joi }>;»:■»; I j G£m. Q4mt/ S^, O^i^etM. M^ ^^ t^, ionva Ka Altu) xxnuLAmO IoaMuWkv auamv) muumv) mom) mivu) iOAOMi) nvu). inn} ioU) nvvM /elloiMV mx Aa fl^rjoo). MUk '^VjAiuUmx) AK AeOAMMO) mx .uou) W ^xuuN joUeuMynaXel WLvnio) Buy, ^855. CONTENTS. LECTURE L Men of learning who have fallen into InCdelltf , LECTURE n. Causes of their Infidelity. LECTUEE m. Men of learning who hare embraced Christianity . LECTURE IV. Christianity contrasted with Infidelity in its influence on the happiness of Man in this world. LECTURE V. Influence of the Bible on the intellect of Man. LECTURE VI. The prejudice that extensive learning is hostile to the spirit of true piety. PIIE3FAGE The origin of these Lectui-es ou the Harmony of Learning and Eevelation may be seen in the following correspondence. New-York, 7th Feb. 1843. Eev. Dk. Mathews, Deab Sib, During your administration of the afiaiia of the University, and when maturing the enlarg- ed system of instruction designed for the Institution, you introduced a Professorship of Sacred Literature. One object of the proposed Professorship was to vindi- cate the Sacred Scriptures from the objections often sup- posed to arise from various discoveries in Science and Letters, That part of the design has not yet been car- ried into effect; but we believe that it has become pe- culiarly desirable at the present time, to afford increased opportunities of gaining information on these important questions; and as you have now released yourself from some of your former multiplied labors, we would inquire whether you would not undertake to prepare a course of public Lectures on the prominent subjects which such a department of instruction should embrace. o PEEFACE. In your hands they might be made to assume a form which ■would render them interesting and instructive to your various hearers; while they would demonstrate the practicability and importance of rendering Sacred Literar ture more generally a prominent branch of instruction. Several of us, and others whom we represent in this request, have enjoyed the pleasure of being associated with you in the important services you have already ren- dered to the cause of Learning in our city; and should you see fit to accede to the proposal we now make, it will give us much satisfaction to co-operate with you in any way which might render your labors most agreeable to yourself and most useful to the interests of Truth and Knowledge. We have the honor to be, Yours, with great respect, James Tallijiadgb, Thomas J. Oaklet, Geokge Wood, John Johnston, Theodore Frelinghdysen Valentine Mott, William Keut, John Slosson, John Lobimer Graham, John W. Draper, M. Van Schaick, William Curtis Notes, George Griswold, William S, Wetmorb, Thomas Botd, John C. Hamilton, Thomas Sufi-ern, William Mo Murray John C. Green, P. Pbkit Cortlandt Palmer, William B. Maolay. PBEPAOE. 9 New- York, 14th February, 1843. To Messrs. James Tallmadse, Thomas J. Oaklet, Geokgg Wood, John Johnston, Theodore Frelinghdtsen, Valentine Moit WiLLLAM Kent, Esquires, &c. &c. Gentlemen, I have received yoiir kind commmiicatioii of the 7th instant, and have given it the more careM attention, as it comes from friends to whom my memory will al Ways recur with sentiments of grateful regard. It is very 'true that I have long been desirous to see the Branch of Learning, to which you refer, introduced more fully into our Literary Institutions. The aspect of the times, and opinions recently promulgated, have also greatly strengthened my convictions of its importance. An impetus has been given to the minds of men within the last thirty or forty years, which has rendered progress in Science rapid beyond example. Nature, in her whole varied extent, is fast yielding up her secrets. But the harmony and connection of these discoveries with the lead- ing truths of the Scriptures do not yet seem to be rightly understood, or fully appreciated. To use the words of an able reasoner on this subject: "Some men in their writings, and many in their discoveries, go so far as to suppose that they may enjoy a dualism of opinions; holding one set, which they may believe aa Christians, and another whereof they are convinced aa Philosophers. One does not see how it is possible to make accordance between the Mosaic Creation and Cuvier's 10 PBEFACE. discoveries: another thinks the history of the dispersions incompatible with the number of dissimilar languages now existing: a third considers it extremely difficult to explain the origin of all mankind from one common parentage. So far, therefore, from considering Eeligion, or its Science Theology, as entitled to sisterhood with other sciences, it is supposed to move on a distinct plane, and to preserve a perpetual parallelism with them; which, though it pre- vents them from clashing, yet deprives them of mutual support." But this xmwarrantable severance of Eeligion from Learning is not the only evil suffered from some of our learned men. Scepticism is always assuming new forms. Among men of education and refinement it now seldom ventures openly and avowedly to assail Christianity. But the venom is not the less dangerous because concealed, and the minds of educated young men are too frequently poisoned before they are aware of it, by the manner and connection in which facts and theorems in science are pre- sented to them. It is chiefly in this way that in our day learning has not only been perverted, but also subjected to unmerited suspicion in the minds of religious men. Such a reproach should be wiped away; and recent dis- coveries show more and more plainly how triumphantly this may be done, I am persuaded there is not one among all the sciences which have been tortured into a shape adapted to the purposes of infidelity, which may not be made to rescue itself from such an injurious per- PBEFACE. H version; and to confute by its own principles, when fully understood, the objections which, have been claimed to spring from them. Nor is the work done, when Learning has thus re- deemed itself from the attitude of hostility to Eeligion. It should not be left as standing upon neutral ground. Science is the natural ally of Eevelation. The principles of the one were designed to fiimish most valuable aid in estabHshing and illustrating the doctrines of the other; and I deem it the duty of Christian scholars to do what they can, to have every fresh discovery which learning brings to light, baptized with the spirit of Christianity, and laid at the foot of her altars. The consequence would be not only a stronger faith in the inspiration of the Scriptures, but an increased relish for them, and a more complete knowledge of the truths they contain. I have seen, with much pleasure, that especially of late this object has engaged the attention of able men. But the field is very extensive, and requires additional labor before it can be brought under adequate cultivation, I would esteem it a privilege to have any share in the work; but I must claim the indulgence of a little time before I engage in it. My health has suffered from the incessant labors through which I have passed during the last twelve or fifteen years. Leisure and relaxation have become indis- pensable to me, Lideed I already feel advantage from' the respite I have enjoyed during the last few months; 12 PEEFACE. I am persuaded, however, that there is no work to which I could more readily or easily turn my attention, than that which you propose. Some of the subjects which would be embraced in such a course of instruction are already familiar to me; on others I have been for yeara collecting materials which I hope to render useful to the cause of Truth. Your request will induce me to bestow increased care and labor upon them ; and if I should be able to prepare a course of Lectures or Essays which may be deemed of any value, I would feel honored ta present them to the Pubho with your approbation and under your patronage. Believe me, Gentlemen, Yours, with sincere regard, J. M. Mathe-ws. Ftoto. the time when I commenced the delivery of the Lectures which grew out of this correspondence, they were received with a spirit of kindness for which I am called to express my gratitude; and at the request of many among both the clergy and laity, I have for several years past employed myself in preparing a work which might contribute to show how effectually true learning can be made to subserve the great interests of Eeligion. It is a task which has called for patient labor; but if I have been so happy as in any degree to clear away the doubts of sincere inquirers after truth, I have an abun- dant reward. Men of Learning who have fallen into Infidelity. I Cor. i. 20. " Where is the scribe ? Where is the disputer of this world?" The two great enemies of Divine Revelation are Superstition on the one hand, and Infidelity on the other. The former professes to believe in Christia- nity, but obscures and often buries it beneath th«> inventions and traditions of men. The latter re- jects it, either in whole or in part, as untrue and irrational. But in nothing is the diflFerence between the two more decided and marked, than in their mode of assailing the truth. Superstition generally makes its assaults openly and without disguise, "going about as a roaring lion, seeking whom it may devour." Infidelity, at least in its beginnings, is usually both timid and treacherous. It masks 13 14 flKST LECTURE. its earliest attacks, and approaches like the tiger, crouching ; but when it makes its spring, the bound is the more dangerous and fatal. This mask is not always the same. It is chang- ed according to times and circumstances, or accord- ing to the attainments and taste of the men who wear it. Some have objected to the Bible on the plea that it teaches a loose morality, and declare their better feelings to be shocked at practices which it tolerates and seems to commend. Others hesitate to avow their faith in the Holy Book, because it teaches doctrines which, if not irrational, in their view are mysterious and unintelligible, and there- fore not entitled to our belief A still different class are found catching at every seeming inconsistency between one part of Scripture and another ; and instead of inquiring as candid judges, how the discrepancy may be explained and removed, they strive, by every art of special pleading, to render it glaring and repulsive. But often as Infidelity has fled to these and similar subterfuges, there is no covering under which it has assailed Christianity more injuriously, than when it hides itself under the show of Learning; FIBSTLECTURE. 15 nor is there a branch of Letters or Science which has not sooner or later been pressed into the un- holy service. The stores of antiquarian lore have been ransacked, and weapons of attack brought forth, the weakness of which it was hoped, might be hidden under the rust of ages which covered them. In generations which have but lately pass- ed by, the war was maintained in the abstruse and bewildering region of metaphysics ; and when such assaults have been repelled, and all that is certain and fixed in metaphysical science was proved to be on the side of Revelation, the enemy has made new demonstrations. He has torn open the bowels of the earth to discover fossil remains that might say something against the Bible; he has carried his unwearied observations into the heavens, in hopes that he could persuade "the stars in their courses" to contradict the word of their Creator; he has even dissected and analyzed the human frame, in hopes to find something in the complexion or figure of the diversified tribes of our race which might contradict the inspired account of the origi- ,nal creation of man. It is generally known that in this noble and 16 FIE3T LECTUEE. ennobling department of knowledge — Physical Science — ^the Infidelity of the present day is most ambitious to display itself It has here a field which is not only wide, but which is constantly and rapidly widening. The impulse that has lately been given to discoveries in the material world, is without a parallel. They are pervading "the heav- ens above and the earth beneath, and the waters un- der the earth ;" and in this wide range which Science is now taking, contributing at every step to enlarge the boimdaries of human knowledge and- human happiness, Infidelity still aspires to follow, and views nothing too high or too sacred for its profane purposes. It would lay its hand on both the teles- dope and the microscope, and reaching from the stars and suns that are the centres of other worlds, down to the tiny insect which is invisible to the naked eye, it seems to hope that its career may be pro- longed by the amplitude of the field before it ; and that, if detected and exposed in one fallacy, it may fly to another, and hide itself under some new sub- terfuge of deceit. In these profligate flights too, it has derived advantages not only from the excitement always FIRST LECTURE. 17 attending new and vast discoveries, but also from that spirit of haste which impels all classes of man- kind in the present age of the world. Onward, onward seems to be the great watch word of our times. The traveller listens to it as he steams his way over land and sea with a speed that outstrips the wind. The merchant listens to it as he makes haste to be rich, and turns away with disgust from patient toil. And while all such pursuits of life are stimulated into increased rapidity of pro- gress ; notwithstanding the prescriptive right of the philosopher to be calm and deliberate, he also is often carried away by the same ambition which animates men around him. He would have the fable of "Mercury on wings" ripen into reality. He will be satisfied with nothing short of a railroad speed on the highway of knowledge, and the lightning of the telegraph must make discove- ries in science with the same despatch that it com- municates the common occurrences of the pass- ing hours. But while this spirit of progress with men of learning is to be hailed as the harbinger and means of invaluable good, it is at the same time attended 18 FIRST LEG TUBE. with dangers which should never be overlooked, The« great truths of Nature often lie deep, very deeply hidden ; and we are liable to imagine that we have fathomed them to their depths, when we have only just touched their surface. Her works and laws also are far from standing alone, or iso- lated one from another. They are all combined into a harmonious system, of which the parts might be considered as deformities or imperfections, il viewed by themselves ; and yet when viewed in their relation to the whole, are essential to its beauty and perfection. In this way our Creator has en- stamped upon his own works the image of him- self, shewing that "he sees the end from the be* ginning, and makes all things work together for good." And there is danger, great danger, that in discoveries recently made, and investigations hastily conducted by short sighted man, we may leave many of them in a crude undigested state, neither reduced to their proper form, nor carried home to their proper place in the great systems of truth and wisdom. Now it should always be remembered that it is just when scientific attainments are yet imper- FIRST LECTURE. 19 feet, fresh and unmatured, and the bearing of dis- coveries not fully ascertained, that Infidelity is most able to array them in apparent conflict with the Scriptures. While it has not yet mastered the alphabet of Science, it would be a judge of the most difficult questions in syntax and prosody. "A little learning is a dangerous thing ;" danger- ous to the man himself, for it often makes him vain and self-sufficient, and dangerous also to the truth according as it is sacred and precious. But enlarged learning, learning that goes deep and sees far, and takes patient care to gain a full know- ledge before it pronounces judgment, is learning from which the Bible has nothing to fear, and much tx) gain. There is scarcely a branch of Science to which this observation does not apply ; and we have recently seen a remarkable example of it. It must be known to many of us, that, when some of the early Geologists made their investigations in the structure of the earth, they pronounced the Cosmogony of Moses erroneous and unphilosophical. But after they had taken time to review their first opinions, and to carry their inquiries farther and deeper, they found that Moses was right both as a<) FIEST LECTUBE. to fact and philosophy, and that they themselves had. been wrong. Well would it have been for the world if all learned men who, like them, have at first made a false step, had also, like them, the wisdom to see it, and the honesty to own it. But far otherwise is the case. There is a pride of opinion with some, which prevents them from confessing an error even when they see it. There is a vanity, a love of notoriety with others, that delights in discarding what the multitude receive as truth. And with others, if not with them all, there is an appetite, a love for what the Bible forbids on pain of heaven's wrath, which inclines them to devise and to carry out, far as they can, every plea that may prom- ise to impair or destroy the divine authority of His revealed will. Of course, although there may be times when Infidelity shows a bolder front than at others, yet, while man remains fallen and corrupt, we must expect to meet it in some of its multiplied forms. The war between it and the Bible is a war of ex- termination. Be it so. We have no fear as to the final result. We not only hope, but we know the FIEST LECTURE. 21 day is coming when error shall be utterly destroy- ed from the face of the earth by the all-prevail- ing power of divine truth. But the contest must endure for many years to come before that consum- mation shall be reached ; and as depravity, the pro- lific root of Infidelity, is a disease which has spread from the highest to the lowest of our race, we must expect to meet the humbling spectacle of men who have distinguished their names in the cause of Sci- ence, tarnishing their honors by mingling in the ranks of those who reject the holy Word of G-od. Let us then at the outset take a fair view of In- fidelity in this aspect. The Gospel, which declares itself to be " Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God," does not require us to disparage the attainments or the numbers of those who un- dervalue its claims. It would have us do them full , justice. In another discourse we shall endeavor to show that if the question in dispute is to be settled by the authority of names, the argument may be viewed as at an end. "We have a majority that re- moves every doubt. On the one side are lumina- ries, it is true; but they are "wandering stars," however bright and glaring, yet baleful in their 22 FIRST LECTURE. course ; and on tlie other side, are not only stars, but constellations, pouring forth their healthful and enlightening hrilliancy on our sin-darkened world. But -we would not in this summary way turn aside from the point before us ; and admitting that Sci ence and Letters have at times been arrayed against Christianity, let us see what estimate should be formed of the unnatural hostility. Our limits will confine us to a selection of names, and we will ad- vert chiefly to those whom all admit to be the strong- est men and best scholars that Infidelity can claim. We ask then, in the language of Paul, "Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world?" Let them be produced. Let us become acquainted with their strength and their attainments, and "the measure of their stature." We meet with them far back in the annals of time. Their hostility began with the man who be- gan the Bible. " The magicians " of Egypt, who encoimtered Moses when he appeared as an inspired Prophet, was but another name for the literati of that day. He came, performing miracles, to attest the inspiration of his message ; and they endeav- oured to discredit this evidence of his mission from FIEST LECTtTEE, 23 heaven, by imitating and explaining away the mira- cles which he wrought; just as the philosophers and neologists of later times have endeavored to invalidate the argument drawn from the wonders performed by prophets, by apostles, and by our Lord himself. And as the dawn of Scriptural light in Old Testament times awakened such opposition in Egypt; in after days, when the fuller radiance of the New Testament shone upon the world, it was met with the same hostility in every nation to which it spread. Referring to the resistance which the great leader and prophet of Israel had encoun- tered in his ministry, Paul tells us, " now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also re- sist the truth ; men of corrupt minds, reprobate con- cerning the faith. But," he adds, "they shall pro- ceed no further ; their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as their's also was." And in this connec- tion I may remark, that the apostle here states a truth that should never be forgotten in our contests with Infidelity. He alludes to the apparent success with which the magicians of Egypt, for a time, succeed- ed in imitating and discrediting the miracles of Moses, "with their enchantments" and "lying won- 24 FIRST LECTURE. ders," "wherein they lay in wait to deceive;" and he reminds us of how they were at length brought to a stand, could " proceed no further," and confess- ed " This is the finger of G-od," thus " making their folly manifest," and giving a testimony to the divine mission of the prophet, which was the more convinc- ing and important as it came from those who had before denied and derided it. Such the apostle would have us know must be the final issue of every conflict between truth and error. He who saith to the sea, " Hitherto shalt thou come but no further ; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed," has always set bounds to opposers and scoffers, which they cannot pass. "He makes the wrath of man to praise him, and the remainder of wrath he re- strains." "He taketh the wise in their own crafti- ness." He allows them to oppose his truth only so far as will make their confusion the more complete, when their own weapons are turned against them, and "their folly is made manifest" by means of their own deeds ; and if the voice of uninspired his- tory is to be credited, the apostle saw in his own day a signal instance of this, in one whose name is not embalmed but impaled in the pages of Scrip- FIRST LECTURE. 