raculous power or knowledge assumes the existence of a Being capable of exerting it; and the matter of the revelation itself is evidenced and interpreted by those awful, far-reaching analogies of mediation and vicarious suffering, which we discern in the visible course of the world. There is, perhaps, no greater satisfaction to the Christian than that which arises from his perceiving that the Revealed system is rooted deep in the natural course of things, of which it is merely the result and completion; that his Saviour has interpreted for him the faint or broken accents of Nature; and that in them, so interpreted, he has, as if in some old prophecy, at once the evidence and the lasting memorial of the truths of the Gospel.

It remains to suggest some of the conclusions which follow from this view, thus taken, of the relation of Revealed to Natural Religion.

1. First, much might be said on the evidence thence deducible for the truth of the Christian system. It is one point of evidence that the two systems coincide in declaring the same substantial doctrines : viz., as being two independent witnesses in one and the same question; an argument contained by implication, though not formally drawn out, in Bishop Butler's Analogy. It is a further point of evidence to find that Scripture completes the very deficiency of nature; and, while its doctrines of Atonement and Mediation are paralleled by phenomena in the visible course of things, to discern in it one solitary doctrine, which from

its nature has no parallel in this world, an Incarnation of the Divine Essence, an intrinsic evidence of its truth in the benefit thus conferred on religion.

2. Next, light is thus thrown upon the vast practical importance of the doctrines of the Divinity of our Lord, and of the Personality of the Holy Spirit. It is the impiety, indeed, involved in the denial of these, which is the great guilt of anti-Trinitarians; but, over and above this, such persons go far to destroy the very advantages which the Revealed system possesses over the Natural; and throw back the science of morals and of human happiness into that state of vagueness and inefficiency from which Christianity has extricated it. On the other hand, we learn besides, the shallowness of the objection to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, grounded on its involving a plurality of Persons in the Godhead; since, if it be inconceivable, as it surely is, how Personality can in any way be an attribute of the infinite, incommunicable Essence of the Deity, or in what particular sense it is ascribed to Him, Unitarians, so called (to be consistent), should find a difficulty in the doctrine of an Unity of Person, as well as of a Trinity; and, having ceased to be Athanasians, should not stop till they become Pantheists.

3. Further, the same view suggests to us the peculiar perverseness of schism, which tends to undo the very arrangement which our Lord has made, for arresting the attention of mankind, and leading them to seek their true moral good; and which (if followed to

its legitimate results) would reduce the world to the very state in which it existed in the age of the heathen moralist familiar to us in this place, who, in opening his treatise, bears witness to the importance of a visible Church, by consulting the opinions of mankind as to the means of obtaining happiness; and not till disappointed in sage and statesman, the many and the educated, undertakes himself an examination of man's nature, as if the only remaining means of satisfying the inquiry.

4. And hence, at the same time, may be learned the real religious position of the heathen, who, we have reason to trust, are not in danger of perishing, except so far as all are in such danger, whether in heathen or Christian country, who do not follow the secret voice of conscience, leading them on by Faith to their true though unseen good.

For the prerogapossession, not of

tive of Christians consists in the exclusive knowledge and spiritual aid, but of gifts high and peculiar; and though the manifestation of the Divine character in the Incarnation is a singular and inestimable benefit, yet its absence is supplied in a degree, not only in the inspired record of Moses, but even, with more or less strength, as the case may be, in those various traditions concerning divine providences and dispensations which are scattered through the heathen mythologies.

5. Lastly, a comment is hence afforded us on the meaning of a phrase perplexed by controversy-that

of "preaching Christ." By which is properly meant, not the putting Natural Religion out of sight, nor the separating one doctrine of the Gospel from the rest, as having an exclusive claim to the name of Gospel ; but the displaying all that Nature and Scripture teach concerning Divine Providence (for they teach the same great truths), whether of His majesty, or His love, or His mercy, or His holiness, or His fearful anger, through the medium of the life and death of His Son, Jesus Christ. A mere moral strain of teaching duty and enforcing obedience fails in persuading to practice, not because it appeals to conscience, and commands and threatens, (as is sometimes supposed,) but because it does not urge and illustrate virtue in the Name and by the example of our blessed Lord. It is not that natural teaching gives merely the Law, and Christian teaching gives the tidings of pardon, and that a command chills or formalizes the mind, and that a free forgiveness converts it; (for nature speaks of God's goodness as well as of His severity, and Christ surely of His severity as well as of His. goodness;) but that in the Christian scheme we find all the Divine Attributes (not mercy only, though mercy pre-eminently) brought out and urged upon us, which were but latent in the visible course of things. Hence it appears that the Gospels are the great instruments (under God's blessing) of fixing and instructing our minds in a religious course, the Epistles being rather comments on them than in

tended to supersede them, as is sometimes maintained. Surely it argues a temper of mind but partially moulded to the worship and love of Christ, to make this distinction between His teaching and that of His Apostles, when the very promised office of the Comforter in His absence was, not to make a new revelation, but expressly "to bring all things to their remembrance" which "He had said to them;" not to "speak of Himself," but " to receive of Christ's, and show it unto them." The Holy Spirit came "to glorify Christ," to declare openly to all the world that He had come on earth, suffered, and died, who was also the Creator and Governor of the world, the Saviour, the final Judge of men. It is the Incarnation of the Son of God rather than any doctrine drawn from a partial view of Scripture (however true and momentous it may be) which is the article of a standing or a falling Church. "Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God; ... this is that spirit of anti-Christ;" for, not to mention other more direct considerations, it reverses, as far as in it lies, all that the revealed character of Christ has done for our faith and virtue. And hence the Apostles' speeches in the book of Acts and the primitive creeds insist almost exclusively upon the history, not the doctrines, of Christianity; it being designed that by means of our Lord's Economy the great doctrines of theology are to be taught, the facts of that Economy giving its peculiarity and force to the Revelation.