But the indices that point our way to the Messiah do not stop with David; they multiply as long as a prophet visits Israel: hence his mother is described as a VIRGIN by Isaiah--a virgin of the family of David. Singular prediction. Behold the virgin shall conceive and shall bring forth a son, and his name shall be IMMANUEL. The sneers and impious scoffs of skeptics at the nativity of Jesus, had they noticed this oracle, would have been prevented or confounded. Let it then be noticed, that 700 years before this child was born, it was foretold that his mother should be a virgin.

      But the place of his nativity is also clearly and expressly named. So clearly and unequivocally was the place of Messiah's birth ascertained in the Jewish scriptures, that all the priests and scribes in Jerusalem could tell Herod the place, without a difficulty. "And thou, Bethlehem, art not the lest among the cantons of Judah; for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel."

      But THE TIME of the birth and appearance of the Messiah was most exactly pointed out. And as this is a matter of great moment, I shall just notice the various descriptions of this time, found in the Jewish [357] prophets. It was defined by several remarkable characters; the chief are:

      1. He was to come before the second temple decayed, or was to appear in the second temple.

      2. He was to come before Judah ceased to furnish a governor.

      3. He was to come while the Roman emperors were in their glory.

      4. And he was to come at the end of a definite number of years, from the permission given to rebuild the temple.

      Concerning the first of these predictions, we have to remark that when the second temple was building, the old men who had seen the first are said to have wept when they saw the second edifice progressing, because it was so inferior to that which Solomon built; but, to console them, it is foretold that the glory of the latter house shall greatly excel that of the former. So speaks Haggai, chap. ii. 7. "I will shake all nations," says the Lord, "and the DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS shall come, and I will fill this house with glory." "The glory of this latter house shall be greater than that of the former." And why? Let Malachi declare: "Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me; and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to HIS TEMPLE; even the messenger of the covenant whom you delight in; behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts." So that it is clearly and expressly stated that the Lord would come while the second temple was yet standing. The first temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar on the tenth day of August, 583 years before Jesus was born; and so the second was built about 500 years before the birth of the Messiah.

      [Here Mr. C. moved to adjourn till half past two o'clock, P. M.]

      Mr. Campbell continues: Mr. Chairman--When we adjourned, we were showing that the time of the coming of the Messiah was marked out and defined by a variety of characters that could not be mistaken.

      The scepter was not to depart from Judah until Shiloh came. But it was merely lingering in that tribe for some years before the birth of the Messiah, for the land of Judea had become a Roman province, but still the remains of the ancient regal power had not been wrested from the hands of Judah. But so feebly did he grasp the scepter, that it seemed to fall at the crisis when the harbinger appeared.

      The prophecy of Daniel, more circumstantially describes the time in the wonderful vision which he explained for Nebuchadnezzar. In this vision, there was a prospective view of the history of the world, from the time of the Chaldean or Assyrian monarchy down to the end of time. That this vision and prophecy might sufficiently attract the attention, and interest the feelings of all the world, it was vouchsafed [358] to an Assyrian king, and explained by a Jewish prophet. The Jews and Gentiles are both concerned in it. Nebuchadnezzar had the vision, and Daniel interpreted it. Thus Babylon and Jerusalem attest its truth. In this vision, and the interpretation of it, the four great pagan empires are most accurately defined. The golden head of the image which the king saw was avowed by Daniel to be the Chaldean dynasty, the silver shoulders were the Medo-Persian dynasty, the brazen body the Macedonian empire, and the iron legs the Roman empire. These were the only four empires of the pagan world which attained to universal dominion; they all had it for a time; they were all pagan empires, and exactly delineated in this image. These great empires are represented in the interpretation as the only empires that should have universal dominion. The Assyrian began 2233 years before the birth of Christ, lasted 1400 years, and ended 770 years before Christ. The Persian empire began 538 years before Christ, continued 200 years, and fell 336 years before the Christian era. The Macedonian or Grecian only continued ten years: it began 334 and ended 324 years before Christ. The Roman began 31 years before Christ, and after continuing 500 years, ended Anno Domini 476.

      Now it was distinctly said, that in the days of the last empire, the God of heaven would set up a kingdom in the world, which should obtain the universal empire of the world, and that it would break and bruise to atoms every particle of the pagan governments; and most astonishing of all, it would begin without human aid, or it would resemble a stone cut out of a mountain without hands, which, self-propelled, should roll on, increase, smite this wonderful image of the pagan government, demolish it, and fill the whole earth. Such was the imagery of the vision. And was not the Messiah born in the days of the Cæsars, who first formed and governed the iron empire?

      Two incidents in this prophecy are worthy of notice. 1st. The time fixed for the commencement of this new kingdom of God in the world. And 2d. That the Roman empire once subdued, there should never again be a universal empire upon the earth, save that of the crucified King. Now we do not know what efforts have been made to build up great empires, and how abortive they have all proved. The most successful effort ever made since the downfall of the Romans was that made by Napoleon. In the year 1813 he controlled the temporal destinies of sixty-four millions of human beings; but what was this number to the whole population of Europe, to say nothing of the other three quarters of the globe! Nothing like a universal empire has ever been established since the division of the Roman into ten comparatively petty sovereignties. [359]

      But Gabriel informs Daniel more definitely of the date of Messiah's birth, and of the commencement of the last great empire. He says, "Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people, and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sin-offering, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in an everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy. Know, therefore, and understand that from the going forth of the decree to restore and build Jerusalem, unto the Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks. The street shall be built again, and the walls, even in troublous times. And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself; and the people of the Prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary, and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined. And he shall confirm the covenant with many, for a week, and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate." When I have made another extract from Daniel, we have all the data before us. Chapter viii. 13. The question there proposed is, "How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice and the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot?" "And he said to me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed." Now, as the Lord said to Ezekiel, "I have appointed one day for a year," and as we find in symbolic language one day stands for a year, we are at no loss in coming to the following conclusions:

      From the time of the going forth of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem until the death of Messiah, would be threescore and nine and a half weeks; that is, a period of four hundred and eighty-five or eighty-six years. Seven weeks make forty-nine years--sixty-two weeks make four hundred and thirty-four years--and in the middle of the week he was to establish the New Institution; that is three and a half or four years more. From the going forth of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem to the baptism of Jesus was four hundred and eighty-three years--his ministry was three and a half years, or the middle of one week; then he was cut off. And in half a week, that is, three and a half years more, Christianity was sent to all nations. This completes the seventy weeks, or four hundred and ninety years of Daniel. Now, from the birth of Jesus till the general proclamation of the gospel, was about thirty-seven years--which, subtracted from four hundred and ninety, makes the nativity of Jesus four hundred and fifty-three years from [360] the commencement of the rebuilding of Jerusalem, which occupied seven weeks, that is, forty-nine years. Daniel then fixes the time of the nativity; the commencement of the kingdom, or confirmation of the covenant; and the ultimate cleansing of the sanctuary, or purgation of the Christian church from anti-Christian abominations. This last event was to be two thousand three hundred years from the afore-said date. That is, from the birth of Jesus about eighteen hundred and forty-seven years. But all that lies before us now is the fact that Daniel gives the whole time intervening from the rebuilding of Jerusalem, after its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, till the birth of Jesus.

      Now from these premises it is clearly established that the Messiah should be born while the second temple was standing; before the scepter and a lawgiver finally departed from Judah; in the reign of the Roman Cæsars; and four hundred and fifty-three years from the commencement of the rebuilding of Jerusalem. And does not the event exactly correspond with the predictions?

      But so clearly was the event predicted, and so general was the knowledge of it, through the Septuagint version of the Jewish scriptures, then read through the Roman empire, that the expectation became general, that at this time some wonderful personage was to be born, who would put the world under a new government. This singular fact shows that the prophecies concerning the time in which the Messiah should be born were so plain in the estimation of all who read them, as to preclude all doubts as to the time of the appearance of the Messiah. But some will ask. Where is the proof of the fact that such an expectation was general? I answer, The history and poetry of Rome prove it. We shall summon some of their historians and the Mantuan bard, to give their evidence in the case.

      Suetonius, in the life of Vespasian--"Percrebuerat oriente toto vetus et constans opinio, esse in fatis, ut eo tempore, Judea profecti rerum potirentur." An ancient and constant tradition has obtained throughout all the East, that in the fates it was decreed, that, about that time, "some who should come from Judea would obtain the dominion of the world."

      Cornelius Tacitus speaks to the same effect when speaking of the prodigies which preceded the destruction of Jerusalem. He says: "Pluribus persuasio inerat, antiquis sacerdotum literis contineri, eo ipso tempore fore, ut valesceret oriens, profectique Judæa rerum potiretur." That "Many understood them as forerunners of that extraordinary person, whom the ancient books of the priests did foretell, should come about that time from Judea and obtain dominion."

      From the Jewish prophets, the pagan Sibyls gave out their oracles, [361] so that the expectation was universal. The same year that Pompey took Jerusalem one of the Sibyl oracles made a great noise "that Nature was about to bring forth a king to the Romans." Suetonius says this so terrified the Roman senate, that they made a decree that none born that year should be educated. And in his life of Augustus, he says, that "those whose wives were pregnant that year did each conceive great hopes, applying the prophecy to themselves." "Senatum exterritum censuisse, ne quis illo anno genitus, educaretur, eos qui gravidas uxortes haberent, quod ad se quisque spem traheret curasse ne senatus consultum ad Aerarium deferretur."

      Appian, Sallust, Plutarch, and Cicero, all say that this prophecy of the Sibyls stirred up Cornelius Lentolus to think that he was the man who should be king of the Romans. Some applied it to Caesar. Cicero laughed at the application, and affirmed that this prophecy should not be applied to any one born in Rome.

      Even Virgil the Poet, who wrote his fourth Eclogue about the time of Herod the Great, compliments the Consul Pollio with this prophecy. Supposing it might refer to his son Soloninus then born, Virgil substantially quotes and versifies the prophecies of Isaiah, and applies them to this child Soloninus:

      Then the poet alludes to Isaiah lxv. 17: "The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain:--"

      Then the expiation of Daniel is referred to:--

      The very words of Haggai last quoted are by the poet next referred to:--

      Virgil, as if he were skilled in the Jewish scriptures, goes on to state that these glorious times should not immediately succeed the birth of that wonderful child:--

      Now the question is not, whether Virgil applied this partly to Augustus, Pollio, or Soloninus then born; but, whether he did not apply it to the general expectation, everywhere prevalent, that a wonderful person was to be born, and a new age to commence.

      The Jews have been so confounded with these prophecies and events, that such of them as did not believe, have degraded Daniel from the rank of a great prophet, to one of the inferior prophets; and others have said that there were two Messiahs to come--one a suffering, and one a triumphant Messiah. But the excuses of mankind for their unbelief are so frivolous and irrational, that they deserve pity rather than argument. It is worthy of remark, however, that not only the Gentiles, the proselytes to the Jews' religion, the eastern magi; but myriads of the Jews themselves recognized these evidences, and bowed to their authority.

      But not only are the time and place of the birth of the Messiah pointed out in plain and direct predictions, but many of the prominent incidents in his life. I once attempted to enumerate the distinct and independent predictions concerning the Messiah and his kingdom, but after progressing beyond a hundred, I desisted from the undertaking, perceiving, as is said by John, that the testimony concerning Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. I will just mention a few incidents in the prophetic communications concerning him. That he should go down into Egypt, and be called back to Nazareth; the appearance, spirit, and mission of John the Harbinger; the slaughter of the infants by the decree of Herod; his general character, meekness, mildness, and unostentatious appearance. "A bruised reed he was not to break; [363] a smoking taper he was not to quench;" he was to use no sword, spear, scepter, nor torch, until he made his laws victorious. He was to make his most august entry into Jerusalem, mounted upon an ass; he was to be a man of sorrows and acquainted with griefs; his zeal was to be so intense as to consume and waste his corporeal vigor; he was to be betrayed by a familiar friend; when delivered up, his friends were to forsake him; his condemnation was to be extorted in violation of law and precedent; he was to be sold for thirty pieces of silver; the money was to be appropriated to the purchase of the potter's field; he was to bescourged, smitten on the face, wounded in the hands and feet, laughed to scorn, presented with vinegar and gall; to be patient and silent under all these indignities and trials; he was to be crucified in company with malefactors; his garment was to be parted; and for his vesture they were to cast lots; his side was to be pierced, and yet not a bone was to be broken, and he was to be buried in the grave of a wealthy nobleman. All these and many more incidents were spoken of, recorded, and anticipated from five hundred to a thousand years before he was born. And mark it well, the records which thus spoke of him were to be kept by the Jews and held sacred by the opponents of Christianity. So that the documents could not be interpolated. So precise were the Jews in the copies of their scriptures, that as some of the Rabbins assert, all the words, and even letters, used in their sacred books, were numbered.

      I would here introduce a very rational argument, of the nature of mathematical demonstration, showing the utter impossibility of so many predicted incidents ever meeting in any individual by chance, guess, or conjecture; in any other way, in brief, than in consequence of divine prescience or arrangement. It is extracted from a very valuable work published by Gulian C. Verplanck, Esq., 1824, pages 11-13:

      "Rousseau, in the eloquent and paradoxical confession of faith which he puts in the mouth of his Savoyard Vicar in Emilius, has said that no fulfillment of prophecy could be of any weight with him to prove a divine interposition, unless it could be demonstrated that the agreement between the prophecy and the event could not possibly have been fortuitous. This proof is more than any fair objector has a right to claim, since it is moral probability and not strict demonstration which we must act upon in the most momentous concerns of life, and as reasonable men we should rest on the same evidence in matters of faith. In both the wise man will be governed by common sense, applied to the investigation of rational probability.

      "In this case, however, we may accept the challenge of the skeptic. Where the points of fulfillment of prediction are numerous, it may be [364] literally 'demonstrated' that the probability of such accomplishment having occurred fortuitously is the most remote possible.

      "This argument is put in a practical and striking point of view by Dr. Gregory, of the Military Academy at Warwick, well known for many respectable and useful works, especially on mathematics and scientific mechanics.

      "'Suppose,' says he, 'that instead of the spirit of prophecy breathing more or less in every book of scripture, predicting events relative to a great variety of general topics, and delivering beside almost innumerable characteristics of the Messiah, all meeting in the person of Jesus, there had been only ten men in ancient times who pretended to be prophets, each of whom exhibited only five independent criteria as to place, government, concomitant events, doctrine taught, effects of doctrine, character, sufferings, or death--the meeting of all which in one person should prove the reality of their calling as prophets, and of his mission in the character they have assigned him. Suppose, moreover, that all events were left to chance merely, and we were to compute, from the principles employed by mathematicians in the investigations of such subjects, the probability of these fifty independent circumstances happening at all. Assume that there is, according to the technical phrase, an equal chance for the happening or the failure of any one of these specified particulars; then the probability against the occurrence of all the particulars in any way is that of the fiftieth power of two to unity; that is, the probability is greater than eleven hundred and twenty-five millions of millions to one that all of these circumstances do not turn up even at distinct periods. This computation, however, is independent of the consideration of time. Let it be recollected farther, that if any one of the specified circumstances happen, it may be the day after the delivery of the prophecy, or at any period from that time to the end of the world; this will so indefinitely augment the probability against the cotemporaneous occurrence of merely these fifty circumstances, that it surpasses the power of numbers to express correctly the immense improbability of its taking place.'

      "It is hardly necessary to draw the inference, which Dr. Gregory goes on to establish, that all probability, and even possibility of accidental fulfillment, as well as of fraud, must be excluded. The sole reasonable solution of the question is, that these predictions and their fulfillment can only be ascribed to the intention of a being, whose knowledge can foresee future events, unconnected with each other, depending on various contingencies, and the will and acts of free agents; or whose power is so omnipotent as to bend to the accomplishment of his own purpose the passions of multitudes, the ambition of princes, [365] the studies of the wise, the craft of the wicked, the wars, the revolutions, and the varied destinies of nations."

      I would here ask any rational skeptic how he will dispose of the argument. How can he remove this stumbling block out of the way of his infidelity? By what logic can he dispose of this document?

      I will now introduce the skeptics to the character of the founder of the Christian religion, as a logician, and give them a specimen of that ratiocination which he exhibited in pleading his cause with those who opposed his pretensions, in the metropolis of the Jewish nation. I will first read the passage as correctly rendered by George Campbell, of Aberdeen, for it is very much obscured in the common version. It reads thus, John's Testimony, chap. v, from verse 31 to 44:

      "If I [alone] testify concerning myself, my testimony is not to be regarded; there is another who testifies concerning me; and I know that this testimony of me ought to be regarded. You yourselves sent to John, and he bore witness to the truth. As for me, I need no human testimony; I only urge this for your salvation. He was the lighted and shining lamp; and for a while you were glad to enjoy his light.

      "But I have greater testimony than John's; for the works which the Father has empowered me to perform, the works themselves which I do, testify for me, that the Father has sent me.

      "Nay, the Father who sent me, has himself attested me. Did you never hear his voice, or see his form? or have you forgotten his declaration, that you believe not him whom he has commissioned?

      "You search the scriptures, because you think to obtain, by them, eternal life. Now these also are witnesses for me, yet you will not come unto me that you may obtain life. I desire not honor from men, but I know that you are strangers to the love of God. I am come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me; if another come in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, while you court honor one from another, regardless of the honor which comes from God alone? Do not think that I am he who will accuse you to the Father. Your accuser is Moses, in whom you confide. For if you believed Moses, you will believe me, for he wrote concerning me. But if you believe not his writing, how shall you believe his words?"

      To the captious Jews he thus addressed himself:

      1. "If I alone bear testimony of myself, my testimony ought not to be regarded." This is disclaiming any special regard as due him, above others, on the mere ground of his own pretensions. It was equivalent to saying: No person pretending to honors and relations, a mission and office, such as I pretend ought to be accredited and received [366] upon his mere profession. No assertions, abstract from other documents in such a case, are worthy of credit. Is not this reasonable?

      2. But, waiving my own testimony, there is another person whose testimony ought to be regarded. But let us hear the reason why--some reason must be assigned, on account of which more credit is due to this testimony. The reason is: "You yourselves sent to John." But in what does the cogency of this declaration consist? You Jews of this city, of your own accord, had formed such a high character of the integrity, capacity, and piety of John the Baptist, as to depute priests and Levites to him to know what his errand, mission, or testimony was. His character had convinced you of the reality of his pretensions, and he proved himself to your own satisfaction, as being far exalted above any earth-born motives of fraud or deceit. He was, yourselves being judges, a competent and credible witness. Now, what did he testify? Did he not tell you that he was not the Messiah; that he was but his harbinger; and that his fame must decrease while mine must increase; that he was from below, but I was from above? Why then did you not believe such a credible witness? Or why receive one part of his testimony and reject the other? I think, then, said he, his testimony ought, in such circumstances, to be regarded. Is not this also reasonable?

      3. But he proceeds: "I need not human testimony. I only urge this for your salvation." I would convince you upon your own principles, and show that your rejection of me is without excuse. John, indeed, was a brilliant light, and for a time you considered him an oracle and rejoiced in his light. "But the works that I do" are superior to any human testimony, and these "show that the Father has sent me." To these I appeal--they are public, sensible, notorious, benevolent, supernatural. Could mortal man have performed them? Have not the laws of nature been suspended by my word? Have not the winds, waves, demons, and diseases of every name, acknowledged my power? To these works, only, as proof of my mission, I appeal. They prove not that I am the Son of God, the Messiah. They only prove that the Father has sent me. This is all I urge them for; but if they prove that the Father has sent me, then all my pretensions are credible; for the Father would not have sent a liar or deceiver, invested with such powers. Now I ask, Is not all this reasonable and logical?

      4. But, again, The Father has himself attested me by his own voice: and by a visible appearance--"DID YOU NOT HEAR HIS VOICE? Did you not see his FORM?" Were not some of you on the Jordan when he attested me when I came up out of the water? Was there not a voice then heard, saying, audibly, "This is my beloved SON, in whom I [367] delight? You could not mistake the person of whom this was spoken; for over my head the heavens opened and you saw the Spirit in the form of a dove, coming down and lighting upon my head. You heard his voice then, and saw his manifestation. But you have forgotten this declaration concerning me! Is not this rational and pointed?

