destruction of Jerusalem, relates that " many were persuaded that it was contained in the old writings of the priests, that at that very time the East should prevail, and the Jews should have dominion," 1. v., c. 13. And Suetonius, in the life of Ves- pasian, c. i., n. 4, says, " That it was an an(^ient and con- stant opinion throughout the whole East, that at that time those who came from Judea should obtain the dominion." And certain it is, as an historical fact, that, from the days of Abraham to the present hour, there never was any other pe- riod in the whole history of the Hebrew race, during which, in indication of the credited fulness of the predicted time, so many false Christ's appeared and deceived many, as at the very season when Christianity arose and Judaism fell ; and immediately subsequent to which, believers in Jesus spread his gospel, and the Jews were scattered throughout the world, in similar and simultaneous verification of the word of the Lord by the prophets. And from whatever source it originated, the prediction or opinion that nature was about to bring forth a king to the Romans,* may here, at least, demand an appropriate allusion, seeing that it so wrought on the fears of the Romans that the senate decreed that no child born that year should be brought up, but be ex- posed. This remarkable decree — which was rendered inop- erative in a manner which farther exemplifies the credit at- tached to the oracle, through the influence of those senators whose wives cherished the hope of giving birth to the great king — was passed in the very year in which Pompey took Jerusalem ; and no sooner had the holy city yielded to the imperial, than the conquest was thus associated with the fear which agitated Rome, that Nature, or, to adopt a more just and intelligible phraseology, the God of Nature, was about to give a king to the Romans, though a child that had not then been born. Nor, in rigid scrutiny of concurring evidence as to the belief of the peculiar or precise time when the Messiah was to come, or a greater than any other king to appear, Bhouid the fact be overlooked, of which tens of thousands of *■ Suetoiiius, lib. ii., sect, 92. Quoted by Leslie. 160 OF THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS witnesses are to be found throughout all the classical schools of Europe, that the first of the Latin poets, touching for once on a nobler theme than his wont, paulo niajora canamus, proclaimed the approaching birth of a great deliverer of the human race a few years before the birth of Christ ; and, as if copying Isaiah rather than Homer, portrayed the blessings of his Divine kingdom in strains unmatched by heathen poesy; as if Jesus had had a messenger to prepare his way in the capital of the world, as well as in the wilderness of Judea. While such striking coincidences, peculiar to the time, and unprecedented or unparalleled in history, may, on reflection, astound the reader, if prejudiced against the Messiahship of Jesus, the direct testimony of Josephus among the Jews, and of Tacitus and Suetonius among the Gentiles, confirms the fact of the general expectation of the coming of the promised Messiah about the very period of the commencement of the Christian era. CHAPTER V. OF THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. The inspiration of the prophets of Israel being visibly and incontestibly demonstrated by existing facts; the- credibility of genuine miracles being established, and the great argu- ment against the adequacy of any testimony in their con- firmation being transferred into a direct evidence of inspira- tion ; the antiquity of the Old Testament Scriptures being undeniable, on the slightest investigation, they:. authenticity being illustrated even by modern discoveries, and confirmed by irrefragable proof, and their testimony of a coming Mes- siah being explicit and abundant, we may enter on the kin- dred question of the credibility of the New Testament in the full knowledge that faith in the Messiah is not left to stand alone on the testimony of man. The birth, the life, the miracles, the death, and resurrec- tion of Jesus — who professed to be the Messiah spoken of by the prophets, whose coming the Divine Mosaic dispensa- tion predicted and prefigured — derive not the full measure of credibility which pertains to them from all that men have re- corded or could have recorded concerning these marvellous events. Human testimony may singly accredit mere human things, for which no other guarantee can be given than the word or the writing of man, and the certainty of which, as OF CHRISTIANITY. 161 affecting only temporary and perishing interests, needs not to be tried by any other test than the corresponding narra- tives of fallible historians. But as such a charge never oth- erwise devolved on human testimony as that which was committed to the witnesses of Jesus, the tidings which they bear lay claim to a warrant as high above that of all others as their importance excels theirs, and as sure and sufficient for the confirmation of things that in their nature and order are Divine, to all who will hear the word of God or see the evidence which he gives, as any testimony of man could be in accrediting things that are natural. The spirit of proph- ecy, saith the Scripture, is the testimony of Jesus. And the testimony of man is not, unaided and alone, to be put in its place, or to be made chargeable with the full execution of that which it is the avowed object and office of the prophetic testimony to fulfil. Reverting, then, for a moment, to the professed connexion between the inspiration of the prophets and the credibility of the gospel, a connexion so close