on the subject of miracles, and how far it is necessary to assume the correctness of the records of miraculous events in the New Testament, to explain the fact that the religion was propagated in the world, and has been continued to the nineteenth century, will be considered in the application of these principles in the subsequent Lectures.

LECTURE III.

HISTORICAL EVIDENCE AS AFFECTED BY SCIENCE.

THE subject of this lecture will be Historical Evidence as affected by Science, particularly the relation of Science to Christianity as affecting the evidence of its divine origin.

There is a wide-spread apprehension among many of the friends of Christianity that Science, in its progress, may set aside the evidence that the Bible is a system of revealed truth, and that, if the point is not already reached, it may soon be, when they will be found to be incompatible with each other, and when it will be impossible to reconcile them. There is probably more apprehension on this subject among the true friends of Christianity than they would like to avow to themselves or to others, and there is more dissatisfaction with the attempts which are made to remove the difficulties, and to reconcile the two, than they would think it prudent to admit. There is many a skeptical thought in a Christian's mind which he would be unwilling to utter, for he would not be desirous that his friends should know how much he is perplexed on the subject, and he would not think it right to expose the faith of others to the shock which would be felt if they knew what was passing through his mind. "Oh the temptations," said Dr. Payson, "which have harassed me for the last three months! I have met with nothing like them in books. I dare not mention them to any mortal, lest they should trouble him as they have troubled

me; but should I become an apostate, and write against religion, it seems to me that I could bring forward objections which would shake the faith of all the Christians in the world. What I marvel at is that the Archdeceiver has never been permitted to suggest them to some of his scribes, and have them published.” “My difficulties," said he in a letter to a friend, "increase every year. There is one trial which you can not know experimentally. It is that of being obliged to preach to others when one doubts of every thing, and can scarcely believe that there is a God. All the atheistical, deistical, and heretical objections which I meet with in books, are childish babblings compared with those which Satan suggests, and which he urges upon the mind with a force which seems irresistible. Yet I am often obliged to write sermons, and to preach, when these objections beat upon me like a whirlwind, and almost distract me.' Cecil has made a similar remark: "I have read," said he, "all the most acute and serious infidel writers, and have been surprised at their poverty. The process of my mind has been such on the subject of revelation that I have often thought Satan has done more for me than for the best of them; for I have had, and would have produced, arguments that appeared to me far more weighty than any I ever found in them against revelation." In this respect, as in others, a good man is often in the situation in which the Psalmist was, when, in deep perplexity about the justice of the divine dealings, he said, "If I say I will speak thus, behold, I should offend against the generation of thy children."-Psa. lxxiii., 15. He is therefore silent, hoping almost against hope, that his apprehensions may not be well founded, and yet not daring to push the inves* Payson's Works, vol. i., p. 379, 380, ed. Portland, 1846. † Works of Rev. Richard Cecil, vol. iii., p. 110.

tigation farther himself. He is, in this respect, like the mariner who fears to examine his ship lest he should find the wood-work of the bottom eaten through, and nothing between him and the waters but the thin sheathing of copper; or the invalid who fears to have his lungs examined from the apprehension that the examiner may find there the unmistakable beginnings of a fatal disease; or the merchant who fears to examine his books from the apprehension that he will find himself to be a bankrupt. The ship, therefore, unexamined, moves on, the slight cough is borne as well as it can be, and the man of business tries to be calm under the apprehension that, if the truth were known, he would be found to be not worth a farthing.

There is a secret confident feeling on the part of not a few men devoted to scientific pursuits that all this is so, and that these fears in regard to Christianity are well founded. In not a few things, in his apprehension, the statements of the Bible and the disclosures of Science have been demonstrated to be irreconcilable, and he smiles complacently at the efforts made by the friends of religion, and especially by ministers of the Gospel, to harmonize them. He feels a confident assurance that one difficulty on the subject will succeed another, and that if a plausible solution of one discrepancy is suggested, Science will suggest a dozen where the points will be irreconcilable. He has that kind of carelessness, therefore, which a man has in playing a game of chess when he feels that, though his adversary may extricate himself out of some small difficulty in the move, yet the general course of the game is certain, and he can afford to be calm; or which the commander of the armies of the Union might have felt before Richmond, when, though there might have been a temporary reverse, yet the great plan of the campaign was de

veloping itself, and the final overthrow of the enemy was certain. So, it is to be feared, not a few men feel about the final overthrow of Christianity by Science. They do not exult. They do not care to use the language of triumph. They do not boast of victory: they smile within, and calmly await the result.

Under these circumstances, it becomes a very important matter to inquire what tendency, if any, there is in this direction, or what Science has done, or can do, to render the statements in the Bible incredible. The exact point for consideration on the subject may be easily understood. There are many things, it would be said, which were not regarded as incredible at an early period of the world, or which men readily received as real under the prevailing forms of belief, which Science ultimately shows to be utterly incredible, and which it removes from the faith of mankind. By the same process it may remove all that is marvelous or supernatural, and thus ultimately destroy every vestige of an argument for the divine origin of the religion.

An illustration will make this point plain. There was nothing, it would be said, in the statements of Livy about the prodigies which he records at the foundation of Rome, or in the early periods of the Roman history, which was contrary to the existing belief at that time, which the prevailing views of the nature of evidence rendered unworthy of belief, or which was a departure from what was expected to be, and what was understood to be, the course of affairs on the earth. It was an age of the supernatural and the marvelous. The world was prepared to receive these accounts. There was universal faith in superior beings; in the fact that they often interposed directly in the affairs of men; that empires were founded, that battles were decided, and that the world was controlled by these supernatural