25 tore. " Simon the Magician," an apostate from the faith he had once professed, " giving out that him- self was some great one," seems to have been a lead- ing man in propagating the sophistries of Infidelity and impiety ; and the occasion of his apostacy was so ordered by the overruling hand of God, as to demonstrate beyond all doubt the baseness and prof- ligacy of the motives which led to his opposition. From the days of the apostles, I might come down and recite to you the names of Celsus, Por- phyry, Hierocles, who were distinguished in the early centuries as Platonic Philosophers, and also as avowed antagonists of the Grospel. In the brief sketch however, to which we confine ourselves, we can barely allude to such men. The largest mea- sure of liberality to their claims cannot require of us to do anything more. The great majority of them are like flies in amber, preserved from oblivion by the medium in which they are held. Their names and their works are known to us chiefly through the writings of the Fathers, who quoted them in order to refute them ; nor would they be acknow- leged by Infidelity as champions in her cause. To find those to whom she would assign that 36 FIEST LECTUKE. pre-eminence, we must turn to a later period in the history of the world and of the church. We must come down through century after century, till we have reached comparatively modern times. We must pass by what are usually termed the Dark Ages ; for during that long slumber of intellect and learning, Infidelity, like every other movement of the human mind, seems to have been brought to a pause. It was not the form in which the great enemy of Christianity then desired to act. While the Church and her ministry slept, it was his policy to remain quiet, that they might not be waked up. But when the trumpet of truth was blown in the days of the Reformation, and Religion and Learning began to bestir themselves after their long slumber ; then also Infidelity raised its head and dis- played its opposition. When Luther and Beza, and Calvin and Cranmer, and Latimer and Ridley, had taken their stand at the altar of heaven, and had brought into light the long-hidden truths of the Gospel ; and when, in the generations following, such men as Bacon, Boyle, Locke and Newton in Eng- land ; and Galileo, Kepler, DesCartes and Leibnitz on the continent of Europe, gave a fresh impulse, FIEST LECTUKE. 27 with a new form and spirit, to Philosophy and Sci- ence ; it was then that Hobbes displayed his art and subtilty in his work, boastfully called the Levia- than, endeavoring to subvert the cardinal principles of Christianity ; then, did Shaftesbury send abroad his polished blasphemies in his Characteristics ; it was then also that Bayle, Spinoza, Blount, Toland, Bolingbroke and others, joined in the same guilty warfare. They were all met and overthrown by christian writers of the massive strength which be- longed to the learning of that day ; and as evil in our world is always overruled for good, their as- saults led to the establishment of the famous Boyle Lectureship, as a permanent defence of Christianity, and from which have been produced some of the ablest discourses in our language, demonstrating the truth and authenticity of the Bible. In referring to this multitude of freethinkers, who came forth as locusts over the land, it should be mentioned that we do not find many among them who can be called men of great learning ; and if a few of their number might claim such a dis- tinction, their Infidelity was so revolting and mon- strous in its blasphemies, as to render it compara- 28 FIESl- LECTUBE. tively harmless. They owed their fame, such as it was to causes which existed hefore them, and iu one senpe called them into being. They generally flourished in what is known as the corrupt age of Charles the Second, when the land was deluged with practical irreligion, and the way prepared for the wild speculations -of Infidelity. They were more like the insects which are generated in the miasma of a soU, already pestilential and deadly, than like the dragon whose pestiferous hreath has been repre- sented as having the power to blight and destroy whatever is lovely and precious in the Edens he in- vades. That gigantic power of mischief and ruin soon afterwards began to be developed, especially in three men, who were singularly adapted to act to- gether as partners in their common object as infidels. And not waiting to enumerate many others who were their cotemporaries and fellow-laborers, let us contemplate that peculiar potency for evil which was displayed in Hume, Rousseau and Voltaire, when they formed their unholy alliance. It has been justly observed, that there is scarce an avenue to the heart in all the varieties of hu- man character, but some one of the three had ex- FIRST LECTURE. 29 actly the talent to reach it. Hume's mind was carried away by his fondness for new theories, his ambition to be found on debatable ground, and the vanity of making good his position by arguments that might perplex, if they did not convince. He describes himself, with evident complacency, as a " friend to doubts, disputes and novelties ;" and so lightly did he value truth, whether as a philosopher or a historian, that he could sacrifice it with the coldest indifference, either to vindicate a speculation, or to gratify a prejudice. "With such a spirit did Hume prosecute his attacks on Christianity. In a philosophy that sets at defiance the more fixed and acknowledged laws of evidence, and in a history abundant in false colorings and garbled statements, all written in a style of almost Grecian ease and finish, he prevailed with readers who, obdurate in heart, and ambitious to be thought more knowing than other men, loved to wrap themselves up in the mists of barren and uncertain speculations. Rous- seau's mind resembled the crater of a burning vol- cano. Everything that came from his pen seemed fused by a melting heat. He wrote for readers who are governed by impulse, rather than by a taste for 2 30 FIKST LECTUBK. sober reasoning ; and by a show of sincerity well adapted to win upon the unwary, and by a vivid- ness of imagery that makes his eloquence dazzling and deceptive, he seldom failed to lead captive those whom he aimed to teach. The scope of Voltaire's mind was more universal. He is not only to be reckoned among the Encyclopedists of his day, but he himself resembled an Encyclopedia of knowledge. He touched upon everything, but instead of adorning, he defaced or perverted much that he touched. There is scarce any region of intellect with which his name is not more or less connected ; and, as if glory- ing in the power of his multiform talents, he im- piously boasted, that " while it required twelve men to write Christianity up, he would show that one man could write it down." He labored for his ob- ject through a long life, and with unabated zeal ; and by the keenness of his wit and satire, and his strong picturing of sensuality and the grosser vices, he became the favorite oracle of those who lay less within the reach of his two great cotemporaries and fellow-laborers in the cause of irreligion. It is frightful even to recollect the havoc and desolation which were wrought by these three FIRST LECTURE. 81 champions of Infidelity and their coadjutors. Their baleful influence was felt from the palace to the cot- tage. They unhinged the fairest forms of society throughout a whole Continent. They were lepers whose touch was defilement. In the language of the Evangelist, the name of the unclean spirit that possessed them was " Legion." Like the reckless de- moniac himself, " no man could bind them, neither could any man tame them." Like him also, their " dwelling was among the tombs ;" for wherever they went, it became a field of death around them, a vast Grolgotha, where was entombed or scattered abroad every thing most essential to the welfare and happiness of man. But alas, how unlike the poor G-adarene in their end ! The word of Divine pow- er commanding the unclean spirit to come out of the man, reached his heart with subduing efficacy ; and we see him at once "sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind." But they, we must fear, died as they had lived ; the demons which pos- sessed them, never exorcised to the last. After them however arose one who stands un- equalled among men in the lasting mischief he has wrought against truth and religion ; and I refer to 92 FIBS, T LECTURE him more particularly, because of the effort, recently made to keep his chief work before the public eye. The name of Gribbon will at once rise to your minds, as entitled to this guilty pre-eminence. "When we think of what he once was, what he became, and what he did, we are reminded of the Star in the Apo- calypse " whose name was Wormwood, and which, burning as a lamp, fell from heaven on the rivers and waters, and men died of the waters, because they were made bitter." If we compare him with other infidel writers whom we have named, it would almost seem as if the Powers of darkness had aimed to imitate the Most High in the creation of the world, reserving the choicest specimen of their workmanship for the last. If " there were gi- ants in the earth in those days," among the enemies of truth, he was " taller than any of them from the shoulders upwards." He is the Goliath of the Philistine host; and when he comes forth " defying the armies of the living God," " the staff of his spear is like a weaver's beam." His feeling of hatred was peculiar. There is no aimity or bitterness like that of an apostate. Nero was cruel and' leckless in shedding the blood of FIBST LECTURE S3 Christians, but he showed nothing like the intensity of rage " against the Lord and against His Anoint- ed," which was displayed by the apostate Julian, who had once professed Christianity and then re^ nounced it. Gibbon had, in turn, been a member of the Protestant Church of England, of the Roman Catholic Church, of the Protestant Church on the Continent ; and in the end became an apostate from religion in all these various forms ; carrying with him an enmity of a three-fold strength, as if the venom had been concentrated anew by every fresh renunciation through which he had passed. Under this stimulus, and with qualifications of mind, study, and travel, richly furnishing him for the accomplishment of his task, he produced the " History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," a work which stands among the most splendid achievements of human intellect, and th« most dangerous of the attacks ever made upon Di- vine Revelation. From the nature of the sultject, it furnished a high and unequalled advantage to the infidel Historian. There has been but on« Rome, and it is scarcely to be expected that another will rise hereafter. The empire not less than the city 34 FIEST LECTUEE. wkich bears that lofty name, appropriated to itself with unsparing hand whatever formed the brightest glories of other nations, until it rose into a mag- nificence both sublime and' gigantic ; and when such a structure is seen fallen and decayed, there is a grandeur in the ruins that is irresistibly impressive and absorbing. It is Rome draped in the hallowed light of all her departed glory that G-ibbon depicts to us with his graphic pen. It was, as he tells us himself, while he sat musing amidst the ruins ol the Capitol, covered with the evening shades of an Italian autumn, and listening to the Friars chanting their vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that he con- ceived the purpose of his work ; and as if imbued with the spirit of the exciting scene before him, he has quickened into life the Forum and the Trium- phal Arch, and made them tell their stories of the greatness which once eimobled the generations of antiquity. And then, when he has depicted to us these scenes of decayed splendor till we long for something fresh and new, he leads us away, evok- ing from the fragments of the dilapidated empire, nations and institutions wearing the form and breathing the spirit of later ages. But although he FIRST LECTUEE. 35 is thus the historian of hoth the ancient and mo- dern worlds, he is not oppressed by the vastness of liis plan, or embarrassed or confused by the diversi- ty and magnitude of his materials. Under his po- tent wand they all settle down into their appropri- ate places, and assume a finished symmetry, till we have a work before us which, notwithstanding the blemishes of a style at times so stately as to be al- most turgid, has placed the author on a pedestal among historians, from which he is not to be shaken. But, as if animated with the cunning of " that old serpent which deceiveth the nations," he has so constructed the whole, as to make it a running li- bel on Christianity. An opportunity for " sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer" seldom escapes him. But his sneers are comparatively harmless. Neither is it his direct and open attacks on the truths of Christianity that we should chiefly dread. "When he has dared to come out and show himself, he has been met and overthrovsm. The chief danger from G-ibbon is of a different kind. " Dan," says the Patriarch, " shall be a serpent by the wayside, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse's heels, so that his rider shall fall backwards." And the Ian- 36 FIEST LECTURE. guage is strikingly descriptive of the subtilty and treachery which distinguish Gribbon as an infidel writer. He has planted himself on one of the great highways of knowledge, and like " an adder in the path," he hides his venomous designs from the un- wary traveller. All historians have facilities pecu- liar to themselves for misleading their readers ; and Gibbon has availed himself of them to the fullest extent. "With the artfulness of which he is an ac- complished master, and which it sometimes requires great care and study to detect, he places facts in such aspects and relations as must lead to conclu- sions directly at variance with truth and justice- While he would only seem to be giving harmony and continuity to his narrative, he often contrives to clothe the corrupt and scandalous institutions of Pa- ganism in aspects so attractive that we almost grieve to part with them, lest we should bury in their grave whatever forms the grace and the gran- deur of the world's best days ; while the debasing and gross sensuality which accompanied them, is either palliated or studiously kept out of view. When he describes the progress of Mahomet, it is done with a vividness and an exultation, that might FIEST LECTURE. 37 ijicline the minds of his ardent readers to join in chanthig a triumph to that chief among impostors ; while the deceit, violence, and blood, by which the Koran was spread, receive scarce a passing censura But when he describes the progress and fruits of the Gospel among the nations, his pencil seems to have been dipped in the coldness and deadness of the sepulchre. Whatever may be the other systems of faith and forms of worship which he recommends or embellishes, Christianity is held up as having scarce a redeeming quality to atone for the wrongs he imputes to it. With an avidity which he can- not conceal, he recites and parades the errors and faults of Christians, showing that he gloried in their shame ; but theil noble examples of faith and pa- tience when they either died martyrs to the truth, or spread streams of salvation through a lost and suffering world, awaken no sentiment of admiration; or if at times he is compelled by the force of truth to speak of their illustrious deeds, he doles out his reluctant and scanty commendations, grudgingly as a miser would part with his gold, impatient till he can close his hand and give no more. Nor is this all: painftil as it is to expose dishon- 38 FIRST LECTURE. esty and bad faith in a writer of Gibbon s powerful mind, when we find him framing such mysteries of iniquity, such insidious attacks on Christianity; with what abhorrence of the man must we contem- plate him, when we see him descending to the low mire of obscenity. True indeed, shame forbade him to translate his disgusting pictures of sensuality into his own language, and to interweave them with the text of his pages. But his evident relish for them was so great that he could not part with them ; and the shape and the place in which he has left them serve to show the deep art with which he has con- trived to make even this portion of his work the more dangerous and hurtful. " It is no apology for this insult upon the public morals" as has been well observed, "an insult of many years continuance, that the poison was confined to his notes, and en- veloped in the cover of a dead and difficult lan- guage. It did more mischief than his Infidelity- It addresses itself to the imagination and the pas- sions of an age which needed not to be inflamed by intellectual incentives — to the youth of our great schools and universities, who, captivated by the se- ductive charms of his text, would be further at- FIRST LECTURE. S9 tracted, by the learned semblance of his notes, to descend to the polluted margin, where they might decipher G-reek, and drink in vice and profligacy by the same effort." Such is a brief view of the adroitness and m- dustry with which Gibbon has aimed to mislead and defile the minds of his readers, in his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." A poison thus artfully prepared has not been harmless. It has spread contagion into the minds of many ; of many who have never been restored from its deadly influ- ence, and of others who have been healed only by remedies which not every physician has the ability to obtain or administer. It seems to have been a great design with Gibbon, from the beginning to the end of his work, that impiety and unbelief should be imbibed from his pages, insensibly; just as dis- ease is taken from an infected atmosphere by breath- ing it. No ordinary precaution can avail to give security against it; nor can the notes of commenta- tors, though prepared with the