      5. Once more--"You do search the scriptures;" and why do you search them? Because you think them to contain a revelation from God, you think and acknowledge that eternal life is in them. This is all true; and in doing this, you act rationally, but why stop here? Now these very scriptures testify of me. To them I make my appeal. They all speak of me; and now show me the oracle, prophecy, or symbol in them, which respected him that was to come, which does not suit my character and pretensions, and I will find an excuse for you. Now I ask, Is not this conclusive?

      If this be not argument and logic, I never heard any. So reasons the Savior. This grand climax of reason ends in the prophecies of the Old Testament. But it is not yet finished.

      6. But adds he, You WILL NOT COME to me. It is not the want of light and evidence. You are now unable to reply. Yet you will not come to me that you might obtain that eternal life promised in the scriptures. I know you well. You have not a spark of the love of God in you. Had you loved God, you would have come to me. Your hearts are full of the honor of this world--these you seek more than the honors which come from God only; yes, this is the secret. It is not argument nor proof, but disposition that you want. You pretend great veneration for Moses. But you do not really venerate him; you do not believe him, for he wrote of me. Now if you do not, with all your professed veneration for Moses, believe him, how will you, or can you believe me? If, prejudiced in his favor, you do not receive his testimony, how, prejudiced against me, will you receive mine? But I tell you, however, I will not become your accuser. Your own Moses, in whom you trust, will one day convict you; for he said of me, that whosoever would not hearken to me, should be cut off from the congregation of God.

      Such is a specimen of the topics from which, and of the manner how, the Savior argued his pretensions, and plead his cause with the people. A more cogent and unanswerable argument is not, if I am any judge, to be found among all the fine models of ancient and modern literature. And let it, I repeat, be borne in mind, that he makes his last appeal to the scriptures and to Moses. Prophecy, then, in his judgment, is among the highest species of evidence, and it is that [368] which, as a standing miracle, he has made to speak for him in every age and to all people.

      But I must notice, while on this topic, that Jesus pronounced prophecies himself, which, to that generation, and, indeed, to subsequent generations, speak as convincingly as Moses spoke to the Jews, and his predictions have produced, and do produce, upon the minds of a vast community, similar expectations to those produced among the Jews.

      Hume says that "prophecy could not be a proof that the person who pretended to deliver oracles, spoke by inspiration; because the prophet is absent at the time of fulfillment; he is dead, and it could not prove to his cotemporaries that he was inspired." This would be true in one case, but in no other; when the prediction had respect to events at a distance; but this is only sometimes the case: for most of the prophets foretold events soon to appear, as well as events to happen after long intervals. We shall find, if we examine the New Testament, that Jesus foretold many incidents immediately to happen, which required as perfect an insight into futurity as events at the distance of a thousand years. His telling Peter, that on casting a hook and line into the sea, he should draw out a fish with a stater in its mouth; or his telling his disciples, that, at a certain place, they should find an ass and his master so circumstanced, and that such events would happen on their application for him, required as exact and as perfect a prescience as could have, four thousand years ago, foretold this discussion between Mr. Owen and me. How many events of immediate occurrence did the Savior foretell, with this additional remark, "This I have told you before it happen; that when it happens you may believe." Prophecy, indeed, seems designed to confirm faith as the events occur, as well as to produce faith by contemplating those which have been fulfilled. But we shall find that, beside the predictions uttered by the Savior concerning his own demise, and all the circumstances attendant upon it, he foretold one event of such notoriety and importance as to confirm the faith of one generation and to produce faith in all subsequent generations. This I specify as one of great interest and notoriety. This was the destruction of Jerusalem, the temple, and the dispersion of the nation with all the tremendous adjuncts of this national catastrophe.

      Upon one occasion, when the sun was beaming upon the beautiful gate of the temple, which radiated with all conceivable splendor, when that edifice stood in all the glistening beauties of the precious metals, costly stones, and the finest specimens of architecture, the Savior took occasion to tell its fate, and that of the people who frequented it, in [369] such language as precluded the possibility of mistake in the interpretation. No prediction was more minute or more circumstantial than this one, and none could be more literal or direct. Both Matthew and Luke give us this prediction; the former in the 24th, and the latter in the 21st chapter of his testimony. The complete desolation of the temple to the foundation, to the removing of every stone, is foretold. The compassing of the city with armies, the slaughter of the inhabitants, and the captivity of those who escaped, are described. The fortunes of his disciples at this time, with all the terrors of the siege, and all the tremendous prodigies in the heavens and the earth accompanying these desolations, are named. And in the conclusion the audience is assured that all these things should happen before forty years--"before that generation should pass away." Now, this prophecy was written, published and read through Judea, and mentioned in the apostolic epistles for years before it happened; and a general expectation of this event pervaded the whole Christian communities from Jerusalem to Rome, and, indeed, through all the Roman provinces. The allusions to these predictions are frequent in the apostolic writings. It was necessary they should, for this reason; the Jews, as long as they possessed the government of Judea, the temple, and the metropolis; as long as they had any particle of influence at home or abroad, they used it with relentless cruelty against the Christians. The Apostles had to succor the minds of their persecuted brethren, and exhort them to patience and perseverance by reminding them of the speedy dispersion of them among the nations. So that all the Christians throughout the Roman empire looked for this catastrophe; and so it came to pass that such of the Christians as were in Jerusalem and Judea, about the time of the siege of Titus, fled according to the directions given by the Savior; and thus not a believing Jew perished in the siege.

      We lose many of the allusions to this event in the epistles, from our irrational modes of explanation, and neglect of the history of those times. Of these allusions the following specimens may suffice: To the church at Rome Paul says: "God will bruise Satan, or the adversary, under your feet soon"--not the Devil, as some ignorantly suppose. Adversary, in English, is Satan in Hebrew. "Get thee behind me, Satan," is a terrible translation of the Savior's address to Peter. The synagogue of Satan was only a synagogue of unbelieving Jews adverse to Christianity. "Brethren in Rome," says Paul, "God will soon put down the adversary of your religion, the Jews, who persecute you. Yes, their power to oppose you will soon be past." This clearly alludes to the expectation founded upon the prediction before us. [370]

      Paul more plainly intimates the destruction of the Jewish power in his first letter to the Thessalonians, written eighteen years before the siege: "Brethren in Thessalonica, you have suffered from your Gentile brethren such persecution as the congregations in Judea have suffered from their Jewish brethren, who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have greatly persecuted us, and do not please God, and are contrary to all men; hindering us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved; that they are always filling up the measure of their iniquities. But the WRATH OF GOD is coming upon them at length."

      Indeed, so frequent were the allusions to this prophecy, both in the public discourses and writings of the apostles, that their enemies began to mock them, and treat them as if they had been imposing upon the credulity of their cotemporaries. Hence, such allusions as these: "Where is the promise of his coming; for, from the times the fathers have fallen asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation?" Thus was Peter upbraided six years before the siege. The old Apostle, however, is not discouraged, being assured that he would make good his promise. "Yes," says he, "they think that we have too long talked of the coming of the Lord to avenge the iniquities of these people. They think that we mock your fears, and they say, 'The Lord long delays his coming to execute his vengeance upon this stubborn people.' But, my brethren, the Lord does not delay in the manner some account delaying; but he exercises long-suffering toward us, that all might be brought to reformation."

      In the letter to the Hebrews, written about six or seven years before the siege, Paul speaks to the persecuted Jewish brethren in the same style: "Yet a very little while, and he that is coming will come, and will not tarry." "Persevere, then, brethren, in doing the will of the Lord, that you may obtain the promised reward." James, too, in his letter of the same date, addresses both to the believing and unbelieving Jews on the impending vengeance. The wealthy and infidel Jew he commands to "weep because of the miseries coming upon them;" and for suffering Christians he animates with the hope that "the coming of the Lord is nigh." Thus do all the Apostles speak of this event with the same certainty as if it had actually happened.

      I need not detail the awful accomplishment of this prediction. Josephus has done this in awful colors. Tacitus, too, relates some of the circumstances. Every word of the prediction was exactly fulfilled, even to the plowing up of the foundations of the temple. It is remarkable that, on the tenth day of August, the very same day the [371] temple and city were laid waste by the Babylonians, the temple was burned by Titus' army.³

      I shall only give you another specimen of the prophetic spirit of the New Testament writers. Paul, in his letter to the Thessalonians, intimates that some persons had suggested that the end of the world was at hand. To counteract such an idea, which seemed to have influenced some to abandon the ordinary business of this life, he gives us a succinct view of the great series of events which were to come to pass before the end of the world. He describes a tremendous apostasy, in 2d Thessalonians, chap. ii. 1-10.

      "Now we beseech you, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together around him; that you be not soon shaken from your purpose, nor troubled, neither by spirit nor by word, nor by letter from us, intimating that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any method; for that day shall not come, unless there come the apostasy first, and there be revealed that man of sin, that son of perdition; who opposes and exalts himself above every one who is called god, or an object of worship. So that he, in the temple of God, as a god sitteth openly showing himself that he is a god. Do you not remember, that when I was with you, I told you these things? And you know what now restrains him in order to his being revealed in his own season. For the secret of iniquity already inwardly works, only till he who now restrains be taken out of the way. And then shall be revealed that lawless one; him the Lord will consume by the breath of his mouth, and will render ineffectual, by the brightness of his coming; of whom the coming is after the strong working of Satan, with all power and signs, and miracles of falsehood. And with all the deceit of unrighteousness, among them who perish, because they embraced not the love of the truth that they might be saved."

      On this observe that the Apostle declares that, in the great drama of human existence, the end of the world could not come until after the apostasy. This apostasy he describes as beginning to work in the first age of Christianity, but that it could not succeed in attaining its full vigor until pagan Rome should yield to Christian Rome. Until he that sat upon the throne and supported the pagan superstition, should be [372] supplanted and succeeded by a Christian emperor, in plain English. Then, says he, will come forth that lawless one, who will usurp the honors of God alone, in his dominion over the faith and the consciences of men. I will be interrogated here by the short-sighted skeptics, how it came to pass that a scheme so benevolent as the Christian scheme, if designed by a benevolent and wise being, could so far have missed its aim. How strange is it, say they, if Christianity originated in divine benevolence, that there should be such a scene in the great drama as this long night of the apostasy and darkness! And I reply, how strange it is that this terraqueous globe, created by a wise and benevolent being, should be three-fourths covered with immense oceans; and the remaining one-fourth so large a portion of mountains and fens, deserts and morasses! One part of it parched with an arid sky; and another locked up in relentless ice! Short-sighted mortals that we are! And we will scan the universe! Could not the earth have been a thousand times more fruitful? Nay, could it not have been a thousand times more comfortable to live in? Might we not have had loaves growing upon the trees, and wine in bottles hanging upon the vines, and thus have been exempted from so much labor, and toil, and care? In this way we might object to everything in the universe.

      I have, for years, contended that the handwriting of God can be proved. And can we not, even under oath, attest the handwriting of some men? Men have their peculiarities which will always designate them from the whole species. No two men write, speak, or walk alike. They are as distinct in each as in the features of their countenances, and the constitution of their minds. Each has an idiosyncracy of mind, an idiomatic style, as well as a peculiar chirography.

      No man who has accurately analyzed the few general principles which govern the universe, and examined the poisons and sweets which are strewed with so much liberality over the face of the globe; who has explored the regularities and incongruities which appear above and beneath, can doubt that the mind which originated the harmonies, the beauties, the sweets, and all the blessings of nature, originated also their contraries, and that it is the same wisdom and benevolence working in the natural and moral empires of the universe. They both exhibit the impress of the same hand.

      We cannot give a fair view of the next item on the genius and spirit of Christianity, unless we enlarge a little more upon this. We must glance at the design of the Jewish religion. In the logical arrangement of all subjects, much depends upon taking hold of a few general principles. Generalizing is not only the most improving exercise of the mind, but the best means of knowing things in the detail. This is [373] that power which, in a great degree, distinguishes the vigorous and well-discipline mind from that of inferior caliber and cultivation. If it were possible to present a general synthetic view, without a previous analysis, we would prefer it; for the only utility of analysis is to put us in possession of synthetic views.

      There is an error into which we are all apt to fall, in attempting to scan the moral government of the world. We do not like to be kept in suspense. Rather than remain in suspense, we will be satisfied with very incorrect or partial views of things. There is nothing more uncomfortable than a state of suspense upon any subject which interests us. Our views are always partial at best, but much more so when we have not put ourselves to the trouble to analyze, with patience, the whole data presented.

      When I hear persons caviling at the present state of things, and objecting to matters which they do not understand, I figure to myself, a person stationed in a small room, say ten feet square, before which is passing continually a map ten thousand square miles in extent; ten feet of which only, at a time, can be seen through an opening in one side. In this small room he sits and peruses this map, for seventy years. For many weeks at a time he sees nothing but immense oceans of water; then apparently boundless forests; then prodigious chains of mountains; then deserts, flats, wastes, and wildernesses. Here and there a succession of beautiful country passes before his eyes. After contemplating this map for seventy years, he exclaims, What an irrational, ill-conducted, and incongruous-looking thing is this! I have seen forests, deserts, and oceans, interspersed here and there with some small specks of beautiful country. I must conclude that the Creator of this planet was either unwise or not benevolent. But, suppose, that on a sudden, the walls of his cottage fell down, and his vision was enlarged and strengthened so as to comprehend, in one glance, the whole sweep of ten thousand square miles; what a wonderful revolution would he undergo! Infinite wisdom and design now appear, where before he saw nothing but confusion and deformity. So it is with him who sits judging on the moral government of the world.

      We have but a small part of the picture before us. Paul explains the whole of it. He teaches us that this world is, in the moral empire, what it is in the natural--a part of a great whole. When speaking of all the irregularities in human lot, and all the diversities in the divine government, in the different ages of the world, patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian, he teaches us that the whole of this arrangement is subordinate to another state of things, having relation to the whole rational universe. All this is done, said he, that now unto the thrones, [374] principalities, and powers, in the heavenly regions, might be exhibited, by the Christian scheme, the manifold wisdom of God. There are various grades of intelligent beings, who, in their different capacities, and according to their different situations and relations, are contemplating this scene of things; and from these volumes of human nature, the divine character is continually developing itself to their view.

      Yes, my friends, your various lots, capacities, and opportunities, and your respective behavior, under these varieties, with the divine economy over you, are furnishing new essays to be read in other worlds. You are all but different letters; some capital, some small letters, some mere abbreviations, commas, semicolons, colons, periods, notes of admiration, notes of interrogation, and dashes; all making sense when wisely combined; but when jumbled together, or separated, you are unintelligible and uninstructive to yourselves and all other intelligent beings. Angels read men, and by and by men will read angels, to learn the Deity. In the rational delights and entertainments of heaven you and they will read each other. Gabriel will tell you what were his emotions when first he saw the sun open his eyes and smile upon the new-born earth; what he thought when he shut up Noah in the ark, and opened the windows of heaven and the fountains of the deep. Yes, Raphael will tell you with what astonishment he saw Eve put forth her hand to the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Gabriel will relate his joy when he saw the rainbow of peace span the vault of heaven in token of no more deluge. He will give you to know what were his emotions when sent to salute the mother of our Lord; and all the multitude will rehearse the song they sung the night they visited the shepherds of Bethlehem. In turn, you will tell them your first thoughts of God and his love; your own feelings as sinners; the agonies of sorrow and grief which once you felt; and how you met the king of terrors. Then will all the shades in the picture appear to proper advantage, and the seraphim and cherubim with their wings no more will hide their faces from man. All happiness, rational, human, or angelic happiness, springs from the knowledge of God. As it is now eternal life, so it will then be eternal happiness to know thee the only true God, and Jesus the Messiah, thy Apostle.

      A vail is yet on the face of Moses, and, indeed, on the face of many of the conspicuous characters of antiquity, in the views of many of our sectarian dogmatists. Some think that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were called, chosen, and elected, for their own sakes. They seem not yet to have learned this important lesson, that there never has as yet been one human being selected by the Almighty for his own sake. If it were necessary that the Messiah should enter our world, it was necessary [375] that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, David, Daniel, and a thousand others, should have been selected from the family of man, and discriminated by the great King as they were. On this one principle the religions of the Jews and Christians are altogether reconcilable. They mutually explain each other. They are but the portico and holy place, leading to the holiest of all.

      The calling and congregating of the Jews were for the same intent, and is relative to the general good of all nations as was the calling of Abraham, or the first promise of a Redeemer to the human race. They must be put under a special arrangement for developing the divine character and government, and for giving us a few lessons upon human nature, which never could have been taught by any other means.

      What does the Lord say concerning Pharaoh? "I have raised thee up for this purpose, that in your history and my government over you, my name might be known through all the earth." The localities and symbols of the Jewish religion made it entirely subordinate to the Christian but the genius and spirit of the latter is universal, or adapted to the whole human family, irrespective of all localities. But this only by the way. My remarks upon the apostasy gave rise to this disquisition, or rather an objection which we saw rising in the faces of some, constrained me to take this course, and to attempt to give some general hints, which, I trust, may repress that restive spirit of skepticism, which, like the demoniac among the tombs, is cutting itself to pieces, when pretending to forsake the haunts of the living for its own safety.

      In one sentence, it appears to be a law of human nature that man can only be developed and brought into proper circumstances to please himself, by what we call experience. You may not be able to account for it, but so it is, that man must be taught by experience. I think we will all agree in this, that if Adam and Eve could have had, while in Eden, the experience which they obtained after their exile, and which the world now presents, they never could have been induced to taste the forbidden tree. Every revolution of the earth, and all the incidents recorded in human history, are but so many preparations for the introduction of that last and most perfect state of society on earth called the Millennium. First we have the germ, then the blade, then the stem, then the leaves, then the blossoms, and last of all, the fruit. Therefore, as Paul said, the apostasy came first.

      The mystery of iniquity early began to work. She made mysteries of plain facts, that she might work out her own delusions. She, it was, that loved mysteries, that paralyzed the energies of the Christian spirit, and inundated the world with all the superstitions, fables, counterfeit [376] gospels, and all the follies of Paganism in a new garb. These found many admirers among the doting philosophers of Asia; and thus, by degrees, the lights of Heaven were extinguished, or put under the bushel of these abominable, delusive mysteries, until a long, dark, and dreary night of superstition besotted the world. These dark ages have sent them down to our times, and bequeathed a legacy which has impoverished rather than enriched the legatees. That man does not breathe whose mind is purified from all the influences of the night of superstition, which has so long obscured the light of the Sun of righteousness.

      Great and noble efforts have been made; but they ended in speculations; and sects and parties, built upon metaphysical hair-splittings, have long been the order of the day. These speculations are turning gray with age; and a religion pure and social, springing from the meaning of gospel facts, will soon triumph on all the speculations of the day.

      All the Bible critics, and even the commentators themselves agree, that Babylon must soon fall, like a mill-stone into the sea, never to emerge; and that her catastrophe will be succeeded by the millennial order of society. She shall be visited with the calamities of Egypt, Sodom, and Jerusalem combined; for she has combined within her dominions the enormities of the three; the filthiness of Sodom, the tyranny of Egypt, and the persecuting spirit of Jerusalem.

      Had not this defection been clearly arraigned before me, and predicted by the Apostle Paul himself--had he not told us that under the form of godliness all the vices of the world would be arraigned; that "self-lovers, money-lovers, proud, defamers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, without natural affection, covenant, or bargain breakers, slanderers, incontinent, fierce persons, without any love to good men, betrayers, headstrong, puffed up, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power of it." I say, had he not taught us to expect such characters to creep into the church, I would have been prepared to join with Mr. Owen in opposing the religions of the world. But when I began to reason, I was taught to distinguish a thing from the abuse of it; and never to condemn anything until I was fully acquainted with it. I see that the apostasy which yet exists, is as clearly foretold as was the birth of Christ; and why should the accomplishment of one prediction confirm my faith, and the accomplishment of another weaken it?

      But this defection is not only foretold literally, but symbolized by John in the Apocalypse, under such combinations, and under such figures as are well calculated to inspire us with a horrible idea of it. [377] Do not be alarmed, my friends, at my naming the Apocalypse. This book is not so unintelligible as you have been taught to think. But I am not going into an analysis of it. I will only trace one idea which runs through it, and then I will be done with the apostasy.

