a humorous mood by fancying that the hammers, cogs, fly-wheels, &c. were each actuated by some appetite, or passion-hate, rage, revenge, vanity, cupidity, &c. while the general result was most benignant, and the machine, taken as a whole, the product of power, knowledge, and benevolence! Such a machine does the moral world, the world of human nature, appear-and to those who seem ever more to place the comparison and the alternative between hell and earth, and quite overlook the opposition between earth and heaven, I recommend this meditation.

EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY.*

I. MIRACLES-as precluding the contrary evidence of no miracles.

II. The material of Christianity, its existence and history.

III. The doctrines of Christianity, and the correspondence of human nature to those doctrines,-illustrated, 1st, historically-as the actual production of a new world, and the dependence of the fate of the planet upon it;-2nd, individually-from its appeal for its truth to an asserted fact,-which, whether it be real or not, every man possessing reason has an equal

* Dictated to, and communicated by, Dr. Brabant of Devizes. Ed.

power of ascertaining within himself;-namely, a will which has more or less lost its freedom, though not the consciousness that it ought to be and may become free;-the conviction that this cannot be achieved without the operation of a principle connatural with itself; the evident rationality of an entire confidence in that principle, being the condition and means of its operation;-the experience in his own nature of the truth of the process described by Scripture as far as he can place himself within the process, aided by the confident assurances of others as to the effects experienced by them, and which he is striving to arrive at. All these form a practical Christian. Add, however, a gradual opening out of the intellect to more and more clear perceptions of the strict coincidence of the doctrines of Christianity, with the truths evolved by the mind, from reflections on its own nature. Το such a man one main test of the objectivity, the entity, the objective truth of his faith, is its accompaniment by an increase of insight into the moral beauty and necessity of the process which it comprises, and the dependence of that proof on the causes asserted. Believe, and if thy belief be right, that insight which gradually transmutes faith into knowledge will be the reward of that belief. The Christian, to whom, after a long profession of Christianity, the mysteries remain as much mysteries as before, is in the same state as a schoolboy with

regard to his arithmetic to whom the facit at the end of the examples in his cyphering book is the whole ground for his assuming that such and such figures amount to so and so.

3rd. In the above I include the increasing discoveries in the correspondence of the history, the doctrines and the promises of Christianity, with the past, present, and probable future of human nature; and in this state a fair comparison of the religion as a divine philosophy, with all other religions which have pretended to revelations and all other systems of philosophy; both with regard to the totality of its truth and its identification with the manifest march of affairs.

I should conclude that, if we suppose a man to have convinced himself that not only the doctrines of Christianity, which may be conceived independently of history or time, as the Trinity, spiritual influences, &c. are coincident with the truths which his reason, thus strengthened, has evolved from its own sources, but that the historical dogmas, namely, of the incarnation of the creative Logos, and his becoming a personal agent, are themselves founded in philosophical necessity; then it seems irrational, that such a man should reject the belief of the actual appearance of a religion strictly correspondent therewith, at a given time recorded, even as much as that he should reject Cæsar's account of his wars in Gaul, after he has convinced himself a priori of their probability.

As the result of these convictions he will not scruple to receive the particular miracles recorded, inasmuch as it would be miraculous that an incarnate God should not work what must to mere men appear as miracles; inasmuch as it is strictly accordant with the ends and benevolent nature of such a being, to commence the elevation of man above his mere senses by attracting and enforcing attention, first through an appeal to those senses. But with equal reason will he expect that no other or greater force should be laid on these miracles as such; that they should not be spoken of as good in themselves, much less as the adequate and ultimate proof of that religion; and likewise he will receive additional satisfaction, should he find these miracles so wrought, and on such occasions, as to give them a personal value as symbols of important truths when their miraculousness was no longer needful or efficacious.

CONFESSIO FIDEI. Nov. 3, 1816.

I.

I. I BELIEVE that I am a free-agent, inasmuch as, and so far as, I have a will, which renders me justly responsible for my actions, omissive as well as commissive. Likewise that I possess reason, or a law of right and wrong, which,

uniting with my sense of moral responsibility, constitutes the voice of conscience.

II. Hence it becomes my absolute duty to believe, and I do believe, that there is a God, that is, a Being, in whom supreme reason and a most holy will are one with an infinite power; and that all holy will is coincident with the will of God, and therefore secure in its ultimate consequences by His omnipotence ;-having, if such similitude be not unlawful, such a relation to the goodness of the Almighty, as a perfect time-piece will have to the sun.

COROLLARY.

The wonderful works of God in the sensible world are a perpetual discourse, reminding me of his existence, and shadowing out to me his perfections. But as all language presupposes in the intelligent hearer or reader those primary notions, which it symbolizes; as well as the power of making those combinations of these primary notions, which it represents and excites us to combine,-even so I believe, that the notion of God is essential to the human mind; that it is called forth into distinct consciousness principally by the conscience, and auxiliarly by the manifest adaptation of means to ends in the outward creation. It is, therefore, evident to my reason, that the existence of God is absolutely and necessarily insusceptible of a scientific demonstration, and that