Christianity, that were we to leave them in silence or in obscurity, we should forego one of the brightest and most impressive of all the arguments which can be brought to bear upon the infidelity of modern days, and become justly obnoxious to censure, for a fault which we have already condemned-the error of resting our defence upon a very partial and imperfect estimate of the strength and bulwarks of our faith.

There is no end to the labyrinth of scepticism, The sceptic is one who has a conjecture for every thing, and a belief in nothing. He shuts his eyes to the force of moral proofs, and would rather give one of his doubtful assents to the most unreasonable possibility, if against, than to the most reasonable probability, if in favour of the Gospel. When, therefore, we press upon his attention the irresistible weight of testimony to the miracles of our Lord, and urge the certainty of the argument which those miracles afford to the divine authority of the religion for which they were wrought, he answers that it is possible that testimony may be false, and not probable that miracles should be true. He holds some events (as we have seen) "to be so extraordinary, that they can hardly be established by any testimony." He allows, however, that were he to become himself a spectator of any extraordinary event, he

would no longer hesitate to admit it, however singular, or however, abstractedly speaking, improbable. Now we maintain, that the whole of this reasoning is repugnant to the common sense of mankind, and we think we have shewn it to be altogether inapplicable to the miracles of the Gospel. But we rest not upon our own reasonings alone. It is precisely at this point that the argument from prophecy is of most avail, and meets the sceptic upon his own ground. The sceptic himself allows that a prophecy fulfilled is neither more nor less than a miracle. It is, in fact, the sure and certain sign of supernatural knowledge, in the very same manner, and to the very same extent, in which a common miracle is the sign of extraordinary power; and the founder of a new and a holy religion who predicts the future, and whose predictions are fulfilled, gives us as convincing and miraculous a proof of the divine origin of that religion he proclaims, as by the restoration of sight to the blind. For he who opens the eyes of the blind, and he who opens the womb of futurity, do alike make men to see what they had never seen before, and never otherwise would have been able to see. If then we can prove in a manner which ought to bring the satisfaction of the

a See Discourse IV.

"Indeed all prophecies are miracles." HUME.

sceptic himself, that the spirit of prophecy rested upon Jesus, we shall have given a testimony to his mission which he cannot but admit. If we bring before his view a prophecy of our Saviour fulfilling or fulfilled, we answer his own demand. We make him spectator of a miracle, and give him that, of which he talks so much, the testimony of experience to the reality of a miraculous event. We do more.-We render also every other miracle of our Saviour a probable occurrence, and capable of being established into certainty by the application of the commonest rules of evidence; and thus prove that the unequivocal and disinterested testimony of the Evangelists is as sufficient to prove the reality of the miraculous as the ordinary works of our Lord. For it is highly reasonable to suppose, that he who has done one miracle may also have done more. It thus appears that one of the most signal advantages of the spirit of prophecy is, as the Apostle expresses it to be, "the testimony of Jesus," to every generation to supply, by the continued wonder of its fulfilment, the cessation of miraculous powers in the Church-to convince every age not only of the probability but of the reality of the astonishing works of Jesus, and throw in such a flood of light and certainty upon the human and historical testimony in his favour, as to make it irresistible to every unprejudiced mind.

Now of the prophecies of our Saviour there are various kinds recorded in the Gospel.

First, There are some of our Lord's predictions which embraced but a very small portion of the future in their terms, and whose completion therefore was often immediate and almost mo

mentary. Jesus said unto Peter, verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice." The cock crew,

them,

"and Peter remembered the words of Jesus, which said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out and wept bitterly.' On another occasion, he said unto Behold, when ye are entered into the city, there shall a man meet you bearing a pitcher of water, follow him into the house where he entereth in....And he shall shew you a large upper-room furnished, there make ready.-And they went and found as he had said unto them; and they made ready the passover." I could produce a thousand examples of a similar kind, so varied in their nature, so minute in their reference, and so intimately interwoven with the surrounding narrative, that an unprejudiced mind would feel it impossible to reject their testimony to Jesus. But still they are not exactly adapted to our present purpose, nor sufficiently convincing Luke xxii. 10, 12, 13.

C

Matt. xxvi. 34, & 75.

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to tell upon the perverseness of modern infidelity. Both in these and many other similar cases the prediction and its fulfilment rest upon the same testimony. The fulfilment, therefore, cannot properly or conclusively be made use of to establish the credibility of that testimony. If a man bear witness of himself, his witness is nothing in a doubtful case. It is where the words of a prophecy, and the fact of its completion are related by different individuals, or drawn from different and independent sources, that they can be brought forward with the greatest triumph as proofs. We must pass on, therefore, to some other examples of alleged prescience in Jesus.

In the second place, then, there is a class of the predictions of our Lord, which, instead of being confined to the compass of a few hours or years, imply his knowledge of things to come, even in the very end of the world and time. He speaketh thus. e" When the Son of Man shall come in his glory and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory. And before him shall be gathered all nations; and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats. And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall

Matt. xxvi. 31.