      John, you remember, lived to be an old man; he survived the destruction of Jerusalem about thirty years. He saw antichrists beginning to show their faces, and was alarmed at the sight. He was exiled to Patmos for the testimony he gave of Jesus; and while there, viewing with anguish the apostasy beginning, it pleased the Lord, who had, while on the earth, honored this disciple with so many tokens of his love, to confer upon him another signal pledge. He cheered the heart of the old Apostle by promising him a view of the future fortunes of the church. After inditing seven letters to the seven congregations in Asia, he presents him with this astonishing vision: A window, as it were, is opened in heaven, and a scroll in the handwriting of an angel arrests his attention. This parchment, written within and without, and sealed with seven seals, is raised aloft in the hand of an angel; and a challenge is given to all the inhabitants of heaven, earth, and sea, to take and open the book. All was silent. John wept. Why did he weep? Because he knew the future fortunes of the church were written there, sealed up from all the living, and no one appeared able to open the seals and disclose the secrets. These he wished to know above everything in the world--therefore he wept bitterly.

      At length the Lion of the tribe of Judah comes forward and takes the scroll, and prepares to open the seals. Universal joy is everywhere diffused, and John dries up his tears. The first seal is broken, and the scroll once unrolled; "Come and see," a mighty angel proclaims. John heard, looked, and beheld "a white horse, and on him sat a king, wearing one crown, with a bow and a quiver full of arrows." He rides off. Instructive emblem of the Lord beginning to subdue the nations to the obedience of faith. I will not detain you with a notice of all the seals. They are all opened; seven trumpets are blown when the seventh seal is opened, and seven vials are poured out in judgments upon the inhabitants of the earth. The intermediate seals, trumpets, and vials, symbolize the events of one thousand two hundred and forty years; or more folly all the events since the pagan persecutions down to our own times.

      But at the close of the different acts of this great drama, John sees the same person he formerly saw, mounted on a white horse, followed by all the armies of heaven, mounted on white horses; he had now upon his head many crowns, and he was clothed with a vesture dyed with blood, emblem of his conquests, and he had now, from the number of his conquests, obtained all the crowns of the kingdom of the earth, [378] and had a name written which no one understood but himself, and upon his vesture and on his thigh was written in brilliant capitals, "KINGS OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS." So that the termination of the vision of the seals, trumpets, and vials, places the Lord Jesus before us as having subdued all the nations of the world to the obedience of faith. This is the animating view which the Lord gave John, and through him has communicated to all nations of the earth, who consult these divine oracles. We rejoice to know that this period is right at hand, when the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the whole earth as the water cover the channel of the sea.

      The world, I mean the Christian communities, are tired of sectarianism; light is rapidly progressing; the true nature of the Christian institution is beginning to be understood, and all the signs of the times indicate the approach, the near approach, of this happy era.

      You have, my friends, in the preceding hints, a solution of all the difficulties which can be proposed upon the past or present order of society--an explanation of all the dark specks which appear upon the moral map of the world. My object was not to unfold the prophecies, but to give you a few hints upon the grand outlines, and to afford sufficient data evincive that the authors or writers of the New Testament were most certainly under the guidance of that omniscient one to whom the end of all things is as open and manifest as the beginning. To suppose that all these predictions found in both Testaments, first, concerning the fates of the mighty empires of the pagan world; next, concerning the character, coming, and kingdom of Jesus Christ; then, concerning the fates of his religion, and the fortunes of all the superstitions in the world; I say, to suppose that all these predictions are mere guesses or conjectures, or that they were written after the events transpired, or never written at all, by the persons whose names they bear, are suppositions, assertions, or what you please to call them, at war with all the literature of the world, with universal experience, with the common sense of mankind, and with the events which are now transpiring in the world. Such a supposition on rational mind can entertain; and we may say further, that neither Mr. Owen, nor any other person, will venture to examine or attempt to refute the argument derived from this source. It stands now, as it stood two thousand years ago, a document which defied criticism, which, with but half the light which New Testament prophecy has accumulated, convinced every man who had the patience and the honesty to examine it; and which, by the gradual and constant completion of the unfulfilled pre-dictions, is designed one day to prostrate all the infidelity upon the face of the earth. [379]

      We promised you some remarks upon the genius and tendency of the Christian religion, and also some strictures upon the social system. These will require another day. Indeed, my respected auditors, I have much reason to admire your patience and the deep interest you have taken in this discussion. It proves that you are alive to the great importance of the subject. The good order and decorum which have been exhibited by this assembly on this occasion, have never been surpassed, I presume, by any congregation on any occasion. I am unwilling to trespass upon your patience, or farther to exhaust my own strength, already far spent; but when I reflect upon the immense importance of the subject, I should think that I was sinning against the best cause in the world, and was wanting in benevolence to my cotemporaries, were I not to attend to the subjects proposed, or although the evidence which has been deduced, from any one of the topics introduced, is sufficient to establish the truth of our religion to the honest inquirer, as we judge; and you must see, I think, by this time, that it is more than my friend, Mr. Owen, can refute; yet, being conscious that each argument in the series confirms all the rest, and that without the topics proposed the evidence would be incomplete, I must, therefore, my friends, beg your attendance another day. Not, indeed, for the sake of carrying a point, nor for the pride of victory; for well I know that the evidences of Christianity have been triumphantly established long ago. It was my intention from the commencement, that all the documents relied on in conducting this controversy should go to the public in a permanent form: such also has been the intention of my opponent. We are constrained to think that he is actuated by a noble benevolence, though sadly mistaken in his views. But that our cotemporaries may have the advantage of all the lights that the present controversy can elicit from a new exhibition of a part of the magazine in the Christian treasury, we wish to be favored with your attendance another day.

      Mr. Campbell continues: Mr. Chairman--I have just now found on my desk a few questions from some unknown hand, which, I suppose, have been presented to me from my own invitations given during the discussion. As these questions bear upon our discussion, I beg leave to give a brief answer.

      The first is, Are the books composing the Old and New Testaments the only books of divine authority in the world?

      I answer positively, Yes. I have already said, that the books composing the two Testaments contain more than what is properly called a Divine Revelation. They contain much history which can with no propriety be called a Divine Revelation; for example, the history of the deluge--the confusion of human language--the dispersion of the [380] human family--the biography of the patriarchal judges, and kings of Israel--the chronicles of Judea and Israel. All the things recorded in these sections were known before written, and therefore could not be REVELATIONS. But it was necessary that these important facts, because of their intimate connection with the people to whom Divine Revelations were made, should be recorded and divinely authenticated. Hence the Pentateuch, in addition to all the revelations which it contains, presents us with a historic record of the first ages of the world, divinely authenticated.

      The question concerning the nature of inspiration, whether (for instance) original ideas were always suggested to the writer, or whether the ideas sometimes communicated were only a mere reviviscence of former impressions, is one that has been ably discussed. However this question may be decided, it affects not the question before us. The Holy Spirit promised to the Apostles was to do one of two things: either to suggest things entirely new, or to bring all things to their remembrance which they had seen or heard. This was done. The writings of the Apostles and of the prophets are authentic histories, written under the guidance of the Spirit of God; or they are immediate and direct revelations of matters inaccessible to mortal man.

      Query 2. What credit is due to the books of the Old Testament, called the APOCRYPHA?

      Let it be observed that there were many other authentic and true narratives and documents among the Jews, as there are among the Christians, beside the sacred writings of the prophets and Apostles. But it was not necessary to have under the divine patronage various histories by various authors upon the same subjects. It would have greatly increased the natural and necessary labors of life had all these records been preserved and collected into a set of volumes, and the reading of them all made necessary to understand either the scheme of divine government or of man's redemption. But to enable us to acquire all that is necessary to be known, certain books have been preserved by the divine authority. The Apocrypha--at least some books of it--contain a true history; but it does not claim to be a Divine Revelation. We receive the records of Philo and Josephus, and many of the primitive Christian writers, as credible narratives of their own times; and, as far as they treat of times immediately subsequent to the apostolic age, they may be called the Apocrypha of the New Testament. All these writings may be, and most of them are, certainly credible and authentic works; but they constitute no part of either religion, and make no such claims upon us.

      Query 3. How are we to ascertain the authorship of Job, some parts [381] of the book of Deuteronomy, such as the death and burial of Moses, the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews? etc.

      It is not necessary that we should be able to prove the authorship of every particular piece composing the Old and New Testaments to prove their authenticity.⁴ The book of Job, for instance, has no name attached to it, nor circumstances mentioned in it, which could decide the author of it. Whether it was written by Ezra, Nehemiah, or any Jewish prophet, perhaps, could not now be decided. My belief in the authenticity and authority of this book, and all anonymous parts of the Old Testament, is founded upon the following basis: The Jewish scribes received them; the whole Jewish nation received them; their own internal evidence attests their pretensions; and, above all, they were quoted as genuine and approbated as parts of the sacred records and revelation, by Jesus Christ, or his Apostles, concerning whose inspiration and certain knowledge of the character of these works we cannot entertain a rational doubt.

      Concerning the question about the burial of Moses, and other such [382] additions made to some books in the Old Testament, they proceed from inattention to the contents of the volume. Joshua wrote some additions to the books of Moses, called "the Law of God;" and that he, or Ezra, or some of the distinguished guardians of these sacred records, should have added the deaths or other posthumous circumstances belonging to the history of these great prophets, is inferable from this fact just now stated. Joshua says he wrote some additions to "the Book of the Law of God," a name applied to the books of Moses. It is the style of Cæsar's commentaries, expressed in the third person: "So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and set them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem; and Joshua wrote these words in the Book of the Law of God."

      Respecting the letter to the Hebrews, although not having directly the authority of Paul's name, it proves itself to be his work. It contains certain direct allusions to Paul's labors, and he speaks of himself in such a style, and with such references to circumstances in which he was a party, as to render it certain that he is the writer. A person may introduce himself by a periphrasis, or circumlocution, without directly naming himself. Thus Paul introduces himself to the Hebrews to avoid encountering a prejudice existing against him in the minds of the unbelieving Jews, for whose benefit, as well as that of the believing Jews, he designed this letter.

      Touching the authorship of these writings, although I think we have already sufficiently established this matter, I would remark, that, of the Apostles' letters, the autographs themselves, as well as many extrinsic circumstances, decided their pretensions. Paul's name, written by his own hand, after his amanuensis had written an epistle, was added to such of them as were not wholly written by himself. The congregations or individuals to whom they were addressed--some of whom were so addressed as to have provoked them to have rejected the letters if they had dared--were the best judges of the authenticity of these writings; and the fact of their having been received as such by these congregations, alone, had we no other proof, amounts to the whole evidence we have in proof of the authorship of the most popular works of Greece and Rome. If these writings had not been the productions of their reputed authors, or if such of them as are anonymous had not been known to have been the works of well-attested authors by their cotemporaries, many would have been proud to have claimed them as their own. I do not know what human being would not have been proud to have been the author of the book of Job, or to the letter to the Hebrews; and their being anonymous, yet received into the sacred writings, is as valid proof of their authenticity as if they had, [383] like the greater part of both Testaments, been inscribed with the names of their authors.

      Query 4. But we are also asked, Are we sure that we have the genuine works of these authors? Are there no interpolations?

      When I hear of interpolations and contradictions, I think of the Honorable Soame Jeyns, once a skeptic. He had concluded to publish a work against the Christian religion; but thinking that he ought to be well acquainted with its fables and absurdities before he ventured to appear before the public, he determined to make himself well acquainted with the contents of the book. But he soon found good reasons to reform his plan; and, instead of furnishing a work against the Christian religion, he gave the world a short and unanswerable treatise upon the truth and authenticity of it. This treatise on the "Internal Evidences" is written in a masterly style, and with a boldness which nothing but the assurance of faith could inspire. He makes the following bold assertion which many would think is going too far:

      "For I will venture to affirm, that if any one could prove, what is impossible to be proved, because it is not true, that there are errors in geography, chronology, and philosophy, in every page of the Bible; that the prophecies therein delivered, are all but fortunate guesses, or artful applications, and the miracles there recorded, no better than legendary tales; if any one could show that these books were never written by their pretended authors, but were posterior impositions on illiterate and credulous ages, all these wonderful discoveries would prove no more than this, that God, for reasons to us unknown, had thought proper to permit a revelation by him communicated to mankind, to be mixed with their ignorance, and corrupted by their frauds from its earliest infancy, in the same manner in which he has visibly permitted it to be mixed, and corrupted from that period to the present hour. If, in these books, a religion, superior to all human imagination, actually exists, it is of no consequence to the proof of its divine origin, by what means it was there introduced, or with what human errors and imperfections it is blended. A diamond, though found in a bed of mud, is still a diamond, nor can the dirt, which surrounds it, depreciate its value, or destroy its luster."

      All the interpolations, and different readings, though numerous as Michaelis, a very learned German professor, makes them, counting all the minutiæ of letters and points, do not affect the character of a single fact recorded in the whole New Testament. Indeed, men have been so much more concerned about the doctrines than the facts of scripture, that they are much more alarmed about the omission, or [384] change of a term, affecting some favorite conclusion to which they have come, than about the evidence on which the great salutary facts are established. Hence has arisen the great ado about interpolations. And if there were ever any interpolations designedly introduced, it was for carrying some doctrine or theorem, and not for proving a fact. Hence skeptics have nothing to fear from interpolations. But a notice of the dark ages here may not be out of place, especially as most of these different readings and interpolations occurred during this dreary period.

      During this period, all learning was locked up in the dark cloisters and confined to the gloomy monasteries of papal superstition. The scriptures, before the art of printing, were in the hands of ignorant monks and nuns, who spent their lives in transcribing them. A majority of these copyists, did not understand the language in which they wrote them. We have seen some of these ancient manuscript copies. Large margins, for the purpose of notes and references, were usually left on these manuscripts. It frequently happened that some of the copyists, unable to discriminate the marginal notes from the text, transcribed some of the explanations into the text. This occasioned various discrepancies between the copies. After the revival of literature and the Reformation, careful and exact comparisons of these copies were made, and the text was purged of most, if not all, these interpolations. In these numerous and careful revisals and comparisons, not only of the copies, but of the most ancient manuscripts, and the quotations found in the works of the primitive fathers, almost everything of a doubtful character, even to the very expletives, were rejected. We have, most unquestionably, the most exact and faithful representation of the prototype of this volume that we have of any other book in the world. It would be impossible to interpolate the sacred text now, because of the rival sects. The same difficulty existed always, almost from the beginning; excepting that the invention of printing, and the multiplication of copies consequent thereupon, have imposed more insuperable barriers in the way of such liberties, than existed before. But when we take into view the VENERATION of even the most ignorant ages for these writings, and the tremendous awe inspired from the sanctions found at the close of the volume, together with sectarian jealousy, no work has been so much guarded against corruption. And a greater proof we cannot have of the truth of these remarks, than the fact that the church of Rome, in which most of the copies now extant were found, the corruptions of which are so clearly pointed out and condemned in the Epistles, have for ages transcribed the predictions, expositions, and censures pronounced upon herself, and [385] handed to the Reformers the sacred text to condemn and expose her own abuses.

      Query 5. How is it that St. Matthew says in a certain place, It was prophesied by the prophet Jeremiah, and no such prophecy is found in Jeremiah, but in Zechariah?

      To this we reply that the divisions which now obtain in both the Old Testament and the New, are of modern origin. Cardinal Cairo, in the twelfth century, divided the scriptures of the New Testament into chapters; and Robert Stephens, in the sixteenth century, divided them into verses. These distributions were made to facilitate references to these writings, but in thousands of instances they have obscured the sense of them.

      The Jews divided all the writings of the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, into fifty-four sections, for the purpose of reading them once in a year in their synagogues. Four of these sections were shorter than the others; and whether designed for two of their greatest solemnities, to be read together, two on each occasion, we cannot say; but so it was, that the whole volume was read once every year in their public meetings. But in quoting these writings, they sometimes quoted them under the general running title of these sections; or more loosely, under these heads--the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. At other times they were quoted with the most minute reference, as, for instance, "It is so written in the second Psalm." Sometimes the whole writings are called the Law. The Savior once quotes the Psalms thus: "It is written in the Law, They hated me without a cause;" yet this is found in the book of Psalms. The running title to the sections of the prophetic writings is said by some to have been Jeremiah; others have said that the Jews called Jeremiah the weeping prophet, and used his name as an appellative, to denote all those predictions which had respect to the suffering of the Messiah. But one thing is obvious, that there was among all persons in that age a loose or general reference, as well as a strict and accurate reference to sayings in the prophets. If, then, Matthew did actually use the name of Jeremiah instead of the name Zechariah, it may have proceeded from some of those causes assigned. But whether or not, it affects no more the credibility of the testimony of Matthew concerning Jesus Christ, than the fact of Paul's forgetting how many he had baptized in Corinth, proves that he was not inspired with an infallible knowledge of the gospel.

      Such objections as these exhibit a very strange state of mind, and show that the objector is entirely ignorant of the real grounds on which we assent to the divine authority of these records.

      Having, then, very briefly attended to these questions, I proceed to [386] the topic proposed on Saturday evening. To form correct ideas of the genius and tendency of Christianity, we must pay some attention to the genius and design of the former dispensation. This we have already glanced at in our remarks upon the apostasy. Until the time of Abraham, all the nations upon the earth had the same general views of the Divinity that created all things and presided over the world. This will appear from all the ancient documents which penetrate into the most remote antiquity of the world.

      In forming a correct view of the religious character of the ancient nations, it is necessary here to inquire how far the inhabitants of Persia, Assyria, Arabia, Canaan, and Egypt, were affected or influenced by the religious institutions of this period; for these were the first nations whose institutions gave a character to all the nations of the world.

      Abraham was the son of Shem by Arphaxad. The Persians were the descendants of Shem by Elam. The common parentage of Abraham and the Persians laid a foundation for some similarity in their religion. Abraham's ancestors dwelt in Chaldea, and at the time that God signalized Abraham, the Chaldeans had begun to apostatize from the service of the true God. Hence the separation of Abraham from among them. But Dr. Hyde, and the most learned antiquarians, present documental proof that the Persians retained the true history of the creation, of the antediluvian age; and so attached were the Persians to the religion of Abraham, that the sacred book which contained their religion is called Sohi lbrahim, i e., the Book of Abraham. For a considerable time after Abraham's day they worshiped the God of Shem, for they did not know all the special communications to Abraham.

      The Arabians, down to the time of Jethro, retained the knowledge of the true God. How long after we are not informed, but their religious institutions, as far as we have account, differed little from those practiced by Abraham, with the exception of circumcision.

      The Canaanites themselves, in Abraham's time, had not apostatized wholly from the religion of Shem. The king of Salem was priest of the Most High God; and during Abraham's sojourning among them, they treated him with all respect as the prophet of the true God.

      Even among the Philistines at Gera, Abraham found a good and virtuous king favored with the admonitions of the Almighty. This he little expected, for he was so prejudiced against those people that, on entering their metropolis, he said, "Surely the fear of God is not in this place." But he was happily disappointed. For Abimelech, in his appeal to Heaven, says, "Lord, wilt thou slay a virtuous nation?" And the Lord did not deny his plea, but heard and answered his [387] request. There appears in the whole narrative no difference in the religious views or practice between Abraham and Abimelech, the king of the nation.

      The Egyptians, too, in the time of Abraham, were worshipers of the true God. In upper Egypt they refused, as Plutarch informs us, to pay any taxes for the support of the idolatrous worship; asserting that they owned no mortal, dead or alive, to be a God. The incorruptible and eternal God they called Sneph, who, they affirmed, had no beginning, and never should have an end. In the first advances to mythology in Egypt, they represented God by the figure of a serpent, with the head of a hawk in the middle of a circle. We find no misunderstandings nor difference between Pharaoh and Abraham, when the latter went down into Egypt. Indeed, with the exception of the Chaldeans, who were the oldest nation, and the first to introduce idol or image worship, we find a very general agreement in all the ancient nations respecting religious views and practice. And the first defection from the religion of Noah and Shem which we meet with in all antiquity, was that of the Chaldeans.

      Now, to save the world from universal idolatry, Abraham is called; and in four centuries his posterity were erected into a nation for this primary object, to teach the unity, spirituality, and providence of God, as well as to introduce a new vocabulary by a symbolic worship, to prepare the world for understanding the Divine character and government preparatory to the mission of his Son.