and inseparable that the doctrine of the gospel is, that Jesus is the Messiah of whom the prophets testified ; and also to the connexion between the Old Testament and the New, similarly close, in that the one is professedly the completion of the other, it may, merely for the present, be in the remembrance of the reader that, prophecy being true and the -Bible being genuine, there is thus a power of evidence prepared for bearing on the truths of the gospel such as no testimony of man could ever have imparted. It hath seemed meet unto Him with whom wisdom dwel- leth — and the truth of whose word, confirmed in all past ex- perience by the very changes of human things, shall stand, though the foundations of the earth be shaken — to make the history of the world the witness of his word, and to show, from those events themselves which have come to pass upon the earth, and which have not only been recorded by histo- rians, but which any man, without the testimony of another, may now see with his own eyes, that the words of the prophets were truly the oracles of God. And it becomes us, therefore, in investigating the credibility of the gospel, not to rest alone on the testimony of man while Jesus appealed to a higher, or to strain a part beyond its natural powers or limits to execute singly the office of the whole, or to trench on the peculiar province of the testimony of God, as if he, by his prophets, had never once testified of the Messiah or borne witness of his Son. It is not even alleged in the New 'J'estament that the faith of primitive Christians, who were the witnesses of miracles, and who were converted by apos- tles, rested on their testimony alone. And the Jews of Berea were declared to be more noble than those of Thessalonica, 02 162 OF THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS ill that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily whether those things were so. Seeing, too, that miracles are not contrary to experience, but that there is evidence of a miracle, the greatest, perhaps, recorded in Scripture, all inquiry into the historical testimo- ny of the origin of Christianity is not precluded from the very nature of the facts with which it is associated ; but, on the other hand, conjoining the positive evidence of inspiration with the credibility of miracles, the testimony of any wit- nesses professedly recording the history of the Messiah would be found to be inapplicable and untenable, on being compared with the sure word of prophecy, if it testified only of human knowledge and natural events. But the fulness of evidence, as well as the rights of truth, forbid that the slight- est undue or unforced concession should" be asked of the skeptic, or that any portion of the testimony of Jesus should be stretched in the least beyond its just measures and fair proportions in relation to the whole. And although the ar- gument against the belief of miracles is not only demonstra- bly fallacious, founded on a fiction, but actually confirmatory of the truth which it was designed to overthrow, still we ask not, and we need not ask, that the credibility of the Chris- tian religion should rest on any human testimony alone, how- ever perfect it might be. We would only claim that the historical evidence of the origin and progress of Christianity be fully, and fairly, and rigidly investigated. Or the invet- erate skeptic may, if he will, as more congenial to his feel- ings, enter on the inquiry on the supposition of the falsehood of the Christian faith, in order to ascertain, more carefully and minutely than he has hitherto done, the time and the manner in which, as he conceives, in contradiction to an apos- tle, the cunningly devised fable was palmed upon the world. And without conjuring up an ideal phantom, but looking to the nature of the testimony as well as to the nature of the facts, let him show, if he can, wherein the deficiency of that testimony lies. It is, then, to the historical testimony itself, as such, that we have primarily and principally, in the first instance, to look, in investigating, as a matter of fact, the actual rise of Christianity in the world : for as to the nature of the events recorded in the gospel, and of the doctrine which it unfolds, other proofs may clearly and fully be found to concur and to give a direct sanction to our belief. The New Testament is in every man's hand, or is known and read together with the Old, at least tenfold more extensively than any other book ; and it would be a marvel without a parallel on earth if no man really knew from whence it had come, or by whom or at what time it had been written. The Christian religion exists and is professed, though in various forms, as OP CHRISTIANITY. 163 the only true faith, wherever civilization prevails ; v^hile every other system of religion bears striking symptoms of decay and early dissolution, and cannot withstand the light that is pervading the world ; and while Mohammedanism, so long its rival in the number of its votaries, can now no more be compared to it than the pale sinking crescent, the thin extended rim of the setting moon, to the sun in the heavens, dispelling darkness wherever its light is unobstructed, and ever brightening as the clouds which obscured it pass away ; Christianity bids fair, in mere human prospect, to be the only religion in the world. But looking merely to what it is, and to the extensive recognition of its Divine authority, it would be strange indeed if its origin were unknown and undiscoverable, and if no positive, certain, and indisputable evidence of the actual time and manner of its rise and propa- gation could, by any possibility, be attained by the zealous