neously gave their minds to the solution of the difficulty, and each suggested that there was another planet, as yet unseen by man, far in the region beyond it. The astronomer at Berlin pointed his telescope to the spot where they said it would be found, and the harmony of the planetary system was restored.

Who knows what time may do in removing apparent inconsistencies and contradictions? Listen to a remark of Mr. Hume: "No priestly dogmas ever shocked common sense more than the infinite divisibility of extension, with its consequences."*

It is said that there are things taught, commanded, and done in the Bible, as the command to Abraham to offer up his son Isaac, and the command to destroy the nations of Canaan, which it is difficult to reconcile with our notions of morality.

This, also, is so; and the same thing is true of much that God does in our world, and of much that he permits. Who has explained these things? Who has been able to show exactly how the things that occur on earth under the divine administration—by the orderings of His providence, and by His own hand, are consistent with our notions of justice and right; our views of morality; our conceptions of benevolence? When there are any fewer difficulties in the facts in our world than there are in this respect in the statements of the Bible, then it will be proper, on this account, to make it a special objection to the Bible as a work of God; when men have succeeded in explaining the difficulties in the facts as they occur under the divine administration, and in showing how they are consistent with our notions of justice, goodness, and morality, then it will remain to inquire whether possibly the same explanation might * Philosophical Works, vol. iv., p. 182.

not remove all the difficulties from the same source pertaining to the word of God. The entrance of sin; the sorrows and woes of earth; the inequalities in the human condition; the destruction of the innocent-of women, and old men, and infants by the plague, by pestilence, and by famine; the desolations of war, not less savage and barbarous than the wars of Canaan; the divine vengeance taken on nations through the agency of the wicked passions of men—the love of conquest, revenge, and ambition-O for the coming of some one, gifted above all mortals hitherto, that shall be able to explain these things, and to tell how they are consistent with the character of a just and holy God; with our conception of what is right, and of what would be for the best; with our notions of benevolence, equity, righteousness O for some gifted mind to tell how sin, and woe, and death came into the universe at all! Till such an appearing, what better can we do than to suppose, in either case, that there may be principles at present beyond our grasp that may explain the one and the other; that the principles which would be applicable to the one may be applicable to the other; that the God of nature may be the God of the Bible.

These things constitute no great difficulty in the practical affairs of life; they need constitute no great difficulty in the practical matters of religion. They do not prove, in the one case, that the world is not the workmanship of a pure and holy God; they do not prove, in the other, that the Bible is not from the same pure and holy Being.

Have we reached a conclusion on this subject which will be satisfactory to your minds? Perhaps I ought not to venture to affirm what I would hope may be true. Have we removed all difficulties from the sub

ject? Assuredly this has not been done; nor, in a world so full of difficulties on kindred subjects, could we hope that this could be done. But, notwithstanding these things, it may have been shown that the Bible is a book whose origin is not to be accounted for by a reference to human genius; and that the most simple and philosophical explanation of the facts in regard to it is, that it is given by INSPIRATION OF GOD-as the most satisfactory explanation of our world, after all, with all its difficulties, is, that it is THE CREATION OF GOD,

LECTURE VIII.

THE EVIDENCE OF THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY FROM THE PERSONAL CHARACTER AND THE INCARNATION OF CHRIST.

THE question which, in history, has agitated the world more perhaps than any other, is that which was asked by Pilate, "What shall I do with Jesus which is called Christ ?" (Matt., xxvii., 22). In history the question has been, What view shall be taken of his person? What origin and rank shall be ascribed to him? What place shall he have among those whose life and teachings have materially affected the condition of the world? Shall he be regarded as a mere man, “naturally as fallible and peccable as other men?" Shall he be regarded as a mere man, but, unlike other men in this respect, that he was absolutely perfect and pure? Shall he be regarded as a phantasm, appearing in the form of humanity, and living, suffering, dying in appearance only? Shall he be regarded as a being of a higher order actually descending to the earth, and living among men-an angel; an archangel; a loftier being still, as near to God as a created being can be, sent into the world to accomplish a great work for men? Shall he be regarded as the most highly endowed in genius of any of our own race; forming some great plan; and accomplishing his work by the mere greatness of his genius? Shall we regard him as a mythical being, and all that has been said of him as embodying only the conceptions of men forming a system of imposture or

delusion around him as a nucleus, and arranging the ideas of that system as if they had been expressed in his life? Shall we regard him as God himself in his own essence incarnate; or as a person in the essence of God incarnate; or as a form of the mere manifestation of the Deity in our world? Shall we regard him as having one nature or two; one will or two; as a perfect man having a “reasonable soul" as well as a body, united with the divinity; or shall we regard him as a man only as he had a bodily form in which God, as such, performed all the functions of the soul? Has the world come to any settled views on these subjects, or is it likely that it ever will? Enemies and friends; sages, fathers, priests; synods and councils embracing the learning and piety of the world; good men and bad men; historians and philosophers; the orthodox and the heretical, have endeavored for eighteen hundred years to answer the question which so much perplexed Pilate, "What shall be done with Jesus ?" Men of profound erudition, assuming that there was a real personage who bore the name, have brought, as Strauss has done, the vast resources of their learning to the inquiry whether all else in regard to him could not be explained on the supposition that his religion is a "myth;" men of brilliant imaginations, entering the field of romance, like Renan, have inquired whether all that occurred in his life can not be explained on the supposition that he was a young man of marvelous genius, awaking gradually to the consciousness of his own great powers, and himself deluded with the idea of a universal empire.. The "orthodox" world has believed that his true place in history can be assigned only on the supposition that he was the only perfect man that has ever trod the