      Abraham was called at a time when idolatry began to appear in Chaldea, and when families began to have each a family god. When his descendants became numerous, and large enough to become a nation, and the nations had each its own god, it pleased the ruler of the universe to exhibit himself as the God of a nation. Hence originated the theocracy. Here it is necessary to suggest a few general principles of much importance in understanding the varieties which have appeared in the divine government. From the fall of man the governor of the world withdrew from all personal intimacies with the race. He no longer conversed with man, face to face, as he was wont to do in Eden. The recollections of the Divinity became more and more faint as Adam advanced in years, and the traditionary information communicated to his descendants became less vivid and impressive in every generation. All new communications from the Creator were through symbols, by messengers, or rather through things already known. Things entirely unknown can only be communicated to the mind by things already known. This axiom is at the basis of all revelations, and explains many otherwise inexplicable incidents in the [388] divine communications to man. The natural symbols and the artificial names of things became, from a necessity of nature, the only means through which God could make himself known to man. This, too, has been the invariable rule and measure of all the discoveries which God has made of himself, his purposes and will. Hence the spangled heavens, all the elements of nature, the earth, and the sea, with all their inhabitants; the relations, customs, and usages existing among men, have all been so many types or letters in the great alphabet which constitutes the vocabulary of divine revelation to man. He has been personated himself by his own creatures, and spoken to man through human institutions. Hence he has been called a Sun, Light, Father, Husband, Man of War, General of Hosts, a Lord of Battles, King, Prince, Master, etc., etc. He has been spoken of as having eyes, ears, mouth, hands, feet, etc., etc. He has been represented as sitting, standing, walking, hasting, awaking. He has been compared to a unicorn, lion, rock, mountain, etc., etc. He has made himself known in his character, perfections, purposes, and will, by things already known to man. This is the grand secret which, when disclosed, removes many difficulties and objections, and sets in a clear light the genius of the Jewish age of the religious world.

      Now when God became the king of one nation, it was only doing what on a more extensive scale, and with more various and powerful effects, he had done in calling himself a Father. Both were designed to make himself known through human relations and institutions. One type, symbol, or name, is altogether incompetent to develop the wonderful and incomprehensible God. But his wisdom and goodness are most apparent in making himself known in those relations and to those extents which are best adapted to human wants and imperfections. And the perfection in these discoveries consists in their being exactly suited to the different ages of the world and stages of human improvement. At the time when he chose one nation and made himself known to all the earth as its King and God, no other name, type, or symbol was so well adapted to the benevolent purpose, as those selected. For when Israel was brought out of Egypt, all the nations had their gods; and these gods were esteemed and admired according to the strength, skill, prowess, and prosperity of the nation over which they were supposed to preside. Hence that god was the most adorable in human eyes, whose people were most conspicuous.

      Wars and battles were the offspring of the spirit of those ages co-temporaneous with the first five hundred years of the Jewish history, and with the ages immediately preceding. Hence the idea was, that the nation most powerful in war, had the greatest and most adorable [389] god. Now as the Most High (a name borrowed from this very age) always took the world as it was in every period in which he chose to develop himself anew, or his purposes, he chose to appear as the Lord of Hosts or God of Armies. And to make his name known through all the earth, he took one nation under his auspices, and appeared as their Sovereign and the Commander-in-Chief of all their armies. Hence the splendid and easy-bought victories of the Israelites. One could chase a hundred, and ten put a thousand to flight. This explains the deliverance out of Egypt, and how the Lord permitted Pharaoh's heart to be hardened--for the purpose of making his name known through all the earth. Pharaoh and his court knew not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and impiously asked, "Who is the Lord, that I should obey him?" But Moses made him know, and tremble, and bow. By the time when the Jews were settled in Canaan, the world was taught to fear the God of Israel, the Lord of Hosts; and so it came to pass that all the true and consistent knowledge of God upon earth, among all nations, was derived directly or indirectly from the Jewish people.

      But we must not think that only one purpose was gained, or one object was exclusively in view in any of those great movements of the Governor of the World. This is contrary to the general analogy of the material and spiritual systems. By the annual and diurnal revolutions of the earth, although by the former the seasons of the year, and by the latter, day and night seem to be the chief objects, there are a thousand ends gained in conjunction with one principal one: so in this grand economy, many, very many illustrious ends were gained, beside the capital one just mentioned. For, as in the vegetable kingdom we have a succession of stages in the growth of plants; as in the animal kingdom we have a succession of stages in the growth of animals; so in the kingdom of God there is a similar progression of light, knowledge, life, and bliss. We have in the vegetable kingdom the period of germinating, the period of blossoming, and the period of ripening the fruit. So we have infancy, childhood, youth, and manhood, in our species. Each period calls for special influences and a peculiar treatment. So it is in the kingdom of God. It had its infancy, its childhood, and its manhood. In each stage it was diversely exhibited. The patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian ages were adapted to these.

      Again, we are not to consider the special temporal favors bestowed upon the Jews, as indicative that the divine benevolence was exclusively confined to one nation to the exclusion of all the earth beside. As well might we say that the husbandman who cultivates his garden despises or neglects his farm, or that he exclusively loved that part of the soil which he incloses with a peculiar fence. Other [390] circumstances and considerations require these specialties. The general good of the human race, and the blessings of all nations in a son of Abraham, were the ultimate and gracious ends in view in all these peculiar arrangements. This promise and guarantee were made to Abraham before the time of these ages or dispensations. So that the calling of the Jews and their erection into a nation under the special government of God, were but means necessary to that reign of favor under which we now live.

      But some will still say, Why was not the Messiah born immediately after the fall, and why was not the Christian era the only era of the world? Why did not the Universal Benevolence introduce the best possible order of things first? Such cavilers remind me of the child who asks, whether from curiosity or petulance: Why does not the ripe ears of corn come up from the seed deposited in the earth? Why does not the full ripe ear first present itself to our eye? Would not a kind and benevolent being have done this rather than have kept us waiting for many months, for the tedious process of germinating, growing, shooting, blossoming? etc., etc. Could not an almighty, and benevolent being, have produced the ripe ear without waiting for a sprout, stalk, leaves, blossoms, and all the other preparations of nature to form an ear of corn? We are, even in the common concerns of life, but poor judges of propriety; and it is extreme arrogance for us to arraign Omniscience at the tribunal of our reason when we cannot tell the reason why the blossom precedes the fruit? Do we not see that it is the order of the universe, natural as well as moral, that there should be a gradual development? "In the fullness of time" when all things were fully ripe, he sent for his Son.

      One part of the human family is cultivated like a garden, and another part is left like a wilderness, unfenced, and undressed. The vineyard, however, after a while produces, through an unavoidable degeneracy, no better grapes than the wild vines in the forest--and the hedge is torn down. A new order of things is developed, and the middle wall of partition crumbles to pieces. The Jew and Gentile are alike degenerated, and the new order proceeds upon a leveling principle. Now, no human being could have known that a government like the Theocracy, placing a people in such enviable circumstances so that system placed the seed of Abraham, would have secured so little to itself, and so little to the people under it, had not the experiment been made and continued as it was.

      But all these matters will be much better understood when we contemplate the constitution of the Jewish nation. This constitution is, in one point of view, very very pertinently called by the apostle Paul [391] The Letter. No term could have been more appropriate to exhibit the views which Paul taught, than this term letter. The constitution under which this nation came into existence, as a nation, was written by the Finger of God, upon two tables of stone. But here let me explain myself. The instrument written upon these two tables is sometimes called the moral law of the whole universe; sometimes the ten commandments; sometimes the old covenant, and the old testament. Now, the terms testament and covenant in the Scotch idiom, and in the English, are supposed equivalent to one and the same Greek word, diatheke. For the king's translators have many a time rendered this Greek word by both of these English nouns. The term covenant, in Scotland, has been applied not only to individual arguments, but to national compacts. Institution, or even constitution, in our day, much more correctly represents to us in our modes of thinking the true import of this term. The writing upon the two tables was in reality, in its original promulgation, and in the use made of it, precisely what we called a constitution. The nation received it as such, and the two tables on which it was written were called "the two tables of the covenant;" and the chest or ark into which it was deposited was called "the ark of the covenant." The whole covenant must have been on the two tables, else it must have been an imposition to call them the two tables of the covenant; and, again, the whole covenant must have been in the ark or it would have been a deception to call that ark "the ark of the covenant." I need scarcely add that the reason why the volumes called the old testament, containing the writings of Moses, the prophets, and the devotional pieces called the Hagiographa, is not because all these writings were the covenant or testament, or constitution of Israel, but by a figure of speech the thing containing is often called the thing contained. Because these writings contain this covenant or constitution they are all called by the name of the old covenant, testament, or constitution. In like manner we shall see that the New Testament has received its name from the same figure and example.

      There were many other laws given to the Jews from the king beside this instrument, but these were not of the same high character with those thus written on the two tables. They were only "leges sub graviori lege," laws under a supreme law; for the constitution of every country is the supreme law of the land. But the proof lies here: the Lord declared, If Israel would accede to the items to be proposed, they would, in consequence, become a peculiar nation, a new sort of kingdom; a community exalted above all the national communities upon earth. They agreed to these preliminaries. Then the Lord said, in their hearing: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the [392] land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; therefore ye shall," etc. Such was the agreement, and such were the items afterward called, the covenant or constitution.

      This constitution continued in one sense for about fifteen hundred years. It could not be broken, or made of none effect, by the transgression of a few individuals. But as soon as the great majority of the people departed from it, God ceased to reign over them as he had done. He allowed his enemies to make prisoners of them; to invade and devastate their land, and carry them into bondage again. Now, so long as this people lived up to the letter of this instrument, so long they were under the especial government of God; and under all the miraculous displays which we see distinguished their history from their eduction from Egypt till they were carried into Babylon by the Assyrian monarch. This explains the reason why miracles continued in Israel so long--and why they ceased at the period alluded to. Miracles were the order of the day for many hundred years in all the important epochs of their history. But after the captivity, the special providences ceased.

      Now, let us hear Jeremiah, who lived about these times, speak of this covenant and the intentions of the Lord concerning them.--Jer. xxxi. 31, 32, 33, 34:

      "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand, to bring them out of the land of Egypt (which my covenant they brake, although I was a husband to them, saith the Lord); but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying: Know the Lord; for they shall all know me from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more."

      Jeremiah then predicts a time when this constitution would cease to be the constitution of Israel--and a new one of a different character introduced. We do not, as some might think, speak of the abrogation or disannulling of anything moral. The laws of morality, like those of nature, are immutable; but the particular forms, and arrangements, and modifications of these principles should be changed, and the whole inscribed, not upon stone, but upon the hearts of men. Now here is the essential difference between the old and the new constitution. The [393] former was not written upon the heart, the latter is. The former was pure letter, the latter is pure spirit. The first, pointed out to the eye, to the intellect of man, a rule of life; the latter, infuses it into the soul or gives a disposition and bias to these principles of action: nay, it imparts to the heart the principle which the letter or law only laid before the eyes. I develop the matter no farther here. I only prepare the way for this sweeping distinction that the Jewish covenant or institution was a covenant or constitution of the letter or law. In one sentence, the first was a constitution of law: the second, or Christian, is a constitution of favor.

      Let us hear Paul elaborate this matter, 2 Cor. iii. 6-18:

      "Who indeed hath fitted us to be ministers of a new covenant; not of the letter, but of the spirit: now the letter killeth, but the spirit maketh alive. Besides, if the ministry of death, imprinted on stones with letters, was done with glory, so that the children of Israel could not look steadfastly on the face of Moses, because of the glory of his face which was to be abolished; how shall not the ministry of the spirit rather be with glory? And, if the ministry of condemnation was honor, much more doth the ministry of righteousness abound in honor. And therefore, that which was glorified, was not glorified in this respect, by reason of the excelling glory. Besides, if that which is abolished, is abolished by glory, much more that which remaineth, remaineth in glory. Wherefore, having such a persuasion, we use much plainness of speech; and not as Moses, who put a vail upon his face, that the children of Israel might not steadfastly look to the end of the thing to be abolished. Now their minds were blinded; for until this day, the same vail remaineth in the reading of the Old Covenant, it not being revealed, that it is abolished by Christ. Moreover, until this day, when Moses is read, the vail lieth upon the heart. But, when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken from around it. Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. For we all, with an unvailed face reflecting as mirrors the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord of the spirit."

      Here is the contrast--letter and spirit. "The letter kills--the spirit gives life. Ministration of death--ministration of spirit, that which is done away, and that which remains." Glorious the former in its promulgation, more glorious the latter in its introduction;--tending of the one is to bondage, of the other to liberty. All human privileges are constitutional. Therefore as in the constitution, so are the privileges of the people whose it is.

      But here we must observe that there is some reason in Mr. Owen's [394] remark, that men are not to be made happy by letter or law. Written codes of laws, however good, are not adapted to augment human happiness, much less to produce it. Laws are restraints--the more numerous, the more are the restraints; to restrain a person is to diminish his enjoyments. It is therefore much more conducive to human happiness to remove the cause which makes these restraints necessary. To infuse into the mind such principles as will make men happy is infinitely more rational than by good laws to curb evil principles already implanted. To remove the disposition to steal, is much more rational than to promulge laws against theft. That system then is incomparably the most conducive to morality, good order, and happiness, and is, therefore, by far the most rational, which removes the evil principle, rather than attempts to curb it by legal restraints. The law was not made for good men. In any state of society the only happiness that good men derive from law is protection. In no other way can it conduce to their happiness. It is made for evil doers.

      So far, then, Mr. Owen is right; but had he known what follows, he never would have adopted so ineffectual a scheme as that which he has proposed. The Almighty gave us an excellent specimen of what a good law could do; he made the experiment for us in the history of the Jews. He gave them the best constitution, the finest country, and a well-arranged society--a very social system. The twelve tribes were twelve communities. They supplied themselves and created a large surplus; so that for two years, at least, in every seven, they rested, and their land rested one. They were under the best government, and enjoyed the greatest share of social privileges ever enjoyed by any people; yet they became worse and worse.

      Now he found fault with the whole economy, and introduced a new one upon quite different principles. Instead of circumcising the flesh, he circumcised the heart; and instead of giving a code of laws to govern men's outward actions, he gives them new hearts; or, in other words, by a constitution of pure favor, or grace, he implants noble principles, so efficient, as neither confiscation of goods, imprisonment, nor death itself, could induce them to do a mean action. I admit that since men have corrupted Christianity by converting it into a new code of laws, observances, and ceremonies, it has not been so productive of those happy influences as it once was almost universally; yet still its direct influences upon all who believe and understand it, are equal to what they ever were; and its indirect influences upon society at large, have civilized and moralized it to an extent far beyond any system ever exhibited on earth.

      But what I now contend for is, that pure Christianity is founded [395] upon the most philosophic view of human nature. It aims not at reforming or happifying the world by a system of legal restraints, however excellent; but its immediate object is to implant in the human heart, through a discovery of the divine philanthropy, a principle of love, which fulfills every moral precept ever promulgated on earth. Here is the grand secret: the religion of Jesus Christ melts the hearts of men into pure philanthropy. It converts a lion into a lamb. It has done this in our times in countless instances. Mr. Owen only dreams of reformations. Christianity alone changes, regenerates, and reforms wicked men. The materialists declare their system "cannot make a wicked man good." Skepticism never converted a wicked man since the days of Celsus till now. Mr. Owen cannot produce one instance. But Christianity, taking hold of the heart of man, not by law, but by love; not by letter, but by favor, has converted millions of the worst characters into the very best. Yes, the religion of Jesus sheds abroad in the human heart the love of God; and that love, purifying the heart, overflows in all good actions--kind, humane, benevolent; not only to the good, but to the evil. This is the true philosophy. Correct the spring--the fountain. "Make the tree good." Engraft a new scion on the old stock. Infuse new life. Warm the heart by the wonderful love of God, exhibited and sealed by the blood of his Son. Let this love, this pure benevolence, this genuine philanthropy, but reach the soul of man, and then all is pure within and moral without.

What law could never do, though as holy, just, and good as the constitution of Israel, through the weakness of the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, has done; he has condemned sin, wounded it, and killed it by a most transcendently glorious display of love.

      Where are Mr. Owen's weapons to reform the world? He dare not, in fact he does not, pretend to reform the world. He owns he has nothing to propose adequate to the task; and, therefore, only promises to save the next generation by a whimsical arrangement of circumstances. He proposes to grow better men and women, not to improve the present race. And what is the pith of his philosophy? Why, it is this: Transplant a crab tree and it becomes an apple tree. But the great reformer's philosophy was, engraft a new scion. Such is the exact difference between the scheme of Mr. Owen and the founder of Christianity.

      But let us have a word from Paul on the contrast between the Jewish and Christian religion. I will, for the sake of dispatch, paraphrase [396] a part of the fourth chapter to the Galatians, thus: "Now I say, the heir, as long as he is a minor, differs in no respect from a slave, though he be lord of all; for he is kept under tutors and stewards until he is of age, or until the time appointed in the will of his father. Just so it was with us Jews, while in our minority, which was during the dominion of the old constitution; we were kept in bondage, restrained, and curbed by the elements, or leading principles of that institution of law. But when the fullness of time appointed by our father in his will had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, and born under the old constitution, that he might be a fellow-subject (I cannot say fellow-citizen) with us under that constitution, that he might be consitutionally qualified to buy us off out of the slavery of the letter; that we might be elevated from the rank of trembling slaves, to the adoption of sons. And now, having been raised to the rank of sons, God has, under a new constitution, given us the spirit of his Son in our hearts; so that we confidently and affectionately say, as little children speak, Abba, Father. Now, my brethren of the Jews, once subjects of the old constitution, you are no more bondmen, but sons in feeling, in spirit, and in truth, too, by relation; and if sons, you know you are heirs of God through his Son, the Messiah. Well, then, brethren, you will never, I hope, desire to be under the old constitution again; but, I trust, you will stand firm in the liberty which you enjoy of serving God under the new constitution, not in the oldness of the letter, but in a new spirit."

      Often does Paul rally upon this point: You Christians are "not under law, but under favor;" sin shall not, then, have power to lord it over you, seeing you are not under the condemning genius of law, but under the pardoning, reconciling, purifying, and ennobling genius of favor.

      This is the genius of Christianity. By Moses came the age of law. By Jesus, the Messiah, came the reign of favor. So sang the angels when they announced his birth, "Glory to God in the highest heavens; Peace on earth, and good will among men." Letters only reach the eyes, but favor can touch the heart. Laws expressed in words assail the ears and aim at restraining actions; but love pierces to the heart, and disarms the rising thought of mischievous intent. It is called the reign of Heaven, because down into the heart it draws the heavenly feelings, desires, and aims. From heaven it came, and to heaven it leads. I will shake the heavens and the earth, says the Lord. I will revolutionize the world; and how, my friends, but by introducing new principles of human actions?

      Paul informs us that the new constitution is every way better than [397] the old one. The Mediator is superior to Moses--its provisions better--its seal and pledges better. It runs in a few sentences. It promises:

      1. To write the law upon the heart. That is, to implant the principle, which induces to all the good and pious works which the law demanded, and which will exclude the necessity of law taking cognizance only of the outward deeds.

      2. It promises to all subjects the remission of all sins; and, consequently, banishes all guilt and fear from the conscience.

      3. It assures all the citizens of having a just knowledge of God; and,

      4. It promises that God himself shall be theirs, and they his.

      Now, let me ask what is wanting in this new constitution (and this is the whole of it), to make men just what reason says they ought to be--to make them good companions and happy in themselves?

      How much happiness is there in doing good? All this happiness is theirs, for it imparts the disposition. How much happiness is there in having all fear of death, all guilt and shame removed from the soul of man? This happiness is theirs. How much happiness in seeing all our fellow-citizens knowing the character of God, his will and designs with regard to the whole human race, and all rejoicing in God? This happiness is theirs. And how much real felicity is there in having all the treasures of God, all the riches of the heavenly inheritance in prospect; as well as all assurance given us that on earth we shall never be deserted nor forsaken by the Lord. Now all these are constitutional privileges belonging to every citizen of this kingdom--to every one under the new constitution. There is not one citizen in the kingdom, of which this is the constitution, who has not in his heart the law of love written; not one who does not know God; not one who has not all his sins forgiven; not one who has not a good hope of the heavenly and eternal inheritance. Such is the unexaggerated character, genius, and design of the new constitution, or Christian religion.

