THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER

Commenced its labours in 1826. It was instituted to uphold and diffuse and carry forward the great principles of the Reformation-the sufficiency of Scripture, the right of individual judgment, and of fearless free inquiry; to uproot alike bigotry and indifference; to free the mind from slavish subjection to human authority in religion, and the heart from the contracting influences of sectarian feeling; to advocate the rights of man, and inculcate the duties obligatory on all human beings to truth, liberty, and virtue, their fellow-creatures and their God; and thus to herald the universality of knowledge, freedom, and happiness.

The Seven Volumes now completing, contain a fund of information on many of the most interesting subjects of thought. Nearly the whole of CHANNING's essays and sermons are contained in them—the whole proceedings in relation to the conflict for Christian liberty in the Synod of Ulster-vindications of the truth and divine origin of Christianity-criticism and explanation of various passages of the Bible-illustrations and defences of the peerless perfections, undivided Unity, and essential unbounded benevolence of God-interesting and powerful articles on Education, Church Establishments, Methodism, Slavery-memoirs of Newton, Locke, Abauzit, Lindsey, Firmin, Emlyn, Biddle-and a record of facts marking the spread of opinions favourable to the emancipation of the body and mind of man from ignorance, slavery, bigotry, and superstition, and the establishment of moral and intellectual, individual and national independence and blessedness. On the 1st of January, 1834,

The First Number of Vol. VIII. of THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER will be published.

Its pages will be increased to forty-eight monthly, printed with an entirely new type and on improved paper. Should the sale continue to increase, the pages will be still further extended; but on no account will the price be raised above its present amount, Sixpence each Number.

Believing that the only basis of individual and social happiness is to be found in the doctrines, precepts, and spirit of Christianity -that it advances and harmonises with all improvement, and is the charter of liberty to every human being-THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER will continue, as it has hitherto done, to advocate its truths in their purity and benevolence-to contend earnestly for all that can elevate human nature, and secure to it the unfettered exercise and undisturbed enjoyment of those privileges and that happiness which the Father of mercies intended for all the children of his love.

It is hoped that every present subscriber will endeavour to procure one in addition. Those who secure twelve shall receive a copy for themselves gratis. Information is requested to be addressed to the Editor, "Rev. GEORGE HARRIS, Glasgow," on or before the 12th December.

THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER is published on the first of every Month, by R. HUNTER, 72 St. Paul's Church-yard; C. Fox, 67 Paternoster-Row; and J. MARDON, 19 St. Martin's le Grand, LONDON. Communications, or books for review, both of which are respectfully solicited, sent to Mr. Hunter, before the last day of each month, will reach the Editor in a few days afterwards.

CHRISTIAN PIONEER.

No. 88.

DECEMBER, 1833. Vol. VII.

The Evidences of Christianity. By William Ellery

Channing, D. D.

(Concluded from page 547.)

FIRST, I am to show, that revelation is founded on the authority of reason, and cannot, therefore, oppose or disparage it without subverting itself. Let me state a few of the considerations which convince me of the truth of this position. The first is, that reason alone makes us capable of receiving a revelation. It must previously exist and operate, or we should be wholly unprepared for the communications of Christ. Revelation, then, is built on reason. You will see the truth of these remarks, if you will consider to whom revelation is sent. Why is it given to men rather than to brutes? Why have not God's messengers gone to the fields to proclaim his glad tidings to bird and beast? The answer is obvious. These want reason; and wanting this, they have no capacity or preparation for revealed truth. And not only would revelation be lost on the brute; let it speak to the child before his rational faculties have been awakened, and before some ideas of duty and his own nature have been developed, and it might as well speak to a stone. Reason is the preparation and ground of revelation.

This truth will be still more obvious, if we consider not only to whom, but in what way the Christian revelation is communicated. How is it conveyed? In words. Did it make these words? No. They were in use ages before its birth. Again, I ask, Did it make the ideas or thoughts which these words express? No. If the hearers of Jesus had not previously attached ideas to the terms which he employed, they could not have received his meaning. He might as well have spoken to them in a foreign tongue. Thus the ideas which entered into Christianity, subsisted before. They were ideas of reason; so that to this faculty, revelation owes the materials of which it is composed.

