ARTICLE IV. LECTURES ON THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, before the Lowell Institute, January, 1844. By MARK HOPKINS, D. D., President of Williams College. BY THE EDITOR. FEW topics furnish a fairer field for the display of genius than the Evidences of Christianity. Strong minds and able pens have been enlisted in showing that the bulwarks of our faith are impregnable. Not only fervent Christians, but also men destitute of the spirit of Christ and strangers to vital godliness, have contended for Christianity with distinguished success. The argument for Christianity is well adapted to strike the attention of thinking minds. Men who know how to appreciate a convincing demonstration, find in it something to be admired. The truth and divine authority of our religion comes to us so fully attested, and capable of being shown in so many different. ways, that no theorem in mathematics can boast of a more satisfactory proof. By several different systems of argument, by various lines of testimony, we find ourselves brought continually to the same conclusions. If the external testimony were absent, we have the immovable bulwark of the internal. If direct proof were wanting, we have an astonishing mass of that which is inferential. If the record of the miracles could be blotted out, we have history; even profane history could not be written, without recognizing the existence, the influence and the principles of Christianity. If the doctrines were taken away, the rites of Christianity would remain to be accounted for; these are fixed facts in the history of the world; in their own nature, they speak forth a system of revealed truth; they embrace certain doctrines which they recognize, and which are the doctrines of Christianity. If doctrines and rites were removed, history and memory, the Scriptures, and all our Christian literature, both ancient and modern, it would still be evident that an element has entered into our civilization which was unknown to the civilizations of Greece and Rome, as well as of all parts of the eastern world and that element must necessarily be traced, in the end, to the refining and elevating force of Christianity. It is true that there is much in our Christian countries and under the shadow of our Christian institutions, worthy only of Vandal barbarism and the most degraded forms of savage uncivilization; but there is also a taste of something higher. A humanizing influence has evidently hovered over the face of society. The breath of some messenger of peace has breathed over the fiery abyss of human passion, and wrought a transformation upon human selfishness. There are to be found among us traits of human loveliness, dignity and generosity, as well as of piety, such as the best days of Rome and Greece never conceived of, and which must have had some origin. And no theory can account for these things, unless Christianity be allowed as the chief element-the saving Spirit, moving on the face of the waters—the forming genius, molding the refractory forms of human character after a heavenly model-the celestial gravitation, attracting free spirits upward to their proper centre and source. The subject of the Evidences of Christianity is one not quickly exhausted. Successive periods of the world bring to light new testimonies in its favor. New discoveries remove difficulties out of the way. Science and the progress of the human race, the progress of the gospel and the fresh developments of Christianity, prove that "we have not followed cunningly devised fables." Whatever be a man's taste, and whatever the nature of his literary pursuits, he is likely to find something here to interest him. Whatever modes of proof seem to a person most satisfactory, he can apply them to Christianity; and, unless they be of a nature wholly aside from the nature of the subject, so that it would be absurd to propose them, Christianity will not refuse to give testimony concerning itself. It will not shrink from any reasonable tests. When questioned, it will give a satisfactory reply. Like a citadel of ancient times, it is found to be secure in every part. Its foundations are sunk deeply in the earth, so that neither frosts can heave them out of their place, nor rains trickle among their crevices and weaken them, nor an invading foe undermine them, and insinuate his forces from beneath into the fortress. The stones of its massive walls are so heavy that human art cannot move them to throw them down. They are joined together with an imperishable cement, and fastened with heavy clamps of iron so that not one can be started from its place. The whole structure is made to form one compact body. The buttresses stand thickly together, so that no battering ram could act upon the walls; and the deep, wide moat in front, forbids the approach of warlike enginery. Its towers are high and strong. And, as befits such a structure, it is filled with armed men, whose weapons are polished and of celestial temper. The storms beat around it, but it is not shaken. The thunders rumble through its arches and the lightnings play around its summit; but he who makes the clouds his chariot and who rides on the wings of the wind, and whom all the elements obey, preserves it from their fury. The seasons come and go, shedding around it their glow and their gloom, their blossoms and their ripened fruits. Noonday pours upon it its fierce beams, and morning and evening make it the measure of their shadows. Ages pursue their circling course, and generation after generation gazes on it, passes away, and is forgotten. The tide of time, in its ebb and flow, dashes against its sides, and the waves of duration die at its foot. Such is Christianity. So firm are its towers, so secure its palaces. "God is known in the midst of her for a refuge." "Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof." We are gratified that this topic, though so nearly connected with the office of the pulpit, is not left exclusively to its charge. We rejoice to see it introduced, in the present instance, into a course of scientific lectures. It is worthy of the benevolence in which the Lowell Lectures originated, worthy of the speaker, and worthy of the public. President Hopkins has honored the foundation. by which the Lectures are supported-a legitimate product of Christian refinement and charity. Such an institution has never graced a land without the gospel. He honored his auditory, by judging that they would deem such a discussion not out of place nor uninteresting. And VOL. XI.