      We are not, my friends, to suppose that the patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian religions, as we call them, are three distinct religions. They are but one religion. The seed was sown in the patriarchal age; the plant sprung up and put forth its leaves and blossoms under the cultivation of the Jewish; it ripened and was matured under the Christian. Favor was promised under the patriarchal, was symbolized and shadowed forth under the Jewish, and accomplished and realized under the new constitution. The first formed good individuals; the second, while held sacred, made a happy nation, and comparatively a moral people; but the third fills men with heavenly influence; with peace, and joy, [398] and righteousness, and can make, and will terminate in, a pure and happy world.

      Mahometanism is only a corruption and perversion of Judaism and Christianity. Idolatry is but a perversion and corruption of the patriarchal and Jewish dispensations. The apostasy or anti-Christ is but a corruption of Christianity, a heterogeneous commixture of Judaism, paganism, and Christianity. There has been but one religion ever in the world. In other words, the fountain whence all superstitions have originated, was one and the same. Hence we find the prominent ideas of divine revelation in every superstition on earth. As we trace languages to a common fountain and origin, so we trace religions. Idolatry and polytheism were the worst of all the corruptions in degrading man. But as the sweetest wine will make the sourest vinegar, Christianity when corrupted has exhibited the most cruelty and tyranny. Hence the Inquisition has been the most cruel and wicked tribunal upon this earth. The fine, vigorous, plethoric constitution, when subdued by a malignant fever, exhibits the greatest mass of corruption. But who argues hence that a fine, vigorous, and healthy constitution is a curse, shocks all common sense.

      But the root of all the corruptions of Christianity was the incorporating with it the opinions and speculations of Egyptian and Indian philosophy. All the systems flourishing upon the earth when Jesus was born were, with the exception of the Jewish (and that, we all know, was much corrupted), mere systems of abstract opinions and speculations. Grecian and Roman, as well as the eastern philosophy, had filled all the reasoning part of society with the most air-built and visionary schemes about matter and mind, creation and providence. Conversions from these ranks, from all the sects of philosophers, polluted, finally polluted, the Christian sanctuary. So that Christianity became with them a science, a fit subject of speculation as much as any of the doctrines of Plato or Socrates. From these unhallowed commixtures spring the creed systems of ancient and modern times, so that finally almost every vestige of the ancient simplicity and the true genius of Christianity disappeared, and various schemes of sectarian and philosophic Christianity succeeded and supplanted it.

      This creed system has been the fruitful source of all the corruptions in morals, as well as the parent of all the religious discords now in Christendom. But for it Deism, Atheism, and Skepticism would have found no resting-place among us. Many of the skeptics, and even Mr. Owen himself, have been attacking anti-Christ, and thought they were opposing Christ. They have not the disposition to discriminate between what Christianity is, and the abuses of it. It requires but little [399] logical acumen to detect the sophistry, and but moderate powers of declamation to expose the fooleries, of most of the systems and exhibitions of Christianity. And he must be dull of apprehension who has not felt, in this discussion, that Mr. Owen has been fighting against the perversions of Christianity, rather than against the religion of facts, of morals, and of happiness which our Redeemer has established in the world. But matter and mind, body and spirit, in their greatest supposed opposition to each other, are not greater contrasts than a religion of opinions and a religion of facts.

      And here I beg leave to illustrate this distinction very briefly. It seems to have been abundantly proved, before the Christian era, that opinions are too feeble to stimulate to virtue and goodness, and too impotent to restrain from vice and immorality. Correct opinions, we see in our times, will not purify the heart, nor reform the life. Nothing that must be argued out by a long process of ratiocination, can be of much power in regulating human conduct. Its strength is exhausted by the time the point is proved. And it must be evident to all that a system which requires much reason to comprehend, would be most unsuitable to the great mass of mankind. A thousand persons can believe a fact, for every one that can comprehend a logical process of reasoning. Opinions, too, are, after all, but probabilities. They can never rise higher than a strong probability; but faith produces, in many instances, absolute certainty, and is, in the very constitution of human nature, evidently intended to be a common and a most powerful principle of action. But opinions are not, in the constitution of human nature, ever intended to be a common, nor a powerful principle of action. They are only to govern us, or to teach us to move with caution, or sometimes not to move at all, in the absence of faith and knowledge. Faith and knowledge are the governing principles of action, and opinion is only to be consulted in the absence of these two.

      The Messiah, well knowing what was in man, adapted his religion to the nature and wants of men, and hence made its reforming, purifying, and saving efficacy to consist in the belief of naked facts; facts which, when believed, have an intrinsic, inherent, and inalienable power to govern a man's thoughts, wishes, motives, and conduct. The Christian's creed, then, runs in the following style: I believe that Jesus was the son of Mary and the son of God; that he cured all sorts of human maladies by his power; was persecuted and rejected by his own nation; crucified, buried, and rose again, and ascended into heaven. Whatever was done or said by him, reported and attested by his companions, who were his witnesses to the ends of the earth and the end of time, constitutes a legitimate article of the Christian's creed. If [400] there have been one hundred well-attested facts, there are a hundred articles in the Christian's creed. This is the only way that a reasonable and an intelligent man can enumerate the articles of his belief. But because all the facts, minor and major, in the evangelical histories, are comprised or rather terminate in the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ--nay, indeed, in one THAT HE ROSE AGAIN by the power of the Father; the Apostle identified the belief of these with salvation; or, in other words, he said: "If you confess with your lips the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you shall be saved." This belief, as far as faith is concerned, brings a man into the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

      But how different this from creeds of human construction! They begin and proceed with the mere assertion of abstract views--such as the omnipresence and omnisciency of God; the purposes and decrees of the Almighty; abstract views of the fall of man; his physical and moral powers; various schemes of redemption; the nature of faith, atonement, and righteousness, etc., etc. Moses did not thus frame a creed for the Jews. He lays down no definition of God, but launches off thus: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." The Apostles begin their creed in the same style: "In those days came John the immerser proclaiming and saying," etc. Such is the difference between the creed of Christians and philosophers. The Presbyterian, Baptist, Episcopalian, and Methodist creeds are so many systems of religious philosophy, built, as they suppose, upon the Bible; just as Sir Isaac's system of nature is built upon the material universe. But the old-fashioned creed of the first Christians ran in such sentences as these: "The Lord is risen, indeed, and has appeared to Peter." "God has commanded reformation and forgiveness of sins to be proclaimed to all nations under heaven," etc.

      But up comes a grace, religious, philosophic sectary, and says, in a very serious mood, Why, Sir, thousands believe your gospel facts, and they have no more influence upon them than the belief of the Mussulman in the mission of Mahomet. How will you account for this? I tell you. Sir, you are the cause yourself. You have taught them to think that such a belief is good for nothing, and in believing you the facts are neutralized, just as acids and alkalis form new substances, and neutralize each other. It is so in the minds of men. A lie may be believed along with truth--and the particular lie and particular truth taught in one sermon, equally believed, render one or both inoperative. Hence it is that the most valuable truths are inoperative. A person who has been taught all his life that nothing but silver and gold can purchase food and raiment, might be presented with a bank [401] bill worth ten thousand dollars, and yet, under the belief that it was not money, might perish with hunger or cold in the absence of gold and silver, thinking that he had no money to go to market; but let some person teach him that this bank bill, by a new agreement of society, was, by appointment or law, good for ten thousand pieces of silver; the moment he is persuaded of this, he feels himself rich, and rejoices with exceeding joy. So let a person be undeceived on this cardinal point, and be taught, that to believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, to be assured of this fact, is all that is necessary to constitute saving faith, or such a belief as will, if obeyed, introduce a man into the kingdom of heaven, and a correspondent joy and gladness must ensue.

      Ah! my friends, the dogmas which represent the scriptures as a sealed book, and that teach that new revelations must be given to open the seals, or all that is written is useless; the dogmas which teach that saving faith is a principle wrought in the heart independent of the testimony of God, that faith is the consequence of regeneration; that a man must be first saved, then believe, and all their kindred dogmas, have put weapons into the hands of the adversary of our faith, as well as have made the word of God of none effect in the hearts and lives of all who believe them. Many skeptics mistake the dross of mere human doctrines and dogmas for the pure gold of Christianity.

      Men have, under the dominion of opinions, been made to love and hate one another for the agreement or collision of their opinions. But under the dominion of faith they are taught to allow a difference of opinions. There is but "one faith," but nowhere is it written that there is but one opinion. All Christians are in reality of one faith; for all believe the gospel facts, and he that does not believe the gospel facts cannot be a Christian. But the Apostle Paul positively commanded all Christians to maintain the "unity of the faith," and to "receive one another without regard to differences of opinion." There is only one faith, but many opinions, and many different degrees of knowledge; and Christianity makes allowances for these.

      A sub and a supra prefixed to the word lapsarian, or the letter i in the word omousios, or omoiousios, have made different communities under the banners of him, who, in his own person, and by his apostles, condescended to all the weaknesses and dullness of intellect found in man or woman who loved his person. Sectaries have forgotten that God is love, as manifested in Jesus Christ to the world; that all Christianity is resolvable into this grand truth, that "God so loved the world as to send his only begotten Son into the world, that WHOSOEVER believeth in him might be saved." Who, believing this, can think that [402] he would condemn a person that loved him because he could not apprehend the metaphysical import of a prefixed sub or supra, or an intermediate i?

      Little children can apprehend and approve the gospel facts, as well, or as firmly as Sir Isaac Newton did. But they cannot understand any of the abstract dogmas of the various philosophic sects. Why then exclude them from the fold of Christ? The Apostle John addressed the congregations of his time as composed of old men, young men, and children. That they were literally such, appears from his address to each. The old men had known Jesus Christ from the beginning of the proclamation concerning him. The young men had overcome the world, notwithstanding the strength of youthful passions. And the little children had begun well, they had been baptized, they had just received the remission of their sins. All these had, however, one faith, believed the same facts; but of very different attainments, both in knowledge and in behavior. How foolish those systems that require all men to be of one standard height in religious opinion; which will have the iron bedstead of Procrustes for fixing the stature to which every roan must grow, on peril of losing his head or his soul!

      The genius of Christianity is love. Its tendency is peace on earth and good-will among men--and it will eventuate in glory to God and man in the highest heaven. It contemplates the reformation of the world upon a new principle. It aims at conquering men by love. And he is a superficial philosopher who cannot see that this is the only rational way to promote purity and happiness--for these are inseparable companions--Happy the pure in heart, for they shall see God. And no system which leaves man not in the possession of a quiet conscience can bestow him happiness. Love has a transfiguring or transforming efficacy upon the human mind. To impress the image of God upon the human heart, it is necessary that the love of God should be exhibited to the human mind. Men cannot be made to love by commands and threats--that would be most unphilosophic. If we would have men to love, we must present an amiable object. This is God's method. To fill men with love to him, he shows them that he loves them. They say, "we love him because he first loved us." That system which promotes, or is calculated to promote, the greatest degree of love among men, is the most philosophic plan for purifying and reforming the world. This. Mr. Owen's system has lost sight of. There is nothing in it to produce love. It wants an object, amiable and magnificent, to arouse reflection, admiration, and love in man. Eating and drinking and lodging in the same departments, are all the stimulus he has to present to the human mind to promote love. And yet who does not [403] know that the fastings, and watchings, and hardships, and dangers of a single campaign, or of a shipwreck, will produce more kind feelings and solicitude for the welfare of our companions, than the feasting together for years, at the same festive board, is capable of producing? If men were to rack their ingenuity to eternity, to invent a scheme for promulging love and good-will among men, they could find nothing half comparable to the Christian scheme. It finds men hated and hating one another, full of bitterness and wrath, yet all in the same calamity. It teaches them that they are all shipwrecked, bankrupts, miserable, and wretched. It makes them feel this; and then presents them with the love of God, sealed by the death of his Son.

      But as yet we have said nothing about doctrine. True, indeed, we have not spoken of the doctrines of the gospel. This word is not in the plural form when applied to the truths of Christianity. We sometimes read of the doctrines of demons; but it is only the doctrine of Christ. When this term does not mean teaching, which it often does, it simply denotes the meaning of the facts. Hence the meaning of any fact, such as the death or burial of Jesus Christ, is the doctrine of the death or burial of Christ. As is the moral to the tale, so is the doctrine to the fact. Hence all who believe the facts and understand the meaning of them, have the sound or wholesome doctrine of Christ. Some may, we admit, believe the facts and not understand the meaning of them. In such a case, the facts believed will either not operate at all, or have a morbid influence. The apostolic epistles, so far as doctrinal, are expressive of the meaning of the gospel facts. They taught the new converts the legitimate bearing and results of the facts believed. The other parts of these letters were exhortatory, or deductions from the facts, calculated to direct and comfort Christians. But all the doctrine of Christ grew out of the facts, just as all Christian faith is founded upon the testimony concerning them.

      Two sentences found in John's writings explain the whole design of both the historical and epistolary parts of the apostle's writings. The design of the historical books is thus expressed by John: "Many other signs, truly, did Jesus, in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book; but these that are written, are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God; and that believing you might have life through his name." The design of the epistolary part he has as clearly expressed: "These things do we write to you, brethren, that your joy may be complete," or that you may know the things which have been gifted to you from God.

      Having so far glanced at the genius and design of the Christian scriptures, and the Christian religion, and remotely at its tendencies, [404] we shall give place to Soame Jenyns again on the tendency of this religion. The extract which I am about to read, not only shows the natural tendency of this religion, but constitutes a formidable argument in proof of its authenticity. For as I hinted to you before; this erudite and acute statesman triumphantly proves the Divine authority of this religion, from the religion itself, or what is not unfrequently termed, the internal evidence--concerning the object of this religion, he says, pages 13-16:

      "First, then, the object of this religion is entirely new, and is this: to prepare us by a state of probation for the kingdom of heaven. This is everywhere professed by Christ and his Apostles to be the chief end of the Christian's life, the crown for which he is to contend, the goal to which he is to run, the harvest which is to pay him for all his labors. Yet, previous to their preaching no such prize was ever hung out to mankind, nor any means prescribed for the attainment of it.

      "It is indeed true, that some of the philosophers of antiquity entertained notions of a future state, but mixed with much doubt and uncertainty. Their legislators also endeavored to infuse into the minds of the people a belief of rewards and punishments after death; but by this they only intended to give a sanction to their laws, and to enforce the practice of virtue for the benefit of mankind in the present life. This alone seems to have been their end, and a meritorious end it was; but Christianity not only operates more effectually to this end, but has a nobler design in view; which is, by a proper education here, to render us fit members of a celestial society hereafter. In all former religions, the good of the present life was the first object; in the Christian, it is but the second. In those, men were incited to promote that good by the hopes of a future reward; in this, the practice of virtue is enjoined in order to qualify them for that reward. There is a great difference, I apprehend, in these two plans; that is, in adhering to virtue from its present utility in expectation of a future happiness, and living in such a manner as to qualify us for the acceptance, and the enjoyment of that happiness; and the conduct and disposition of those, who act on these different principles, must be no less different. On the first, the constant practice of justice, temperance, and sobriety, will be sufficient; but on the latter, we must add to these an habitual piety, faith, resignation, and contempt of the world. The first may make us very good citizens, but will produce but a tolerable Christian. Hence it is that Christianity insists more strongly, than any preceding institution, religious or moral, on purity of heart, and a benevolent disposition; because these are absolutely necessary to its great end. But in those whose recommendations of virtue regard the present life only, [405] and whose promised rewards in another, were low and sensual, no preparatory qualifications were requisite to enable men to practice the one, or to enjoy the other; and, therefore, we see this object is peculiar to this religion, and with it was entirely new.

      "But although this object, and the principles on which it is founded were new, and perhaps undiscoverable by reason, yet when discovered, they are so consonant to it, that we cannot but readily assent to them. For the truth of this principle, that the present life is a state of probation and education, to prepare us for another, is confirmed by everything which we see around us. It is the only key which can open to us the designs of Providence in the economy of human affairs; the only clue which can guide us through that pathless wilderness, and the only plan on which this world could possibly have been formed, or on which the history of it can be comprehended or explained. It could never have been formed on a plan of happiness, because it is everywhere overspread with innumerable miseries; nor of misery, because it is interspersed with many enjoyments. It could not have been constituted for a scene of wisdom and virtue, because the history of mankind is little more than a detail of their follies, and wickedness; nor of vice, because that is no plan at all, being destructive of all existence, and consequently of its own. But on this system all that we here meet with may be easily accounted for; for this mixture of happiness and misery, of virtue and vice, necessarily results from a state of probation and education; as probation implies trials, sufferings, and a capacity of offending; and education, a propriety of chastisement for those offenses."⁵

      More has been read here than is necessary to our object, the prominent idea on which we emphasize is, that the tendency of this religion is to produce purity of heart as essential to present and future happiness; not to obtain it as a reward, but to prepare ourselves for the enjoyment of it. A person to sustain any character must have a previous training. A plain unlettered man would feel himself but ill at ease among the polished grandees of this world; his taste, education, and habits would disqualify him for all enjoyments in their society. Now, this is a prominent design of the Christian religion, not only to reveal a future state, but to prepare us for the enjoyment of it. A design so apparent in the volume as to make it a Miracle, to me at least, how any person could conceive the authors of it to be bad men, deceivers, or impostors. [406]

      That the object or design of the Christian religion is not political, needs scarcely to be proved; when speaking of the personal character of this religion, Mr. Jenyns very forcibly remarks, pages 20-22:

      "And here I cannot omit observing, that the personal character of the author of this religion is no less new, and extraordinary, than the religion itself, who 'spake as never man spake,' and lived as never man lived. In proof of this, I do not mean to allege, that he fasted forty days, that he performed a variety of miracles, and after being buried three days, that he arose from the dead; because these accounts will have but little effect on the minds of unbelievers, who if they believe not the religion, will give no credit to the relation of these facts; but I will prove it from facts which cannot be disputed. For instance, he is the only founder of a religion in the history of mankind, which is totally unconnected with all human policy and government, and therefore totally unconducive to any worldly purpose whatever. All others, Mahomet, Numa, and even Moses himself, blended their religious institutions with their civil, and by them obtained dominion over their respective people; but Christ neither aimed at, nor would accept of any such power, he rejected every object, which all other men pursue, and made choice of all which others fly from, and are afraid of. He refused power, riches, honors, and pleasure; and courted poverty, ignominy, tortures, and death. Many have been the enthusiasts, and impostors who have endeavored to impose on the world pretended revelations, and some of them from pride, obstinacy, or principle, have gone so far as to lay down their lives, rather than retract. But I defy history to show one, who ever made his own sufferings and death a necessary part of his original plan, and essential to his mission; this Christ actually did; he foresaw, foretold, declared their necessity, and voluntarily endured them. If we seriously contemplate the divine lessons, the perfect precepts, the beautiful discourses, and the consistent conduct of this wonderful person, we cannot possibly imagine, that he could have been either an idiot or a madman; and yet, if he was not what he pretended to be, he can be considered in no other light. And even under this character he would deserve some attention, because of so sublime and rational an insanity there is no other instance in the history of mankind."