Revelation, we must remember, is not our earliest teacher. Man is not born with the single power of reading God's word, and sent immediately to that guide. His eyes open first on another volume, that of the creation. Long before he can read the Bible, he looks round on the earth and sky. He reads the countenances of his friends, and hears and understands their voices. He looks, too, by degrees, within himself, and acquires some ideas of his own soul. Thus his first school is that of nature and reason, and this is necessary to prepare him for a communication from Heaven. Revelation does not find the mind a blank, a void prepared to receive unresistingly whatever may be offered; but finds it in possession of various knowledge from nature and ex

perience, and still more in possession of great principles, fundainental truths, moral ideas, which are derived from itself, and which are the germs of all its future improvement. This last view is peculiarly important. The mind does not receive everything from abroad. Its great ideas arise from itself, and by

nature.

those native lights, it reads and comprehends the volumes of nature and revelation. We speak, indeed, of nature and revelation as making known to us an intelligent first cause; but the ideas of intelligence and causation, we derive originally from our own The elements of the idea of God, we gather from ourselves. Power, wisdom, love, virtue, beauty, and happiness, words which contain all that is glorious in the universe and interesting in our existence, express attributes of the mind, and are understood by us only through consciousness. It is true, these ideas or principles of reason, are often obscured by thick clouds, and mingled with many and deplorable errors. Still they are never lost. Christianity recognises them, is built on them, and needs them as its interpreters. If an illustration of these views be required, I would point you to what may be called the most fundamental idea of religion, I mean the idea of right, of duty. Do we derive this originally and wholly from sacred books? Has not every human being, whether born within or beyond the bounds of revelation, a sense of the distinction between right and wrong? Is there not an earlier voice than revelation, approving or rebuking men according to their deeds? In barbarous ages is not conscience heard? And does it not grow more articulate with the progress of society? Christianity does not create but presupposes the idea of duty, and the same may be said of other great convictions. Revelation, then, does not stand alone, nor is it addressed to a blank and passive mind. It was meant to be a joint worker with other teachers, with nature, with Providence, with conscience, with our rational powers; and as these are all given us by God, they cannot differ from each other. God must agree with himself. He has but one voice. It is man who speaks with jarring tongues. Nothing but harmony can come from the Creator; and accordingly, a religion, claiming to be from God, can give no surer proof of falsehood, than by contradicting those previous truths which God is teaching by our very nature. We have thus seen, that reason prepares us for a divine communication, and that it furnishes the ideas or materials of which revelation consists. This is my first consideration. I proceed to a second. I affirm, then, that revelation rests on the authority of reason, because to this faculty it submits the evidences of its truth, and nothing but the approving sentence of reason binds us to receive and obey it. This is a very weighty consideration. Christianity, in placing itself before the tribunal of reason, and in resting its claims on the sanction of this faculty, is one of the chief witnesses to the authority and dignity of our rational nature. That have ascribed to this faculty its true and proper office, may be easily made to appear. I take the New Testament in hand, and on what ground do I receive its truths as divine? I see nothing on its pages but the same letters in

which other books are written. No miraculous voice from Heaven assures me that it is God's word, nor does any mysterious voice within my soul command me to believe the supernatural works of Christ. How, then, shall I settle the question of the origin of this religion? I must examine it by the same rational faculties by which other subjects are tried. I must ask what are its evidences, and I must lay them before reason, the only power by which evidence can be weighed.

