of those forty days for testing just referred to, and in spite too of St. Paul's and St. John's subsequently asserted visions of Jesus Christ in his ascended state of glory, that their belief may have arisen from some illusion of the senses, credulously yielded to under the influence of fond affection to their deceased friend, and excited expectations about Him,-there then comes in to assure the truth of their statement on the matter, that mighty confirmatory fact of the descent upon the apostles, shortly after, (I pray you never to forget this,) of supernatural powers from on high: in fulfilment of a promise made, they said, by Jesus Christ, both before death, and again after his resurrection; charging them on the last occasion to "tarry in Jerusalem until they were endued with that power from on high." So they tarried there; such is the sequel of their story; and, within a few days after his ascension, received the power:-a power of working miracles, as signs to the world for the time then present: and power moreover of uttering predictions most remarkable of all the chief changes and events of the coming future; as signs to the world, in proportion as those predictions might have fulfilment, (I shall hope to illustrate this in my next Lecture,) for all after generations.

Besides which primary historic evidence for the truth and divine origin of the Christian religion, there is seen to offer itself further the subsidiary historic evidence of the wonderful success of the Christian apostles and disciples in propagating the religion; in spite of opposition and persecution from both Jews and Gentiles, with all the power of the mighty Roman empire to back them in it :-and this, though a religion unworldly and self-denying; and with the use of no other weapon than simple Gospel-preaching! (How different herein from the propagandism of Mahomet's religion afterwards; with its sensualistic doctrines, and its master argument of the sword!) In fact, within scarcely more than two centuries after the death of Christ's

longest-lived disciple, St. John, Christianity actually overthrew Heathenism, and established itself as the religion of the Roman world.-Surely on this point Gamaliel's reasoning might well suggest itself to our inquirer's mind: "If this religion had not been of God, it had fallen; but, being from Ged, they could not overthrow it, seeing that therein they were fighting against God."

Such, and so convincing to the REASON, Seems thus far the historic evidence of Christianity. I say thus far, because in the Christian statements themselves this historic evidence is constantly and essentially interwoven with the prophetical, (especially in regard of certain Old Testament prophecies asserted to have had fulfilment in Jesus Christ,) and also with the moral and the experimental. These, then, we must also make the subjects of our careful examination.

So we will suppose our Court of Inquiry adjourned for the present. When met again we shall have to proceed to the investigation of these other branches of the Christian evidence. They will constitute the subject of my next Lecture.

LECTURE V.

ON THE

PROPHETIC,

MORAL, AND EXPERIMENTAL

EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY.

AGAIN, we will suppose, the Court of Inquiry into

the evidences of the truth of the Christian faith holds its session:-the REASON, as before, seated in the Chief Judge's place, with the CONSCIENCE and the HEART as judicial assessors on either side.-It was its historical evidence that at the last sitting was the subject of examination. And, after a prolonged inquiry it seemed to us that REASON, the presiding Judge, could not but confess to its being strong, and indeed, so far as it went, unanswerable. But, throughout the Christian New Testament books themselves, appeal, we saw, was made both by Jesus Christ and by his apostles, to certain prophetic, moral, and experimental evidences of the truth and divine origin of his religion, quite as much as to that historical evidence, last considered. These, then, we must now proceed to inquire into. And, first, into that which constitutes the second grand head of the Christian evidences; viz.,—

II. The PROPHETIC EVIDENCE.

Under which important head two quite distinct lines of evidence imperatively claim attention:-the primary one being that of Old Testament predictions converging on Jesus Christ, as their object and subject; the other that of New Testament predictions of the afterward coming future, that radiated, even as through a divine

spirit of prophecy speaking in them, from Jesus Christ and from his apostles.

1. For the first we have to turn to the venerable collection of writings which make up the Old Testament volume of that insulated and most peculiar people, the Jews;-writings not of one age, like those of the Christian New Testament, but with the dates stamped on them of very various ages; in a continuous succession of some 1100 years, from the time of Moses, the Jews' great national lawgiver, and leader from out of Egypt into Palestine, down to Malachi, designated as their last prophet, about 420 years before Jesus Christ.* Now, through all these writings, from first to last, (writings divinely inspired in both Jewish and Christian estimation) various as are their subjects and character,—some in main part being historical, (with the history in the earliest of them reaching back to man's creation and fall,) some moral, some devotional, some prophetic,through all these, I say, there runs (intermixed with other subjects) one grand line of prediction, having reference to some great promised Deliverer of man's fallen race; and which constitutes, in fact, a marked feature of unity through the whole.

And what, then, were the chief particulars predicted of that Deliverer in these professedly heaven-inspired writings; and how far answering to Jesus Christ? In a former Lecture I just touched on the point, when speaking of what the early Christian teachers would tell of Jesus Christ, on inviting Jews or Gentiles into Christian membership under the baptismal covenant. And let me now, still briefly, but a little more in detail, revert to it first premising, as most observable, that, from first to last, the line of Old Testament prophecy concerning the great promised Deliverer was twofold: a line of visible prophetic types respecting Him running *So Vitringa, and other more recent critics, as to Malachi's age, making him contemporary with Nehemiah; and not without reaSee Smith's Biblical Dictionary on Malachi,

son.

down in parallelism with the verbal prophecies; the latter foretelling of the Deliverer's character and history, the former figuring the mode of his delivering man, viz. by dying for him. Thus, beginning with the very history of man's creation and fall in paradise, as narrated in Moses's first book of Genesis, we there see recorded together the primary verbal promise of the seed of the woman who should bruise the serpent's head, and, side by side, the typical institution of sacrifice; in signification, as explained fully afterwards in the expanded sacrificial system under Moses, of the promised Deliverer's offering up Himself, as man's substitute, to bear the death-penalty of God's broken law, in his stead. Was it not, let me ask in passing, like a continuous visible sacramental prefiguration of Jesus Christ's death for us, in accompaniment of the prophetic word, till the fulfilment of the type on Calvary; just as ever since there has been in his Church the visible commemorative sacrament of broken bread and out-poured wine, in accompaniment of the preached Gospel-word?

But to proceed. The covenant of this promise (God's great covenant) having been continued from Adam to Noah, and from Noah to Abraham, there was then added the important announcement that the Deliverer should be of Abraham's seed. And preparation was made thereupon, according to these Old Testament Scriptures, for constituting Abraham's descendants, in the line of Isaac and Jacob, into a nation; which should in due time be planted, so as they afterwards were in fact, under guidance of Moses and Joshua, in the land of Canaan: there thenceforward to remain; and there, from time to time, to receive further communications from God through his prophets, as the nation favoured above all others in being made the depository of the promise. So there followed (as told of in other of those Scriptures) the long periods successively of Jewish government by Judges, and government by Kings; and then the brief Babylonish captivity; and then the Jews' restoration,