      In speaking of the moral character and tendency of the Christian religion, the same very acute writer observes: "That every moral precept founded on reason, is carried to a higher degree of purity and perfection than in any other system of the ancient philosophers of preceding ages--every moral precept, founded on false principles, is entirely omitted, and many new precepts added, peculiarly [407] corresponding with the new object of this religion." From these peculiarities he deduces a very powerful argument in proof of its Divine origin. The first item has been frequently noticed by other writers. But few have spoken more explicitly on the false virtues omitted on the Christian religion, though universally applauded in all other religions. These false virtues are, valor, patriotism, and friendship. His remarks upon these three being very brief, I beg leave to read them, pages 31-36:

      Valor, for instance, or active courage, is for the most part, constitutional, and therefore can have no more claim to moral merit, than wit, beauty, health, strength, or any other endowment of the mind or body; and so far is it from producing any salutary effects by introducing peace, order, or happiness into society, that it is the usual perpetrator of all the violences, which, from retaliated injuries, distract the world with bloodshed and devastation. It is the engine by which the strong are enabled to plunder the weak, the proud to trample upon the humble, and the guilty to oppress the innocent. It is the chief instrument which ambition employs in her unjust pursuits of wealth and power, and is therefore so much extolled by her votaries. It was, indeed, congenial with the religion of Pagans, whose gods were, for the most part, made out of deceased heroes, exalted to heaven as a reward for the mischiefs which they had perpetrated upon earth, and, therefore, with them this was the first of virtues, and had even engrossed that denomination to itself; but whatever merit it may have assumed among Pagans, with Christians it can pretend to none, and few or none are the occasions in which they are permitted to exert it. They are so far from being allowed to inflict evil, that they are forbid even to resist it; they are so far from being encouraged to revenge injuries, that one of their first duties is to forgive them; so far from being incited to destroy their enemies, that they are commanded to love them, and to serve them to the utmost of their power. If Christian nations, therefore, were nations of Christians, all war would be impossible and unknown among them, and valor could be neither of use nor estimation, and therefore could never have a place in the catalogue of Christian virtues, being irreconcilable with all its precepts. I object not to the praise and honors bestowed on the valiant, they are the least tribute which can be paid them by those who enjoy safety and affluence by the intervention of their dangers and sufferings; I assert only that active courage can never be a Christian virtue, because a Christian can have nothing to do with it. Passive courage is indeed frequently, and properly inculcated by this meek and suffering religion, under the titles of patience and resignation, a real and substantial virtue this, and a direct contrast to the former; for passive courage arises from the [408] noblest dispositions of the human mind, for a contempt of misfortunes, pain, and death, and confidence in the protection of the Almighty; active, from the meanest; from passion, vanity, and self-dependence. Passive courage is derived from a zeal for truth, and a perseverance in duty; active is the offspring of pride and revenge, and the parent of cruelty and injustice. In short, passive courage is the resolution of a philosopher; active, the ferocity of a savage. Nor is this more incompatible with the precepts, than with the object of this religion, which is the attainment of the kingdom of heaven; for valor is not that sort of violence by which that kingdom is to be taken; nor are the turbulent spirits of heroes and conquerors admissible into those regions of peace, subordination, and tranquillity.

      "Patriotism also, that celebrated virtue so much practiced in ancient, and so much professed in modern times; that virtue, which so long preserved the liberties of Greece, and exalted Rome to the empire of the world; this celebrated virtue, I say, must also be excluded; because it not only falls short of, but directly counteracts, the extensive benevolence of, this religion. A Christian is of no country; he is a citizen of the world; and his neighbors and countrymen are the inhabitants of the remotest regions, whenever their distresses demand his friendly assistance. Christianity commands us to love all mankind; patriotism, to oppress all other countries to advance the imaginary prosperity of our own. Christianity enjoins us to imitate the universal benevolence of our Creator, who pours forth his blessings on every nation upon earth; patriotism, to copy the mean partiality of an English parish officer, who thinks injustice and cruelty meritorious, whenever they promote the interests of his own inconsiderable village. This has ever been a favorite virtue with mankind, because it conceals self-interest under the mask of public spirit, not only from others, but even from themselves, and gives a license to inflict wrongs and injuries, not only with impunity, but with applause; but it is so diametrically opposite to the great characteristic of this institution, that it never could have been admitted into the list of Christian virtues.

      "Friendship likewise, although more congenial to the principles of Christianity, arising from more tender and amiable dispositions, could never gain admittance among her benevolent precepts for the same reason; because it is too narrow and confined, and appropriates that benevolence to a single object, which is here commanded to be extended to all. Where friendship arises from similarity of sentiments, and disinterested affections, they are advantageous, agreeable, and innocent, but have little pretensions to merit; for it is justly observed, 'If ye love them, which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also [409] love those that love them.' But if they are formed from alliance in parties, factions, and in interests, or from a participation of vices, the usual parents of what are called friendships among mankind, they are then both mischievous and criminal, and consequently forbidden, but in their utmost purity deserve no recommendation from this religion."

      As Mr. Jenyns, though a very honorable member of the Baptist Parliament, dared to avow that patriotism was not one of the Christian virtues, we may add that even the policy which we so much approbate in this community under the name of "The American System," though most unquestionably good policy, is a very bright example of the correctness of his remarks upon patriotism. The patriotism of Great Britain would not permit her to buy the products of our soil; and our patriotism will not permit us to buy the products of her mechanical labors; she will compel her own subjects to suffer rather than purchase our corn and flour; and we will endeavor to deprive the manufacturing classes in Great Britain of the means of subsistence to hold up our own. All this is good policy and good patriotism, but no part of the Christian religion. To call this a virtue may be correct in politics, or economics; but in the Christian religion it would pass for a false virtue, and very justly, according to the genius of this religion, which embraces all Christians in its affection, and all mankind in its benevolence.

      Some have rather censured than applauded some of the precepts found in the "sermon on the mount." Pretty thing, indeed, say they, to be commanded "to turn the other cheek to him that has already smitten us once;" and to go "two miles with him that compels us to go one." Yes, indeed, a pretty thing for the proud and retaliating! But the question is. Which is the speedier way to end a controversy? Now take the precept literally, and doubt not the controversy will be sooner terminated, and less danger will be incurred by turning the other cheek than by striking back; and we will sooner get rid of an unprofitable companion by going two miles with him, than to stop and quarrel on the road. Now, taking them literally, which is not in accordance with the genius of such maxims, or the Savior's intention, I presume; but, I say, take them literally, and they are, in their tendency, better than any other course which can be pursued to terminate the quarrel.

      But Christianity inculcates many virtues unknown and untaught before, each of which demonstrates its divinity and excellent tendency. I will prefer taking notice of them in the words of Mr. Jenyns to my own desultory remarks. [410]

      On the beatitude which says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," he remarks:

      "This was so new, and so opposite to the ideas of all pagan moralists, that they thought this temper of mind a criminal and contemptible meanness, which must induce men to sacrifice the glory of their country, and their own honor, to a shameful pusillanimity; and such it appears to almost all who are called Christians, even at this day, who not only reject it in practice, but disavow it in principle, notwithstanding this explicit declaration of their Master. We see them revenging the smallest affronts by premeditated murder, as individuals, on principles of honor; and, in their national capacities, destroying each other with fire and sword, for the low considerations of commercial interests, the balance of rival powers, or the ambition of princes. We see them with their last breath animating each other to a savage revenge, and in the agonies of death, plunging with feeble arms, their daggers into the hearts of their opponents; and what is still worse, we hear all these barbarisms celebrated by historians, flattered by poets, applauded in theaters, approved in senates, and even sanctified in pulpits. But universal practice cannot alter the nature of things, nor universal error change the nature of truth. Pride was not made for man, but humility, meekness, and resignation; that is, poorness of spirit was made for man, and properly belongs to his dependent and precarious situation; and is the only disposition of mind which can enable him to enjoy ease and quiet here, and happiness hereafter. Yet was this important precept entirely unknown until it was promulgated by him who said, 'suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of heaven; verily, I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.'"

      Another precept, equally new and no less excellent, is forgiveness of injuries. "You have heard," says Christ to his disciples, "Thou shall love thy neighbor and hate thy enemy; but I say unto you, love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you." This was a lesson so new and utterly unknown, until taught by his doctrine, and enforced by his example, that the wisest moralists of the wisest nations and ages, represented the desire of revenge as a mark of a noble mind, and the accomplishment of it as one of the chief felicities attendant on a fortunate man. But how much more magnanimous, how much more beneficial to mankind, is forgiveness! It is more magnanimous, because every generous and exalted disposition of the human mind is requisite to the practice of it; for these alone can enable [411] us to bear the wrongs and insults of wickedness and folly with patience, and to look down on the perpetrators of them with pity rather than with indignation; these alone can teach us, that such are but a part of those sufferings allotted to us in this state of probation, and to know, that to overcome evil with good, is the most glorious of all victories; it is the most beneficial, because this amiable conduct alone can put an end to an eternal succession of injuries and retaliations; for every retaliation becomes a new injury, and requires another act of revenge for satisfaction. But would we observe this salutary precept, to love our enemies, and to do good to those who despitefully use us; this obstinate benevolence would at last conquer the most inveterate hearts, and we should have no enemies to forgive. How much more exalted a character, therefore, is a Christian martyr, suffering with resignation, and praying for the guilty, than a pagan hero, breathing revenge and destroying the innocent! Yet noble and useful as this virtue is, before the appearance of this religion, it was not only unpracticed, but decried in principle as mean and ignominious, though so obvious a remedy for most of the miseries of this life, and so necessary a qualification for the happiness of another." pp. 39-42.

      After specifying other virtues never before promulged, such as what he calls faith, repentance, humility, and universal benevolence, he concludes with these remarks, pp. 51-55:

      "It cannot be denied that the Great Author of the Christian Institution, first and singly ventured to oppose all the chief principles of pagan virtue, and to introduce a religion directly opposite to those erroneous, though long established opinions, both in its duties and in its object. The most celebrated virtues of the ancients were, high spirit, intrepid courage, and implacable resentment.

      "Impiger, iracundus, inerorabilis, acer, was the portrait of the most illustrious hero, drawn by one of the first poets of antiquity. To all these admired qualities, those of a true Christian are an exact contrast; for this religion constantly enjoins poorness of spirit, meekness, patience, and forgiveness of injuries. 'But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.' The favorite characters among the Pagans, were the turbulent, ambitious, and intrepid, who through toils and dangers, acquired wealth and spent it in luxury, magnificence, and corruption; but both these are equally adverse to the Christian system which forbids all extraordinary efforts to obtain wealth, care to secure, or thought concerning the enjoyment of it. 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth,' etc. 'Take no thought, saying. What shall we eat, what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed? [412] for after all these thing do the Gentiles seek.' The chief object of the Pagans was immortal fame: for this their poets sang, their heroes fought, and their patriots died; and this was hung out by their philosophers and legislators, as the great incitement to all noble and virtuous deeds. But what says the Christian legislator to his disciples on this subject? 'Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake; rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven.' So widely different is the genius of the pagan and Christian morality that I will venture to affirm that the most celebrated virtues of the former are more opposite to the spirit, and more inconsistent with the end of the latter, than even their most infamous vices; and that Brutus wrenching vengeance out of his hands to whom alone it belongs, by murdering the oppressor of his country, or a Cato murdering himself from an impatience of control, leaves the world more unqualified for, and more inadmissible into the kingdom of heaven, than even a Messalina, or a Heliogabalus, with all their profligacy about them.

      "Nothing, I believe, has so much contributed to corrupt the true spirit of the Christian institution, as that partiality which we contract from our earliest education for the manners of pagan antiquity; from whence we learn to adopt every moral idea, which is repugnant to it; to applaud false virtues which that disavows; to be guided by laws of honor, which that abhors; to imitate characters which that detests; and to behold heroes, patriots, conquerors, and suicides, with admiration, whose conduct that utterly condemns. From a coalition of these opposite principles was generated that monstrous system of cruelty and benevolence, of barbarism and civility, of rapine and justice, of fighting and devotion, of revenge and generosity, which harassed the world for several centuries with crusades, holy wars, knight-errantry, and single combats, and even still retains influence enough, under the name of honor, to defeat the most beneficent ends of this holy institution. I mean not by this to pass any censure on the principles of valor, patriotism, or honor; they may be useful, and perhaps necessary, in the commerce and business of the present turbulent and imperfect state; and those who are actuated by them may be virtuous, honest, and even religious men; all that I assert is, that they cannot be Christians. A profligate may be a Christian, though a bad one, because he may be overpowered by passions and temptations, and his actions may contradict his principles; but a man whose ruling principle is honor, however virtuous he may be, cannot be a Christian, because he erects a standard of duty, and deliberately adhers to it, diametrically opposite to the whole tenor of that religion." [413]

      To conclude, the direct tendency of the Christian religion is to purify the heart, and to make men everything which the perfect happiness of society requires. After Paul had gone into long detail of Christian virtues, he concludes in his sweeping style, which suffers not one virtue to escape: "Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are venerable, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are amiable, whatever things are of good fame; if there be any virtue, and if any praise be due, think on, and practice these things."

      One miracle there is, which Mr. Owen must believe at all events, on the whole premises before us. He must believe that a set of vile impostors, deceivers of the basest stamp, the greatest cheats and liars that ever lived, did give birth to the purest system of morality the world ever saw--did recommend the practice of every virtue which human reason in the most cultivated state of society can admire and approve. He must believe that all the true religion and genuine virtue now existing depends upon the forgeries of a pack of charlatans, who went about from place to place declaring that they had heard what they never did hear, and that they had seen what they never saw. This miracle Mr. Owen must believe, which is a miracle of a more incredible character than any one in the volume, especially when we take into view the circumstances attendant on the progress and sufferings of these wicked impostors.

      "If weak thy faith, why choose the harder side?"

      But still I have not made sufficiently emphatic the tendency of Christianity upon every one who embraces it. This I will again lay before you. It becomes the more necessary to call this up again, because our opponent execrates Christianity more because of its "idle fears and terrors" than on any other account. To me, from childhood, it has seemed strange why mankind should more fear the threats than hope for the promises of Jesus Christ. If not to a consciousness of the just desert of all that is threatened, perhaps anterior to any notice of the threats, I know not to what other cause this is to be attributed. For certain it is that threats and promises are equally credible or incredible. They both rest upon the same testimony. Now, Christianity, if rationally regarded, can never fill but one class of mankind with fears. If it be regarded as a fraud or imposition, its hopes and fears are equally disannulled. If it be regarded as true, what is its truth save pardon and peace to every one who submits to the government of Jesus Christ? No person can, then, be filled with any fears or terrors from the New Testament, but he that believes and will not obey. The infidel cannot; the Christian cannot. To the infidel it is all a romance; [414] to the Christian it is all peace, hope, and joy, real as life itself. Who, then, does Christianity make unhappy? The very persons, and none but the persons, it ought to make unhappy, viz: those who believe, and will not obey Jesus Christ. And if it did not make such unhappy, it would be unworthy of its Author and its object. And the man who labors to divest the guilty of his fears is a misanthrope, and not a philanthropist.

      But there is a species of corrupt Christianity which has made suicides through the false alarms which it creates about things unknown and unknowable. I have nothing to do with it more than with the Alcoran. It is enough for my purpose to show that Christianity promises pardon to every human being who voluntarily submits to the government of Jesus Christ; and this pardon is tendered to them the very instant they bow to the authority of Jesus Christ or enter his kingdom. Hence the first Christians always rejoiced, because the moment they were baptized into Jesus Christ, they had put him on as their Savior; or, in other words, had put themselves under the constitution of favor, and sin could no longer lord it over them, for they were not under law. Now all who, like Saul of Tarsus, believed in Jesus Christ, and were baptized for the remission of their sins, as he was, or as the three thousand on Pentecost, could, like the eunuch, after baptism, go on their way rejoicing. So that the first Christians addressed one another as having their sins forgiven; and, consequently, all guilt, and shame, and fear were removed from their consciences. They did not cease--they could not cease--always to rejoice, with joy unspeakable and full of glory. 'Tis monks and friars and monasteries that have invented the gloomy religion of the times. The first Christians were commanded to rejoice always. So that the legitimate tendency of the religion of Jesus Christ is to fill all who submit to his government with peace, and joy, and good hope; and to cause them finally to exclaim, "O Death, where now thy sting! O Hades, where now thy victory!"

      That such are the inseparable results of a cordial reception of the gospel, or of a sincere submission to the authority of Jesus Christ, all the New Testament might be appealed to in proof. I will only allude to a few cases. Three thousand, pierced to the heart by Peter's discourse in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, so soon as he announces reformation and remission of sins, were baptized for the remission of their sins, and straightway they were filled with joy and peace; for they eat their food with gladness, praising God. When many of the Samaritans heard Philip proclaiming the Reign of Favor, they believed and were baptized, both men and women, and then, we learn from Luke, "there was much joy in that city." So it was in all the cities [415] where Christianity was embraced. The Apostles taught the Christians that God "had forgiven them all trespasses." Of their joy, Peter says: "Whom having not seen you love, but on whom not now looking, but believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." The forgiveness of sins, the removal of guilt, and the consequent termination of all fear that has torment, were, in all cases, simultaneous blessings enjoyed by all Christians on their putting themselves under the guidance of Jesus Christ. The same cause will produce the same effect, and wherever the ancient gospel is proclaimed, believed, and obeyed, the same effects will uniformly follow.

      Now when we add to these blessings the well-founded hope of a glorious immortality, at the resurrection of the just, we have elevated man to a rank worthy of himself, and made his existence worthy of the GREAT FIRST CAUSE. So that the direct tendency of Christianity is to glorify God in the highest degree; to produce peace of mind, joy, and hope in the believers; and to diffuse good-will among men. The golden paradoxes of Paul speak more in praise of Christianity than all the encomiums ever pronounced upon it. To hear men persecuted, reproached, and destitute of almost every earthly comfort, say, "We are sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; we are poor, yet making many rich; we have nothing, yet possessing all things," transcends all the encomiums from all the orators of Greece, Rome, and England, pronounced upon virtue, the gods, and religion.

      Fancy to yourselves, my friends, a society in which such characters shall have the rule, and then you want no poet to describe the millennium to you. Peace, harmony, love, and universal good-will, must be the order of the day. There wants nothing--believe me, my friends, there wants nothing--but a restoration of ancient Christianity, and a cordial reception of it, to fill the world with all the happiness, physical, intellectual, and moral, which beings like us in this state of trial could endure--shall I say?--yes, endure, and enjoy.

      But even yet, were we to close our remarks upon the tendencies of Christianity, upon the subject of it, and upon society at large, we should fail in doing justice to this item. We must not only speak in general terms of its influences upon the human family; we must look at it in detail. We must ask, What has it done for WOMAN? Yes--for woman--created to be the helpmate of man? In all pagan lands, and even among the Jews, she has been made little else than a slave to the passion and to the tyranny of man. The Jews rather exile her from the synagogue, as altogether animal in her nature; and the rude savage makes her more a beast of burden than a companion for man; doomed to incessant toils, to all the real drudgeries of life. [416] Paganism, in its most improved forms, leaves her without a taste for rational enjoyment, and without a taste of it. The Jews and Pagans, for ages back, have scarce recognized that she has any claims upon man, more than for food and raiment, and these, indeed, are often dispensed to her without a smile. But some half dozen of female names have come down to us in the annals of Grecian and Roman story, as having attracted much attention from their cotemporaries, or as deserving much admiration from posterity. Natural affection, in defiance of pagan darkness, superstition, and cruelty, did, in some few instances, snatch some individual females from the empire of night, and gave them a place among the reputable characters of antiquity. But the sex, as such, were almost universally neglected. But from the time that Gabriel visited the cottage of Mary, the mother of our Lord, down to the present, wherever Christianity has found its way, the female sex has been emancipated from ignorance, bondage, and obscurity. It has been the aim and the glory of Christianity, my female friends, to elevate your sex from the degradation of Paganism, and to make you the rational, the useful, and the amiable companion of man. To it you are indebted for that influence which you now possess, and ought to possess, in forming the character of man. While Christianity had made you not the inferior, but the companion and the equal of man, it has taught you that you are to pay the impost which, for this honor, it has laid you under. That is that you are to bring up your offspring in the discipline and education which the Lord enjoins; that you are to use all your influence in casting the minds of those under your control, into the mould of the Apostle's doctrine. This is the way you can perpetuate the blessings which you enjoy, and leave behind you sons and daughters, who will feel themselves equals, and mutually love, honor, and esteem, one another. Let me remind you that there are more individuals of your sex, honored in the New Testament, more of them named, more of them applauded, and more true courtesy shown them, than is to be found in all the other works of the Augustan age; and let all the world know that in the New Testament, it is a maxim that in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female, but that both sexes are one in all moral, religious, and social privileges and enjoyments of which either sex is susceptible.

      Christianity would not have commended itself to every man's conscience had it not paid a due respect to all the natural and unavoidable relations existing in society. Hence there is not a natural relation to which it does not allude. Husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, are all addressed in a way corresponding with [417] the nature of these relations, well designed to sanctify and render them all useful, comfortable, and happy.

