3. The inspiration of the Scriptures appears, further, from the excellency of the doctrines they contain. Of these doctrines, amidst all their extent and variety, the cross of Christ is the centre, the glory, and the substance. To Him give all the Prophets witness; and all the Apostles, in common with Paul, determined to know nothing among men, save Jesus Christ and him crucified. These doctrines are, no doubt, mysterious. Human reason could never have discovered them; the human intellect is incapable of fully comprehending them; and vain man, when he hears them propounded, is apt, in the pride of his understanding, to exclaim, "How can these things be?" 66 Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him."* Yet the mysteriousness of these truths is no valid objection to their certainty, or to their heavenly origin. Nature has its mysteries as well as revelation. Had the Scriptures contained nothing astonishing, nothing that man could never have anticipated or imagined, nothing that surpasses the grasp of the human mind-they would not have been analogous to the other works of God, and their authenticity would thus have been open to suspicion.

The doctrines of the Gospel display their high origin by their native sublimity and excellence, and by their evident adaptation to the moral circumstances and exigencies of mankind. The glories of Immanuel-the wonderful union of divinity and humanity in the one person of Jesus Christ-unspotted innocence, and the highest perfection, in the midst of a world lying in wickedness-the deep abasement and unparalleled agonies of the Son of God in human flesh-the just suffering for the unjust-the Holy One causing the sword to awake and smite the man that is his Fellow and his well-beloved-sin punished without abatement, and yet the sinner saved to the uttermost-the Ruler of the universe just, and yet the justifier of the ungodly that believeth in Jesus-life springing out of death-glory, honour, and immortality arising from the ignominious and accursed tree-the resurrection of Christ as the first fruits of them that slept the entrance of the Forerunner, by his own blood, into that within the vail-the continual presentation of this all-atoning blood before the throne -the mission of the Spirit by the exalted Saviour to illuminate and sanctify his people, and conduct them to the land of uprightness;—these, and other collateral doctrines, form a divinely excellent whole, worthy of the majesty, the holiness,

1 Cor. ii, 9.

the wisdom, and the goodness of Jehovah, and admirably suited to the needs of fallen humanity. When conscience awakes, and with a voice of thunder shows us the real nature and demerit of sin, as rebellion against our Creator, and a violation of his righteous law-when the sorrows of death compass us about, and the pains of hell get hold upon us, where can we find rest and refreshing to our souls, but under the shadow of the Christian atonement? When the utter emptiness of this transitory world presses the mind with resistless force, and the realities of eternity burst on the view, where can we obtain firm footing and substantial relief, but in that Saviour who has abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light by the Gospel?" The vain refuges provided by the Pagan and the Mahometan systems, cannot bear a comparison with that which is denominated "the wisdom of God in a mystery." "The Prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully; what is the chaff to the wheat, saith the Lord?" As the sun manifests himself by his own light, so the leading doctrines of Scripture, of themselves, discover their divine Author; and "if our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine into them."+

4. Another proof of the divine inspiration of the Scriptures is furnished by the purity of its precepts. Our whole duty is comprehended in those Ten Commandments that were solemnly promulgated at Sinai; of which the first and the last, in particular, combine to show that the law is spiritual, and exceeding broad. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," is a prohibition, by which we are expressly taught that the Lord's eye is upon us, and that we must keep ourselves from refined and inward, as well as gross and open idolatry. "Thou shalt not covet," explicitly forbids the first risings of evil desire in the heart. Our blessed Lord requires love, supreme love to God, and unfeigned love to our neighbour, as the fulfilment of the law. His illustrations of duty in his sermon on the Mount, and in his unequalled parables, are admirably minute and touching. Both Prophets and Apostles uniformly inculcate the renewing of the mind, the culture of the soul, the keeping of the heart. Amid all the bodily exercise and splendid ceremonies involved in the observance of the 2 Cor. iv. 3, 4

*

1 Cor. ii. 7.

† Jer. xxiii. 28.

Mosaic ritual, the book of Psalms very strikingly demonstrates that devout affections were indispensable, and were never withheld by "Israelites indeed." The institutions of New Testament worship are still more powerfully calculated to impress that important maxim; " God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."* The habitual remembrance of our Creator is represented by the sacred writers, as the great spring of all that is excellent in spirit and conduct. Piety must exercise its benign influence on every class, every period, every department of life. We are enjoined to abhor all that is offensive, and cultivate all that is pleasing to God. Amidst our various occupations, recreations, and designs, His glory is the grand object to be kept constantly in view. We must delight ourselves in Him, as our chief felicity, our only adequate portion; and every created good is to be enjoyed as a display of his kindness, and a stream by which we are conducted to the Fountain of bliss. To temperance, chastity, spirituality of mind, and other personal virtues, we are taught to add a noble elevation of spirit, prompting us to love our enemies, to forgive and forget the greatest injuries and indignities, and to prosecute disinterested labours of benevolence with alacrity, zeal, and perseverance. At the termination of the noblest efforts, at the close of the brightest career, in place of boasting of our own attainments in virtue, we must feel that we are unprofitable servants, that we have even come far short of the requirements of the perfect law, that by the grace of God we are what we are, and that our hopes of acceptance and eternal life rest entirely on divine mercy, flowing through the Saviour's

blood.

