dispensations. It is the completion of a progressive scheme, the perfection of a vast design, all the preceding parts of which, various, complicated, distant, and widely separated, are yet intimately connected, mutually dependent; and each individually, as well as the whole, necessary to that consummation which it received in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ.

2. If again we consider the scheme of Christianity itself, we must do it in connexion with its history, its origin, and its parentage. We have a wrong apprehension of the subject, if we suppose Christianity, in its main features and its principal doctrines, to be new and different from all that was taught in preceding dispensations. Not only is it the perfection of reason, and the religion of nature, separated from its corruptions, restored to its purity, and taught with authority; it is the same doctrine, in its fundamental points, that was known to the patriarchs, that made the basis of the Mosaic institution, that was taught by the prophets, that imparted a spirit and gave a character to all the sacred writings of the Jewish people.

His

Our Lord taught no new doctrine respecting the Author of nature and Lord of the universe. Father in heaven, to whom he directs our religious regards, is the same Being, represented under the same images, with the same attributes, exercising the same government, that appears through the whole of the preceding dispensations; that inspired the holy prophets, gave the law to the nation of Israel by Moses, and was worshipped by the patriarchs. And as the object of worship, and of religious trust, was the same,

so also was the worship itself, and the moral system connected with it. Not in the internal character and essential principles, but in the external forms of religion, suited to a maturer age of the world and a more advanced state of it, does Christianity vary from the former institution. It differs, also, in the stress it lays on internal character above external forms, in the greater clearness it gives to the hopes of the righteous, and the greater strength it imparts to the motives of a holy life. But those hopes and those motives are essentially the same. New light is given to guide, to encourage, and to comfort us; but no new object of worship, no new terms of acceptance, no new principles of action, no new system of morality, are revealed. These are all the same, which were before taught by Moses and the prophets, and which make up the substance, constitute the spirit, and appear in every part of the writings of the Old Testament.

3. If we now turn our attention to the proofs of Christianity, as a divine revelation, we find it not less closely connected with the dispensations that went before. Jesus proved himself to be a divine messenger, and his doctrine to be a divine revelation, by the miracles which he wrought, and to which he appealed as decisive evidence. But he also declared that he was the particular messenger of God, who had been foretold by a series of prophets, beginning at Moses, and continued through the long period that had intervened, till the last of the prophets, after the return from the captivity. He referred to the Jewish Scrip

tures in general, to Moses their great lawgiver in particular, and to the other prophets, as testifying of him, -as pointing out his person, his character, his offices, his works, the time of his coming, and the circumstances of his ministry, in such a manner, that a careful examination and a fair comparison would leave them in no doubt of his being the person to whom they referred.

Now, if, when we make this examination, we find the resemblance striking; if we find in the designation of the person of the Messiah, in the character he was to sustain, and the works he was to execute, marks of distinction which appeared in Jesus, but appeared united together in no other; and if they were marks of an extraordinary nature, such as were extremely unlikely to be found united in any one person, especially if a part of the description related to those very proofs, by which he was to establish his claims as a divine messenger, it is easy to see to how very great a degree the whole of this will serve to confirm and strengthen the evidence, before highly satisfactory and conclusive.

On this extensiveness of the scheme of revelation, the unity of design that appears running through the whole, the connexion of parts by mutual relation and dependence and importance of design, three remarks are to be made.

In the first place, as to the fact of this relation to preceding dispensations, it may be remarked, that the manner in which it is recognised, and the frequency of allusion to it by our Saviour and his

apostles, furnishes an argument of a peculiar kind, and of considerable force, in support of the claim of Christianity to be a revelation from God. It gives a positive air of sincerity and truth, as it multiplies the instances of coincidence or discrepancy to be observed, and thus furnishes easy means of detection, if the relations, connexions, and dependencies alluded to have no real foundation; and, on the other hand, if they are found to exist, it goes far to support the whole claim. I observe, that so frank and artless a reference to facts and circumstances, which will indeed support its claims, if fairly made out, but must be fatal to them, if it fails,—is a mark of sincerity and truth. Impostors are not apt to multiply gratuitously the means of their detection.

Second. But the argument becomes more decisive, when the appeal is answered, and the relation and dependence in question are made out in a satisfactory manner. For the very extent of the scheme furnishes some presumption as to its author, and the counsels in which it originated. So also does the length of time occupied in its progress to perfection, its gradual development, and the relation and dependence of parts so widely distant in time and place, and so various in kind. In these respects it is unlike the inventions of men, and the fictions of imposture. Man is shortsighted, impatient of delay. His views are of narrow extent. His purposes ripen soon, and either come to their perfection or perish. But it is far otherwise with Him, who can see from the beginning to the end of things, whatever be the interval that separates them.

Him no length of time, or distance of place, or variety of objects, acting on each other in an infinite variety of ways, can perplex. None of his designs in the natural or moral world appear to be single. None terminates in itself. Each, when accomplished, becomes in turn a means toward some farther end.

Through what an extensive and complicated chain of intermediate steps do the provisions of the natural world pass, each holding successively the place of means and ends in the progress; no part terminating in itself, but each necessary to the next succeeding in the series! We see this exemplified in the manner in which inanimate matter is made to contribute to vegetable life, this, again, to furnish subsistence to the whole animal race, and this, in its turn, made subservient to the next superior order in the scale of being, the intellectual and moral creation. In this, as in most other cases, too, the dependence is mutual, each inferior receiving in return some compensation for what it is destined to contribute to the next superior.

Examples, also, occur in the whole history of human improvements. In every part of human knowledge, advancement has been gradual; by steps each contributing to the next in the series. Nothing has come to perfection at once, but the generations of men have been constantly advancing, each a step beyond the preceding. The faculties themselves, too, as well as the objects on which they are employed, are improved and perfected by culture; and the higher they are advanced, become the more capable of further ad

vancement.