diligence and ability of a Milman or a Guizot, either abstract or neu- tralize the poison. The fabric is dyed in the wool. Blasphemy and irreligion form a part of its very 40 FIKST LECTURE. elements ; and though a texture of gorgeous magni. fioence, it4,must remain from end to end, smitten with the "fretting leprosy" of Infidelity "in the warp and in the woof." If you will excuse the digression, I would ask, are we never to see a work rising beside it, equal- ing, if not surpassing it in grandeur, and yet free from its depravity and deceit? Are we never to see it ? The church needs it, and the world needs it. Heligion needs it, and learning needs it. Could T call spirits from the vasty deep, and make them come, I would enlist jQrom the multitudes of the gifted and the learned, some intellect of superior might, who would immortalize his name with such a monument of learning. The power of the gospel in renovating the world and elevating man from the degradation of ignorance and guilt, was never more fully displayed than when it found Rome sinking firom the zenith of her grandeur into the depth of her humiliation. "When that vast empire, which claimed to have a dominion co-extensive with the world, crumbled into fragments, "the earth and all the inhabitants thereof were dissolved." Chaos had come again, and "darkness was upon FIBSTLECTUEE, 41 the face of the deep." The allwise Disposer of events allowed our world thus to become " without form and void," in order to furnish a new and a world- wide demonstration of the public and private bless- ings which follow in the train of Christianity. The whole structure of society was to be re-cast and vivi- fied under the life-giving power of His word, who in the beginning had said, " Let there be light, and there was light;" and there is not in all the wide regions of knowledge a greater desideratum than a history written with the enlightened spirit of the christian, the philanthrbpist and the statesman, and which ■vill award to Christianity its just claims in the changes then wrought on the condition and desti- nies of the human race. !For, as has been said in language equally just and beautiful, " How vague in general is our notion of this the most remarkable change which has ever been wrought in the state of mankind ! The violent and rapid conquests of Mo- hammedanism are clear and intelligible ; a con- quering nation overruns a great part of the world, and establishes its faith upon the ruins which its arms have made. The triumph of Christianity is the secret progress of opinion, working at first no 42 FIRST LECTURE. change in the existing forms or relations of society, but gradually detaching indiriduals, cities, nations, from their ancestral faith ; still growing in numeri- cal superiority, compressing the inert resistance of its antagonist into a narrower compass ; not sweep- ing clear and levelling the ground for the erection of its new system, but springing up, as it were, like a fresh growth of vigorous trees above a decaying forest, which gradually withers down into a thin and perishing under- wood, till at length it entirely dies away, or only hangs a few parasitical branch- es upon the stately grove which has succeeded to its place and honors." "We have nothing which fills up the outlines presented in this happy illustration. There is no want of ably written works which place the pure morality and spiritual worship and social refinement of Christianity in contrast with the de- baucheries, superstitions and barbarities of Pagan- ism. But no historian has yet arisen who fully traces out and unfolds the noiseless yet all pervad- uig power of the Gospel in re-modelling the whole structure of society ; in di/fusing new sympathies and a higher purity through all the social and do- mestic relations of life; in creating new views of FIRST LECTURE. 43 civil rights and civil duties, imparting a new tone and spirit to legislation and jurisprudence ; in giv- ing enlargement and elevation to cultivated intel- lect and rescuing the masses of a nation from igno- rance, barbarity and wretchedness. We must have all this done with the discrimination of a sound philosophy and the reverence of a christian spirit, before justice can be rendered to Christianity as sent " for the healing of the nations ;" and no doubt the day is coming when such a work will be given to the world under the blessing of Him with whom is "the residue of the spirit." To return : in the brief review which we have given of Infidelity among men of learning, we have endeavored to be not only just but liberal in our es- timate of their attainments ; and as we proposed at the outset, in our selection we have brought forward no name of inferior note. We might have extend- ed the list by referring to D'Alembert, Diderot, Con- dorcet, and others of their rank. But whatever may have been their standing in literature, they be- longed to a school of which Voltaire was master. They served in an army of which the men to whom I have chiefly referred were leaders ; an army of such 44 FIEST LECTXTEE. unequalled numbers and strength as to have rend- ered the century in which they lived, I will not say the golden, but the brazen age of infidels and scof- fers. That inglorious distinction must be admit- ted as belonging to the century now past; and if, since its close, the war has still been continued by a few who hold a high rank in science, their hostili- ty, as we will hereafter show, has generally been disguised if not timid, aiming to hide itself under some new name, and rather to sap the foundations of Christianity than to destroy the citadel by storm. The hardened forehead of Infidelity, which openly o-lories in its own shame, is not often found in our day among the refined and the intelligent, but among the low and the vulgar. And naw, in conclusion of this lecture, let us turn and look back ; and after this -brief review of what the ablest infidels, whether of ancient or mo- dern times, have done, or attempted to do, let us ask what they have accomplished against the Christian faith? Have they impaired its beauty, or rendered its foundation less stable or secure ? They have led on their attacks under banners of every form and color. They have chosen their implements of warfare from FIBSTLECTUEH. 45 every arsenal of learning ; from uistory, from phi- losophy, from the arts ; while the lighter weapons of sarcasm and wit have been used without stint. But let them bring their armour or their arms whence they may, in their prolonged and unsparing hostility ; can they tell us of the progress they have made in the accomplishment of their unholy de- sign? Have they even lessened, much less over- thrown the credibility of a single page or a single sentence in the whole Bible ? They have the map of the civilized world before them ; can they draw their finger over it, and show us that by means of their untiring labors the territory held by Christi- anity has been curtailed in its limits or reduced in its strength ? But if the Bible is untrue, or Christianity a de- ception, as they- would have us believe, let us con- sider the great advantages which they have in their hands for showing it to be so. Let us remember that no deception or imposture can possibly stand the test of time. It is as true of falsehood as of murder, that sooner or later it " will out." You cannot by any ingenuity conceal either of them always. Some prying eye of a close ob- 8 *5 FIRST LECTUEE. server, or some unforeseen occurrence, will bring them to light. Fruitful of such evils as the ingenuity of man has been in all ages, there is no imposture to be named which has lived beyond a few genera- tions, or perhaps, I might say beyond a few years, where general intelligence and freedom of inquiry prevail. The Koran loses its hold on the public mind wherever information spreads among the people ; and the superstitions which at various times have aimed to baptise themselves with the name of Christianity, owe their existence to the prevalence of the maxim, that ignorance is the mother of de- votion. But the Gospel, revealing the way of life through a crucified Redeemer, has been received in nation after nation, meeting with the freest exami- nation of the wise and well informed; in fact, cre- ating inquiry and intelligence as one of its fruits ; and what has been the result ? The Book is be- fore us. Thousands of years have passed away since the greater portion of it was written, and it never appeared more unsullied and impregnable than it does this day, as its very foes admit. In its own beautiful language, " No weapon that is form- «d against it has prospered, and every tongue that FIEST LECTURE. 47 has risen against it in judgment, it has condemn- ed." And while it stands thus strong and unshaken against the assaults of man, Time, even Time him- self, that wastes and puts the mark of decay on every thing created by human wisdom and human power, only adds to the stability and grandeur of the Holy Book. Come or go, rise or fall, perish or endure whatever may, the Bible still seems to en- trench itself anew with some fresh demonstration of its truth ; and not only does it stand unmoved and immovable amid all the changes passing around it, but it claims to itself the high distinction of being alone able to stand amon;g all the forms of faith and worship that men have ever embraced. And well it may. It has seen false divinities beyond number, as Baal, Ashtaroth, Jove, Minerva and Mars covered up in a common grave of. obli- vion, or remembered only as phantoms of deluded nations ; but Jehovah, Jehovah whom it has taught from the beginning as the true G-od, the only God, is to this day still on his " throne, high and lifted up," "the same yesterday, to-day and for ever." It has seen Sibylline verses which claimed to be divinely inspired, scattered to the winds as re- 48 FIRST LECTURE. cords of deceit and folly; while not a word or syl- lable of its own is marred or lost in the current of ages as they roll hy. And then, let me add, when it has challenged comparison with these discarded divinities, these scattered records of deceit ; it goes on, and in defiance of time to come, as in triumph over time past, it stakes its reputation for truth on the prediction that it will still endure, as the reve- lation of grace to man, when time himself shall be no longer. There is but one explanation to be given of all this, to be given of this incorruptibility and endurance of the Bible. We have it from the • Book itself. "All flesh is as grass," says the Pro- phet, " and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass." " The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away ; but the word of the Lord en- dureth forever," and it endureth forever, because it is the word of the Lord. But farther ; we may perhaps conceive of some fiction or imposture so carefully framed and guard- ed at all points by the practised sagacity of its author, that it might be difiicult to detect and ex- pose it after the most patient examination. But if so, it should treat of but one subject, it should be FIRST LECTURE. 49 the work of one man, and should he framed or composed in some one age of the world. Just ac- cording as it multiplies either topics or authors, it increases its liahility to exposure hy multiplying the points on which it may he assailed hy some sharp-sighted antagonist. But how is it with the Bihle ? Does it treat of but one subject; or was it written hy one man, or at one period of time ? No hook was ever written, emhracing suhjects of such vast extent and such endless variety. It he- gins at the beginning. It recites the creation of the earth, and the heavens, of the sun, the moon and the stars also, and describes the final dissolution of our world, when "the heavens, being on fire, shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat ; the earth also, and the works therein, shall be burned up." It shows when and how man was created in the image of his Creator, tells the sad story of his fall from primeval innocence, and spreads before us the good news of his redemption from sin by a Redeemer, and his final admission into the world of the blessed. It gives a code of morals so perfect as to be applicable to every duty and C/ondition of man, and foretells a coming 50 FIRST LECTUEE. judgment, when it will be rendered to every man according to that which he hath done. It draws aside the veil and shows us the attributes of Him who is God over all, blessed for ever," and brings down to our view that " great mystery of godliness, Grod manifest in the flesh." At times too, stepping aside as it were from these more sacred doctrines, it gives us its teachings respecting the physical laws which sustain and govern the material world ; it shows us the frame work of a civil government, which equally sustains the authority of rulers and se- cures the rights of the ruled ; and it recites the his- tories of nations in their rise and fall, often making us familiar with events of such remote antiquity that no record of them is to be found except in its rich and diversified revelations. There is indeed no department or branch of valuable knowledge upon which it does not touch, with which it is not directly or indirectly connected. It comprehends things past present and to come, visible and invisible, temporal and eternal. And then Look also at its numerous authors and the va- rious circumstances and ages of the world in which they wrote. "It is a book which nearly fifty FIRST LECTURB. 51 •vriteis of every degree of cultivation and every condition of life, and living through the long course of fifteen hundred years, have contributed to pro- duce. It is a book which was written in the centre of Asia, in the sands of Arabia, in the deserts of Judea, in the courts of the temple of the Jews, in the schools of the prophets at Bethel and Jericho, in the sumptuous palaces of Babylon, on the idola- trous banks of Chebar, and finally in the then centre of western civilization, in the midst of the Jews and of their ignorance, in the midst of Poly- theism and its idols, as also in the bosom of Fan- theism and its sad philosophy. It is a book whose first writer had been forty years a pupil of the magicians of Egjrpt, in whose opinion the sun and stars were endowed with intelligence, reacting on the elements and governing the world, by a per- petual efiluvium; and whose last writer was a fisherman from the sea of Tiberias, called from his net to be an inspired Apostle." Now, with all these facilities for exposing the falsehood of a book, arising from the number and variety of its subjects and authors, what deception or deviation from truth have the most able adver- 52 FIEST LECTURE. saries detected in the Bible ? Let them point out if they can, a single instance of discrepancy or con- tradiction, a single violation of the unity and har- mony that should run throughout the whole, as a constantly brightening revelation of G-od's holy pur- pose to save guilty men through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. It 'belongs to the human mind, that when allowed to act according to its ordinary laws, it will invariably imbibe views and tendencies from the habits of the age and the na- tion to which it belongs. But with the inspired writers of the Bible, it was directly the reverse. It matters not whether it was Moses, " learned in all the wisdom of Egypt," and a daily witness of the various idolatries interwoven with the character of the people ; whenever he takes his pen to write for the Bible, his mind becomes clarified and elevated above all these superstitious delusions ; not a trace of respect for Osiris, or Isis, or other divinities of Egypt, appears in his pages ; while all honor and worship are rendered to Jehovah, the covenant Grod of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, offering life and for- giveness to men through a Messiah yet to come. It matters not whether it be Paul, "brought up at the PIBST LECTURE. 53 feet of Gramaliel,"a Pharisee, zealous for the tradi- tions of the elders, and proud in the righteousness of a law by which he counts himself blameless; when he writes for the Bible, his Pharisaism and pride have disappeared, while Christ and the cross, as foreshadowed and foretold by Moses and the Prophets, become the all and in all of which he would speak, and in which he would have the world believe. In like manner we might speak of all the inspired writers. Whatever may have been the error or idolatry prevailing in their day, not a trace of it is to be found mingled with the pure truth that comes from their pens to be embalmed in this Holy Bible. Its ever brightening pages come down to us through generation after generation, untainted and untarnished, like the beams of the rising sun breaking through the mists and vapors of the morning, touching them only to dispel them, and then to burst forth in its own native splendor. And while we find the Bible thus free from the delusions of former ages, see also how it har- inonizes with the best discoveries of Philosophy in later days. If we examine the writings of the wisest among uninspired men on questions of 54 FIRST LECTUEK. Science, we find that the theories of yesterday have been exploded hy the discoveries of to-day ; and that the Philosophers of past generations are conti- nually shown to he at war not only with each other, but also with truth, as it becomes better known. But here is the Bible, the oldest book that was ever written, in comparison with which every other is modern ; it tells us of the heavens, the sun, moon and stars ; of the earth and the sea, and all that in them is ; of their origin and the laws that govern them and bind them together into a beautiful whole. It placed its teachings respecting these subjects on record thousands of years ago, when Astronomy was more of a dream than a Science, when G-eo- logy. Physiology, and Chemistry, were words and things unknown ; and yet, notwithstanding all that Astronomy has since done to make us familiar with the countless orbs of heaven; notwithstanding all that Greology has done to extract from the bowels of the earth the remains of worlds which have existed before man was created ; notwithstanding all that Physiology has done to reveal the laws of life; notwithstanding all that Chemistry has done to analyse matter, we challenge infidelity to pro- FIRST LKCTUBK. 55 duce a single principle, which has been discovered and established, in this wide range of Science^ and which stands in conflict with any truth or fact known to he contained in the sacred Volume. Indeed, as we hop© to show in the progress of the work we have prescribed to ourselves, so far is the Bible from having anything to apprehend from the in- vestigations of Science, that it invites her to proceed with diligence in her appropriate task ; and while it cautions her not to dishonor her own name by theories that are crude and ephemeral, it asks her to hasten forward with her richest stores of dis- covery, that it may use them to strengthen its own claims on the faith of mankind, by showing that when the volume of nature is most widely unfolded, and is "placed side by side with the volume of the gospel, they appear like twin stars, combining to shed increased light on the otherwise dark world beneath them. With this view of the subject before us, we will ask infidelity to account far sueh an i^nexampled, unresembled exemption from error, for this immacu- late accuracy of the Bible — ^nothing from beginning to end of the Book, altered or erased,, or needing 56 flEST LECTURE. alteration or erasure to make its parts harmonize with each other, to free its pages from the pre- judices or delusions of the age or the land in which they were written; or to bring its facts and its doc- trines into harmony with the ever-widening dis- coveries of Science and Philosophy ? We have an explanation, if we admit that the Bible needs to undergo no emendations or changes, because how- ever varied as to their condition in life, their attain- ments of mind, or the age in which they lived, were the men whose pens contributed to produce the sacred volume, they were all inspired, were moved and controlled in their holy work by that Omniscient One " who seeth the end from the be- ginning; neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight, but unto whose eyes all things are naked and open." This solves the case, and there is no other solution which is either just or rational. Let me add a word more, wliich I trust many, if not all before me will rightly appreciate. If such be the care and the wisdom with which the Most High Grod has prepared his Word ; and if such be the care and vigilance with which he has preserved FIRST LECTUEE. 