The Christian code of morality is incomparably superior, in purity and extent, to all the moral systems ever contrived by human legislators, priests, or philosophers. Look into the precepts of a Lycurgus, a Cato, and other sages of antiquity, and you see them either expressly permitting the perpetration of obvious, and even outrageous immoralities, or extolling them as virtues. Examine the sacred books of Persians, Indians, or Mahometans, and you will find them, amidst a show of wisdom and sanctity, so constructed as less or more to flatter the pride of mankind, to indulge their passions, and tolerate their favourite vices. The writers of Scripture, on the contrary, with unshrinking fidelity, apply the axe to the root of depravity, denounce without reserve all manner of iniquity, and hold forth an immaculate standard of moral conduct. "Whence * John iv. 24.

had these men this wisdom?" From what source did they derive these noble conceptions, and heart-stirring sentiments? Not from the native stores of their own minds, but from the illuminations of the Holy Spirit.

It has been justly observed, that the motto engraven on the mitre of the Jewish High Priest, "HOLINESS TO THE LORD," is inscribed on the whole Bible. In connection with the purity of its precepts, we might have surveyed the holy tendency of its various parts, doctrinal, devotional, prophetic, and historical. Its biographical sketches, too, it is clear, supply instances of ruinous ungodliness fitted to deter from evil, and examples of eminent piety and holiness calculated to allure to what is good; above all, the glorious and attractive pattern of our Saviour, of whom it is emphatically said that he "went about doing good." But we proceed to notice, as another proof of divine inspiration,

5. The wonderful harmony which characterizes all the sacred penmen. The composition of the Holy Scriptures was not the work of a single age, or of merely one or two writers; nor did its penmen universally belong to any one particular class. The period during which this sacred undertaking was carried forward, from its commencement to its consummation, included no less than fifteen centuries; betwixt thirty and forty individuals were employed; and although, with few exceptions, they were descendants of Abraham, yet in many instances, agreeably to the statements formerly made, they widely differed from each other in point of birth, rank, education, natural capacities, acquirements, habits and pursuits. Alluding, nevertheless, to the expressions of the Apostle Paul regarding the unity of heart and purpose discovered by himself and his dear brother Titus, we may say: "Walked they not in the same spirit? walked they not in the same steps?"* Do we not uniformly recognise in them all, the same principles and feelings, the same scope and design? Sublimity blended with simplicity, an ardent concern to glorify God and benefit mankind, inviolable attachment to the interests of truth and righteousness, zeal tempered by humility and gentleness, with a disposition ingenuously to acknowledge their own infirmities and faults, are the distinguishing characteristics, without exception, of the whole group. How, amid great varieties in other respects, could they have so happily manifested the same excellent features, or so cordially and perfectly concurred in forwarding the same blessed design, unless they had been uni

* 2 Cor. xii. 18.

versally inspired, and led, by one and the same Spirit. Assuredly, these holy men thus harmoniously co-operated, during a long series of ages, under the inspiration and guidance, not of that impure and malignant Spirit who is called the Devil and Satan, but of that one Divine Spirit, who is usually designated the Holy Spirit, and of whom the Psalmist says, thy Spirit is good.*

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The harmony betwixt the Old and the New Testament writers is highly deserving of notice. The New Testament powerfully confirms the Öld. Its historical narratives embody the completion of ancient predictions, and the fulfilment of ancient types. Explicit testimonies are every where borne by our Lord and his Apostles to the genuineness, authenticity, and inspiration of the writings of Moses and the Prophets. Judicious advocates of revelation have, therefore, in some instances, thought proper to begin by establishing the divine original of the New Testament; observing, that when this is proved, it follows, of necessity, that the Old Testament must be ascribed to the same source.† The Old Testament, however, does not fail, in its turn, to afford great facilities for the illustration and defence of the New. Let us only consider the reiterated promises respecting the Messiah, his numerous types, the various characters under which he is presented by holy men of old, their circumstantial predictions relative to his birth, life, ministry, miracles, sufferings, death and resurrection, and then peruse the details of the Evangelists, showing how fully and minutely all was verified-and we cannot but perceive a rich profusion of evidence reflected, by the first great division of the inspired volume, on the second. Those very passages of the Old Testament, indeed, on which Deists and Sceptics have been particularly apt to pour forth a torrent of abuse, and which some professed Christians have incautiously regarded as spots or excrescences in the system of revelation, do, when correctly understood in their purport and design, contribute, in their several proportions, towards the credit and utility of the whole book of God.

We cannot stop to advert particularly to the seeming contradictions that have been observed in the Scriptures. Suffice it to remark, that, as many excellent interpreters and critics have shown at length, they are all capable of a fair adjustment. In no part of the Bible do they occur more frequently, or as

Psalm cxliii. 10.

† See Dr Dick's Essay on the Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, chapters iii. iv. v.