LECTURE III.

INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.-VAGUENESS OF THE DIVISION BETWEEN THEM.- - REASONS CONSIDERING

FOR

THE INTERNAL EVIDENCES FIRST.-ARGUMENT FIRST: FROM

ANALOGY.

IN In my first lecture, I attempted to show that, if God has given a revelation, we may certainly know it; and in the second, that there is no such antecedent improbability against a revelation, as to justify us in requiring proof different from that which we require for other events. There are laws of evidence according to which we judge in other cases, and I only ask that these same laws may be applied here.

If these points are established, we are ready to inquire whether God has in fact given a revelation.

On coming into life, we find Christianity existing, and claiming to be such a revelation. We wish to satisfy ourselves of the validity of that claim. How shall we proceed? The evidence by which its claims are sustained is commonly divided into two kinds, the external and the internal. This division is simple, and of long standing; but by it heads of evidence are classed together, having so little affinity for each other, and, in regard to some of them, it is so difficult to see on what principle they are classed under one rather than the other, that its utility may be doubted. Thus the evidences from testimony, from prophecy, from the mode

in which the gospel was propagated, and from its

INTERNAL EVIDENCE.

69

effects, - topics resembling each other scarcely at all,

are classed under the head of the external evidences; while the various marks of honesty found in the New Testament, the agreement of the parts with each other, its peculiar doctrines, its pure morality, its representation of the character of Christ, its analogy to nature, its adaptation to the situation and wants of man, - topics still more diverse, are classed under its, internal evi

dences.

Chalmers and Wilson.-I notice the vagueness of this arrangement, because these two classes of evidence have often been opposed to each other, and the superiority of one over the other contended for; and because great and good men, as Chalmers formerly, have in some instances regarded it as presumptuous to study the internal evidences at all, as if it would be a sitting in judgment beforehand on the kind of revelation God ought to give; and others, as Wilson, have thought it arrogance to study the internal evidences first, as if the capacity to judge of a revelation after it was given implied an amount of knowledge that would preclude the necessity of any revelation at all.

Internal evidences their study not presumptuous.But of which of the internal evidences mentioned above can it be said to be presumptuous for man to judge without reference to external testimony? Certainly not of those natural and incidental evidences of truth spread every where over the pages of the New Testament; nor of the agreement of the several books with each other; nor of the morality of the gospel; nor of its tendency to promote human happiness in this life; and if there be some of the doctrines, of the probability of which we could not judge beforehand, that is no reason why we should be excluded from an immediate and free range in every other part of this field. There is what has been called, by Verplanck, a critical, as well as a

moral internal evidence. Of the first we are competent to judge, and, in determining the question of our competency to judge of the second, we are not to overlook a distinction made by the same able writer. It is that "between the power of discovering truth, and that of examining and deciding upon it when offered to our judgment." "In matters of human science," he goes on to say, "to how few is the one given, and how common is the other! Look at that vast mass of mathematical invention and demonstration which has been carried on by gifted minds, in every age, in continued progress, from the days of the learned priesthood of ancient Egypt to those of the discoveries of La Place and La Grange. Who is there of the mathematicians of this generation who could be selected as capable of alone discovering all this prolonged and continuous chain of demonstration? If left to their own unaided researches, how far would the original and inventive genius of a Newton or a Pascal have carried them? Yet we know that all this body of science, this magnificent accumulation of the patient labors of so many intellects, may be examined and rigorously scrutinized in every step, and finally completely mastered and familiarized to the understanding, in a few years' study, by a student who, trusting solely to his own mind, could never have advanced beyond the simple elements of geometry.

"This reasoning may be applied, either directly or by fair analogy, to every part of our knowledge of the laws of nature and of mind; and it therefore seems to be neither presumptuous nor unphilosophical, but, on the contrary, in strict accordance with the soundest reasoning, to maintain that though the world by wisdom knew not God,' yet, so far forth as he reveals himself to men, and calls upon them to receive and obey that revealed will, he has given to them faculties, by

TO JUDGE OF REVELATION NOT PRESUMPTUOUS. 71

no means compelling, but yet enabling them to understand his revelation; to perceive its truth, excellence, and beauty; and to become sensible of their own want of its instruction, as well as to estimate that extrinsic human testimony by which it may be supported or attended."*

Certainly, there are many things in which we perceive a fitness and an excellence, when they are made known, of which we should never, of ourselves, have formed any conception. Thus the Newtonian system comes before the eye of the mind as a great mountain does before that of the body, and we see at once that it is worthy of God. No timid disclaimer of our right to judge of the works of God can prevent this effect. Its simplicity, and beauty, and majesty, speak with a voice more pleasing, and scarcely less satisfactory, than that of mathematical demonstration. I will not say how much of this perceived excellence, or whether any, must belong to a revelation which we are under obligation to receive. Certainly, that of the Jews had to them far less of this than ours to us. But I will say that it is the natural impulse of the mind to examine any thing claiming to be a revelation by such tests; and if it is done in a proper spirit, and with those limitations which good sense must always put to human inquiries, it is neither presumptuous nor dangerous. It is not judging beforehand of what God ought to do; it is judging of what it is claimed that he has done; and the same spirit that would prevent us from doing this would debar us from any study of final causes in the works of God. If the gospel is to act upon character, it must be received with an intelligent perception of its adaptation to our wants, and of its excellence. The message, not less than the minister of God, might be

* Verplanck's Evidences of Revealed Religion.

expected to commend itself "to every man's conscience in the sight of God."

tests, and so they may be

Standards and tests in the mind. I would not claim for reason a place which does not belong to it. So far as the Christian religion rests on facts, it must rest on historical evidence; but so far as it is a system of truth and of motives intended to bear on human character and well-being, it must be judged of by that reason and conscience which God has given us. There are in the mind, as God made it, standards and tests which must ultimately be applied to it. Men may be uncandid or irreverent in applying these in examining historical proof; and I have no more fear in one case than in the other. In arguing for, or against such a system as Christianity, we of course take for granted the being and perfections of God; we have a previous knowledge of his works, of his providence, of the difference between right and wrong, and of the beings for whom the system is intended. Let, now, a candid man find in the system nothing absurd or immoral, but many things that seem to him strange, and little accordant with what he would have expected, and he will be still in doubt. He will make due allowance for the imperfection of his knowledge, and the limitation of his faculties, and he will hold his mind open to the full force of historical proof. But let him be shown a system which, though he could not have discovered it, he can see, when discovered, to be worthy of a God of infinite wisdom and goodness, let him find it congruous with all he knows of him from his works, coincident with natural religion, so far as that goes, containing a perfect morality, harmonizing with the highest sentiments of man, and adapted to his wants as a weak and guilty being, and he may find in all this a ground of rational conviction that such a system must have come. from God, and so, that those facts which are