57 it; how and in what spirit ought we to regard it? "The words of the Lord are pure words; as silvei* tried in a furnace of earth purified seven times." Do we value them and honor them according to their worth? I appeal to the generous of heart, who shrink from the imputation of ingratitude as a stain on their names and a poison to their own peace. Can you bring yourselves to treat lightly a book which your Creator commends to your faith by stamping on its every page the broad seal of Heaven, by preserving it through all time with the wakefulness of an eye that never slumbers nor sleeps, and which he puts into your hands to mark out the pathway which leads you to heaven? I appeal to men of enlightened minds, to the lovers of truth and knowledge. Can you find a book in which the veins of wisdom run so rich and deep, in which the lore of former ages is so carefully em- balmed, and the germ of all the later acquisitions of the human mind is seen rising so brightly and constantly to the eye of every reader? And lastly, I refer to that condition of bur race in which we all share; share too 'argely; I appeal to all who have sins to be forgiven; who are offenders against 58 FIRST LECTUEE. a righteous God. ; tell me, sinful men ; if we shut up this Bible, where is your hope ? If there is no help for you here, neither earth nor heaven contains it. In all the wide universe of God tliere is neither truth nor reality left to guide you in life or support you in death, and you are lost, lost forever. Causes of Infidelity among Men of Learning. John iii. 19, 20, "And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and m,en loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil 'hateth the lights neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved." In our previous discourse we have called your attention to the fact that men of learning are some- times found in the ranks of infidelity, and we have aimed to do full justice to their literary acquire- ments. We are hereafter to show that if the question respecting the inspiration of the Bihle is to be settled by the authority of names renowned for literature in all its branches, the friends and ad- vocates of the holy volume so far outweigh its ad- versaries as to put an end to controversy on the subject. But before we bring into view this splen- 60 SECOND LECTUKE. did array, armed with the panoply of truth, there is an important inquiry which it may be well to answer. Admitting that men of learning, who arp on the side of infidelity, are comparatively few, it may be asked, How are we to account for their avowed unbelief? Was it the fruit of their learn- ing, or did it spring from a very different and less creditable source? In answer I might call up one of their own number, and refer you to his testimony. The his- tory of John, Earl of Rochester, is well known. He was an infidel to whom his friends often pointed as a star of no common brilliancy. His courage was even heroic, showing a spirit not to be in- fluenced by any cowardly dread of death. But in his later days, when cool reflection came and con- science was allowed to speak out, wishing to undo the evil he had done by his profane scofis against leligion, he often laid his hand upon the Bible and declared, "A bad heart, a bad heart is the great objection against this Holy Book;" and most care- , fully, did he provide for having the recantation of his infidelity authenticated, as the honest and de- liberate act of a dying man. We have an account SECOND LEOTUEE. 61 of the change which passed upon him, written hy the venerahle Burnet, of which Dr. Johnson has remarked that " The critic ought to read it for its excellence, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety." We believe the testimony of the converted Ro- chester to be true. It is only expressing, in other words, what our Lord teaches in the text when he says that "light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. Por every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved." We believe that in all cases infidelity has its rise and progress from a bad heart, not from a clear head ; from enmity, not from argu- ment against that which the Bible reveals ; and when it appears among the learned, we believe that so far from showing enlargement and liberality of mind, it betrays what we may denominate, in the mildest language adapted to the case, a manifest want of sincerity and honesty in the pursuit of truth. This is a serious accusation. It should not be lightly made, especially against men who have; built up for themselves a high name in the world 4 62 SECOND LECTtTEE. of letters. It should not be allowed to rest on evidence in the l«ast equivocal or inconclusive. The proofs should be irrefragable and obvious to every candid judge ; and such is the proof we have to offer. It is taken mainly from the confessions made by the accused themselves. "Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee," said his Lord to the wicked servant who had misused his talent : and this shall be our rule of judgment against men who have perverted splendid talents and great acquirements to discredit the Bible and dishonor its divine Author. In prosecuting the subject, I know not what names can be more suitably brought forward in this connection than those to which I have already referred, as Hume, Rousseau, Voltaire and Gibbon. There can be no doubt as to the influence and posi- tion of these men in the ranks of infidelity. Their spirit was not confined to themselves^ Their whole class or sect was imbued with it ; and what is true of them, may be expected to hold true of those who glory in being their followers. Accordingly, it is to such men that I will chiefly refer in discussing the point now before us. SECOND liECTUEE. 63 Whether happily or unhappily for their own good name, we will not say ; but happily for the cause they assailed, the Memoirs of these leading infidels have been placed before the public eye; prepared too for our perusal by no unfriendly hands, but on the contrary, either by the men themselves, or by their admirers, who would be inclined to " ex- tenuate " rather than " set down aught in malice." We have here not only the leading events of their lives, showing how surrounding circumstances may have influenced their opinions and feelings, but we have also their correspondence and conversa- tions with friends to whom they communicated their sentiments unreservedly and fully. There is no species of history more instructive and important than such faithful portraitures of distinguished men, whether friends or enemies of truth and righteousness. It is when we see them in their un- guarded moments, and in the free interchange of thought with bosom friends, that the secret springs of action are developed, and the heart becomes so unveiled as to show, not only what they have done, but why they have done it ; not only what they have believed, but why they have believed it. 64 SECOND LECTUEE. From such evidence, and from the manner in which they have conducted their public assaults on Christianity, we shall draw our proof that the pre vailing causes of infidelity among men of learning are to be found, as we have said, in a want of candor and honesty in the pursuit of truth and a blinding hatred of the truth itself They claim that they are governed in their judgment on all questions by the principles of a sound and enlightened philosophy. But we find that they are not faithful or honest in their in- quiries respecting the truth of the Bible, considered simply as a subject of philosophical investigation. It is at once both the dictate of justice, and essential to sound reasoning, that before we venture to form an opinion of a book which professes to treat of high and important subjects, we should at least give it a careful reading. What, for instance, would Hume or G-ibbon have said concerning a critic who should have pronounced either of their Histories to be a mg^ss of fictions, or a string of crude and awkward blunders, at the same time con- fessing he had never read the work, or at most, had looked into it but partially and superficially? Or, SECOND LECTURE. 65 how would an objector be received, who should represent the time honored works of Newton or Locke as a confused collection of dangerous dog- mas or incomprehensible mysteries; when at the same time he should confess that he had never carefully perused them ? Every right-minded man would cry down such opinions, as equally worth- less and arrogant ; and would frown on the rashness and presumption that dared to pronounce judgment on the labors of such authors, without having taken every pains to understand them. This pre- sumption too would be considered wicked and wild just in proportion as the subjects under considera- tion were of high importance, and the authors had been long honored and trusted by many of the wise and the good. Now here is our Bible, which brings before us subjects of immense importance to man, both here and hereafter; and which, as all must admit, has commanded the careful study and full belief of many among the greatest and best of men in every age. Is it philosophy, any more than it is justice or wisdom, that any one shall pronounce the book unworthy of his faith until he has carefully read 66 SECOND LECTUEE. and examined it ? And have infidels done so before they gave judgment against it? You shall hear from themselves : Hume confessed that he had never read the Bihle after he had grown to mature manhood. This fact was notorious among his cotemporaries. Dr. Johnson, in conversation with several literary friends, once observed, in his usual direct and un- equivocal manner, that no honest man could be a Deist, because no man could be so after a fair ex- amination of the truths of Christianity. When the name of Hume was mentioned to him as an excep- tion to his remark ; he replied, " No sir, Hume once owned to a clergyman in the bishoprick of Durham, that he had never read even the New Testament with attention." Gibbon lets us know that the amount of his critical reading, when finally making up his mind respecting the truth of the Scriptures, embraced only the Gospel of John, and one chapter in the Gospel of Luke. Did the large measure of Divine unction which is found in the writings of the dis-' ciple whom Jesus loved, prove so offensive to a mind like Gibbon's, that he could not persuade SECOND LECTURE. 67 liimself to go farther ? Or, was it his deliberate de- sign to put contempt on the Sacred Volume, hy placing his slight attention to its contents in con- trast with the careful study with which he claims to have weighed the merits of other books 1 Hal ley the astronomer was deeply tinged with Infidelity. On a certain occasion he avowed his scepticism in the presence of Sir Isaac Newton ; when that venerable man turned to him, saying, " Sir, you have never studied these subjects, and I have. Do not disgrace yourself as a philosopher by presumiiig to judge on questions you have never examined." Halley felt himself compelled to admit that the reproof was deserved. We will add another example taken from a well authenticated incident in the life of Dr. Benjamin Franklin. "We are told that during his residence in Paris he was invited to a company embracing many of the courtiers, and of the distinguished men who signalized the age in which they lived by their learning and their scepticism. According to their custom, in a free and promiscuous conversa- tion, Christianity was the great topic, and the Bi- ble was treated with unsparing severity. Growing 68 SECOND LECTUKE, warmer, and more profane in their comments, one of the company attracted universal attention by as- serting, with great confidence, that the Bible was not only a piece of gross deception, but totally devoid of literary merit. With the exception of Franklin, the entire company seemed to give a hearty assent to the sentiment. Being at the time a general favorite, his companions were disquieted by even a tacit reproof from a man of his might and influence. They all appealed to him for his opinion. He replied, in his own peculiar manner, that he was hardly prepared to give them a suita- ble answer, as his mind had been running on the merits of a book which he thought of rare excel- lence, and which he had happened to find in one of the Paris bookstores ; and as they had made allusion to the literary character of the Bible, perhaps it might interest them to compare the merits of his new prize with that old volume. If so, he would read them a few sentences. All were eager to have him proceed, and give them something from his rare book. He then opened it, and with much gravity of manner, and propriety of utterance, read to them the words — " God came from Teman, and SECOND LECTURE. 69 the Holy One from Mount Paran. His glory cover- ed the Heavens, and the earth was full of his praise. His brightness was as the light. He had horns coming out of His hands, and there was the hiding of His power. He stood and measured the earth ; He beheld and drove asunder the nations. The everlasting mountains were scattered ; the perpetual hills did bow. His ways are everlasting." The few sentences made a deep impression. The admiring listeners pronounced them superior to anything they had heard or read ; and that nothing could surpass them in grandeur and sublimity. They all wished to know what was the name of this new work, the name of its author, and whether this was a speci- men of its merits ? Certainly, gentlemen, said Dr. Franklin, smiling at his triumph, my book is fiill of such passages ; It is no other than your good-for- nothing Bible. I have read to you a short para- graph from the prayer of the prophet Habakkuk. Such are the men who assume to themselves the right to sit in judgment on the truth of the Bible ; men who have never examined the book so as to know what it contains, and yet profess to re- ject it as the result of philosophical investigation. 70 SECOND LEOTUEE. Take another proof of their want of fairness in treating the question. "Whatever may be affirmed or denied of Christianity, it is certainly a serious subject. It speaks of matters, that are of most solemn import ; that no rational man should touch or even approach but with a grave and reverential spirit. It teaches the fall of man from a state of innocence and happiness, into a state of sin and suifering. It professes to show the compassion of God in saving men, and tells us that although He is "the High and Holy One who inhabiteth Eternity" he "so loved the world, that he gave his only begot- ten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Is this matter for jesting? Is it fitting or rational to discuss it with sarcasms and scoffing? Does it comport with a sound philosophy to contemplate or treat it in this way? And yet no one can deny that these are the weapons which we find in greatest abundance in the hands of known infidels. It is only at times that we have the opportunity of encountering them in the field of logical argument or sober dis- cussion ; and when plea after plea for their scepti- cism is shown to be weak and worthless, instead of SECOND LECTUEK. 71 yielding with the candor and frankness of a manly spirit, they still claim to be unconquered, because they can utter the spiteful sarcasm or the con- temptuous sneer. Nor do they always rest satisfied till they have gone down in their course to the low depths of vulgar scurrility. "When Voltaire spoke of the only begotten Son of God, the Saviour of the world, a usual exclamation with him was " Ecrasez I'infame" — " Crush the wretch," and the blasphemy was so often repeated as to become one of his house- hold words. In this spirit of low abuse he had fol- lowers too, among those who stood high in his nation, and who may perhaps be said to have gone beyond their leader. When the rulers of France rose up " against the Lord and against his anoint- ed " during the reign of terror and impiety which swept over the land like a whirlwind, they devised and established a Calendar which was a singular compound of blasphemy, pedantry and vulgarity. Desirous of obliterating every feature or material ol Christianity which has long been interwoven with the Calendar of civilized nations, they changed both the designation and beginning of the year, the duration of the months and weeks; and to render 72 SECOND LECTUBE. the revolution in the calculations of time as radical as in every thing else, each day of the year was distinguished by a separate title of its own, the no- menclature being generally taken from the produc- tions of agriculture, or from domestic animals. One day was denominated from the apple, another from the olive; another from the horse, another from the ox. But when the Convention came to assign a distinct name to Christmas, the 25th of December, on which it has been generally believed that Christ was born, this day is deliberately denominated the day of the Dog! To this low point of blasphemous scurrility, so revolting to every sense of decency and piety, could the leading minds of the nation descend, when steeped in the poison of Infidelity. Assaults like these, whether in coarse abuse, or more polished witticisms, may draw forth the sigh of pity and sorrow, but they are not to be met by a reply in kind from those who would obey their Master's will. The christian advocate of the Holy Bible should view himself as the disciple of Him who has commanded us not to render "railing for railing; but contrariwise, blessing, knowing that we are hereunto called, that we should inherit SECOND LECTURE. 73 a blessing." Infidejs are always safe from pursuit when they betake themselves to the path of the scoffer. It would be alike useless and unbecoming to follow them. "Who can refute a sneer?" has been wisely remarked by the judicious Paley, when speaking of the irreverent and sarcastic at- tacks of Gibbon on the Christian faith. Let us take another view of the unfairness and dishonesty to which we refer. We are now meet- ing our infidel opposers as philosophers, the name in which they are constantly glorying. But true philosophy, when tracing effects to their causes, will be careful to distinguish the rule from the ex- ception, and the exception from the rule; to deter- mine between the legitimate and the spurious, between natural results and those which are ano. malous and unnatural. " The tree is known by its fruits," is a sound principle in science, and a car- dinal doctrine in theology. It is common sense, it is general experience. We ask for the application of this rule in form- ing a judgment on the practical results, the natu- ral tendencies of Christianity. We ask that the tree should be judged by its fruits. We ask that 74 SECOND LECTURE. the consequences which can be proved to flow from Christianity as the legitimate fruit of the system, should be distinguished from those which have no true alliance with her teachings or her influences. But this is just what the infidel refuses to do. He exhibits the exception as the rule. As*- if loving to violate truth and right, he holds up the decayed apple as the only product of the tree, and overlooks the rich and plenteous fruit which meets the eyes of every one who has the will to see it and to taste it. If he finds among christians an example of unhappiness or depression of spirit, he imputes to Christianity the misery and gloom which it was sent to remove and dispel. This in- justice and impiety have at times exposed the in- fidel to mortifying chastisement. " I never saw a religious man who was not melancholy," said Hume to Bishop Home; to which the excellent man replied, " That, sir, may be very true ; for it is enough to make any one melancholy who meets with Mr, Hume, and thinks of how he is pervert- ing his best talents to rail against the God who made him." Would such men judge wisely and justly respecting the influence of our religion in SECOND LECTURE. 