PORTION AS DIVINE REVELATION IS INADEQUATELY KNOWN AND OBEYED.

Have men in Christendom too much light? As they recede from a real obedience to revelation, is their knowledge increased, and are their morals improved? Does the state of Christian nations show that revelation was probably needless? Is it not quite notorious, that the standard of religious knowledge and holiness rises in exact proportion as Christianity is fully acted upon; and sinks as it is neglected or obscured? Can any thing prove more clearly the indispensable necessity of a divine revelation? Is not the proof unavoidable, prominent, demonstrative, tangible?

From the seventh to the sixteenth century, when from a gradual corruption of the Christian faith, revelation was more and more lost sight of, what was it that marked the decay? Was it not morals depraved-superstitions multiplied-heathenism revived under the garb of Christianity-spiritual tyranny established the pure worship of God forgottenmoral duties exchanged for vows and pilgrimages and austerities-secularity-selfishness-moral apathy— vice ? And what was it that recalled men to the truth and practices of essential religion at the period of the reformation? Was it unaided reason; or was it the Book of Revelation re-opened, re-published, re-appealed to by the magnanimous zeal of the Reformers and martyrs?

Take any period you please, and tell me the instance in which reason ever brought men up from the gulf of ignorance and degeneracy; show me the spot where its boasted irradiations shone forth; point out the people amongst whom conscience and the moral sense and the contemplation of the works of nature, I will not say, first planted religion, but preserved it when it had been planted, or revived it when it had declined, or purified it when it had been corrupted. It is by revelation only that truth is first sown; it is by reve

lation only that it is nourished; it is by revelation only it is re-cultivated and made fruitful.

Cast an eye over the states of Christendom now, and tell me whether the moral and religious purity of each is not in proportion to its adequate knowledge of the Christian revelation? Is it to France during the late rule of infidelity, that I am to be directed for a proof, that revelation can be spurned by a Christian people without injury? What, have we forgotten the overwhelming corruption of all ranks of her people, not a quarter of a century since, as the infidel school succeeded in their daring designs? Have we forgotten the goddess of reason, and the abolition of the Sabbath, and death proclaimed an eternal sleep, and the reign of terror, and the murders of thousands and tens of thousands all over the finest country of Christendom, when it had renounced its religion and its God?

I will not stop to say a word on the state of Italy and Spain, where the gross ignorance of the Chris tianity they still profess in name, is marked with the correspondent demoralization of the people; I will come nearer home and put the question of the necessity of a revelation to the test of our own observation. Survey the state of your populous towns, and the mass of your manufacturing poor, and say, have you any sufficient hold upon the conscience, except as the Christian religion is adequately known and obeyed ? What does the neglect or ignorance of the peculiar truths of the Bible produce? What do all the improvements in education, in the mechanical arts, in science, and the exercise of the reasoning powers produce, if disjoined from Christianity, and poured into the receptacle of a proud intellect? Must not every one be compelled to acknowledge that revelation is the found ation of virtue, conscience, subjection to law, and the peace of society? That it is so far from being unnecessary in its original communication, that

it is indispensable still to the maintenance and application of the truths it has discovered, and the princi. ples it has taught?

Indeed, may I not advance a step further, and appeal to the heart of every true Christian before me? Do you find revelation unnecessary? Can you do without your Bible, without your Saviour, without the promises of grace? Do you find that if you close the sacred volume, and rely on natural light and reason and argument and the fitness of things, you increase in the love of God, and obedience to Him? Do you not, on the contrary, feel that all I have said of the absolute and indispensable necessity of divine revelation, is greatly below the real truth of the case? Do you not feel that every step safely taken, is taken with Christianity as your guide?

But why press an argument further, which defies enumeration in its details? I speak to the docile student who is truly desirous to know the will of God, and I ask him-after this review of the state of the world before the coming of Christ, of unbelievers scattered now in Christian countries, of the heathen nations around us, and of Christian people in proportion as revelation is only partially known and obeyed-whether a revelation from God was not indispensably necessary for man; necessary to teach the unity and perfections of God; necessary to teach the state of man and his obligations; necessary to teach the way of expiation and atonement for sin; necessary to teach the rule of duty, the immortality of the soul, and a future state of rewards and punishments; necessary to teach the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, as renewing and consoling the heart, and applying to it the remedy which God has provided for all the wants of a fallen world.

Having brought my young inquirer to this point, I would add two or three remarks of the greatest im

portance. I would inform him that a general impression has actually prevailed throughout the world, that God has granted some communication of himself to man; that supposed revelations have obtained credit solely on the ground of the great likelihood of such a blessing; that any notion of natural religion doing all that is necessary for us, is opposed to the general sense and belief of mankind in all ages; and that the spontaneous dictate of the weakness of man is to crave a divine direction. Surely this is a remarkable fact: but this is not all.

I would inform him further, that the wisest and greatest amongst the ancient Heathen, have confessed their despair of remedying, by any means known to us, the vices and miseries of mankind, and have desired a divine guidance; and that Socrates, more especially, cries out as it were for help, and tells his disciples to wait patiently till some revelation should be made."

Having called his attention to these circumstances, I would then ask him to recollect the admitted benevolence, wisdom, and goodness of the Deity; and that he has confessedly provided remedies and palliatives for every other evil in life, except, on the idea of there being no revelation, for the greatest of all, moral depravity.

I would next beg to ask him, as man, by the admission of unbelievers themselves, may come at some future period, and in another state of being, to a more enlarged knowledge of God and of himself, by an emanation of the divine favour; whether the obvious inference is not that the beginnings of such future communication may be looked for now in the intermediate accession of knowledge contained in a divine revelation ? 8

Let the candid inquirer lay these things together,

7 Plat. Dial. 2 Alcib.

$ Davison.

and let him say whether it be so extremely improbable that God has granted to his fallen but accountable creatures, some kind of divine aid and guide and hope of deliverance.

For, be it well remembered, that infidelity blots out, not only the revelation properly called Christian, but the preceding revelation also to Moses and the prophets, (from which all the faint traces of truth discernible in the sacrifices, the incense, the purifications, the oracles of the heathen world, had their rise,) and leaves a total blank in the creation of God from the fall to the present hour-a blank which it pretends not to fill, except by vapid declamations on the sufficiency of reason. But there is no other revelation-no counter-system-no choice of religions proposed to man.' The question is between Christianity and nothing; between Christianity and a dark uncertain hesitation as to every point of faith and practice here, and a gloomy and impenetrable obscurity hereafter.

But no, my brethren, I cannot longer dwell on a supposition so frightful, so dishonourable to our Almighty Father and Preserver-so full of dark despair to man. No, my brethren, the God of mercy and creation has not deserted us in our fallen state he has not left us without a guide. The unbeliever, in the scornful spirit which I described in my last discourse, may take the miserable part of exalting beyond all measure, the light of reason, and may shut his eyes to the glories of Christianity; he may attempt to rekindle his faded taper at the blazing torch of revelation, and then claim it as his own, and try to extinguish the very luminary to which he owes all his feeble irradiation. But we are not so lost to rea

The imposture of Mahomet proceeds on the revelation of the Bible, to which it pretends to be supplementary, and is altogether undeserving of notice in the present part of our argument.