the whole system of Christianity is a cunningly devised fable, the speculations of infidelity are a miserable tissue of bewilderment and folly,—that the evidence given for the truth of Christianity is more than sufficient to meet the most unbounded of our reasonable demands,that to ask more evidence than has been given, in kind, or quantity, or perspicuity, would be to exemplify the grossest perversity, since no addition which man can devise could increase the claim of Christianity on our moral reception,that to resist a body of evidence so clear and abundant as that which Christianity presents, because a few motes of difficulty are floating amidst its light, is to betray the most deplorable moral infatuationthat the effects produced by Christianity on the hearts and characters of its genuine disciples, cannot possibly be accounted for, except on the principle of its truth and divinity,—that the hypocrisy, or fanaticism, or moral inconsistencies, which characterize some who profess Christianity, are no argument whatever against its heavenly origin,—that there are certain assignable characteristics, by which a saving belief of Christianity is capable of being distinguished from every counterfeit,-that to substitute a mere impression that we are interested in the Christian salvation, in the room of that belief in the testimony of God which alone can warrant such an impression, is to commit a fatal mistake,—that our justification is founded in the righteousness of Christ alone, and is not procured, in less or more, by faith or works on our part, that although good works contribute nothing to the conversion of a sinner, nor directly to the support of his new nature, after he is converted,

yet they are indispensable to the development of his new character, and the consummation of his new destiny, that between Christ and those who believe in him, an ineffably intimate union subsists, which is the source of their spiritual nourishment, the medium of their communion with him, and the stimulus of all their spiritual activities,-that this union, with the ultimate safety which it involves, so far from producing ease in sin, is the grand incentive to industry for the mortification of evil desire, and the prosecution of holiness, that while Christ has obeyed for us, even unto death, he has not released us from the obligation which lies on us as moral agents, to live to the glory of Him who created us; for, instead of saving, this would destroy us, defeating the end of the Christian economy, and leaving us utterly incapable of enjoying its proffered blessedness,-and that no inducements to a life of holiness can possibly be named, which are either so clear or so cogent as those which these views of Christianity are fitted to suggest.

From this epitome, the reader will perceive that this is eminently a book for the man whose moral repugnance to Christianity is somewhat intellectual, who has been caught in the snare of infidel speculation, or, after escaping from this species of sophistry, has been thrown amidst the equally subtile entanglements of conflicting doctrinal opinions. It approaches this man at the remote point of settled and scornful unbelief. It bears with his pride and petulance—it patiently examines his wildest objections-it avails itself of no advantages, but those which are fairly won by the force of truth and argument—and it

It is

carries him gradually forward from one position to another, till, by the grace of God, it sets him down in the joy and peace which are in believing. true, that the Author does not exhaust the argument for the truth of revealed religion, but confines himself to a single point-the divine mission of Jesus Christ, with the collateral evidence thence arising. But the reader will bear in mind, that, if this point be once established, as is here triumphantly done by an overpowering weight of evidence, every other necessarily follows, and the cause of scepticism is utterly lost. For although, after this, there may be difficulties which still remain unsolved, these difficulties are of minor importance, and may be solved or not, as the means of solution are given or withheld, without at all affecting the stability of the general structure of Christian truth. It may be proper to apprize the reader, that, by the internal evidences of Christianity,' Dickinson does not mean those proofs of its divinity which lie within the Bible itself, but the effects produced by its doctrines and promises within the hearts of men-effects, so powerfully regenerative of the most depraved and profligate, so obviously superhuman, pervasive, and durable, as to remain for ever unaccounted for, unless we shall ascribe them to a power which is divine. Upon the whole, we regard the Volume as having merit beyond its pretensions, and possessing a very peculiar aptitude, not merely for establishing its positions, but for travelling to them by such a process as constrains the reader to reason as he reads, and in this way to arrive at conclusions which he feels to be his own.

Without adverting more particularly to the doctrinal part of this Volume, we shall limit what we have further to say, to the topic with which it commences, namely, the evidence of Christianity, or the grand fundamental truth, that the Bible is the Word of God. We do not mean to discuss this evidence, or estimate the amount of its power and conclusiveness, but rather to specify the moral circumstances which are certainly known to obstruct its power, and tend to foster a state of mind which no amount of mere evidence can possibly subdue.

It cannot but minister the highest delight to a well-informed Christian, whose belief in the word of God is as enlightened as it is decided, to contemplate the abundance of the argument by which his faith is supported, and to feel, as he necessarily must, that, in yielding himself up to the dictates of his Bible, he makes a use of his understanding which is as rational as it is devout. He may well exult in the position which he occupies, since enlarged research has enabled him to discover, that, while each of the grand divisions of the evidence for Christianity supports the others, and exactly fits its place in that finely adjusted system which gives to the whole the weight of a moral demonstration, every one of these divisions has a power within itself to carry the question unanswerably, and involve the acutest infidel in irretrievable defeat. His right to triumph in the argument of his faith is clearly incontestable; since, in the light of its progress, and in defiance of subtilties the most artful, it has given him the certainty, that corroborative references to its existence are interspersed through the oldest and best accredited re

cords of antiquity,-that it is mixed up with the history of human affairs, down through all the subsequent ages, just as might be expected on the supposition, that it is what it professes to be, and has maintained throughout an unchanging character,that the books which contain it were positively written by the men whom it declares to have written them, and are in his hands as their penmen left them, that from its characteristic doctrines, spirit, and power, there emanates a glory which evinces the absurdity of supposing it human, and challenges for it an origin which cannot be less than divine,-that He who established the course of nature, arrested the operation of nature's laws, and astonished the world with miracles, stupendous and varied, wrought in avowed connexion with it, and expressly intended to attest its divinity, and illustrate its gracious character, that the proof of these miracles, as carried down to us, cannot be resisted or explained away, except by assuming principles which are yet more staggering than the miracles themselves, and which, if they were assumed, would daringly limit the Godhead, destroy the credit of moral evidence, and involve us in all the miseries of universal distrust,that it contains a multitude of specific predictions respecting its own developments, and the destinies of nations in connexion with it, which have already been accomplished with most surprising exactness, or are coming forth into fact every day before his eyes, -that although its spirit be directly opposed to the most inveterate moral propensities of the whole human family, although its mortifications are many, and its rewards precisely of that kind which man, in his