researches of its friends or the prying scrutiny of its ene- mies But m approacnmg the testimony-which all history, civil as well as ecclesiastical, bears to the origin and rise of Chris- tianity, we do not enter a labyrinth of fable, where we might ever grope in vain without once grasping the truth : for never was the way of investigation more completely cleared, nor were ever facts more palpable to the sight of all men. This thing was neither done, nor is it hid, in a corner. And were it not that the varied and abundant evidences of the truth of the gospel disclaim any assumption destitute of the fullest and most direct demonstration, we might at once, from the clearness and prominence of both, take a conjoint view of prophecy and of history in respect to the present extent, the past corruptions, the early propagation of Chris- tianity, as all history concurs in describing them ; and hence alone show that it has not been left without the witness of God and the corresponding testimony of man. And detach- ed from all antecedent credibility that pertains to it, it may not only be averred, without the hazard of denial on the part of any reasonable being, that there is only one history of Christianity, whether given by friends or foes, and that every adversary may be challenged to produce any other which, in any truth or reason, could ever bear a hearing ; but also that the most searching, or even the slightest mvestigation, must convince every candid inquirer that never on earth was a similar or so strong an attestation borne to any facts in the history of man as that which was given by the witnesses of Jesus. That testimony has to be tried whether it be com- plete of itself, and be infallibly substantiated as such, so far, in the first place, as human testimony can be. It may be put to the rack, as these witnesses were, that it may bear every tr-al; and the more searching the scrutiny, it will be 164 OF THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS the better approved as, of itself, genuine and unimpeacha- ble , and it may stand singly at the bar of reason, claiming a verdict for itself, as lacking no evidence that the testimony of Jesus has been borne to the world, and that nothing is wanting to the credibility of the gospel which it has been charged to impart. The sophistry of Jesuitical extraction, which their vaunt- ed argument displays, could gild a falsehood with a most deceptious plausibility, but could not disguise the inherent suspicion it betrays, that the testimony itself was not to be touched ; and, after its fallacy is seen, it is a tacit confes- sion of the power of that very testimony, with which, being unable to grapple, the wily speculatists shrunk from the en- counter. Evasion, which was their only wisdom, should have been their only boast. Unbelievers, in their fancied security and success, have not always proved aright the quality of their boasting, nor of their " great argument" of everlasting use. Retreat, though successful, is scarcely re- puted as the choicest theme for glory or the first claim for triumph. But slight is the hope of safety when, instead of having escaped for ever from indomitable foes, the fugitives must stand before an unbroken army with banners. And never, in the contest for historical truth, was there ranged on the field of controversy such an impenetrable mass as " the noble army of martyrs," flanked on each side by cap- tive enemies, the full force of whose testimony the evasive foes of Christian truth, when all ambush fails them, and when the phantom in which they trusted has vanished, have yet to encounter. The testimony of a heathen, vouched by a skeptic, may take the lead in this portion of the Christian evidence ; and all reasoning would be lost on those who would discredit it. Tacitus, an eminent historian, thus describes the origin of the name and faith of Christians, and the persecutions which they suffered in Home, the capital of the world, at so early a date as thirty years after the death of Christ. At that pe- riod " they were commonly known," as he relates, "by the name of Christians. The author of that name was Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was put to death as a crimi- nal, under the procurator Pontius Pilate. But this pestilent superstition, checked for a while, broke out afresh, and spread not only over Judea, where the evil originated, but also in Rome, where all that is evil on the earth finds its way and is practised. At first those only were apprehended who confessed themselves of that sect ; afterward a vast multi- tude discovered by them ; all of whom were condemned, not so much for the crime of burning the city as for their en- mity to mankind. Their executions were so contrived as to expose them to derision and contempt. Some were covered OF CHRISTIANITY. 165 Dver with the skins of wild beasts, that they might be torn to pieces by dogs ; some were crucified ; while others, having been daubed over with combustible materials, were set up for lights in the 'nighttime, and thus burned to death. For these spectacles Nero gave his own gardens, and, at the same time, exhibited there the diversions of the circus; sometimes standing in the crowd as a spectator, in the habit of a charioteer, and at other times driving a chariot himself : until at length these men, though really criminal and deserv- ing exemplary punishment, began to be commiserated, as people who were destroyed, not out of regard to the public welfare, but only to gratify the cruelty of one man." (Taci- tus, b. XV., c. 44.) " The most skeptical criticism," says Gibbon, " is obliged to respect the truth of this important fact, and the integrity of this