ITS EVIDENCES, EXTERNAL, INTERNAL, AND COLLATERAL. TOGETHER WITH ITS CANONICAL AUTHORITY AND PLENARY INSPIRATION. BY DANIEL DEWAR, D.D. LL.D. PRINCIPAL OF MARISCHAL COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY, ABERDEEN, Second Edition, enlarged. LONDON: HOULSTON AND STONEMAN, 65, PATERNOSTER ROW. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. THE design of this Work being to furnish a Text-book, on the Evidences of Divine Revelation, to students in the literary and philosophical classes in this University, it has been composed by the Author with a special view to this important object. He felt it necessary to combine comprehensiveness with brevity; to give a complete view of the evidences of the truth and divine authority of the Old Testament and the New, in as narrow a compass as is consistent with the elucidation of the numerous topics to which reference must necessarily be made in such a work. The most effectual, indeed the only effectual, method of conducting the studies of young men who have not yet completed the curriculum of arts, in the Evidences of Divine Revelation, is, to combine regular examination on a text-book with such additional and familiar illustrations as the teacher may deem it necessary to give. By devoting a very moderate portion of time weekly to this exercise, during the currency of two sessions, considerable knowledge may be acquired in this important branch of a Christian and liberal education. I would also suggest to parents the propriety, and the great advantage, of devoting a portion of time weekly,-perhaps on the evening of the Sabbath— to the instruction of their children in the evidences of the truth and divine authority of Christianity. Is it not an error in the general system of education in this country that, while the truths of the Christian religion are taught with commendable diligence, the reasons why those truths should be believed are so seldom taught? Though we should not rest satisfied with the mere knowledge of the grounds of our faith, it is, on every account, proper that we should be so well acquainted with these grounds as to be able to give an answer to every man that asketh us a reason of the hope that is in us, with meekness and fear. As to the propriety and importance of giving instructions in the evidences of Christianity to the students attending the literary and philosophical classes in the Universities, there are few, it is presumed, who entertain any doubt. No man can be liberally educated who is unacquainted with this important branch of knowledge. Irrespectively of the divine authority, the grounds on which Christianity claims to be a miraculous interposition of the Deity form a class of phenomena of which no man should be ignorant, and ignorance of which in any person who professes a knowledge of letters and of science is disreputable. MARISCHAL COLLEGE. |