may be that force when directed against other religions.

1. In the first place, we are to consider the circumstances under which the testimony of the Evangelists has reached us.

Now, it is evident that we ourselves have not, like the primitive Christians, either seen the works or heard the words, or been conversant with the person of our Saviour or of his Apostles. All that we reason upon as to the religion of Jesus, and all that we know of the character, and conduct, and doctrine of his immediate disciples, is derived, as a matter of history, from the testimony of others from the dwellers in distant countries, and in ages remote from our own. Hence it has been insinuated by some, that the probability of the truth of Christianity, like the probability of all other matters of history, must have suffered, from the very nature of the case, a considerable and unavoidable diminution of its force, by being transmitted through a number of successive individuals and generations; so that whatever might have been its original credibility, that credibility they pronounce to have undergone a very serious reduction. "The diminution of evidence by this species of transmission may," says Laplace, "be compared to the extinction of

light by the interposition of several pieces of glass. A small number of pieces will be sufficient to render an object entirely invisible, which a single piece allowed to be seen very distinctly.""

Now I can easily admit that if the report of any fact were to be transmitted through twenty individuals, in different countries and in regular succession, and we ourselves were to receive the account from the twentieth witness alone, a very serious degradation of probability might have taken place, and our reliance upon the reality of the fact would necessarily be reduced in proportion to the circumstances of the case. The insulated testimony of some tenth transmitter of a wondrous tale, however credible in itself, can never be counted of equal certainty with that of the original witness or agent in the transaction. But if the person who communicates the fact in question to us, can refer us back to the person from whom he himself received the account, and we could thus pass from country to country, and consult the whole series of witnesses, till we arrived at the source and fountain of the report itself, the uniformity of their several testimonies would, in that case, materially strengthen our belief, and the probability of the fact would suffer no diminution whatever. If an inhabitant of

Edin. Rev. 1814. No. XLVI. p. 325.

Scotland were to assert the existence of some splendid monarchy in the centre of the African desert, as a fact which he had heard in Italy, from those who had travelled into Spain, and there met with some merchants of Tripoly who had received the accounts from several wandering Arabs, who declared that they had visited its metropolis, and beheld its greatness, my confidence in the existence of such a monarchy would be reduced in proportion to the credibility of the fact, the number of transmissions, and the possibility of deception or mistake. But if by travelling back in regular order through the several links in this chain of testimony; if by visiting Italy and Spain and Africa in person and in succession, I could trace the report through all its steps (finding it always uniform), till I had arrived at the original propagators, the proba bility of the fact would be the same to me as to the very first individual to whom it was communicated. In this manner I should remove, as it were, the interposing pieces of glass, which prevented the transmission of the light of truth, one by one, and be enabled at last to perceive and to judge of the object presented to my mental eye with the same distinctness and certainty as the first hearer of the story.

Of a similar character, as I conceive, is the

historical evidence for the truth of those facts upon which Christianity is founded, with this only difference, that our distance from the original witnesses is that of centuries instead of countries, and that the testimony is consequently written and perpetuated instead of being oral and transitory. It is not merely that the writers of the présent day assert that eighteen hundred years ago the Apostles and Evangelists bore a record to Jesus, which record is true; for, then, indeed, my reliance would scarce arise to any high degree of evidence. But the real and correct statement of the question is this: I can begin with the writers of the present day, and tracing their evidence upwards in a regular and unbroken succession, and comparing and verifying it as I go along, can reach at length the testimony of those primitive Christians who heard the Apostles declare that they had seen the Lord and his works, and even of those Apostles themselves who have recorded the same. So far, therefore, as the credibility of those reporters may extend, so far does the credibility of the facts they have reported extend also, and is the same to us, as it was to those to whom it was originally given. The truth may not be so easily and immediately perceived in this case, as in those in which there are no intermediate witnesses, because the attention and labour of verifying the report through all its

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stages is great and tedious. But when once the task has been accomplished, the conclusion is equally satisfactory and sure; and the fallacy of supposing otherwise seems to me to have arisen from the practice of considering the testimonies to the genuineness of the New Testament, that is, to the genuineness of the original records of the works and words of Jesus, in a descending instead of an ascending series. In descending from the age of the Apostles to the present time, we not only begin with a period in which, from the very nature of the case, the testimonies are more scanty and few; but we are obliged also to take for granted the age and genuineness of the works from which we quote, until the whole demonstration has been completed. On the other hand, in ascending upwards from the present writers, the whole line of our argument is natural and conclusive. We take for granted nothing but what is the subject of our own individual experience, the existence of certain books in which we read that their writers received the genuineness of the New Testament upon the authority of their predecessors for many generations. We turn to those predecessors in regular order, and find them constantly testifying the same, and thus at length, by regular gradation and infallible reasoning, we reach the source and fountain of the historical stream. It