of document to the conduct, of satisfaction to the heart, as demonstrably prove it to be the instrument of God for the salvation of man.

FOUR GRAND ARGUMENTS FOR THE TRUTH OF THE BIBLE.

THERE are four grand arguments for the truth of the Bible; the miracles it records, the prophecies, the goodness of the doctrine, and the moral character of the penmen.

The miracles flow from divine power; the prophecies from divine understanding; the excellence of the doctrine from divine goodness; and the moral character of the penmen from divine purity. Thus Christianity is built upon these four immovable pillars, the power, the understanding, the goodness, and the purity of God. I add farther; the Bible must be the invention, either of good men or angels, bad men or devils, or of God.

It could not be the invention of good men or angels; for they neither would nor could make a book, and tell lies all the time they were writing it, saying, "Thus saith the Lord," when it was

their own invention.

It could not be the invention of bad men or devils; for they would not make a book, which commands all duty, forbids all sin, and condemns their souls to hell to all eternity.

I therefore draw this conclusion, the Bible must be given by divine inspiration.

THE TRUTH OF THE GOSPELS ARGUED FROM THE CHARACTER OF THE EVANGELISTS.

THE evangelists were plain, honest, artless, unlearned men, in very humble occupations of life, and utterly incapable of inventing or carrying on such a refined and complicated system of fraud, as the Christian religion must have been if it was not true. There are, besides, the strongest marks of fairness, candour, simplicity, and truth, throughout the whole of their narratives. Their greatest enemies have never attempted to throw the least stain upon their characters; and how then can they be supposed capable of so gross an imposition, as that of asserting and propagating the most impudent fiction? They could gain by it neither pleasure, profit, nor power. On the contrary, it brought upon them the most dreadful evils, and even death itself. If, therefore, they were cheats, they were cheats without any motive, and without any advantage; nay, contrary to every motive and every advantage that usually influences the actions of men. They preached a religion which forbids falsehood, under pain of eternal punishment; and yet, on this supposition, they supported that religion by falsehood; and whilst they were guilty of the basest and most useless knavery themselves, they were taking infinite pains, and going through the greatest labour and sufferings, in order to teach honesty to all mankind. Is this credible? Is this possible? Is not this a mode of acting so contrary to all experience, to all the principles of human nature, and to all the usual motives of

human conduct, as to exceed the utmost bounds of belief, and to compel every reasonable man to reject at once so monstrous a supposition?

THE APOSTLE PAUL A GENUINE BELIEVER.

ST. PAUL could have no rational motive to become a disciple of Christ, unless he sincerely believed in him: that whereas it may be objected to the other apostles, by those who are resolved not to credit their testimony, that having been deeply engaged with Jesus during his life, they were obliged to continue the same professions after his death, for the support of their own credit, and from having gone too far to go back; this can by no means be said of St. Paul. On the contrary, whatever force there may be in that way of reasoning, it all tends to convince us, that St. Paul must naturally have continued a Jew, and an enemy of Christ Jesus. If they were engaged on one side, he was as strongly engaged on the other. If shame withheld them from changing sides, much more ought it to have stopt him, who, being of a much higher education and rank in life than they, had more credit to lose, and must be supposed to have been vastly more sensible to that sort of shame. The only difference was, that they, by quitting their Master after his death, might have preserved themselves; whereas he, by quitting the Jews, and taking up the cross of Christ, certainly brought on his own destruction.

As, therefore, no rational 11otive appears for St. Paul's embracing the faith of Christ, without having been really convinced of the truth of it; but, on the contrary, every thing occurred to deter

him from acting that part, one might very justly conclude, that when a man of his understanding embraced that faith, he was in reality convinced of the truth of it, and that, by consequence, he was not an impostor, who said what he knew to be false, with an intent to deceive.

ST. PAUL AT ATHENS.

THERE are at this present moment more than six hundred millions of the human race in the appalling situation of the men whom the apostle describes as "without Christ in the world:" and the question is, with what feelings and what purposes a Christian would survey this vast and wretched portion of the family of man. Behold

St. Paul at Athens. Think of the matchless splendour which blazed upon his view, as he rolled his eye round the enchanting panorama that encircled the hill of Mars. On the one hand, as he stood upon the summit of the rock, beneath the canopy of heaven, was spread a glorious prospect of mountains, islands, seas, and skies; on the other, quite within his view, was the plain of Marathon, where the wrecks of former generations, and the tombs of departed heroes, mingled together in silent desolation. Behind him towered the lofty Acropolis, crowned with the pride of Grecian architecture.-There, in the zenith of their splendour and the perfection of their beauty, stood those peerless temples, the very fragments of which are viewed by modern travellers with an idolatry almost equal to that which reared them. Stretched along the plain below him, and reclining her head on the

slope of the neighbouring hills, was Athens, mother of the arts and sciences, with her noble offspring sporting by her side. The Porch, the Lyceum, and the Grove, with the stations of departed sages, and the forms of their living disciples, were all presented to the apostle's eye.

What mind, possessing the slightest pretensions to classic taste, can think of his situation amid such sublime and captivating scenery, without a momentary rapture? Yet there, even there, did this accomplished scholar stand as insensible to all this grandeur, as if nothing was before him but the treeless, turfless desert. Absorbed in the holy attractions of his own mind, he saw no charms, felt no fascinations, but on the contrary, was pierced with the most poignant distress; and what was the cause? "He saw the city wholly given to idolatry." To him it presented nothing but a magnificent mausoleum, decorated, it is true, with the richest productions of the sculptor and the architect, but still where the souls of men lay dead in trespasses and sins; while the dim light of philosophy that still glimmered in the schools, appeared but as the lamp of the sepulchre, shedding its pale and sickly ray around these gorgeous chambers of death.

What must have been his indignant grief at the dishonour done by idolatry to God; what his amazement at the weakness and folly of the human mind; what his abhorrence of human impiety; and what his compassion for human wretchedness, when such stately monuments of Pagan pomp and superstition had not the smallest possible effect in turning away his view from the guilt that raised them, or the misery which succeeded them!