-NO. XLII. 20* he has honored himself by the ability with which he has presented the arguments for the divine authority of Christianity. He has not trodden altogether in a beaten track; but has shown that he is worthy to lay claim to the honor of an original and independent writer. We propose to exhibit the course of thought pursued by the President in his Lectures, adding such remarks as seem to us appropriate under the several heads. In a sceptical age, it is wise often to refresh our minds by recurring to an analysis of the Evidences of Christianity. Before proceeding, however, it is due to the publisher to say, that the mechanical execution of the work is very pleasing, the page being large, the type generous and clear, and the paper firm and pure. It is very attractive to the eye, and a fine specimen of the present advanced state of the typographical art. It is written in a style easy and readable, not profuse in ornament, not unnecessarily bold; but such as well befits the subject and the occasion. The work is creditable both to the logical ability and the literary taste of the author. The subject is presented in twelve Lectures. The first and second consist of preliminary considerations, with the definition of terms, and removal of difficulties. The third treats of internal and external evidence, showing the difference between them, and the claims of the former to a prior exhibition. Lectures IV-VIII contain a view of the internal evidences; IX-XI, the external evidences. The whole closes in Lecture XII, with a brief answer to objections, and the consideration of additional particulars, tending to show the truth and divinity of the Christian system. At the commencement, the author remarks that he hopes, by these lectures, to benefit three classes of persons; those who have received Christianity by acquiescence, having never examined its claims; those who have passed from this class into doubt and infidelity, and Christians themselves. He then shows that the kind of evidence by which Christianity is supported is satisfactory;—that it is adapted to produce conviction in a candid mind; and that it has as much certainty as mathematical demonstration. We may arrive at certainty in respect to any subject of investigation on six different grounds. The grounds of certainty are reason, or the Reason, con sciousness, the evidence of the senses, memory, testimony and reasoning. The evidence of the divine authority of Christianity rests on the last two; and if the proofs arising from either one of them are sufficient to give entire certainty, a fortiori the proofs arising from both must be so. But may not testimony and reasoning clash? May not a person or a number of persons affirm that a certain thing happened, which reasoning shows to be unnatural, unlikely, and contrary to universal experience? This is the difficulty started by Hume, in his celebrated argument against miracles. The author, therefore, at this point takes occasion to present an extended reply to Mr. Hume; and vindicates the Christian miracles in an able and triumphant manner. As we have in this refutation a good specimen of the style and manner of the author, and of the ability with which he stands up for the truth, we quote what he says on this point, at length. "Hume takes it for granted that what we call a miracle is contrary to the uniformity of nature. Indeed, his own definition of a miracle is, that it is a violation of the laws of nature. But how can we know that what we call a miracle is not, in the highest and most proper sense, as natural as any other event? By the term natural, we mean stated, fixed, uniform. Whatever happens statedly in given circumstances, we call natural. If men rose from the dead as statedly, after a year, as they now do from sleep in the morning, one would be as natural as the other, and would occasion no more surprise. In accordance with this definition, we call an event natural, though it happen but once in a thousand years, provided it come round statedly at the end of that time. The appearance of a comet having the periodical time of a thousand years, would be just as natural as the rising of the But if we suppose such a comet to appear for the first time, and that were the only one in the system, it is plain no man could tell whether it was natural or not. When it should come round again and again, it would be considered natural. sun. "But who can tell whether, in the vast cycles of God's moral government, miracles may not have been provided for, and come in, at certain distant points, as statedly and uniformly, and therefore as naturally, as any thing else? Who can tell whether a miracle may not be, to the ordinary course of events, as the occasional and momentary reversing of the engine bearing the cars onward? A man gets into a railroad car for the first time, and moves uniformly forward, perhaps for the course of a day, and he may suppose the engine capable of no other motion. He has rode a whole day, and has had no experience of any other. But an emergency occurs, and the motion of the engine is reversed. He now perceives that it is capable of an adjustment and a movement required only on particular occasions, of which he was before wholly ignorant. But a thousand years are with God as one |