75 removing unhappiness and disquietude from the heart, let them come with us where Christianity acts itself out most freely ; let them come into our assemhlies of worship, and listen to our songs of praise to Him who has redeemed us hy His hlood ; and there learn whether our religion makes us gloomy. Or if it would be too much for them to go with us into a house of worship, let them go with us into the wide fields of creation, where the sun shines to give life and light to the world be- neath him, where the flowers perfume the air that we may breathe it ; and let us see who derives most enjoyment from the bright scene before us ; whether the Christian who can say " My Father made them all," and made them for my happiness as I pass through this world to a better; or the infidel who sees in this living panorama of Heaven's goodness only the working of some hidden mechanism of nature, blindly producing its usual roimd of results. Equal injustice is done to Christianity in re- ference to her influence on the peace and prospe- rity of communities and nations. We proclaim it as the natural fruit of her teachings and her spirit, that she would bind men together in one family 76 SECOND LECTUEE. of universal brotherhood, that she would render the strong the protectors, not the oppressors of the weak, that she would subdue the bitter passions of hatred and envy, and drive them from the bo- soms and the abodes of men. And we have ample right to declare that such blessings are the native fruits of Christianity; a right arising from her doctrines, from her precepts, and from what she is known to have done when allowed to exercise her sway. Her first great command is, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy G-od," and her " second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." She was ushered into the world with the procla- mation from the skies, " Glory to G-od in the highest, on earth peace and goodwill to men." Her own beautiful description of the mission she came to fulfil in subduing evil and enmity among men is in the words, " They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks, neither shall they learn war any more;" " the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid ; the calf, and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them — and the sucking child SECOND LECTUEE. 77 shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain." And we claim that she has abundantly fulfilled these glowing predictions, that she has actually wrought these wonders of loving kindness and peace wherever we find her disciples bearing her name and breathing her spirit. In her earliest days, and when she first spread abroad her domin- ion through the world, it was the confession of her enemies, "Behold how these Christians love one another." But how have such historians as Hume, Vol- taire and Gibbon described her; described her in her influence upon the peace, the harmony and the benevolence of men and of nations? Their unjust accusations, their revolting caricatures are but too well known and read of all men. The followers of the Redeemer who came to create peace, peace to him that is afar off and to him that is near, are habitually described as fanatics and incen- diaries who make war on the kindest amenities of human life, and have drenched the earth with blood to spread a dogma or a sect. Nero set fire to 5 78 SECOND LEOTUKE. Rome, and burnt to ashes the fairest portions of the city in order to gratify his fiendish love of cruelty and wickedness; and although Christians were among the foremost in their efforts to stay the progress of the devouring element, he accused them of being the incendiaries, and put them to death in tens of thousands for the crime falsely laid to their charge. His conduct is a striking illus- tration of the treatment Christianity has received from infidel historians. Crimes which she con- dems, evils which she was sent into the world to prevent or to cure, have been charged to her ac- count, until she has been made responsible for atrocities not less degrading and repulsive than ever stained the pages of Pagan idolatry or Maho- medan delusion. Had infidels carried the same mode of argument into questions of science and letters which they have employed against the christian -religion, they would have been treated with derision and scorn. Farther still : while they have thus disregarded the principles of justice and the rules of sound reasoning, we have evidence that in their profes- sions of infidelity, they also violate their own con- SECOND LECTURE. 79 victions of truth. How was it with Hume? He was pleased to be known as the correspondent of distinguished divines. In a letter from Dr. Blair it appears that the subject of his infidelity had been introduced, and we would hope with becoming pro- testations against it. In his reply he says " I have long since done with inq[uiries on these subjects and am become incapable of instruction. I beg that in time to come they may be forborne between us." And yet, anxious as he was to exclude these sub- jects from his thoughts, at times they forced them selves upon him, and compelled him to acknowledge his conviction of their importance. I do not now refer to the evidence of it seen in his uneasy and confused expression of countenance, indicating something more than mortified vanity, whenever he heard the names of such men as Campbell and Beattie, "Warburton and Hurd, who had exposed his sophistries and castigated his impieties. But T quote confessions which came from his own lips. Sorrow, especially at the death of friends and near relatives will often, at least for the time, so drive vanity arid pride from the heart, that it will speak out its real feelings with sincerity. Con- 80 SECOND LEOTUBE. science theu gains a sway which it may not have possessed in the hour of gladness and self-con- fidence. Hume so felt it notwithstanding his well- known ambition to he the stoical philosopher. When the news of his mother's death reached him, whether owing to compunction for efforts he had made to deprive her of her faith in the Gospel, or to some other cause, he was plunged into the deep- est affliction. The friend who witnessed it, and who wished both to console and benefit him, took occasion to say "You owe this uncommon grief to your having thrown ofi" the principles of religion : for if you had not, you would have been consoled by the firm belief that the good lady, who was not only the best of mothers, but the most pious of Christians, is happy in the realm of the just." To which the sorrowing infidel replied, " Though T throw out my speculations to entertain the learned and metaphysical world, yet in other things I do not think so difierently from the rest of mankind as you imagine." By his own showing then, Hume's hypocrisy was as reckless as it was deliberate and profane; and the confession which grief wrung from him, leaves his name without the slightest claim to SECOND LECTtJKE. 81 respect from any man who values truth and sincerity in things that are sacred. "As a madman who oasteth fire-brands, arrows and death, so is the man that deceiveth his neighbor, and saith, Am not I in sport?" The incident is perhaps the more impressive, as it has been carefully spread before the public by one of his relatives in order to save his name from a still worse imputation. As another evidence of the moral turpitude to which he had reduced himself when treating the subject of religion, we may refer to an event which many of his admirers have admitted to be a cause of embarrassment and shame. The mind of a young clergyman, Mr. V , belonging to the church of England, had become perverted by a perusal of Hume's writings. He felt that having lost his be* lief in the truth of Christianity, he could not, as a man of candor and truth, continue to preach its doctrines. In this dilemma he applied to one of Hume's friends, who referred the case to Hume him* self, saying " You are somewhat bound to give him your best advice. V- is a very good-natured, ho- nest, sensible fellow, without any fortune. He seems rather inclined not to be a clergyman ; but you know 82 SECOND LECTURE. as well and better than I do how difHoult it is to get any tolerable civil employment. If you should determine on his being a clergyman, throw in some- thing consolatory on his being obliged to renounce white stockings the rest of his life." Hume replied " Let Mr V , adhere to the ec- clesiastical profession; for civil employment for men of letters can scarcely be found." And he adds, as his reason for giving this advice, " It is putting too great a respect on the vulgar, and on their supersti- tions, to pique one's self on sincerity with regard to them. Did ever one make it a point of honor to speak truth to children or madmen? If the thing were worthy being treated gravely, I should tell him, that the Pythian oracle, with the approbation of Xenophon, advised every one to worship the G-ods — vo{tcj TtoT^oa;. I wish it were still in my power to be a hypocrite in this particular. The common duties of society usually require it ; and the ecclesiastical profession only adds a little more to an innocent dissimulation, or rather simulation, without which it is impossible to pass through the world." We are not told whether the young man follow- SECOND LECTURE. 83 ed the iniquitous advice to spend a life-time of de- ception as a minister in the church of Grod. But we would fondly hope that, however unscrupulous may have been the master who gave it, it involved too gross a violation of truth and of fidelity to his own conscience for the disciple to follow it. If this was the fit place for the demonstration, we might go on and spread before you convincing proofs of Hume's dishonesty in his far-famed " His- tory of England." Hostility to religion, admiration of royal prerogative, and opposition to the rights of the people, were predominant feelings with him when he prepared that able and insidious work; and under the searching investigations of Brodie and others, he stands convicted of having wilfully garbled and mutilated facts of essential importance in order to answer his unworthy ends. Prom this painful exhibition of insincerity and dishonesty in one whom many have long de- lighted to honor, let us turn to another and a very different man, though both noted for their Infidelity. Let us hear the voluntary and deliberate confession of Rousseau, respecting whom we are told by a poet too nearly allied to him in spirit : 84 SECOND LECTUEE. " His life was one long war with self-sought foes, " Or friends by him self-banished ; for his mind " Had grown suspicion's sanctuary, and chosey " For its own cruel sacrifice, the kind " 'Gainst whom he raged with fury strange and blind ; "And from him came, "As from the Pythian's mystic cave of yore, " Those oracles which set the world in flame ; " Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more." This "self torturing sophist" never could so utterly destroy his innate sense of the beautiful or the grand as not to admire it whether he saw it in the opening flower, the lofty mountain, or the page of history though it might be the page of inspira- tion. We cite his confession the more willingly be- cause of the care which he has himself taken to place it on record.. In his " Emilius " or " Treatise of Education," perhaps the least exceptionable of all his works, speaking as if to a son or a young friend whom he would aim to instruct, he gives this remarkable and impressive testimony to the truth and excellence of Christianity and to the divinity of its author. "I will confess to you, that the majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel hath its influence on my heart. Peruse SECOND LECTURE. 85 the works of our philosophers with all their pomp of diction ; how mean, how contemptible are they, compared with the Scripture! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime should be mere- ly the work of man? Is it possible that the sacred personage, whose history it contains, should be him- self a mere man? Do we find that he assumed the air of an enthusiast or ambitious sectary? "What sweetness, what purity in his manners ! What an affecting gracefulness in his delivery! "What sub- limity in his maxims ! What profound wisdom in his discourses ! What presence of mind, what sub- tilty, what truth in his replies ! How great the com- mand oTer his passions ! Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live and so die, with- out weakness and Avithout ostentation ? When Plato described his imaginary good man loaded with all the shame of guilt, yet meriting the highest re- wards of virtue, he describes exactly the character of Jesus Christ \ the resemblance was so striking that all the Fathers perceived it. What prepossession, what blindness must it be to compare the son of Sophroniscus to the son of Mary ? What an infinite disproportion there is be- 86 SECOND LECTURE. tween them ! Socrates, dying without pain or igno- miny, easily supported his character to the last; and if his death, however easy, had not crowned his life, it might have heen doubted whether Socrates, with all his wisdom, was anything more than a vain sophist. He invented, it is said, the theory of morals. Others, however, had before put them in practice : he had only to say what they had done, and reduce their examples to precepts. Aris- tides had been just, before Socrates defined justice; Leonidas gave up his life for his country, before Socrates declared patriotism to be a duty ; the Spar- tans were a sober people before Socrates recom- mended sobriety ; before he had even defined virtue, G-reece abounded with virtuous men. But where could Jesus learn, among his compatriots, that pure ' and sublime morality of which he only hath given us both precept and example. The greatest wisdom was made known amidst the most bigoted fanati- cism, and the simplicity of the most heroic virtues did honor to the vilest people on the earth. The death of Socrates, peaceably philosophizing with his friends, appears the most agreeable that could be wished for ; that of Jesus, expiring in the midst SECOND LECTURE. 87 of agonizing pains, abused, insulted, cursed by a wtiole nation, is the most horrible that could be feared. Socrates, in receiving the cup of poison, blessed indeed the weeping executioner who admi- nistered it: but Jesus in the midst of excruciating tortures prayed for his merciless tormentors. Yes, if the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God. Shall we suppose the evangelic history a mere fic- tion? Indeed, my friend, it bears not the marks o. fiction; on the contrary, the history of Socrates, which nobody presumes to doubt, is not so well at- tested as that of Jesus Christ. Such a supposition in fact only shifts the difficulty without removing it. It is more inconceivable that a number of per- sons should agree to write such a history, than that one only should furnish the subject of it. The Jew- ish authors were incapable of the diction, and stran- gers to the morality contained in the G-ospel; the marks of whose truth are so striking and inimita- ble that the inventor would be a more astonish- ing character than the hero." "Is Saul also among the prophets?" might justly be asked in view of these sentiments coming from 88 SECONL LEOtUltE. the pen of the unbelieving Rousseau. No wonder that Voltaire, D'Alembert and other infidels of the day should have been so vexed and irritated with him for having made such an unlocked for confes- sion, that they had almost disowned him from their infidel brotherhood. He presents to us, and in a very striking manner, those strong arguments, taken from the internal evidence on behalf of the gospel, which no ingenuity has ever been able to refute ; he acknowledges that he felt their force ; and yet he still persisted in infidelity, and spent his subsequent life in efforts to malign and destroy the religion, to the truth of which he had borne such unequivocal, and as he says, such heartfelt testimony. Such proofs of insincerity, of deliberate violence to their own convictions, as we have given from the lives of Hume and Rousseau, might be greatly multiplied ; and they throw a dark, dark shade, not only on Infidelity, but on the infidel himself. They betray a want of honesty, and a disregard of truth, which if practiced in the ordinary concerns of life would go far to banish a man from respectable so- ciety. It has been said of G-ibbon, that he assails Christianity with the temper of a man who sought SKCOND LECTURE. 89 to resent a personal injury ; and the sentiment is but a fair verdict concerning infidel writers general- ly. They act under a bias that would exclude them from passing judgment on a question at issue be- tween man and man in a court of justice. They feel that they have a personal controversy with the Bible, and they aim to discredit it as a measure of self-defence and self-justification. " With such a temper apparent," says the ven- erable Wilson, in his lectures on the subject, "I have a key to the secrets of their unbelief." "I see one writer speaking of the life and dis- courses of our Saviour with the ignorance and buf- foonery of a jester, and asserting that ridicule is the test of truth ; I want no one to inform me that he is an unbeliever. " I see another virtually denying all human tes- timony with one breath, and with another defend- mg suicide and apologizing for lewdness and adul- tery: — I do not ask if he is dissatisfied with the Christian evidence. "I see a third, after composing a work full of hy^jocrisy and deceit on the Subject of religion, pub- lishing it to the world on the persuasion of having 'JO SECOND LECTURE. heard a voice from heaven. I observe another ex- plainmg away the historical narrative of the Old Testament as a mere mystical representation of the signs of the zodiac. I see a late noble poet betray- ing, throughout his profligate writings, caprice and vanity, self-conceit and misanthropy, together with an abandonment of all moral feeling. I want no one to explain to me the sources of the unbelief of such writers. " I turn to our modern historians, and I mark their blunders in whatever relates to religion, their inconsistencies, their misrepresentations, the impu- rities which defile their pages, their vanity and self confidence, and the malice and spleen with which they pursue the followers of Christ. I ask no fur- ther questions. " I open the works of the G-erman infidels, and find the index of their true temper in the follies and absurdities with which they are content to forsake all common sense in their comments on the sacred text, and to exhibit themselves as the gazing-stocks of Christendom. " I cast my eye on the flippancy of the Prencn school of irreligion, and see such entire ignorance of SECOND LECTURE. 01 the simplest points of religious knowledge, such gross impurities, connected with hlasphemies which I dare not repeat ; I see such an obvious attempt to confound truth and falsehood on the most im- portant of all subjects, and such a bitterness of scorn, a sort of personal rancour against the Christ- ian religion and its Divine founder, as to betray- most clearly the cause in which they are engaged. I take the confession of one of their number, and ask whether, in such a temper of mind, any reli- gious question could be soundly determined. 