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deeply anxious to arrive at satisfaction of mind concerning it. Christianity must not be examined as an abstract, dry, uninteresting question, a matter of mere historical dispute, a point in chronology, on the determination of which little or nothing depends; but as an enquiry which involves the honour of God, and the present and eternal happiness of man. This earnestness we find described in the scripture in such terms as these, If thou criest after knowledge and liftest up thy voice for understanding, if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as hid treasure; then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.2

PRAYER to Almighty God must be an attendant on this docile and serious temper. We must not enter upon the enquiry for the display of intellectual acuteness, but with the devotional frame of mind which becomes those who acknowledge the existence and perfections of God, and who profess to believe that it is the duty of a dependent creature like man, to implore his aid and blessing on every undertaking, and more especially upon an enquiry which relates to the solemn revelation of his will. Fervour, humility, the submission of prayer for divine guidance and illumination, in the 2 Prov. ii. 3, 4, 5.

reverent use of our best faculties, are essential parts of a right disposition of heart.

A PRACTICAL OBEDIENCE to the will of God, so far as it is known, is the last branch of the temper on which we would insist that course of general conduct which may prove us to be sincere in seeking to know the will of God, that we may do it; a life and conduct free from those vices which natural conscience condemns; a behaviour not inconsistent with the docility, the earnestness, the prayer for divine instruction which we profess in our enquiries a life which shall not obviously make it our interest that Christianity should be untrue-a freedom, in short, from those various hindrances to an impartial examination of religion, which, as films and mists, distort every moral object, and bar out the entrance to truth and persuasion.

II. Now, if this be manifestly the state of mind in which the subject of the truth of Christianity should be studied, it may be useful to show THE ENTIRE WANT OF IT in too many of those who reject revelation. Young persons

will thus be guarded, in the first instance, against the assaults of impiety, and may judge of the cause in which unbelievers are engaged, by the spirit which actuates them. For I assert

Need I say, then, on concluding this introductory discourse, that if any question can be important to a reasonable and accountable creature under the moral government of an Almighty and righteous Being, for such is the admission on which we are to proceed, it is the investigation of the subject which I have now opened?

The Christian religion proposes to needy, miserable man, a hope-a solid, substantial, abiding hope-of everlasting happiness, founded on the mysterious death of the incarnate Son of God, received by faith, implanted and nourished in the heart by the sacred aid of the Holy Ghost, and producing the most holy effects in the entire life and character. Over against this hope of endless life, the Christian religion sets the unutterably woful state of the disobedient and unbelieving who reject its proffered grace, and persist in their rebellion. against God. Its sanctions stand thus, He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned. It is to infuse into you this blessed hope, and warn you to escape the opposite gulph, that we enter upon the present subject.

It demands, therefore, your attention. It is most momentous in its consequences. Indifference is madness. The alternative of neglecting, despising, disobeying this religion, is unspeakably awful. It is not a speculation

which Christianity brings you, it is not a curious inquiry, it is not an intellectual disquisition which leaves the state of men's morals and hearts and hopes where it found them. It is a question upon which an eternity of happiness or misery depends. It is a religion which inspires hope in a hopeless world, which establishes a way of pardon and peace, which reveals all the corruption of our fallen state, in order to reveal all the blessedness of the remedy for that state which is proposed to us in the Son and Spirit of God. Christianity is not a magnificent portico, with no temple; it is not a road laboriously prepared which leads to no city its body of evidence is a portal which opens to the temple of the living God; its solid proofs are a highway which leads to heaven.

The question, therefore, as to the truth of the Christian doctrine must be infinitely important. In expounding to you the evidences on which that truth rests, I should shrink from the responsibility of the task, if I were not persuaded that no exposition can be so incomplete as to obstruct materially the faith of a sincere and humble enquirer—and if I did not rely for success on the blessing of that God who has granted us the means of conviction on this subject, in an abundance correspondent to the importance of the case.

Let me further remind you, that if there be a

God, (and with the Atheist I am not arguing,) the duty of prayer to Him on entering upon this argument must be of paramount obligation. Let me entreat you, then, to unite with me in supplications to the common Father of all, whom the unbeliever professes to adore and reverence as well as the Christian, and beseech him to illuminate our minds, to dissipate all prejudices and prepossessions, and to dispose us to receive the truth with humility and joy.

And let the pious and sincere Christian cultivate more of the meekness and fear which are to attend his apology for his faith. It is the holy, upright, consistent, benevolent life of the Christian which forms the best standing defence of his religion to others, and the best spring of hope in his own mind. The effects of Christianity are then prominent and decisive. Were the faith of all who call themselves Christians a really living principle, we should be able to appeal to them with more confidence, as exemplifying and embodying what we describe in our portraits of the Christian cha⚫racter. The inconsistent tempers and lives of the professors of Christianity are the reproach of the faithful, and the stumbling-block of the profane. For no contradiction can be so fatal in its effects on others and on ourselves, as the claim of a believer's hope and the darkness and misery of an infidel's life.

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