      Here I am informed, by a note handed me, that I have omitted to say anything upon the subject of regeneration. Some persons think as most preachers speak. If you will observe, scarce a preacher takes a text, or makes a sermon, but he must give you his whole system of theology. No matter where the text be found, the system must come out. Hence some of this audience think, that, in defending Christianity, I must defend or exhibit all the tenets of a sect, or all the essential points of some system; and so I am told that I have omitted the article of regeneration. Strange, indeed! when I have been discoursing at length upon the purifying influences of the Christian religion, and its tendencies upon the hearts and lives of men, I should be told that I have neglected the article of regeneration! Perhaps my informant expected to hear from me a disquisition upon the quaint theories of modern systems. In not gratifying him with such a discussion, for the time being, I hope he will have the goodness to excuse me.

      Having paid some attention to the genius, design, and tendency of Christianity, I will now approach the social system again. Mr. Owen relies upon his twelve facts, and especially upon the sixth fact, or law, to demolish all the religions in the world. Yes, indeed, if his sixth law be a truism, he conceives that all the religions of the world are as prostrate as Dagon before the ark. If it be so, that we can neither make ourselves nor our wills, that circumstances control us by a necessity as unchangeable as fate itself, then he has proved, by merely asserting these laws, that all the religions of the world are founded upon the ignorance of mankind. He does not seem to have noticed that there is a very learned and respectable body of Christians who attribute as much to necessity, only under different names, as he does himself. Every action of every human being, is, with them, foreknown, and predetermined from all eternity; or, in brief, "that God has foreordained whatever comes to pass." Yet these are all firm and rational and argumentative believers in the Divine authority of these records. How, then, in the name of reason, can Mr. Owen think, that, in proving his doctrine of fate or necessity, he has proved all the religions in the world to be founded upon the ignorance of mankind, when he will find myriads of Christians, philosophic or systematic necessarians, admitting his premises in all the prominent items, and yet dissenting from his conclusions?

      It will not then follow, as a necessary consequence, in the mind of a thorough Calvinist, that if our volitions have no power over our belief, that if all things are unchangeably fixed, there is no truth in [418] religion. Mr. Owen has taken for granted that which will not be granted by myriads of learned, acute, and talented men, that his propositions proved and Christianity is slain. I hope he will not turn his thoughts thitherward. He may say that they are inconsistent, and self-condemned; but still it proves that his system may be true--myriads being judges.

      But this only on the way to another peep into his theory. I do think, as Mr. Owen has paid so little attention to the objections offered to his system, that I am logically excused from paying any further attention to it. But as he still reiterates his fundamentals with undismayed confidence that the repetition of them is, like a charm, to effect a cure of our mental maladies; and as he has repeatedly affirmed that if one of his principles can be proved erroneous, he will give up the whole, I will call upon other witness in the case.

      If consciousness be any sort of evidence of the powers with which we are endowed, I make the following appeal to it on the subject of his sixth law:

      Objects are thrown in our way, or we go in quest of them. These excite our reasoning powers, or call them into action. We reason upon them and form judgments. These judgments or conclusions either call for some activity upon our part, or they do not. If they do not, we do not act. But if they do, we act. Now what is the cause of these actions? Not the mere presentation of the object, but our reasonings upon it. From the first examination of the object to the last, there is a continual determination of the mind to the object, or when we have finished the first examination of the object we will to examine it a second time; and so on to the third or fourth examination. Mr. Owen, for example, had heard that the Mexican government had much territory to dispose of--his previous desire for territory to test his theory upon, prompts him to think upon some plan for obtaining a part of it. He reasons upon the object, and examines it in many independent points of view. On every separate view of the subject, he decides to examine it again. There are as many determinations as examinations. Finally, his ultimate conclusion is formed. Now, every one of these examinations is begun, prosecuted, and carried out from the consciousness which he possesses of his power to accomplish the object so soon as it shall be decided which is the better course. He would never examine the subject a moment if he was not conscious that he has the power of examining it, and the power of acting agreeably to his last decision. Now this consciousness of the power of examination, deciding, and acting, I summon as proof that such a controlling power the mind possesses over its own acts. It is the nearest witness which can [419] be summoned in this case, and its testimony is the most creditable. It knows most, and is the best judge, of all our intellectual and moral powers--and it avers, as every man can hear in the court of his own understanding, that nothing could be examined, contemplated, or reasoned upon, were we destitute of a controlling power, or a power of acting conformable to our own decisions. Consciousness is often the ultimate arbiter in all questions concerning our intellectual and moral powers. How often do we see persons either abandon or refuse to undertake a profession, or cause, because conscious their powers are not equal to it. We make consciousness a witness in all cases within its jurisdiction.

      Again: in walking down street, Mr. Owen hears that his cotton factory at New Harmony is consumed by fire! he does not at first know whether the report is credible. He goes to the river to interrogate the passengers or captain of a steamboat just arrived from the vicinity. He interrogates them, and from their unanimous testimony he believes the fact, and doubts no more. Now, would Mr. Owen have gone one step in this examination if he had not been conscious that he had the power of believing upon testimony, and that there was a certain amount of evidence which would produce certainty? His ultimate belief is evidently a consequence of the existence of this controlling power; and his determination to examine the matter proves that his volition had some influence upon his belief. For, had he not examined, he would not have believed; and had he not determined or willed to examine, he might not have obtained the evidence: so that his belief is, in this case, dependent upon his will.

      Were I to ask him now to believe that his factory was not burned, he could not do it; not because his will determined anything about it, but because he wants evidence. Pretty much the same power which the will exercises over our eyes in examining objects of sense, does it exercise over our mental eye; we open or shut the eye in obedience to our wills. But we cannot will to see without light. An eye and light, and a will to see, are all necessary to vision. He that affirms that a man believes by necessity, may as well say that man sees by necessity. There is no person more blind than the man who will not see.

      But we have still greater objections to the social system pleaded by Mr. Owen. It is only in its best possible state founded upon the half of man, and only promises to make him a happy animal. For the sake of illustration, we will admit that Mr. Owen has consummated all his plans, and all his wishes, in erecting his parallelogram communities; and that he has got a whole territory, nay, the whole earth, covered with them--everything just to his mind. Man, at his zenith, is a [420] stall-fed ox. Mr. Owen has mistaken the capacity of man as much as the vintner did the capacity of a vessel who strove to fill it with two gallons when it held four. Nothing but experiment could convince him; he thought his measure of two gallons was equal to the capacity of the vessel, until he poured in its contents: he then saw that it was but half full. So with Mr. Owen's system. Men would sigh, and groan, and long for greater bliss than Mr. Owen has to bestow. His wheat, his oil, and his wine; his amusements, pastimes, and all his fanciful inventions, would not fill the immeasurable blank yet remaining in the true enjoyment of rational beings, doomed by him only to riot like a worm upon the damask cheek of a deceased stripling.⁶

      Man has taste, desires, aspirations after bliss higher than the earth can minister to him. Now if Mr. Owen contemplates man as other skeptics have done, not as a privileged being; if he would give him that latitude of licentious intercourse which prevails among the brutes in the gratification of every propensity, until his capacity for sensual enjoyments is filled to overflowing; if his artificial wants have been multiplied to the utmost conceivable extent; and if he have surrounded him with the most refined circumstances imaginable; what does it all amount to? Has he made him happy? Far from it. His capacity for happiness is as far from being filled as ever it was. It is only like subtracting a few miles from infinite space; the remainder is no less. So man's desires are as eager and as unsatisfied still. Like Alexander the Great when he had conquered the whole world, he wept, forsooth, because his arm was hampered, and had not room enough to do its work. "What a misfortune! Have I, indeed, no other world to conquer!"

      Whence, then, this insatiable desire for happiness? or whence, as the poet says, "this longing after immortality?" Mr. Owen can boast, he says, that he is free from the fear of death; and he may boast that he is free from any hope in death. And so, like the well-fed calf, he has neither hope nor fear from death. Is this the glorious and rational end of this new philosophy? Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die! But the time for adjournment has arrived.

      Adjourned till 2 o'clock.

      Mr. Campbell continues: Mr. Chairman--We concluded our remarks [421] in the forenoon on the subject of the perfect inadequacy and maladaptation of my friend's scheme to the constitution of human nature--to the extent of our capacity of fruition. We admit, that, were the human family to be regarded as mere animals, whose enjoyments were all of a sensual kind, that Mr. Owen's scheme would not be liable to so much objection. We might conclude with Paul, "If there be no resurrection, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." The short tenure of earthly enjoyments would compel us to make the best use of them, and indulge in them to the greatest extent. We might, then, adopt the Epicurean precept, "Carpe diem," and say with the Epicurean poet, "Vita summa brevis vetat spem longam incohare." But inasmuch as reason and experience prove the inadequacy of all earthly pleasures to satisfy the human mind, we are obliged to declare that my friend's scheme falls infinitely short of providing for our capacity of enjoyment. Who so dead to the charms of the material universe as not to feel himself more refreshed and comforted by the sublime contemplation of the great Creator through his works, than ever he felt from mere sensual enjoyment? A small portion of material good things is sufficient to satisfy all the wants of nature; but the appetite for intellectual enjoyment is insatiable.

      The construction of the material universe is admirably calculated to lead us to the contemplation of the great First Cause who created the heavens and their hosts, and who sustains the immense universe with more ease than we move a finger or an eyelid. To contemplate these things is "to look through nature up to nature's God." Shall this sublime pleasure be annihilated? Must we be forever doomed to look downward, and never raise our eyes to heaven? The splendors of the starry firmament, the glories hung up to human view in the majestic vault of heaven, are the natural types of the Divine Majesty; while the earth presents, in all its magazines of goodness and mercy, the plain drawn characters which interpret all these sublime symbols. Must we never read this volume, nor inquire into the moral character of its great Author? And do we not, my friends, find our only consolation under the toils, anxieties, and vexations of this troubled sea of life, in the anticipation of our one day reaching those mansions of peace, "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest?" Will any man's experience authorize him to say that when, like an ox, he has eaten and drank his fill, then he is happy? Certainly this would be to degrade man below the dignity of which he is now conscious. Who has been so successful and prosperous in the voyage of life as to gain the object of his pursuit? Does not almost every man die in the keen pursuit of his favorite object? And does [422] not this teach us that all our acquisitions are but progressions toward objects of distant fruition and hope? Experience teaches us that our capacity of happiness is not to be filled by sublunary pleasures; that earth and sea, with all their treasures, are far too small to fill the soul of man.

      This social system robs the disconsolate of their only support--drives them to the adoption of Mirabaud's seductive cure; and when "weary of conjecture" concerning futurity, to put an end to the debate with a knife, a halter, or a pistol. Were it not for the cheering consolation which the hope of immortality inspires, what numerous suicides should we have to deplore! This hope is not only necessary to fill the measure of our capacity of enjoyment, but it is necessary that we should carefully cherish this bright hope that we may be enabled to sustain the vicissitudes, the disasters, the moral and physical diseases, which attach to our bankrupt circumstances. Experience has proved to us all, that we have derived more pleasure from the pursuit of a favorite object, than we have enjoyed in the attainment of it; that we derive more pleasure from anticipating future gains, than in realizing them. Cut off anticipation from man, and you sever him from the most fruitful source of his happiness. The pursuit, more than the acquisition, all experience says, contributes to please, amuse, and gratify man. To place man, then, in a situation where he has nothing to wish for, nothing to desire, nor to pursue, is to cut him off from this most fruitful source of intellectual pleasure, which all men have found to be paramount to all sensual gratifications. But not only in this instance is the theory contradicted by the universal experience of mankind, but it also involves another mistake in regard to the constitution of human nature.

      Mr. Owen contends that a society can exist without an idea of obligation or responsibility. This is contrary to all the past records of time, and all present experience. A banditti of highway robbers could not exist without the ligament of laws, and the tie of moral obligation. Without them it would be impossible for them to concert a scheme of co-operative plunder.

      No society has ever existed, or ever can exist, without some sense of responsibility and obligation. We talk of a lawless banditti, but this is to be understood sub modo. They are not without laws, and rigorous ones, to, among themselves; they well know that they could not exist without them. [423]

      It is worthy of notice here, that among the rabble of superstitions, professed by the pagan world, not one of them ever pretended to be derived from the First Cause. They derived their religious systems from subordinate persons, from inferior deities, who stood in some special relation to the people that adored them. The ancients ascertained that it was impossible to retain men in order without the influence of religious restraints. The popular religions of the pagan world were all founded upon this principle; and magistrates imposed religions upon the people which they did not believe themselves, because experience had taught them that man was not to be governed without religious restraints. The ancient philosophers saw through the cheat, and were sufficiently inclined to expose it. Some of them denied the existence of future rewards and punishments. They contended that the body must return to the earth, and the spirit to the Universal Spirit, of which it was but an emanation, and that therefore future punishment was impossible. But the magistracy told the philosophers that, although all this might be very true, yet the people were not to be kept in order without the restraints of religion; and the philosophers were strictly enjoined not to propagate their free-thinking notions among the vulgar. From this originated the Eleusinian, and other mysteries of iniquity, the object of which was to preserve among the initiated, just views of the First Cause, and of the gods worshiped by the vulgar, which dare not be divulged among them. If we examine the ancient superstitions of the pagan world, we shall find them all founded upon this politic hypothesis.

      No social compact has as yet existed without the doctrine of responsibility, obligation, or accountability. Mr. Owen's scheme is the most Utopian project in the annals of society. He lays the ax at the root of all obligation and accountability, and yet would have society to hang together without a single attraction, save animal magnetism, if such a thing exists. The doctrine of no praise, no blame, is to be taught from the cradle to the grave; and yet all are to live in accordance with the most virtuous principles. They are to have no principle of responsibility suggested; and yet under the charm of social feeling alone, they are to be more firmly bound than any wedded pair! Among the visions of the wildest enthusiasm, this one appears to be a rarity.

      Children are to be reared without a lesson upon obligation or duty, and yet they are to be most orderly, neither selfish, querulous, peevish, ambitious, nor any way vicious. All these evil propensities are to be eradicated from their nature in consequence of being born in chambers ventilated, heated, or refrigerated in the social way. They are to be models of beauty and rationality, too, by a mere change of [424] circumstances. No irrational faces, no deformed countenances, no disfigured frames can grow in any of Mr. Owen's parallelogram arrangements. The romantic genius of Mr. Owen gives these babes all angelic charms, excepting wings; and while there is to be a total destitution of all evil disposition, they are to be perfect giants in literature, virtue, and benevolent enterprise--able in two hours per diem, to provide for all their own happiness and to perpetuate overflowing streams of bliss to posterity!

      I am yet at a loss to know what Mr. Owen means by society. A society without a social compact, to me is unintelligible. Society is not a number of persons covering a certain piece of ground like the trees in our forests. They must congregate upon some stipulations, express or implied. These stipulations are to be performed, and, consequently responsibility and accountability force themselves upon Mr. Owen in defiance of the powers of his imagination. In all other societies, except Mr. Owen's imaginary one, the people and the magistracy, whether elective or hereditary, are mutually accountable to each other. The people owe allegiance, which they promise in electing their rulers; and the magistracy owe protection, which they promised in being elected. In entering into society man surrenders a part of his natural liberty for other benefits, which he could not enjoy as a hermit. This surrender he must never recall, nor those benefits must they withhold: they are, therefore, under continual obligations to each other. Whenever any person feels himself absolved from these obligations, he is either dangerous to, or unfit for, society. And certainly Mr. Owen's system of training children would naturally lead them to feel themselves absolved from all such obligations. His system directly unfits them for society. I would ask you, my friends, or I would ask him, in what light he could contemplate that society which taught every child that entered its schools, that the child which would kill its own father was not to be blamed or disliked any more than the child which loved, caressed, and reverenced its father?

      But, to be a little more plain and pointed, I must again remind you that Mr. Owen's system, as far as it has any peculiar benevolence proposed in it, or stamped upon it, is a plagiarism from Christian society; in other words, all the benevolence about it was derived from models furnished by Christian enterprise and Christian sympathy, and the crude notions of materialism and philosophic necessity, have been superadded from the atheistical schools of France and Epicurus. The influence of parents over their offspring, and the influence of circumstances, were popular doctrines in the reign of King Solomon; nay, in the days of Moses. Moses laid as much emphasis upon the necessity [425] of bringing up children under the best moral influences as any man in ancient or modern times. And so great an adept was Solomon in this science, that he affirmed: "Train up a child in the way it should live, and when old it will not depart from it." Mr. Owen, indeed, has confessed that he was indebted to Christian society for his first ideas of the co-operative system in producing the greatest amount of human enjoyment, as far as our temporal wants are concerned. Mr. Owen may have had the merit of amplifying somewhat upon the data furnished by the excellent preacher, Mr. Dale. The advantages accruing from the experiments of Mr. Dale were sufficient to convince any person of Mr. Owen's discernment, that much might be done by benevolent co-operation in a population like that in Scotland; to diminish the evils under which a large class groan from poverty, and its handmaid, ignorance. This was the start of the benevolent part of the scheme.

      About forty years ago, when my friend was just about entering manhood's prime, the French revolution broke out, and all the covert deism, atheism, and skepticism, which the vices of popery had generated like worms in a putrid carcass, exhibited themselves. Kingcraft and priestcraft became odious all at once, and infidelity, rising in the greatness of its feebleness, or strength, shook itself clean of both crafts, and ignorantly and impiously attempted to deify matter, and dethrone the legitimate sovereign of the universe. The ravages of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, began to appear in all their horrors. Priests were now everywhere execrated, caricatured, and every printer's shop was filled with infidel and atheistical tracts. In this awful crisis, when atheism became philosophy, and skepticism was called reason, every raw and undisciplined mind who came into contact with these spirits or their works, caught the contagion: and the desire of being reputed a philosopher, or a man of reason, impelled them to laugh at religion, as if it deserved no better treatment than the Puritans once thought was due to witches and necromancers. The contagion spread into England, and the woeful circumstances which then surrounded my friend furnished him with the first impulses or data for the infidel part of his scheme. Since then he has been laboring to amalgamate the good ideas received by the better part of his circumstances with the bad ideas derived from the worse part of them; and it is owing to the superiority of his natural organization that he has been so moral, or that his atheism has not led him into the usual and legitimate results which have, in ninety-nine instances in every hundred, been its attendants.

      But beside the models furnished him in Scotland, the Moravian and other societies, either preaching or practicing some sort of a religious [426] community of interests and feelings, either strengthened the convictions or enlarged the views of my benevolent friend. But the misfortune was, and is (and I fear will be), that he persists in attempting to unite the lights of Christianity with the darkness of skepticism. But the greatest error which I have to attribute to Mr. Owen is, his not discriminating what Dr. Franklin failed to teach Thomas Paine. This political philosopher, who was, like many other reasoners, sane in politics, but insane in religion, submitted his "Age of Reason" to the revision or inspection of the greatest American philosopher. He read it, and agreeably to Mr. Paine's request, he wrote him his advice about its publication. After telling the skeptic what risks he would incur, and how little good his work would do, he gravely reminds him how much he was indebted for those principles of morality and benevolence which he possessed, to the influence and genius of the religion he was about to attack. He tells him that he calculates too largely upon the natural virtues of man. This advice of the American sage applies with still additional force to Mr. Owen. He possesses a most benevolent temperament. In early life, too, he went regularly to church; and from these sources, as from the "good books" which he told you he had read, he imbibed all these moralities and benevolent views which his skepticism has not in forty years been able to obliterate. But his fault (for I believe that men may be guilty of faults) has been not to discriminate, not to assign to its proper cause the influences which he feels, and which he sees in himself and in the world.

      His ideas concerning matrimony, and many of his views, detailed in this discussion, were all detailed with much ability by Godwin in his Political Justice, though he feared some of those conclusions from his own premises, which Mr. Owen has had the moral courage to avow. I do not say that Mr. Owen directly and literally borrowed all his ideas from these fountains; but as these were not only the fashionable books, but the common topics of the epoch of his social system; and as he has told us that he has read five hours per day for nearly thirty years of his life, it would be doing him injustice to suppose that these works had not occupied a due share of his attention.