'I have consulted our philosophers, I have perused their books, I have examined their several opinions, I have found them all proud, positive and dogmati- cal, even in their pretended scepticism; knowing every thing, proving nothing, and ridiculing one another.' ' If our philosophers were able to discover truth, which of them would interest himself about it? There is not one of them, who if he could dis- tinguish truth from falsehood, would not prefer his own error to the truth that is discovered by another. Where is the philosopher, who for his own glory would not willingly deceive the whole human race,' " 02 SECOND LEOTUEE. We are aware of the show of indignant feeling with which we have heen told, it is not to be en- dured that such authors as Bolingbroke, Hume, and Grihbon should be charged with unfairness and dis- honesty in their writings. But we have the facts, facts which speak for themselves, and by every righteous tribunal they will be pronounced decisive in the case. It is no pleasant labor thus to unmask opposers. We would prefer to leave their honesty unimpeached, and to meet them in a fair trial upon the strength of their arguments. They have not us to blame if we go farther back. They have tliemselves invited it. They have themselves put on record the proofs of their insincerity and incon- sistency. We know not indeed how far men may go in deceiving themselves, and thus at last becomp less dishonest because so blinded in their delusions as to have lost the power to discriminate clearly be- tween truth and error. A man may so effectually destroy his own power of vision as to believe it to be dark night long after the rising sun has declared it to be clear day. Our Maker has made it a fixed law of our being that we cannot persist in abusing SECOND LECTURE. 93 or perverting any of the faotdties he has given us without in the end destroying them. He has assur- ed us that when men receive not the love of truth that they might be saved, for this cause he sends them strong delusions, that they should believe a lie. " There is a principle of belief implanted in our nature that seeks to avenge itself on the infidel for the wrong done to his own soul when he turns aside from reposing confidence in Him who is truth itself; and we have examples constantly ocouring to show that when a man has rendered himself sceptical as to Divine Revelation, he is often left, as a just punishment, to become the dupe of the most gross absurdities. Indeed the most gross delusions of unreasoning, blind superstition, have been fully equalled by the weak credulity of those who have become most deeply involved ia the mazes of infi- delity. It was said of the notorious Vossius, who dishonored the name of a venerable father by his licentious and hardened irreligion, that he stood ready to believe any thing and every thing, except that the Bible was true; and tliat his faith was generally strong according as the falsehood was glaringly absurd. 94 SECOND LECTUEE. This discreditable weakness of mind had be- come so conspicuous and general among the scep- tics of Shaftesbury's day, that notwithstanding his well known sympathy with them in their unbelief, he tells us in his " Characteristics," " For my own part, I have ever thought this sort of men to be in general more credulous, though after another man- ner, than the mere Vulgar. Besides what I have observed in conversation with men of this character, I can produce many anathematized authors, who, if they are wanting in true Israelitish faith, can make amends by a Chinese or Indian one. If they are short in Syria, or Palestine, they have their full measure in America or Japan. Histories of Incas or Iroquois, written by pirates and renegades, sea-captains and trusty travellers, pass for authen- tic records, and are canonical with the virtuosos of this sort. The Christian miracles may not so well satisfy them ; but they dwell with the highest con- tentment on the prodigies of Moorish and Pagan countries." Had Shaftesbury lived in a later generation he might have confirmed his remarks by examples seen in high places of power where he would scarcely SECOND LECTURE. 95 have expected to find them. Frederick of Prussia was anxious to he known as the great infidel of his time. He seems to have counted it a greater hon- or to he the friend and disciple of Voltaire than to he the conqueror of Austria. And yet, although he could fill Europe with the fame of his skill and courage as a warrior ; while he was scoffing at the solemn truths of Christianity, he was the tremhling dupe of judicial astrology : and the dread of a pre- diction uttered hy a Saxon fortune-teller, to whom he was led hy the craving of his nature for some- thing to helieve, so affected his mind as often to render him utterly unhappy and insufierahly petu- lant and tyrannical. But whatever such men may have done hy per- verseness and ohduracy of heart to impair their powers of discriminating truth from falsehood, and to bring on themselves a judicial blindness respect- ing the word of God ; none of them can plead that they were " horn blind." The innate power of con- science, which is given by our Creator to every in- telligent being, cannot be subdued except as the consequence of long and repeated violence ; and there is a self-evidencing power in the light of christian &6 SECOND LECTURE, truth, like that coining from the sun in the heavens, which makes itself more or less known even to those who would turn away from it. They may shut up or cast away the Bible ; but they will feel its influence in the very atmosphere of a christian community. Its memorials meet them in every re- curring sabbath, in every house of public worship, in every institution which distinguishes a christian people ftom a nation of pagans : and the monitor within will make a response to these signs from heaven that meet it from without. Hume confesses concerning himself, as we have seen, that at the very time when he was giving out his lessons of infidelity to the world, his inmost thoughts in his hours of sobriety and reflection gave a very dif- ferent testimony. Much as he might endeavor to shut religion out from his mind, there were seasons when he felt constrained to think of it, and to think as other people thought, of its value to our world of sin and sorrow. But these convictions seem to have become more and more faint, accord- ing as they were often resisted, until finally the deadly stupor of infidelity gained supreme control of the man who had labored to cherish it. SECOND LECTURE. 97 We have no doubt there were external circum- stances in the lives of such leading infidels as we have named, which combined with depravity of heart to confirm them in their hostility to Chris- tianity, perhaps to embitter it. There were events in the life of Hume, which may have had this sinis- ter influence on his mind. Surprising as it must appear, after he had betrayed his infidelity, and when he had so degraded his own sense of right and wrong as to write essays vindicating suicide and other enormities, he twice offered himself as a can- didate for the Chair of Moral Philosophy. His first application was for the professorship in the Univer- sity of Edinburgh ; and when he had been rejected by that venerable seat of learning, as if determined to brave public sentiment, he afterwards applied for the same appointment in the University of Glasgow. The community were amazed at his hardihood and presumption in supposing that an avowed unbe- liever in Christianity could be chosen to tea.dk morals to the youth of a christian nation. He com- plained that he was treated with injustice, inas- much as he had published volume after volume to which no exception could be taken, and that evea 5*6 SECOND LECTURE. if a few pages of reprehensible matter had escaped him, it was unreasonable to condemn him on ac- count of so small a part of what he had written. On one occasion when he was thus pleading his own cause, one of the company replied to him " Sir, you put me in mind of a Notary Public who having been condemned to be hung for forgery, lamented the hardship of his case ; that after having written many thousand inoffensive sheets, he should be hanged for one line." Happily for the cause of truth and of morals, the appointment was in the hands of those who could not be persuaded to con- sider either forgery or blasphemy against G-od and His holy word as matters of small moment ; and Hume was shut out from a place which he so per- tinaciously coveted, but so little deserved. As might be expected, the clergy, in discharge of their duty, were both earnest and indignant in resisting his applications ; and it is not surprising that a man of Hume's temperament should wish to visit on reli- gion itself, the, resentment which he was not slow to avow against its ministers and advocates. It may well be supposed too that the minds of both Hume and G-ibbon, especially the latter, be- SECOND LECTURE. 99 came more and more estranged from Christianity by their intercourse with the leading savans of Prance. In their days France was one vast hot bed of impi- ety and infidelity, of sparkling intellect and profli- gate manners. It set the fashion not only in the world of gaiety, but in the world of philosophy. So alluring did Hume find his position when he was in Paris, that he had a strong inclination to make it his home for life, notwithstanding his attachment to his friends in Scotland. Gibbon's love of France amounted to such a passion that he preferred writing in the French language rather than in his own. His exclamation when he met with Voltaire was — " Virgilium vidi tantum ;" and to such a ridiculous length did he carry his desire to appear at home in every thing which was French, that his friend Mme. DuDeffand remarked, she was often on the point of saying to him, "Don't give yourself so much trouble ; you deserve the honor of being a Frenchman." It is a melancholy proof that a na- tion has reached the last stage of moral delinquen- cy, and the contagion becomes doubly dangerous, when the poison of impiety strikes as deep into the minds of women as of men. It was remarkably so -00 SECOND LECTUEE. at this time in the French nation ; and no one can peruse the biographies of Hume and Gibbon with- out perceiving that whenever they came out from the licentious and brilliant salons of Paris, they had fallen from bad to worse. But among the external causes of the wide- spread infidelity which showed itself not only in Hume and Gibbon, but also in many of their co- temporaries, we must not fail to mention the low state of religion which then prevailed to a lament- able extent. It is a truth which cannot be too often repeated or too solemnly urged, that the strength of Christianity to " still the enemy and the avenger," and "put to silence the lying lips," is never so irre- sistible as when displayed in the purity and filial devotedness of Christians. When the church "looks forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun," she is also "terrible as an army with ban- ners;" and goes forward, like her Lord, conquering and to conquer. If all is well within, she has nothing to fear from without, "though an host should encamp against her." But widely difierent was her condition at the time of which we speak, "With the exception of a comparatively few redeem- SECOND LKCTURK. 101 ing points, the picture was gloomy and forbidding throughout the wide territory which had once own- ed the sway of Christianity, and still claimed to pass under her name. In some lands she was dis- figured by superstitions that brought her worship in- to close affinity with the corrupt rites of Paganism; and in others she was enervated and depressed un- der the weight of cold indifierence or proud un- meaning formalism. She had not yet felt the influ- ence of the burning and shining lights which have since arisen to restore her to herself, and wake her up to the duty not only of repairing her own deso- lations, but of making the aggressive iruroads on the kingdom of darkness which are both the index of her strength and the sure means of increasing it* " While men slept" in this deep slumber, the tares of impiety and infidelity were sown broadcast, es- pecially throughout the nations of the Old World ; and we must lament that among those whom we find sleeping at their posts, are men who were dis- tinguished for their official station and extensive in- fluence; and yet, when weighed in the balances are found greatly wanting in the spirit of firmness and decision with which they ought to have rebuked 102 SECOND LECTUBE. the open enemies of the faith they were appointed to defend and vindicate. But in whatever degree external circumstances or the state of the times may have influenced the ultimate views of infidels, it is too plain to he ques- tioned, that their infidelity had its origin and its chief aliment in an "evil heart of unbelief" The Bible which they assailed explains their case and unfolds their motives, when it tells us "they loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil ;" " having their understanding darkened, be- cause of the hardness of their heart, they became vain in their imaginations ;" "professing themselves to be wise, they became fools." And from the language which the Apostle here uses, describing their ambi- tious desires to be noted for superior wisdom, we are reminded, that, if among the unworthy motives which excited their hostility to religion there is one which seems to have obtained the greatest ascen- dancy, it is that prurient ambition for distinction in knowledge which was man's first sin against his Maker, and is frequently the last which will yield to the power of the Gospel. Like Simon the Magi- cian, the first of their race on record in modern his- SECOND LECTTJEE. 103 tory, " giving out that himself was some great one," they were captivated with a desire of exhibiting themselves as great; great in the enlargement ol their views, the fearlessness of their inquiries and Ihe extent of discoveries which they hoped would overturn the received belief of former days. This dangerous ambition is peculiarly the be- setting sin of active minds in early life. Happy for those who, in the formation of first opinions on great subjects, are under the influence of guardians and instructors whose sober and experienced judgment may avail to chasten these ardent aspirings, and implant in the heart that humility and becoming self-distrust which are the beginning of true wisdom. Had a wise and timely control, by some parental hand, been exercised over the minds of Hume and G-ibbon, how different might have been their course and their influence in the world! But unhappily they were left to themselves at the period of life when the self-sufficiency, of which we speak, was unchecked; and they fell easy victims to the temp- tation of thinking more highly of themselves than they ought to think. Hume, while in childhood, lost his father, and seems to have met with no one 104 SECOND LECTURE, who cautioned him against the absorbing desire to be known as a " discoverer in philosophy," which, as his friends admit, controled his tastes and pur- suits before he had arrived at the age of manhood. Gibbon^s father lived to see his son growing up to matured years ; and yet, owing to various causes, he left the care of the boy to instructors who usually left him to take care of himself : the consequence was that his mind ran wild, and the ambition to master abstract questions became a passion with the lad. It is melancholy to see him, when yet in the greenness of his youth, grappling with subjects beyond his strength; and his mind becoming bent and distorted under burdens firom w;hich no kind and faithful hand came to relieve him, while no friendly voice was raised to rebuke the presumption which so overtasked his faculties. Speaking of his residence at Oxford as a student in Magdalen Col- lege, and of the entire neglect with which he was treated by the Professors, he tells us in his Me- moirs, "Prom my childhood I had been fond of religious disputation; nor had the elastic spring been totally broken by the weight of the atmos- phere of Oxford. The blind activity of idleness SECOKD LECTURE. 105 urged me to advance without armour into the dan- gerous mazes of controversy; and at the age of sixteen I bewildered myself in the errors of the Church of Rome." In this way his mind wearied itself into confirmed disease, and arrogantly con- ceiting that no one ought to believe what he could not comprehend, he threw aside one set of opinions after another, till he became self-school- ed into a scepticism that grew with his growth, till he rose to be one of the most dangerous foes whidi Christianity has ever encountered. From such a neglected soil have sprung up, in different ages of the world, many of what Sir Thomas Brown calls "the sturdy doubts and bois- terous objections wherewith the unhappiness of our knowledge too nearly acquainteth us, and which are to be encountered, not in a martial posture, but on our knees." "Keep back thy servant from pre- sumptuous sin," is the prayer of the man after G-od's own heart; and we can scarcely conceive of any sin more presumptuous or offensive than the spirit of pride and self-sufficiency with which men have too often professed to inquire into the truth of G-od's word. The challenge is addressed to all created in- 106 SECOND LECTURE. telligences, however high, whether of man or of angel, "Can'st thou by searching find out God? can'st thou find out the Almighty unto perfection ? It is high as heaven; what can'st thou do? deeper than hell ; what can'st thou know?" As a fit response to the overwhelming inquiry, we may well exclaim with Paul, " Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom arid knowledge of G-od ! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out I For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him . again? For of him, and through him, and to him are all things : to whom be glory forever. Amen." No man can be suitably prepared for learning the Divine Will, or inquiring into it, till he imbibes the feeling portrayed in the solemn and impressive woids of our Lord, "Verily, I say unto you, whoso- ever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a lit tie child, shall in no wise enter therein." " The se- cret of the Lord," says the Psalmist "is with them that fear him, and he will show them his covenant. The meek will he guide in judgment, and the meek will he teach his way." And as this meekness, this SECOND LECTURE. 