transcends all others in its sententious meaning; absolutely constituting, in itself, an epitome of the whole Christian System. The natural state of the human heart; the illuminations of the spirit; the power of our grand adversary, till that domination is counteracted by divine grace; the pardon of sin through the great atonement, with the eternal inheritance which awaits the righteous, in perpetual community with the glorified inhabitants above, derived alone through faith in the merits and intercession of Christ.

The reader will immediately recognise that one verse in the 26th of Acts, uttered with the majesty of heaven, by the risen Saviour, and crowding into a few words a greater condensation of solemn truths than human language, aided even by inspiration, ever before contained. His words to Paul are, "I now send thee to the Gentiles, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God; that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified, by faith that is in me."

But to recur, finally, to the "size of the Bible." With such strong inducements to expatiate, in the respective writers, had it not been for an Overruling Providence, in restraining their natural dispositions, a hundred folio volumes could scarcely have contained so vast a depository as the sacred volume. In this case, for all practical purposes, it must have become nearly a sealed book; independently of the impossibility which would have existed, in a Manuscript Age, of disseminating copies sufficient to guard against the ravages of Time, or to allow three transcripts to the whole world. This compression must be viewed as one of the most striking of the Scripture Miracles.

If any section of this great work can be separated, as furnishing a superior subject for astonishment, when we consider the copious nature of Biography, it is, that such a Life as that of our Saviour should have been so briefly narrated; a life which was written by four of his followers; all of whom revered his character; regarded him as their Lord; beheld his miracles; recorded his mandates; related his actions; attended his footsteps for three years, through all the wanderings of his active life; which consisted almost of a continuity of either doing, or saying; who witnessed his contemptuous rejection by the Jews; his agonies; his death, and resurrection! yet such was the Invisible Influence to which they were subject, in their adoption of words, and their selection of actions, that each of these Biographers of Christ has so circumscribed his narrative, that it may be read at a sitting.

The hand of God is as manifest in this superintendence, as it is in the formation of a world!

ESSAY III.

ARGUMENT IN FAVOUR OF CHRISTIANITY,

DEDUCED FROM

OUR SAVIOUR HAVING LEFT NO

WRITINGS.

HAD our Saviour appeared upon earth in a merely human character, bearing a divine commission, like the old prophets, it might reasonably be supposed, that he would have written, as they did. He would have been influenced by human feelings, and must have experienced an earnest desire that the various sentiments be inculcated should not be misstated, nor the order even of his words be changed: but what corresponding means were adopted to guard against the one, or to secure the other?. The angel of the Apocalypse commanded John to write in a book' what he heard and saw, to prevent his injunctions and supernatural visions, from being forgotten: Christ, on the contrary, entertained no apprehension lest his actions, miracles, and precepts, on which so much hereafter was to depend, should be unfaithfully stated, and the effect thereby be lost on posterity, to which his eye was habitually directed.

Christ professed to have come into this world for the purpose of consolidating a Religion which was from above; to fulfil the Law and the Prophets, and to establish what had never before entered into the thought of man: a pure and spiritual empire. Influenced by such anticipations, his days and his nights, it may be supposed, must have been occupied in minutely arranging this unprecedented assault on the Kingdom of Darkness. With views so calculated to animate and impel, every human character would infallibly have left behind him deliberate and indelible writings, as a permanent standard of appeal.

If, however, from any possible cause, Jesus Christhad declined, like Mahomet, the task of transcription, like Mahomet, he would have felt a proportionate increase of anxiety to secure sage and competent assistants, to whom he would have imparted his doctrines, and recited the most important of his actions, with the plausible motives for those actions; and, finally, he would have inspected all their statements with the most scrupulous care. It was not in man's nature to have neglected any probable means for effecting such an end, or to have felt indifference, when every thing interesting to our race was implicated in the result; when a Religion was about to be promulgated, which was speedily to subvert the power of Roman, and Barbaric superstition, and, ultimately, to regenerate the world. His attention would have been especially directed to that testamentary account, which was designed for other times, and where a few uncorrected errors, and slight inconsistencies, might have demolished, irretrievably, the whole edifice. With such objects to obtain, and such dangers to avert, what was the fact?

Jesus Christ, instead of preparing this well-digested statement of his actions, doctrines, and miracles, never wrote one word! Instead of selecting historians to record his life, from among the learned, and the refined, he chose rather for his coadjutors, and biographers, illiterate fishermen! Instead of providing for the future, and testifying an earnestness, lest succeeding generations should but imperfectly comprehend his designs, arising from the incompetency of the agents who were to transmit a statement of them to posterity; instead of cautioning those of his followers who might project a history of their Master, for distant ages, to be faithful, and to omit no part of those leading points, on

which the strength of his mission rested, he absolutely gave no directions; made no provision; and discovered no solicitude!

Could the mind devise a procedure more directly calculated "to bring to naught" all the objects at which he professedly aimed? It bears as little resemblance to the uniform workings of the heart, and is as inconsistent with design and imposture, as it was in Christ, at the very moment his disciples distinctly recognised him as the Messiah, the Son of God, to predict his approaching death at Jerusalem, and in the prospect of that death, to utter, with a superhuman solemnity, "O, Righteous Father! the world hath not known thee, but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me." Or, as his last hour approached, to set his face, "steadfastly to go to Jerusalem," though he knew and had predicted, that, at that place, (the grave of the prophets!) he should "suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days, rise again."

One species of instruction Christ indeed conveyed to his disciples, contrary to the established maxims of policy, and which would have alienated from his cause all who had not "some good thing" predominant in their hearts "toward the Lord God of Israel." He "forewarned" them that their fidelity to him, would entail the loss of all things. He informed them that they would endure privation " for his name's sake." He authorized them to expect no better fare than their Master had experienced, "who had not where to lay his head." He taught them that they would be hated of all men, and sustain contumely and reproach; that, through adherence to him, they would be dragged before potentates; that bonds and imprisonment would await them, and, in some