Redeemer's miraculous birth and spotless life; his death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven; the efforts of the witnesses of these events to make them known to the world, and the success of their labours; their letters to the converts to Christianity, explaining its doctrines and enforcing its duties; ending with a sublime apocalypse of the thrilling scenes that shall precede the dissolution of the world, the terrors of the judgment-day, and a heartcheering vision of the mansions of blessedness.

We should each know for ourselves, the evidences on which belief in these stupendous truths is founded.

It is not designed to enter here at length into the evidences of Christianity. Wilberforce, Chalmers, Erskine, and Paley, on this subject, are earnestly recommended to your serious and attentive perusal.

The New Testament depends upon the evidence of testimony, and of internal evidence, or its adaptation to the wants and condition of man.

Upon the strength of the first argument, our belief mainly rests. The writers of the New Testament-were they intelligent, honest, and true witnesses? They were plain, sensible men, who had no other motive in writing, but to make known truths which would expose them to contempt, persecution, and death, in obedience to the command of their crucified Master; they exhibited the credentials of their authority as Christ's witnesses, by working miracles, which were seen and known by thousands of their fellowmen, in full possession of their senses and their reason. The knowledge of these events has been transmitted to the present time, in the same way that other historical truths have been; namely, by written testimony. No one ever doubted that there was such a man as Alexander the Great, or that he had such a friend as Parmenio, or that he conquered the Persian monarch Darius. We believe these things as firmly as if they had occurred in some distant land in our own day; the length of time that has elapsed does not invalidate the testimony of the historian. No history in the world is so well supported by testimony as the

history of Jesus Christ: for this very reason, that there never has been a time when there were not parties interested in proving it false, if they could have done so. A number of eye-witnesses have given their separate but concordant narrations of the same events, and the severe scrutiny that has been exercised upon them has only laid open the immoveable basis upon which they rest.

These brief hints have been given, merely to lead your minds to a thorough investigation of this subject.

The second argument, namely, whether the truths revealed are adapted to the condition of man, comes home to every heart. Look into your own; are its yearnings after happiness satisfied with anything that earth affords? What shall purify and elevate its affections? What moral power do you possess to escape from wretchedness? What human philosophy will afford consolation in death, and hope of a blissful immortality? The Bible! The Bible alone reveals the mystery of man's being, his fallen, sinful state, and the means of restoration; points out the path of duty, and opens wide the golden gates of immortality. And for the evidence of the truth and the divine origin of Christianity, are there none within the circle of your acquaintance, whose lives are a constant example of the power of its divine influence on their hearts? The consistent lives of Christian men is the best and most unanswerable evidence of the divine origin of Christianity. Nor, let it be remembered by each of you, is there a greater stumblingblock in the way of unbelievers, than the inconsistencies of professing Christians. The Bible, then, my young friends, must be your text-book of duty, your guide in self-education; and a simple faith in the divine Redeemer the ground of all your hopes for time and for eternity. Life and immortality have been brought to light by the gospel. But you must come to the reading of it with one petition, uttered with the earnestness of the last cry of a drowning man, "God be merciful to me a sinner!" You must flee to Christ as the only refuge of the lost, as well as the only remedy for sin. Then the same spirit which inspired "holy men

of old" to write its solemn truths, will render it to you "a pillar of fire by day and a pillar of cloud by night," to guide you through life's wilderness to the promised land.

In this age of sectarianism and heresy, cling closely to the Bible. Consider it more honourable than any sectarian appellation, to be called "a Bible Christian." In the stillness and solitude of evening, before you throw yourself upon the protecting care of Divine Love, read its glorious promises. By the rosy light of morning, study its holy precepts, to regulate your thoughts, animate your love, and fortify your heart against temptation. Imbibe its principles, so that they shall run through the whole tenor of your conduct-form the very warp upon which your life is woven. You need not fear that you will become too well acquainted with the blessed book. To adopt the eloquent language of another, "If all the minds now on earth could be concentrated into one, and that one applied the whole of its stupendous energies to the study of this single book, it would never apprehend its doctrines in all their divine purity; its promises in their overpowering fulness; its precepts in their searching extent; even that glorious mind, sufficient to exhaust the universe, would only discover that the Scriptures were inexhaustible."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE STANDARD OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER.