107 childlike docility is the spirit befitting even the greatest and the wisest of men, when they would be made wise unto salvation; never does hranan greatness appear so ripe and attractive, as when we find it seated at the feet of Jesus, confessing its own weakness and ignorance, and asking help and wis- dom from Him who is the Light of the world. Pew men have exercised so powerful a sway among the learned around him as Dr. Samuel Johnson. But notwithstanding the high renown which he gained for eminence in literature, he seems to have his highest claim to our admiration, when we hear him offering this prayer to God, in which we should all desire to join: " Lord, my Maker and Protector, who hast graciously sent me into this world to work out my salvation with fear and trembling, enable me to drive from me all such inquiet and perplexing thoughts as may mislead or hinder me in the prac- tice of those duties which thou hast required. When I behold the works of thy hands, give me grace always to remember that thy thoughts are not my thoughts, nor thy ways my ways. And while it shall please thee to continue me in this 108 SECOND LECTUEE. world, where much is to be done, and little to be known, teach me, by thy Holy Spirit, to withdraw my mind from unprofitable and dangerous inqui- ries; from difficulties vainly curious ; and doubts im- possible to be solved. Let me rejoice in the light which thou hast imparted: let me serve thee with active zeal and humble confidence; and wait with patient expectation for the time in which the soul which thou receivest, shall be satisfied with know- ledge. Grant this, Lord, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen." Learned Men who have embraced Christianity. Matthew, ii. 1, 2. " There came wise men from the East ; saying, Where is he thai is born King of the Jews ? for we have seen his star in the East and are come to worship him." It is a beautiful idea of the Ancients, that the most venomous serpents which infest our earth are ' to be found only in those regions which abound with the most sovereign antidotes to their poison. "Whether this be true or untrue in the world of na- ture, it is a principle which prevades the moral creation. Evil always has its limits. It never can become either perpetual or unrestrained. It some- times comes to an end from having in itself the elements of self-combustion ; and is destroyed by a process resulting from its own nature. At other times, by its encroachments on every thing high 7 110 THIED LECTFEE. and holy, it awakens ^ resistance which overpowers and crushes it by the hands of those whom it had aimed to destroy. To both these causes it is per- haps owing, that the triumphs of infidelity have always been short, and that in the end it has met with overthrows so complete and decisive. But friends of the truth who are faithful to every trust, will not allow error to live until it may die out of its own accord, or perish by the laws of its own nature. However short may be its life, the evil fruit which would spring from it, might last forever ; and accordingly, as you will see from what we are now to set before you, wherever infidelity has sown its seeds; like the fabled teeth of the dragon, they have started up into axmed men ; men who could not be impelled to turn their weapons against each other, but men armed in the panoply of truth, to make war in its defence and for its wider dominion. We cannot be said, in our former Lecture on the subject, to have done injustice to infidelity by an unfair exhibition of the force it can array in its de- fence, "We have not raked up from the kennel the low and debased who are found on its side: nor have we called forth from the dens of pollution, the THIRD LECTUEE. Ill scurrilous, noisy and reckless revilers of Chris- tianity, who station themselves under the infidel banner. We have passed by this motley and loath- some host in silence. We have presented to view only the chosen and acknowledged leaders of in- fidelity, its ablest and most distinguished advo- cates ; and in our view of their l«arning and their lives, their scepticism and its causes, we have aimed to give tiiem full credit for whatever they may claim, either in learning or in character. But hav- ing thus surveyed the strengtii of those who have set themselves against us, let us now turn to the ranks of the learned, who appear under a different banner and animated by a different spirit. Their banner is the cross, with its motto—" In hoc vin- ces;" and their spirit, love to the truth and to Him who has revealed it for the salvation of a lost world. Let me here observe, that in the array of names which I am about to set before you, for the sake of argument, I will not take into the account any of those who have been known as ministers of the Grospel, however they may have been distinguished for their scholarship and learning. And yet let me not be understood to admit, that as a- body the 112 THIRD LECTURE. clergy are to be held of small moment to the cause of letters and science. I cannot be accused of un- due partiality for my own profession, when I claim, that if the learning of the clergy were to be swept away from the mass of human knowledge, it would leave a chasm, " a great gulf that could not be passed over " for generations to come. Even in that age of the world, when as a Profession, they were far from being what they ought to have been, they were the chief, if not the sole preservers of letters. " The Dark Ages " but too well deserve the name. But though they were dark, they were not without gleams of light. The darkness was not Egyptian, a blackness that was total and unrelieved. There were stars, if nothing more, in the expanse above us. And it was the clergy, as is held in remembrance by their very name, who kept the light of know- ledge from utter extinction in that dreary night of intellect. Nor are we indebted to them only for the indus- try with which they preserved the materials of classi- cal learning, both Greek and Uoman. Physical sci- ence has always been largely a debtor to their labors. Six hundred years ago, or about the middle of THIRD LECTURE. 113 the thirteenth century, Roger Bacon gave to the world his "work, which obtained for him the title of " the Wonderful Doctor," in which we find the first movements towards several of those discoveries which have since revolutionized the face of the civilized world. Long before gunpowder was known in the art of war, he foretold " a substance may be prepared which even in very small quantities will produce a loud report in the air, kindle like a train of fire, and be able to destroy whole castles and ar- mies." He was the first to teach that " we may cut or shape glasses so that some of them will enlarge objects, or bring them nearer, and others will di- minish or remove them farther; some will make them appear upside down, others right them again." Here you find the germ of the telescope and micro- scope, which have immeasurably enlarged the limits of knowledge both in the terrestrial and celestial worlds. To mention only one other suggestion of his busy and prolific mind. " It is possible," he de- clared, " to build ships that might be managed by one man, and surpass in swiftness all ordinary ves- sels, even if full of rowers. Moreover, a kind ol carriage may be constructed, which without being lU THIKD LECTUBE. drawn by horses could go over an incredible space." The steamers and the locomotives, which are the boasted inventions of our day, are, as you here see, only the realization of Eoger Bacon's original con- ceptions, the fulfilment of his bold predictions. Owing to the darkness of the age in which he lived, this far-sighted philosopher, whose diligent studies and skilful experiments led him to discover that such powers lay hidden in the bosom of nature, barely escaped being put to death as a magician. But notwithstanding the suspicions and reproach which he had to encounter; he brought to light what may be viewed as the fiist chapter in that long list of scientific discoveries which have ever since been in. progress, and are yet to be carried on until every power of nature shall be subdued to the services and comfort of man. And yet, though per- secuted by his mistaken and narrow minded breth- ren, he still avowed himself to be one of the cleisgy, and that he wished to be always known and num- bered as belonging to the sacred profession. Nor should I fail, in this connection, to mention, at least one more example in the history of truth and know- ledge, where we find the clergy taking the lead. THIBD LECTURE. 115 It was mainly to such men as Luther and Calvin, and Knox and Cranmer, Aat we are indebted for that emancipation of mind, known emjphatically as the Reformation, and which at the close of the " Dark Ages " led to new and enlarged views not only in religion, but in philosophy, and iii all the civil and social rights which exist between man and man. But much as the clergy have done for the exten- sion of knowledge in every department of learning, and many as are the examples we might cite from them who have stood high in letters as well as in religion ; we will forego at present all allusion to them, when we speak of distinguished scholars who have been intelligent believers in Christianity. It shall not be said that we derive our testimony from men who are influenced by the spirit either of their caste or their craft, as the official defenders of Eeve- lation. We confine ourselves to the laity; and even then, the difficulty lies in determining whom to select out of so great a number of illustrious witnesses. As a prelude to the high names which I am about to recjitef I should perhaps refer to some of 116 THIED LECTURE. the most distinguished sages of antiquity, who have expressed in strong and pathetic language not only their longing desire to know what the gospel teach- -es, but also their full conviction that such know ledge could be revealed to man only by his Maker and Preserver. " Athenians," said Socrates, " you must wait till a personage appear, to teach you how you ought to conduct yourselves towards God and towards man." " When," he adds " 0, when shall that period arrive ;" and when asked by Alcibiades, "Who is he that shall thus instruct mankind?" So- crates replied, " It is he who now takes care of you and is concerned for you." " I have entered the world in sin," said the far- famed Aristotle, " I have lived in ignorance, I die in perturbation. Cause of causes pity me!" In such affecting language did these venerable sages, the philosophers and leading minds of their day, confess and lament their ignorance of what they were anxious to know as moral and immortal beings. Such were their heart-felt longings for a re- velation of grace and truth from God, which should guide them in duty while they lived, and- give them a sure and steadfast hope for eternity when they THIBD LECTUEK. 117 died. They had pursued their diligent inquiries far" as unaided reason could carry them, hut in the end, they " could rather feel after God than find him;" and the more they knew concerning Him from his works, the more sensihly did they realize their need of that knowledge which they felt could be learned only from his word. They longed for the Bible, and to know what the Bible reveals ; and could such men as Socrates now speak from their graves, how would they put the hardened infidel to the blush, as they would rebuke his impiety and blasphemy in turning his back on this pre- cious volume, which they would have given worlds to possess. But leaving behind us lands covered with the- darkness of paganism, let us turn to nations which have been visited with the day-spring from on high- Let us look at some of the luminaries in letters and science, who have enjoyed the light of the Gospel,, and see how they regarded it. The text reminds us that when the Saviour was a new born babe and cradled in a manger, " Wise men from the East," — men devoted to the philosophy then prevailing, honored and owni3d Him as th» 118 THIRD LECTUKK. Desire of nations and the Saviour of a lost world. As we proceed, you will find that the star which at the dawn of the Christian era thus led men of learn- ing to the feet of the Redeemer, has not yet disap- peared, or failed to fulfil its high ofiice ; and as the space to which I confine myself will not allow me to enumerate the names of illustrious scholars who followed its guidance in the earlier ages of Christianity, let us at once come down to times more modem and more familiar. I will begin with Poetry ; and the Muse I will here present to your view, is " No reeling Goddess with a zoneless waist." We leave the inspiration derived from so fecu- lent a source to those who, in their rihald verse, have dishonored the Muse by the impieties to which they have degraded her. We read from a roll con- taining only the names of those who have sung in strains which have been equally an honor to poetry and to themselves. Has infidelity its Spenser, its Tasso, its Watts, its Young, its Cowper, its Scott ; or more than all, its Milton, the Prince of Poets, who THIRD LECTUEK. 119 accounted it the highest privilege of his Muse, that she came from " Sen's hill--or Siloah's brook,that flow'd fast by the oracle of God." Or has the cold creed ever awakened in the science of music, so nearly allied to poetry, masters who have created the rich and majestic melody of Han- del, Hayden, Mozart ? Or if we pass to men whose polished minds have added to the graces of poetry, the sweetest specimens of prose in the whole range of belles-lettres; has infidelity ever produced its Addisons, its Beatties, its Goldsmiths ? Or has it in general literature, a man to place side by side with Samuel Johnson ? If we come to the arts; has infidelity its Chriis- topher Wren in architectare; its Raphael, Rey- nolds, or West, or Ashton in painting ; its Angelo, Canova, or Thorvaldsen in sculpture? If we pass into the regions of political science or political rule, has infidelity statesmen, who in sound views and wise measures for the welfare of natiojis, can equal Grotius, Selden, Montesquieu, Raleigh, Burke, Pitt ; or a man, we should still 120 THIBD LECTURE. more revere, Washington, to whom I may now add Clay and Wehster ? In the nohle profession of Law, can she furnish us with a Blackstone, a Hale, a Somers, a Mans- field, a Marshall, a Story, a Kent ? Nor would I pass by the Medical Profession, in which is centred the knowledge so important to life and health. Much as infidels have claimed from some distinguished members of the healing art, where are their men who can take rank with Har- vey, Sydenham, Boerhaave, Gregory, Goode, Cooper and Rush ? But to philosophy properly so called, they would perhaps wish to lead us. And so be it. We are ready to follow them to any region of learning or knowledge. We will go back then to the age when the father of sound philosophy gave the first great impulse to the human mind, that has done so much to free it from the bondage of former generations. Has infidelity a name among his contemporaries, to compare with Lord Bacon ? Or has it among the philosophers of that century, those whom it can rank with Newton, Boyle, Locke or Leibnitz ? Ox in later days, has it men who in ripe scholarship THIRD LECTUKK. 121 and deep researches can equal Sir "VV. Jones, Du- gald Stewart, Davy, Herschel, Cuvier, and others of equal distinction both at home and abroad, who are still living, and whom for that reason, delicacy forbids me to mention? I might extend this list until I had rendered the catalogue wearisome to your patience. But I would not confine myself to a mere enumeration of names, however great. I would better deserve your attention by turning back and showing you wha,t some of these men have done, and where, by uni- versal consent, they stand in the world of knowledge. "Who then was Bacon ? The name had not been rendered less illustrious by descending from the clergyman of the thirteenth century to the philoso- pher of the sixteenth. Lord Bacon was a great libe- rator of literature, from the tyranny of form and theory. The scholastic rules of reasoning which had prevailed previous to his day, were to the minds of men what the coat of mail was to their bodies, excellent for defence as warfare was then practised ; but an encumbrance to the limbs of a warrior, and a hindrance to his movements, when called to act for an object, or in circumstances not 122 THIED LECTURE. foreseen. Bacon created a new era in knowledge, by teaching men how to use their faculties with more freedom and effect. He did even more in phi- losophy than Columhus did on our glohe; for he not only showed how new worlds of knowledge may be discovered, but also how all their treasures may be approached and applied to promote every great interest of man. He turned upon the School-men and asked, " Is truth ever barren ? Are We ihe richer by one poor invention by reason of the learn- ing which has been for these many hundred years?" And if " he found knowledge barren he made it fruitful." He not only taught that philosophy should be drawn from facts ; but he also showed how to use ascertained facts, so as to impart new clear- ness, force and value to philosophy. He gave new meaning to the maxim, that "knowledge is power;" and it is from the spirit of life which he breathed into learning, endowing it with "a living soul," that we have seen her, ever since his day, gradually reaching and subjecting one element of nature after another to tlie welfare and happiness of the human family. But with all this eminence as a phildso- pher, no one ever showed a more profdlind and THIED LECTURE. 12S intelligent faith in the Eible than Lord Prancis Bacon. Among the memorable sayings in which his wisdom and learning lie embalmed for future generations, we find nothing more impressive than his prayer, — " Thy creatures have been my books ; but thy scriptures much more. I have sought thee in the courts, fields and gardens ; but I have found thee in thy temples." Who was Milton ? As a poet he had no com- peer. Homer and Virgil may share the laurels of antiquity between them, but the higher honor as- signed to Milton, m the lines of Dry den, is not to be questioned ; — "Three poets in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy and England did adorn ; The first in loftiness of thought surpast ; The next in majesty, in both the last. The force of nature could no further go; To make a third she joined the other two. But the poetry of Milton is not the only pro- duct of his surpassing intellect which entitles him to the grateful admiration of his race. He was among the first and best writers who explained and vindicated those great principles of civil and reli- 124 THIRD LECTtTKE. I gious freedom which have borne their ripe fruit in the liberty and independence of our own happy land. Need I say what he thought of Christianity whose " Paradise lost " and " Paradise regained," are one continued tribute of reverence to the great truths of the gospel ? And yet so full to the purpose of meet- ing objections of the scoffer, are the following sen- tences, that I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting them. " God having to this end ordained his gospel to be the revelation of his power and wisdom in Christ Jesus, this is qne depth of his wisdom, that he could so plainly reveal so great a measure of it to the gross, distorted apprehen- sion of decayed mankind. Let others therefore dread and shun the Scriptures for their darkness ; I shall wish I may deserve to be reckoned among those wJio admire and dwell upon them for their clearness." I will next ask who was Sir Isaac Newton? Had his theory of light and colors been his only achievement, he would have deserved a high place among Natural Philosophers. But when to these you add, not only his advances in Mathemaltical science, but those vast discoveries in Astronomy, THIED XECTUEE. 