I have not a distinct

I have not two un

faculty given me for judging a revelation. derstandings, one for inquiring into God's word, and another into his works. As with the same bodily eye I now look on the earth, now on the heavens; so with the same power of reason, I examine now nature, now revelation. Reason must collect and weigh the various proofs of Christianity. It must especially compare this system with those great moral convictions which are written by the finger of God on the heart, and which make man a law to himself. A religion subverting these, it must not hesitate to reject, be its evidences what they may. A religion, for example, commanding us to hate and injure society, reason must instantly discard, without even waiting to examine its proofs. From these views we learn, not only that it is the province of reason to judge of the truth of Christianity, but what is still more important, that the rules or tests by which it judges, are of its own dictation. The laws which it applies in this case, have their origin in itself. No one will pretend that revelation can prescribe the principles by which the question of its own truth should be settled; for until proved to be true, it has no authority. Reason must prescribe the tests or standards to which a professed communication from God should be referred; and among these, none are more important than that moral law which belongs to the very essence, and is the deepest conviction of the rational nature. Revelation, then, rests on reason, and in opposing it, would act for its own destruction.

I have given two views; I have shown, that revelation draws its ideas or materials from reason, and that it appeals to this power as the judge of its truth. I now assert, thirdly, that it rests on the authority of reason, because it needs and expects this faculty to be its interpreter, and without this aid, would be worse than useless. How is the right interpretation, the real meaning of the Scriptures to be ascertained? I answer, By reason. I know of no process by which the true sense of the New Testament is to pass from the page into my mind, without the use of my rational faculties. It will not be pretended that this book is so exceedingly plain, its words so easy, its sentences so short, its meaning so exposed on the surface, that the whole truth may be received in a moment, and without any intellectual effort. There is no such miraculous simplicity in the Scriptures. In truth, no book can be written so simply as to need no exercise of reason. Almost every word has more than one meaning, and judgment is required to select the particular sense intended by the writer. Of all books, perhaps the Scriptures need most the use of reason for their just interpretation; and this, not from

any imperfection, but from the strength, boldness, and figurative character of their style, and from the distance of the time when they were written. I open the New Testament, and my eye lights on this passage, "If thy hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee." Is this language to be interpreted in its plainest and most obvious sense? Then I must mutilate my body, and become a suicide. I look again, and I find Jesus using these words to the Jews," Fill ye up the measure of your fathers." Am I to interpret this according to the letter, or the first ideas which it suggests? Then Jesus commanded his hearers to steep themselves in crime, and was himself a minister of sin. It is only by a deliberate use of reason, that we can penetrate beneath the figurative, hyperbolical, and often obscure style of the New Testament to the real meaning. Let me go to the Bible, dismissing my reason, and taking the first impression which the words convey, and there is no absurdity, however gross, into which I shall not fall. I shall ascribe a limited body to God, and unbounded knowledge to man; for I read of God having limbs and of man knowing all things. Nothing is plainer, than that I must compare passage with passage, and limit one by another; and, especially, limit all by those plain and universal principles of reason, which are called common sense, or I shall make revelation the patron of every folly and vice. So essential is reason to the interpretation of the Christian records. Revelation rests upon its authority. Can it then oppose it, or teach us to hold it in light esteem?

I have now furnished the proofs of my first position, that revelation is founded on reason; and in discussing this I have wished not only to support the main doctrine, but to teach you to reverence, more perhaps than you have done, your rational nature. This has been decried by theologians, until men have ceased to feel its sacredness and dignity. It ought to be regarded as God's greatest gift. It is his image within us. To renounce it, would be to offer a cruel violence to ourselves, to take our place among the brutes. Better pluck out the eye, better quench the light of the body, than the light within us. We all feel that the loss of reason, when produced by disease, is the most terrible calamity of life, and we look on a hospital for the insane, as the receptacle of the most pitiable of our race. But in one view, insanity is not so great an evil as the prostration of reason to a religious sect, or a religious chief; for the first is a visitation of Providence, the last is a voluntary act, the work of our own hands.

I am aware that those who have spoken most contemptuously of human reason, have acted from a good motive; their aim has been to exalt revelation. They have thought that by magnifying this as the only means of divine teaching, they were adding to its dignity. But truth gains nothing by exaggeration; and Christianity as we have seen is undermined by nothing more effectually, than by the sophistry which would bring discredit on our rational powers. Revelation needs no such support. For myself, I do not find that to esteem Christianity, I must think it the only source of instruction to which I must repair. I need