      I am not so skeptical in skepticism as Mr. Owen is in Christianity, or, as to think that mankind may not be improved in their condition. "Fas est ab hoste discere." It is lawful to learn from an enemy. I do not doubt but that Mr. Owen has asserted many truths, and some useful truths. But not one good idea has he submitted, which has not been derived, or which is not derivable from Christianity. There was a society in the New Testament which had all things in common; but their happiness was not derived from a community of goods, but [427] from that principle which issued, in their circumstances, in a community of goods. I most sanguinely anticipate a restoration of the ancient order of things, and a state of society far superior to anything yet exhibited on earth. I believe that there will be what is commonly believed by all Christians, a Millennium; a period, a long period of general or universal peace, happiness, and political and religious prosperity. And that some of the views of Mr. Owen may then be realized as the legitimate fruits of Christianity, I would not deny.

      But I must speak plainly and say, taking the whole of Mr. Owen's theory in the mass, it is the most visionary theory which has ever been pronounced. It is, too, all theory, for Mr. Owen has not made a single proof of it. He cannot point to any society, on earth, as a practical proof of its practicability, or of its excellency. Tell me nothing about New Lanark, for there it has never been tested; and tell me nothing about New Harmony, for there Mr. Owen will not appeal himself. He has given us a beautiful theory of his social system. But Paul Brown's "twelve months' residence in New Harmony" will show the thing in practice ['Tis all a lie, says Mr. Owen]. And although much has been said about New Lanark, I must, if testimony be a proper source of information, believe that no social system, no co-operative system, was ever tried there. That many persons may there have been improved in their circumstances is not denied. But how has that come to pass? Not on the principles which Mr. Owen now teaches. I will tell you how some of them have been reformed and improved in their circumstances in that establishment. If, for example, a drunkard was received into the New Lanark manufactories, he was not permitted to draw any money from this company, for his work, so long as he continued in the employment of the company. All his necessary demands for food, raiment, lodging, etc., were promptly paid in the articles wanted; and the surplus, if any there was, was not paid him in money during his continuance in the establishment; but when he removed, the last farthing was paid him. Thus he became sober from necessity; and temperate, because he could not get anything to intoxicate him. The prodigal, and those destitute of economy, were improved in their finances by this same system--and there was a good school for educating the youth, for which, I believe, Mr. Owen deserves some praise. But this is about the net proceeds of the social system in New Lanark. The people of New Lanark, too, were, in the aggregate, a religious people. There is one Presbyterian church in New Lanark, well frequented; also for the benefit of the Independents, who dissented from the establishment, a meeting-house was built, to which Mr. Owen himself was the principal contributor. For, to his credit, it must be [428] told, that while he has been declaiming against priests and their impositions, he has been liberal in building meeting-houses. The people of New Lanark are a religious people. I have learned, from those who visited that place, that not only on the first day of the week, but on Thursdays, and other stated meetings during the week, they meet for social worship in some of the large rooms of the establishment.

      Mr. Owen's theory, then, is without proof, unknown, and incredible. Forty years' reading, studying, traveling, and all the funds expended, have produced nothing as yet visible, except the "Twelve fundamental Divine laws of human nature." "Like quicksilver, the rhetoric he displays, shines as it runs, but grasped at, slips away." New Harmony was once the land of promise. Bankrupt and broken fortunes were to be repaired there. Thither came the lame, the halt, the blind, in fortune and in fame. The philosopher's stone, or the elixir of immortal youth, were not more eagerly sought than the city of Mental Independence. But soon the charm dissolved, and all the awful realities of nature, reason, and religion, disbanded the social builders, and like those in the plains of Shinar, when one called for a brick, his attendant handed him a stone, or a blow, and utter dispersion and confusion on their banners waited. As many of those folks as had been brought to their sense, and had ever read Horace, as they returned, admitted the truth of the old maxim and now and then lisped it out:

      The trinity of evils was the text for months at New Harmony. But soon they found a treble trinity of other evils than artificial ones. Next to religion, marriage was accursed. Marriage, the oldest institution in the world, founded in nature, reason, and religion, must be banished the dominions of the social system. It enabled parents to recognize their children, and children their parents; and natural affection could run in these channels, and mine and thine, in spite of the twelve categories would be heard, and this was perfect discord in the music of New Harmony. Marriage, then, must, for these reasons, be banished, that a thorough social system may succeed.

      This attempt to dissolve, violate, or impugn the marriage contract, I think, ruined the project on the Wabash. It is hard to fight against "the trinity of nature, reason, and religion." God said, it is not good for man to be alone! He then created a helpmate for him. Even in paradise, man alone was but half blessed:

Polygamy was denounced in the creation of but one woman for man, and the equal distribution of the sexes since has shown, that every man ought to have his own wife, and every woman her own husband. All that adorns, animates, and exalts, as respects the finer feelings of human nature, spring from this institution in its primitive appointment. On the altar of matrimony are woven all the cords of affection, all the ligaments and bands that cement society. All natural relations are but the names of the silken cords which bind society in all the social relations which give a zest to all enjoyments, and extract the sting from the thousand griefs and sorrows of human life. He that would abolish this institution, or violate its sacred obligations, is anything but a philanthropist. Destroy this institution, and not only the happiness of man, as a social being, but the safety of the race, would be endangered. Parental affection is the strongest passion of the human soul, which not even the deformity of person or mind, or filial ingratitude, disobedience, or impiety, can wholly obliterate. Our greatest gratifications, on earth, arise from this institution, and the relations to which it gives birth. And it is just as necessary for the safety, as for the happiness of the race.⁷

      But to meet the exigencies of the new state of existence, when marriage is to be no more, a band of nurses are to be trained who are to have in charge the infants of the communities. This is to save time and labor, and to economize the productive energies of the communities. Mothers are thus to be happily exempted from many of the toils incident to parturition; and in this arrangement Mr. Owen supposes he is promoting the happiness of mothers. This is a lame and blind philosophy. A mother feels incomparably more pleasure in having the care of her own offspring, than. in being exempt from it. The smiles of her infant, the opening dawn of reason, the indications of future greatness or goodness, as they exhibit themselves to her sanguine expectations, open to her sources of enjoyment incomparably overpaying the solicitudes and gentle toils of nursing. In exempting her from the natural concern and care due to her offspring, Mr. Owen debars her from the largest portions of maternal enjoyments, for which he can substitute nothing like an equivalent. But, perhaps, when marriage is abolished, all maternal solicitudes and enjoyments will expire with it. Indeed, all the finer and more tender sensibilities of our nature appear to share the same fate in the desolating prospects of the new order of things, for the luxury of eating and drinking. The most [430] powerful⁸ of all natural affections is to be waylaid in the cradle; and, if possible, slaughtered as soon as born--the affection of parents for children flowing from the sacred institution of marriage. In every point of view in which we regard it, this system is at war with human nature, as well as with religion, matrimony, and private property. It aims a mortal blow at all our ideas of social order and social happiness. But Mr. Owen has not yet found, and I am confident he will never find, human nature and human passions so plastic as to be cast into any artificial mould he may imagine; sooner will he cause the rivers to flow backward to their sources; sooner can he reverse the decrees of gravitation, than abolish religion, marriage, or even private property. I doubt not, either, that were men as religious as Christianity is designed to make them, they could co-operate in societies greatly to diminish the evils of life, to facilitate the education of their children, and to augment their social enjoyments. But to attempt this without the aids, the principles, motives, and inspirations of Christianity, would be only to attempt to make a globe, a new earth, without the principles of gravitation or attraction. Mr. Owen's system always appears to me to resemble the efforts of some pagan god to build a world upon the single principle of repulsion.

      But Mr. Owen is about to have the animal man improved as the horses and sheep of this country have been improved, upon scientific principles. He has told us of a science, in which he is an adept, and with which all shall be well acquainted in "the new state of existence," for improving man in his animal and mental endowments, even from, if not anterior to, his birth. This is all in accordance with the fine imagination of my friend. He is not, however, the inventor of this part of his scheme; Dr. Graham was before him, and disrobed him of the honor of originating even this part of the new sciences of the social system. We shall give you some short account of this matter.

      James Graham, M.D., born at Edinburgh, 1745, a philanthropic physician, traveled over great part of England and America, administering relief in the most desperate cases, for the benefit of mankind. After returning from America, where he had realized a considerable fortune, he settled in London, about 1775. There, under the titles of a Temple of Hymen and a Temple of Health, he erected one of the most superb institutions that ever was planted, for the gratification of the votaries of pleasure; and, under the pretense of instructing all persons of both sexes who put themselves under his tuition, and were willing to sacrifice to Venus in these sacred domes, he engaged to teach "the art of preventing barrenness, and of propagating a much more strong, beautiful, active, healthy, wise, and virtuous race of human beings, than the present puny, insignificant, foolish, peevish, vicious, and nonsensical race of Christians; who quarrel, fight, bite, devour and cut one another's throats about they know not what." Such is a part of one of his many advertisements which then appeared in the London papers.

      About the end of 1787, he returned to Edinburgh in a new and extraordinary character, viz: that of a teacher sent from God, to announce the millennium, the second coming of Christ, and the final consummation of all things. He styled himself the servant of the Lord, O.W.L., i. e., as he explained it, Oh Wonderful Love. He commenced a new era, dating his bills "1st, 2d, and 3d days of the first month of the New Jerusalem." But before the commencement of the second month he was constrained to confess "he felt the devil, the world, and the flesh too strong for him, and therefore he supposed the Lord must look out for another forerunner of his second coming."

      During a great part of this time, his wife (for he had married in New England) seems to have been neglected, and even forgotten; for, upon becoming acquainted with the celebrated Mrs. Macaulay, the historian, he offered her his hand, which she would have accepted had she not accidentally discovered that he had a wife still living. Upon this discovery, the Doctor, nowise discomfited, protested the ardor of his passion for her had made him forget that circumstance. This singular and benevolent being died in 1794.

      The points of similarity between my friend and the Doctor are so plain, that I need not be at the pains to point them out. Your own recollection of the first and second years of the era of Mental Independence proclaimed at the metropolis of Free Thinkers, and at the head of the army of the "March of Mind," will, with what you have heard and seen on the present occasion, be sufficient data to trace the lineaments of Dr. Graham in my good-natured and benevolent friend.

      I forgot to mention that Dr. Graham was finally placed in a lunatic asylum. But on this side of this extravagance, several miles on this side of these enthusiastic flights, there have been schemes hatched up under the canopy of a peculiar organization, as air-built it is true, and as benevolent as that of Dr. Graham and Mr. Owen, which have lasted a little longer, but have finally proved as empty quite.

      But, my friends, I should not have occupied a minute of your time [432] upon these visions, and dreams, and theories, called philosophic or vulgar, had it not been for the wanton attack made by Mr. Owen on the last, best hope of mortal man. I should have permitted any other experiment to have found its quietus, as thousands such have already done, without observation or regard. But when I see the last hope of a dying world recklessly assaulted, I feel too much interest in the eternal welfare of my fellow-creatures, to remain a mere passive spectator. I feel myself called upon to put on the armor of reason, true philosophy, and religion, and to stand to my post, lest in the midst of such morbid excitements, in this age of extravagant theory and licentious philosophy, many over-ardent minds might be allured by the speciousness and false glare of this tinseled philosophy, which, I trust, we have shown to be anything else but consentaneous with the constitution, experience, and history of the world.

      Behold the cruelty of this scheme! (not that Mr. Owen is cruel), the hard-heartedness of the system! Think of all the labors and toils, the griefs and sorrows through which you have passed. How have you wearied yourselves in pursuit of phantoms! Everything you have gained has only mocked and disappointed you. Like bubbles, they have bursted when you laid your hands upon the glistening objects of your avarice or ambition. All has been fleeting and evanescent. You know; for woeful experience has taught you, that you have been pursuing shadows. What pleased you at seven, you disdained at fourteen; what charmed you at fourteen, was disgusting at twenty; and what you almost adored at twenty, has been long since contemned and despised; and what now fascinates you at forty, will, should you reach seventy, appear as unworthy of your admiration as the toys of childhood now present themselves to you. But when the curtain drops, and the last grand act of the drama of human life closes, you will be mocked still; and, on Mr. Owen's principle, you have been mocked at last. There is nothing real. You desired immortality; you sought it, each in his own way; but with him none have found it. It is deceit and mockery all through. Riches, popularity, wisdom, health, and life itself, have all been deceivers--all was promise--all is disappointment. The promised bliss, the real, substantial, and permanent good which religion has presented to you, is torn from your eyes, and everlasting death, eternal sleep, and utter annihilation, is the only reality he has offered you. Cruel system! Bootless boast!

      Religion--the Bible! What treasures untold reside in that heavenly word! Religion has given meaning, design, to all that is past, and is, as the moral to the fable, the good, the only good of the whole--the earnest now of an abundant harvest of future and eternal good. Now [433] let me ask the living before me, for we cannot yet appeal to the dead, whence has been derived your most rapturous delights on earth? Have not the tears, the dew of religion in the soul, afforded you incomparably more joy than all the fleshly gayeties, than all the splendid vanities, than the loud laugh and the festive song of the sons and daughters of the flesh? Even the alternations of hope and fear, of joy and sorrow, of which the Christian may be conscious, in his ardent race after a glorious immortality, afford more true bliss than ever did the sparkling gems, the radiant crown, or the triumphal arch, bestowed by the gratitude or admiration of a nation, on some favorite child of fortune and of fame.

      Whatever comes from religion, comes from God. The greatest joys derivable to mortal man come from this source. I cannot speak for all who wear the Christian name; but for myself I must say, that worlds piled on worlds to fill the universal scope of my imagination, would be a miserable per contra, against the annihilation of the idea of God the Supreme. And the paradox of paradoxes, the miracle of miracles, and the mystery of mysteries with me now, was, and evermore shall be, is, how any good man could wish there was no God! With the idea of God the Almighty departs from this earth not only the idea of virtue, or moral excellence, but of all rational enjoyment. What is height without top; depth without bottom; length and breadth without limitation? What is the sublimity of the universe without the idea of Him who created, balances, sustains, and fills the whole with goodness? The hope of one day seeing this Wonderful One, of beholding Him that made my body, and is the Father of my spirit; the anticipation of being introduced into the palace of the universe, the sanctuary of the heavens, transcends all comparison with all sublunary things. Our powers of conception, of imagination, and our powers of computation and expression, are alike baffled and prostrated in such an attempt.

      Take away this hope from me, and teach me to think that I am the creature of mere chance, and to it alone indebted for all that I am, was, and ever will be, and I see nothing in the universe but mortification and disappointment; death is as desirable as life; and no one creature or thing is more deserving of my attention or consideration than another. But if so much pleasure be derived from surveying the face of nature--from contemplating the heavens and the systems of astronomy; if there be so much exquisite enjoyment from peeping into the great laboratory of nature, and in looking into the delicate touches, the great art, the wonderful design even in the smaller works, in the kingdom which the microscope opens to our view, what will be the pleasure, the exquisite joy, in seeing and beholding him who is the [434] Fountain of Life, the Author and Artificer of the whole universe! But the natural and physical excellencies, and material glories of this fabric, are but, as it were, the substratum, from which shine all the moral glories of the Author of Eternal Life, and the august scheme which gives immortality to man!

      No unrestrained freedom to explore the penetralia of voluptuousness, to revel in all the luxury of worms, to bask in the ephemeral glories of a sunbeam, can compensate for the immense robbery of the idea of God and the hope of deathless bliss. Dreadful adventure! hazardous experiment! most ruinous project! to blast the idea of God! The worst thing in such a scheme which could happen, or even appear to happen, would be success. But as well might Mr. Owen attempt to fetter the sea, to lock up the winds, to prevent the rising of the sun, as to exile this idea from the human race. For although man has not, circumstanced as he now is, unaided by revelation, the power to originate such an idea; yet when it is once suggested to a child, it never can be forgotten. As soon could a child annihilate the earth, as to annihilate the idea of God once suggested. The proofs of his existence become as numerous as the drops of dew from the womb of the morning--as innumerable as the blades of grass produced by the renovating influences of spring; everything within us and everything without, from the nails upon the ends of our fingers, to the sun, moon, and stars, confirm the idea of his existence and adorable excellencies. To call upon a rational being to prove the being and perfections of God, is like asking a man to prove that he exists himself. What! shall a man be called upon to prove a priori, or a posteriori, that there is one great Fountain of Life! a Universal Creator! If the millions of millions of witnesses which speak for him in heaven, earth, and sea, will not be heard, the feeble voice of man will be heard in vain.

      Some questions have been handed me today which do not come within the lawful purview of this discussion. They are of a sectarian character, and, therefore, we cannot attend to them at this time, however agreeable it might be for us on some other occasion to attend to them.

      The question, What is the Word of God? has already been anticipated in my remarks upon what constitutes revelation. In the Bible, we have seen, are the revelations of God; but, beside these, much of the history of the world. The discriminations already laid down on this subject are, we presume, sufficiently plain to enable all to form a correct decision upon this subject.

      That which is emphatically called the Word of God, the Word of the Lord, or the Word, in the New Testament, is generally, if not [435] exclusively, the Gospel, or Good News concerning Jesus Christ. Of the many proofs of this, I will give you but one at present, and then conclude: Peter had the honor of making the first clear, explicit, and correct confession of the faith ever made upon earth. When all the Apostles were interrogated by the Lord in his own person concerning their views of himself, Peter thus spoke: "We believe and are sure that THOU ART THE MESSIAH, THE SON OF THE LIVING GOD." This drew the blessing of the Savior upon the head of Peter, and obtained him the honor of the keys of the kingdom of heaven. By this figure was meant, that Peter should have the honor of opening the gates of the kingdom of heaven, or the new reign announced by John the Baptist, the Savior, the twelve Apostles, and the seventy disciples, as near at hand, or as approaching. These keys have been long a bone of contention among the clergy. The Pope says he wears them at his girdle; the archbishops of York and Canterbury think they have them in joint keeping; the good old Kirk of Scotland thinks she has them in the archives of her General Assembly; and Independents think each congregation, or an association of congregations have them in charge. But, as we have no account of them in the last will and testament of the Apostle Peter, we have no good reason to conclude that he made any, or all, of these good ecclesiastics the keepers of the keys. Beside, I do not know that we have any use for them. Peter opened that kingdom of which they were the keys to the Jews and proselytes in Jerusalem upon the ever-memorable Pentecost. And some years afterward, when God designed to call the Gentiles into the kingdom, much pains were taken to obtain Peter. He was sent for to Joppa, and came to Cesarea, and opened the kingdom to the Gentiles. The gates of this kingdom have never since been locked against Jew or Gentile--against none but the impenitent and unbelieving; and Peter declared once already that he could not open the kingdom to such. But having once opened the kingdom, and never having locked it, he took the keys with him; and so it is all an idle controversy about the keys: none of them, none of us, have them.

      But my special object in introducing this occurrence is to show how Peter, when opening the reign of favor in Jerusalem and Cesarea, defined the Word of God, or THE WORD. In opening the kingdom of heaven, or that new state of society and privilege, of which the Savior spoke to Nicodemus, when he told him, "Except a man were born of water and the Spirit, into the kingdom of God he could not enter," Peter narrated the deeds, and mission, and death, and resurrection of Jesus; and showed the Jews how they might be born of water and the Spirit, and thus enter the kingdom. He did so also in Cesarea. He [436] defined the message, or proclamation, in this way: "That word, or message, which God sent by Jesus Christ, you have, no doubt, heard the report of; how it was proclaimed by John concerning the mission of Jesus, who did so and so. To him," said he, "did all the prophets testify, that whosoever believeth in him might obtain remission of sins." They were born of the Spirit and of water too; and, moreover, received the miraculous powers of the Holy Spirit. Thus Peter defined the Word of God. And this is now emphatically the Word of the Lord, or the Word of God, to which, my friends, we ought, one and all, to pay supreme regard.

      We rejoice that the Word of God is well defined in this volume, and most easily distinguished, not only from all former communications of the Almighty, but from all other information found in the sacred records. They who presumed to make criticism upon the terms and phrases found in the Bible, ought first to ascertain well whether they are biblical critics.

      I should now proceed to give you a concentrated view of the whole argument, but I must give place to my friend, that he may make his objections to my long speech.

      [The above speech commenced on Friday at three o'clock, and, in all, occupied twelve hours.]

[COD 279-437]