125 which render us familiar with the laws and move- ments of the countless worlds which surround our own, there is a .grandeur attached to his name, to which every one lovfis to render homage. He seems to have overleaped, at a hound, the obstacles which had arrested the progress of other men in their in- vestigations ; and so quick and vigUant was his •spirit of observation, that from the fall of an apple in his garden, he first caught the idea which ex- plains the revolutions of sun, moon and stars. And yet, no day was allowed by Newton to pass by without refreshing his spirit by a devout perusal of some portion from the Holy Eible. ;So great was his love and reverence for it, that he never would allow an unbecoming reference to be made to it in his hearing, without a solemn rebuke; and engrossed as he was in philosophical pursuits, and high as was the eminence to which they had raised his name, yet he spent some of his best days in the study and elucidation of the sacred volume. As if ambitious to place on record his supreme regard for the Bible, he has told us " J nt the Scriptures of G-od to be ^;he most sub- philosophy. I find more sure.' marks of au- 8 126 THIRD LECTUKE. thenticity in the Bible than in any profane his- tory whatever." Who was Locke ? The first man who applied the canons of philosophy, as set forth by Bacon, to Metaphysical Science, exhibiting the powers and laws of the human understanding in a form which enabled men to know themselves. And if the superb structure which he reared, has since undergone modifications and changes, we owe these finishing improvements to a scholar of a recent day, who vies with his great predecessor in the profound homage which both render to the value and sacredness of Christianity. The testi- mony of Locke to the Bible, remarkable for truth a^nd brevity, and comprehensiveness, has been so joften quoted as to render it familiar to you all. •" The scriptures " he says " have God for their au- thor ; eternity for their object ; and truth, without any mixture of error, for their subject matter." Who was Sir William Jones ? A master mind of the first order. Though he finished his career before he reached the age of half a century, he was confessedly the first man of his day in the variety and extent of his learning. The accomplished THIRD LECTURE. ■ 127 jurist, and ripe scholar in the laws and literature of England, he became the pioneer of European learning into the rich and splendid regions of in- tellect found among the nations of Asia ; and from their languages and their laws, their poetry aud philosophy, he brought tribute alike valuable and imexpected to the cause of science and letters. But when he had made himself familiar with the labors of the greatest and purest minds both of Asia and Europe ; and with a keen relish for their various beauties, could attribute to each their just measure of praise ; when he speaks of the Bible, he tells us that " the Scriptures, contain, independently of their divine origin, more true sublimity, more ex- quisite beauty, more pure morality, more impor- tant history, and finer strains both of poetry and eloquence, than could be collected from all other books that were ever composed in any age or in any idiom. The two parts of which the Scriptures consist, are connected by a chain of compositions which bear no resemblance, in form or style, to any that can be produced from the stores of Grrecian, Indian, Persian, or even Arabian learning. The antiquity of those compositions no man doubts ; '128 THIEB LEOTTTRB. and the unrestra^iiied application of therii to eveiits, ioixg subsequent to their publication, is a solid g'roUnd of belief that they were genuine produc- tions, and consequently inspired." !Not that lie lArou^ht less of the diamolid than of the casket which contained it. The doctrines of the Bible Were as precious to his heart as the beauties of its style were gra-teful to his taste. One of the last g6'ms which d^ropped from his cultivated mind is in the beautiful lines, " Before thy fa^stic altar, heavenly truth, I kneel in manhood, as I knelt in youth ; Thus let me kneel, till this dull form decay. And life's last shade be brightened by thy ray; Then shall my soul, now lost in clouds below, Soar without bound, without consuming, glow." To come to our own country : I will first men- tion a name which, if less distinguished among the learned, is universally known and recognized iamdng the wise and great of his race. Shall I ask, who was Washington? or can I utter the words, Until every one will have answered in the oft re- peated laihguage, *'He was first in ■*var, first in THIRD LEG TUBE. 120^ pe,aoe, aijd first in the hearts of his countrymen." Ifl our nation, he is a irian standing alone,, on a pedestal that can belong to none bvit hin\self. If there have been men who stand before hini in Ijurillitacy and quickness of mind, iii extent of learning; where does he find a superior in the ^undness of his opinion on every subject which he, professed to understand ; in his a,courate judgment as to every thing which most concerned the wel-, fere of men and of nations ? But with that noble heart and clear he^d, Christianity was entwined a^s an element of his life. In his boyhood, it§i prin^ eiples were implanted within him by his widowed jftother, while she watched over him as her best, earthly hope. In ripe manhood, you could se@ hiift, when at the head of our armies, going frpig the camp to sit down at the communion t^ble, with a he^rt al] melted over the en^blems of a dying Savipui's Ipye; and ^t this day, with the felatives who gtill puryjve him, |pi the ipainily Bible, bearing its many proofs of hpw pfteij it had ^een perused, ?i|id hpiiv carefully hp had treasure4 up the promises which sustained him in his peace* ful death. In his various public aets, be waa 130 THIRD LECTUEE. studiously careful to proclaim his confidence in Christianity, not only as his own best hope, but also as the only hope of the nation. In his ad- dress to the civil authorities of the several States upon disbanding the army, at the close of the Revolution, he speaks in the devout language, " I now make my earnest prayer that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, under his holy protection; that he would incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate the spirit of subordination and obedience to government, Ic en- tertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow-citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for their brethren who have served in the field ; and finally, that He would be most graciously pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean our- selves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind, which were the characteristics of the Divine author of our blessed religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy nation." You will not be surprised that in this connec- THIBD LKCTUKE. 131 tion I should refer to one whose recent death has made us a nation of mourners, Siiad at whose grave the jealousies and strifes of political party have subsided . into one sentiment of universal grief. Who was Daniel Webster ? We all know where he stood as a man, a scholar and a statesman. He had no one above him. If it belonged to Wash- ington alone to enjoy undisputed pre-eminence in peace and in war, and in the heart of the nation, it is ec[ually true of Webster, that he had no superior in the Senate, at the Forum, or in the Cabinet councils of his country. Whenever he spoke, high and low, learned and unlearned, were anxious to listen. But never were his lips more filled with the majesty of truth than when he was about to take leave of the world, and of all th« scenes of his former greatness. Not a power of his mighty intellect was impaired by the ravages ol disease. He died as he had lived, the great man ; but most and best of all, the humble Christian When he had stood before the Senate in the pleni- tude of his strength, as the acknowledged defender of the Constitution, he was not more anxious that his language might be strong and his meaning 132 THIRD LECTURE, elear, than he was in his last days, wheai he g'ave his testimony to the truth and preciousness of the gospel, which reveals salvation for lost man through our Lord Jesus Christ, As a lasting and eonspicuous memorial of the faith which supported his heart, living and dying, he directed the words of Scripture to he inscrihed on his tomh, — "Lord, T believe. Help thou mine unbelief ;"^ and there the inscription stands, to be known and read of all men, to prove his sincerity and humilitv as a believer in the only begotten Son of God. Let us for a moment look back upon these dis- tinguished men ; and to enable us the more justly to appreciate the value of their testimony to the truth of Christianity, "let us observe, 1st. That they are generally selected from those pursuits and professions which are best adapted to give enlargement and vigor to the understanding ; to form its powers for sound and clear discrimina- tion of truth from error. This, it must be confess- ed, is a habit or power of mind not always found ui the secluded student, however deep or thorough his investigations. Too often theory is every thing with such men. The creations of their own mindsj THIBO LKCTUBE. 133 are frequently the only creations which they roJish. The fitness of things to the great purposes of life is what they do not always comprehend^ nor love to contemplate. The consequence is, they often become " vain in their imaginations*" Their minds become unsoimd. And from just this class of learned men do you find infidelity gathering up her favorite and most distinguished recruits. As every one knows, who is acquainted with the bio- graphies of her Humes and Rousseau^; I might give you instance after instance, to show how often they rendered thernselves even ridiculous by their weak credulity in the concerns of practical life. Not so with the bright constellation of witnesses which Christianity brings forward to testify on her behalf. Here we see not only men who in their day were prodigies of learning ; but we find those also among them who have carried their well stored intellects into the active concerns of human welfare, and have taken a leading part in the im- provement and government of mankind, in all their civil, pditical and social relations. We have accordingly shown you the very choicest of men, not only from the halls and groves of Phir 134 THIED LECTURE. losophy, but from the Bar and the Benchj from the Camp and the Cabinet; men whose minds were accustomed to weigh in the balances of truth, both men and things ; who could not only reason with clearness, but could act with energy; and from them all, especially from the best and greatest of them all, you have leading advocates and orna- ments of Christianity. Let me add, 2d. And in the next place, several of these learned and distinguished men had once, or at times, been led to doubt, if not to deny the inspira- tion of the Bible, Their faith in the Scriptures therefore, was far from being the result of unthink- ing trust. It did not come to them as a matter of tradition. It was the fruit of careful investigation, and generally of such investigation, at a period of life when their faculties were well matured, and in the prime of their strength. Sir William Jones had filled the length and breadth of the land with his name, when feeling his mind unsettled or dis- turbed on the question by difficulties which had been artfully thrown in his way, he sat down and gave all his best powers to a careful examination of the subject; and became more than ever a firm THIBD LECTURE. 135 believer in the Gospel, and so remained until his death. The mind of Webster also had been liable occasionally to similar disquietude. "Philosophi- cal argument," he tells us, " especially that drawn from the vastness of the universe, in comparison with the apparent insignificance of this globe, has sometimes shaken my reason for the faith which is in me ; but my heart has always assured and re-assured me that the G-ospel of Jesus Christ must be a Divine reality ;" and to give lasting evidence of his final and settled convictions, he directed that this declaration should be engraven on his tomb, side by side with the words already quoted as a portion of his epitaph. Notwithstanding Dr. Beat- tie's strong faith in the G-ospel, and his triumphant vindication of it against infidelity, many of his most intelligent readers have thought he was de- scribing the conflict through which his own mind had passed, when he penned the beautiful lines in « The Hermit," " Twas thus, by the glare of false Science betray'd, That leads, to bewilder ; and dazzles, to blind ; My thoughts wont to roam, from shade onward to shade. Destruction before me, and sorrow behind : 1^6' TglRD {jBC^'UBE. pity, great Father of light, then I cried. Thy creature who fain would not. wander from Thee ! Lo, humbled in dust, I relinquish my pride : From doubt and from darkness thou only canst free." ad. We may further observe, that among the learned whom we have most prominently exhibit- ed as helieveia in the gospel, are many who hw^ distinguished themselves as innovators in science, We have often been tpld that if the world, should see a day when the minds of men could be rele^jsed from the trammels of tradition, and when reverence for usage and anticj^uity would yield to a spirit qi free inquiry ailter truth, then the Bible, with other remnants qf past ages, would be disowned. But, as we have seen, that desired day of intellectual liberation has been granted to our world, and ha,s been produced by the labors of such intellectual reformers as we have been, describing. They were indeed far from making a, reckless and indiscrii]ii- nate war on the opinions of those who ha,d lived before them. They did not repudiate every thing that was old because it was old. But while they felt a deep and becoming reverence for the learn- ing and for the men of former days ; so far was it THIRD LECTURE^ 137 from being the habit of their minds to subiftit blindly to the iriere atithdrity of antiquity and custom, they were the very men who took liie first steps which disinthralled the learned world from its bondage to long established habits of thought and argument. So was it especially with Baooft, and aifterwards with Newton and Locke, in the.ir respective spheres of study and investigation, In Philosophy, in Astronomy, in Metaphysics, indeed throughout the whole wide range of learning, they broke down the barriers which from the days of Aristotle had greatly restrained and hindered free- doM of inquiry; and they carried their investiga- U0ns, with a fearless spirit, into regions which till then had been considered as alike unknown and forbidden to man. The greiat characteristic which distingnished these wonder Working scholars lay in this undismayed and adventurous spirit, "by which they gave new forms and larger growth to science, and exploded and exposed the delusions of former ages. But while in their new philoso- phy they grasped a lever like that of Archimedes, by which they moved the world of learning and overthrew qrror after error; what was the effect 138 THIRD LECTURE. of their new powers of reasoning when hrought to bear upon the Bible ? It stood before them as it has always stood before every one who, would ex- amine into its truth with sincerity and patient in- dustry. Its stability and divinity were made only the more manifest by the new tests to which it was now subjected ; and none among the learned or unlearned were more devout believers in its holy doctrines than the gigantic masters in learn- ing, who seemed to have been born to liberate the world from the errors of former ages, and to enlight- en it in the highest attainments of human wisdom 4th. We may remark in this connection, that time, the great test of truth and wisdom, is con- tinually furnishing new proofs, which show the superior soundness and wider compass of the learning that is arrayed on the side of Christianity. This will be more fully demonstrated as we pro- ceed in the lectures we have prescribed to our- selves. But we will here cite an instance of it, which owing to the occurrences of our day has become remarkably striking. In the commenta- ries which Sir Isaac Newton has written on the Prophecies of Daniel, and on the Apocalypse, he THIBD LECTUEK. 139 has occasion to speak of the rapidity with which events must be brought to pass, in order to prepare the way for the universal spread of the gospel at the time predicted ; and he avows his belief that men will discover the means of passing from place to place with unwonted speed, perhaps at the rate of fifty miles in an hour. Voltaire in his self-con- ceit and hostility to religion scofis at the sugges- tion, not only as a contradiction to the principles of sober sense and sound philosophy, but as a proof of the bewildering and entangling influence of Christianity on the mind of a great man. He does not question the services which Newton has ren- dered to the cause of philosophy, while devoting his mind to subjects of science; but he professes deep regret, to see the enlightened philosopher ren- dered a poor dotard by employing his mind in the stixdy of the Scriptures. "We now see the locomo- tive actually accomplishing as nothing rare or ex- traordinary all that Newton foretold; and can safely judge which of the two has the best claim on our confidence as a man of learmng— Newton, the humble and sincere believer in the gospel, or Voltaire, the scoffing infidel. 140 THIED iECTITRB Nor would we take leave of this incidrjot vi'r.- out tjonsidering not only liow strongfiy it re/nmds us of the fact, that profound learnm^^ has been generally if not universally found ou the side of Christianity ; but also how it illustrates the care and wisdom with which God in his providence has ordered the time and manner of bringing forth maiiy of the best discoveries in science and art, so as most effectually to confound and put to shame the boastful objections of infidelity ; a wisdom too, which, as we hope to show,, both controls the important discoveries that are now essentially im- proving human comfort and welfare, and reaches even events comparatively mintite and inconside- rable. It has been remarked as a singular coinci- dence, that the very same press which Voltaire em- ployed at Ferney to publish many of his attacks on Christianity, was afterwards employed at Ge- neva for printing and disseminating the Holy Scriptures : and also that an estate wldch Gibbon purchased in Switzerland with the profits arising from bis infidel publications, afterwards came into the possession of an owner who employed la large portion of the income- accruing from it, to : sustain. I see, I see dearly. that all these.sajne. glorious and dazzling perfections,, which; now, only, serve to kindle my affections into a flame, and to melt. down my soul into the same blessed , image, would burn and scorch: me, like a consuming fire,' if I were an im- penitent sinner.". At a later hour, and when he saw dissolution: neairer at ; hand, he exclaimed,. " The celestial city is now full in my view. Its glories beam upon me — ^its sounds strike upon my ears, and its spirit is 'breathed into my heart. Nothing sepg-rates , me from it but the river of death, and that' appears but an insignificant rill, that .Hiay; be.icrossed by. a single step, whenever God shall give, permission." With such glowing words upon their lips, did these eminent . sa,ints , pass away from our world,, seeming,- like; Elijah, to be wrapped into heaven in .chariqts ofifire; and the striking contrast which we findrbetween Hervey and Payson rejoicing in. idealthj'.ahd .Hobbes willing to give a whole worldi 11 174 FOURTH LECTURE. if he could escape from it a single day longer, has led me to place their names in immediate proximi- ty to each other. But we do not here close our recital of exam- ples that will serve still further to enforce our argument. Let us then turn hack from Hervey and Payson, to other scenes which, although they may be less attractive, are still fearfully instructive. "What might have been the feelings of Gribbon, had he known death to be near to him, it is im- possible to say. His biographers show us that he passed away into eternity without being conscious that he was even approaching it. They relate that within twenty hours before he expired, he de- clared that he " thought himself a good life for ten, twelve, or perhaps twenty years ;" nor does it ap» pear that he was undeceived till speech had failed him, and his faculties were overpowered by the stupor of disease. But while we must leave G-ibbon to die blind- folded as to what lay before him ; and we must fear, to utter his wail of agony and despair, when beyond that bourne wheace no voice ever comes back to the human ear ; we can turn to one whom FOURTH LKCTURE. 175 he has called " the most extraordinary man of the age," the far famed Voltaire ; and in him we wit- ness horrors that might well suffice for both. He saw death coming, and felt the icy hand of the destroyer, when day after day, it crept up to his heart ; and his death bed was a scene so appalling that it has few parallels in those pictures of re- morse that startle and shock us while we survey them. As we have already stated, in his coarse and virulent attacks on Christianity, his favorite and oft repeated expression, when speaking of the Redeemer, was, " Crush the wretch." No wonder that in his last hours, he himself should seem crushed beneath the weight of the divine displea- sure, as a reptile in the highway lies writhing under the chariot wheel that has rolled over it. We well know the pains that have been taken by his infidel companions to hide from the world the agony of the dying man ; but truth has been too strong for them. There could be no excuse for shutting out the physician from the chamber of sickness and death ; and he was too honest to con- ceal what he knew, and too universally respected for his integrity and iutelligence, not to be believed. '.I'm FOURTH LECTUEE . It was on Voltaire's last visit to Paris, wien at the zenith of his fame, and when, as previously ap- • pointed, he was puhlicly crowned at the theatre as the, idol of Franee, that he was taken with a he . uiorrhage that terminated his life. He was thus brought into a startling resemhlance to Herod, who, as we are told, " upon a set day, arrayed in royal apparel, sat upon his throne and made an oratioai to the , people. ■ And they gave a shout saying, It is the voice of a God, and not of a man. And im- - mediately the angel of the Lord smote him, hecause he gave not Grod the glory." No sooner had Vol- taire felt the ; stroke, which he was atvare mu§t issue in death,' thain he was overpowered with re- morse. He at once sent most earnest messages for a priest,) that he might be "reconcileid to the church/' as the phrase is ; make confession of his ;sin,s,