CHAPTER III.

A TRIFLING FALSEHOOD INFLUENCES HUMAN BELIEF AGAINST THE BIBLE MORE THAN GIGANTIC TRUTH IN FAVOR OF IT.

EXAMPLE 1. An English traveller, Brydone, wrote and published a description of mount Etna. He describes her craters and her extended slope, covered occasionally for twenty miles or more, along the side of the mountain, with vines, villages, and luxuriance. These are sometimes destroyed by the river of melted lava which issues from the mountain above, many feet deep, and a mile-perhaps more, sometimes lessin width, bearing all before it, until it reaches the sea and drives back its boiling waves. After this burning stream has cooled, there is seen, instead of blooming gardens, a naked, dreary, metallic rock Sometimes many eruptions occur in the course of a year, breaking out at different parts of the mountain, and sometimes none for half a century. The traveller found a stream of lava congealed on the side of the mountain, which attracted his notice more than others. He thought it must have been thrown out by an eruption, which was mentioned by perhaps Polybius, as occurring nearly seventeen hundred years since. There was no soil on it. It was as naked as when first arrested there. The particles of dust floating through the air had not fallen there, so as to furnish hold for vegetation, and these vegetables had not

grown and decayed again and again, thus adding to the depth of the soil. Such a work had not even commenced. He tells us that on some part of that mountain, near the foot, if you will sink a pit, you must pass through seven different strata of lava, with two feet of soil between them. Upon the supposition that two thousand years are requisite for the increase of earth just named, he asks how seven different layers could be formed in less than fourteen thousand years. The chronology of Moses makes the world. not half as old. The Englishman was jocular at this discovery, and his admirers were delighted at what seemed to them a confutation of the book of heaven. How many thousands through Europe renounced their belief of revelation with this discovery for their prop, the author of this treatise is unable even to conjecture. It seems that many parts of Europe almost rang at the news of the analogical theory. True, the traveller only conjectured that he had found the lava mentioned by the ancient writer; but no matter, supposition only was strong enough to rivet their unbelief. The author has conversed with those in America, and on her western plains, who would declare they believed not a word of the Bible, because there was no soil on a stratum of lava, which, in all probability, had been there long.

Another learned Englishman, an admirer of the books of Moses, wrote to those who seemed to joy so greatly in their new system. He told them, that inasmuch as they seemed fond of arguing from analogies, he would give them an additional one. He reminded them that the cities of Herculaneum and

Pompeii were buried by the eruption in which the elder Pliny lost his life, near seventeen hundred years since. Those cities have lately been discovered; and in digging down to search their streets, six different strata of lava are passed through, with two feet of earth between them. And the famous Watson tells them, that if six different soils near Vesuvius could be formed in seventeen hundred years, perhaps seven might be made elsewhere in five thousand years.

an answer.

Might we not suppose, that those who had renounced their belief of Christianity, after reading some conjectures concerning Etna, would have resumed their faith as soon as these Vesuvian facts were placed before them? No, it was not so. It was easy to descend, but they never reascended. Men love darkness rather than light. Thousands who snatched at the objection with joyful avidity never read the confutation. They never inquired for Those who read were afterwards silent, but remain unaltered. A lawyer who stood so high with his fellow-citizens, for worth and intelligence, that he filled many offices of trust, had his credence of the sacred page shaken by reading the imaginary system built on the surface of Etna's lava streams. He took the book to a friend, to show him what reason we have for casting off our reverence for the Bible. This friend turned over a few pages of the book, where this same traveller, after telling how many eruptions sometimes happen in the course of a month, goes on to narrate the following history:

"Our landlord at Nicolasi," he says, "gave us an account of the singular fate of the beautiful coun

try near Hybla, at no great distance from hence It was so celebrated for its fertility, and particularly for its honey, that it was called Mel Passi, the Honey Land, till it was overwhelmed by the lava of Etna; and having then become totally barren, by a kind of pun its name was changed to Mal Passi, the Mean Land. In a second eruption, by a shower of ashes from the mountain, it soon reassumed its ancient beauty and fertility, and for many years was called Bel Passi, the Beautiful Land. Last of all, in the unfortunate era of 1669, it was again laid under an ocean of fire, and reduced to the most wretched sterility, since which time it is known again by its second appellation of Mal Passi."

The lawyer was asked if his difficulties were in any way obviated by this rapidity of change from soil to nakedness, and from nudity to soil again, narrated by the same original discoverer of the whole theory. He answered in the negative, and continued obstinately to cast away the book of God. Thousands of cases happen continually, where the individual is as readily and as speedily turned into the path of infidelity, and when once there, continues to trace it with invincible pertinacity. Men, without knowing it, love darkness rather than light.

EXAMPLE 2. When some travellers in Asia wrote back that the Chinese record made the world many thousand years older than the Mosaic history does, how it rejoiced a host of listeners. Oh, how they clapped their hands! We thought, said they, that the Bible was a fabrication, unworthy of belief. any wrote, or said to those who were thus becoming

If

scoffers at revelation, "Do not be too hasty in your conclusions: how can you tell but that national vanity may have had some share in exciting those who speak of their celestial empire, to claim a spurious antiquity?" they turned away, or closed their ears with satisfied confidence. They seemed to wish for no further information. After a time, some additional items were published from Chinese history, such as the following: They tell the name of their first king, which would sound in the ear of some as a corruption of the word Noah. The time they assign for his reign corresponds with the age of Noah. They speak of this king as being without father; of his mother being encircled with the rainbow; of his preserving seven clean animals to sacrifice to the great Spirit; that in his day the sky fell on the earth and destroyed the race of men, etc. When we remember that the waters of the sky did this in the days of Noah; that Noah was the first of the postdiluvian race, and thus without father; that the rainbow is interestingly connected with his history; that he did take into the ark clean animals by sevens, part of which were offered in sacrifice-we begin to discover that the Chinese account is nothing more nor less than a blotted copy of the truth. See Stackhouse's History of the Bible.

We gather from Moses, that between the creation and the deluge there were ten generations of men, surpassing us greatly in longevity. It would be no tortured inference to suppose them vastly our superiors, both in strength and stature. This kind of men, the heathen in ages past were in the habit of calling