"At kind distance still

Perfection stands, like happiness,

To tempt eternal chase."

WHEN Corregio first saw the paintings of Raphael, his heart throbbed with exultation, and he exclaimed, “I, too, am a painter!" An artist of our own country was once standing, with folded arms, gazing with intense delight upon a beautiful picture; the question was asked, "Do you ever expect

to equal that?" He turned quickly, his dark eye flashing with the enthusiasm of genius, and replied, " My aim is perfection." Would such an one be daunted by the ridicule of those who have no taste for his art, or his ardour cooled by the sober advice of the utilitarian, who declares it to be an unprofitable employment of time? They no more retard his progress, than the "dewy cobwebs on the morning grass" retard the journey of the early traveller. The painter's ardour, his devotedness, his perseverance, call forth unbounded praise from all lovers of the art; they know that such concentration of power, such unity of purpose, will produce surpassing excellence. All the world acknowledge that "it is good to be zealously affected in a good cause," excepting only the best of all causes-the cause of religion.

Among those who are professedly Christians, the diversity of character is immense. The heart may be right, where there are errors in judgment; and the understanding may be enlightened and convinced, while the heart remains untouched. It is, nevertheless, to this "cloud of witnesses" that the young look for example.

The poetical student of the Bible admires the beauty and the thrilling grandeur of many parts of it. Its wonderful truths exercise the intellect, and give unbounded scope to the imagination. His taste is charmed with the bold rhetorical figures and the beautiful imagery with which it abounds. He is not insensible, perhaps, to the noble examples of moral sublimity there exhibited. He admires, too, the splendid actions of illustrious men of every age and country-" the lofty deeds and daring high" of the patriot, the philanthropy of a Howard or a Wilberforce, the dauntless courage of a Luther and a Knox-but with the same kind of admiration that might be bestowed upon equal energy and intellectual power directed to entirely different purposes. It is the admiration of greatness of character, of a grandeur and power which belong, in a superior degree, to Milton's Satan and Goethe's Mephistopheles. It is possible he may sometimes admire what is called the beauty of virtue, but it is not "the beauty of

holiness." To him there is nothing picturesque, nothing interesting, in the daily life of the serious, humble, unobtrusive Christian; nothing to excite the imagination, or charm the overwrought feelings, in such an one's selfdenying duties. If such a Christian, however, were brought to the stake, and endured, with unyielding fortitude, the agonies of martyrdom, then he would become worthy of admiration. Or it is possible that the magnanimity or the moral courage of a Christian might strike the poetical religionist with awe, as Milton's Satan, at the grave rebuke of the cherub Zephon, struck with his angel countenance, 66 severe in youthful beauty,"

"Felt how awful goodness is, and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely."

Rousseau could admire the beauty and moral grandeur of Christianity, and could even pen an eloquent encomium upon that Saviour whose divinity he denied, and whose precepts he daringly violated.

He says: "The majesty

of the Scriptures strikes me with astonishment, and the sanctity of the gospel addresses itself to my heart. Look at the volumes of the philosophers! With all their pomp, how contemptible do they appear in comparison to this! Is it possible that a book, at once so simple and so sublime, can be the work of man? Can he, who himself is the subject of its history, be a mere man? Was his the tone of an enthusiast or an ambitious sectary? What sweetness! What purity in his manners! What an affecting gracefulness in his instructions! What sublimity in his maxims! What profound wisdom in his discourses! What presence' of mind! What sagacity and propriety in his answers! How great the command over his passions! Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live, suffer, and die, without weakness and without ostentation?"

Madame de Staël, in her works, discovers the same admiration, the same enthusiasm, for the grand and the beautiful in religion; while it is not uncharitable to believe that she never felt its power.