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P3
1855

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by

ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of

New York.

STEREOTYPED BY THOMAS B. SMITH 216 William St. N. Y.

PRINTED BY

E. O. JENKINS

114 Nassan St.

TO THE

REV. ISAAC FERRIS, D.D., LL.D.

CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.

REV. AND Dear Sir

As you suggested to me the superintendence of this edition of Paley's Evidences of Christianity, I beg permission to throw the few prefatory remarks I have to make, into the form of a letter to yourself. Dr. Chalmers has recorded his opinion that Paley's work forms, all things considered, the best text-book for students. My own opinion is -and you were pleased to coincide in it-that, not only for academical, but also for popular use, it is one of the best treatises extant upon the External Evidence of our Holy Faith. The argument is not more difficult, and certainly not less interesting, than that which may be produced by an able advocate in some important trial; and those who earnestly and intelligently peruse discussions of the latter sort, are inexcusable if they recoil from the attentive perusal of a work like the present. As a mere logical study, it is eminently beautiful; as an unanswerable demonstration of the truth of Christianity, it is in the highest degree precious.

In my introductory chapter I have endeavored to state

fairly the claims of Divine Revelation. To this succeeds Paley's argument, which, in proving the Historical Reality of the Miracles of the New Testament, establishes the claims that the Bible for itself sets forth. The notes to the work are sometimes original, and frequently extracted from the writings of others. I was anxious to add the authority of greater names than my own humble and obscure one to the opinions which these notes embody. The books on the subject of the Evidences, to which I have chiefly referred, are those that are most easily accessible in this country; for, in these days of daring hypotheses and new revelations, it is more than ever necessary that the Christian should be able to give a reason for the hope that is in him, and more than ever desirable that the sciolist and the sceptic should study the credentials of the Sacred Scriptures. Whenever our author deserves commendation he receives it; when censure, it is not withheld. The case of Dr. Paley is one that strikingly illustrates the possibility of a man's being mighty in stating the credentials of Revelation, and most feeble in interpreting the contents of Revelation. I believe that had he executed this work at a later period of his life, he would have used much more caution than he has done, in speaking of Morals, of Inspiration, of the Old Testament, and of the peculiar object of the Gospel. But, fortunately, the very inferiority of the ground which, on those points, he chooses to occupy, only strengthens the arguments that he draws from them. They become arguments à fortiori. Yet, after all, although, in what he terms the Auxiliary Evidences of Christianity, his sagacious and judge-like faculty of clear and conclusive statement does not desert him, it is the Direct Historical proof that constitutes the stronghold of the work.

And this is impregnable. It is equally fatal to Deism, which pronounces the Bible false; to Naturalism, which pronounces it fabulous; and to Spiritualism, which pronounces it the production of mere human genius. Deism has had its day. Naturalism is compelled to assume, in spite of Historical fact, that the books were got up as mythical creations during the interval between Christ's death and some fancied epoch at which the books are said to have been compiled from the popular legends of the church! And Spiritualism maintains that the Great Teacher himself, and his apostles, were not more divinely inspired, and much less. extensively informed, than the modern apostles of its own school. The Historical chain, however, is traced up to the very days of our Saviour, of whose life we have no fewer than four distinct memoirs composed by his own contemporaries, besides numerous other documents of the same period, which proceed upon the facts as notorious-the whole constituting a body of proof unequalled, we believe, in any other ancient historical question whatever, while the books themselves, on the ground of the undoubted miracles they record, claim, in every possible form, direct and indirect, to be, in very deed, the WORD OF GOD and NOT OF MAN.

I have endeavored to render this edition as complete a text-book for colleges and schools as my limits would allow. In my own experience I have found Paley's treatise singularly adapted to this purpose by its perspicuity, precision, and brevity-the three great requisites in such a work; and it is hoped that the notes and additions to the present re-issue will supply, to some extent, what was wanting to make it suitable to the times in which we live.

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