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Had the historic chain been broken in every age, each new exhibition of the advancing system of religion might have recommended itself, in many points of probable evidence, to the faith of man; but still as a system, in every one of those ages it would have stood as an isolated unit, which rested upon its own intrinsic merit; or rather, which stood alone in the approving favour, and fell in the condemning rejection of the ever-varying opinions of the world. Let us suppose, for instance, that in different periods of the world's history, and in distant and unconnected points of locality upon its surface, different divine legislators and teachers had been commissioned to reveal different parts of that truth, according to the universal exigence of the world's circumstances; let us suppose that Adam, and Noah, and Moses, and David, and Ezra, and Zoroaster, and Solon, and Lycurgus, and Numa, had all in succession got different parts of the great system of truth to communicate to mankind, is it not evident, from the experience of the world on this very point, that, without this long and unbroken chain of prospective and retrospective unity of historic dependance, and national connexion, and prophetic anticipation, all certainty in regard to the truth would have been totally lost? No nation upon the face of the earth could now have boasted of the divine sanction for the faith and the hope they held. In the antediluvian world, it would appear that the promises and the religious truths involved in them were forgot or disbelieved long before Adam and the holy men who conversed with him were removed from the instruction of the godless race; and by the time of the flood, it would seem that none but Noah and his family retained a knowledge or belief of the truths upon which the eternal destinies of the world depended. Again, when the earth was re-peopled, and these truths given in clearer form, and with more numerous sanctions, and, no doubt, zealously taught and inculcated by the patriarchs of the new world, it appears from this record, that Shem had not yet left the earth ere the nations which had arisen had already forgot those mighty truths which their fathers had heard from the mouth of God, which many of them preached with the present sanction of God's authority, and which all of them could establish by an appeal to the recent and remaining monuments of his awful judgments. Abraham was called out of a land of idolaters, when his mind seems to have been already under the influence of that perverted system of belief, which was weaving itself around him, and becoming identified with all his opinions. Before the lapse of another

age all would have been lost. But ere that linked chain of traditionary knowledge, of historic faith, of monumental fact, and prophetic declaration, was irreparably severed, God himself interfered to strengthen and continue it, till it should be permanently and indestructibly fixed, in a wider, and yet limited system, which his own wisdom contrived, his goodness revealed, and his mighty power sanctioned.

These instances are very obvious and very important illustrations of the principle we are unfolding, that without historic evidence for our religion, the world, at every stage of its progress, would have forgot the very elements and principles upon which all the essential doctrines of its salvation are founded. What the consequences of this would have been, we have too good reason to know from the history of the heathen nations. They have all indeed retained more or less clearly the doctrine of the corruption or depravity of our nature, and, coupled with that, a belief of a previous condition of innocence and happiness; but having lost all knowledge of the real nature of the fall, and of the relation in which man at first stood, and now stands towards his Creator, the mere belief of a fact so obvious did lead, and could lead to no practical consequences in morals and religion. All speculations of heathen philosophy, even when they tend toward the Christian truth, as there is a natural bias in the unprejudiced mind toward it, are full of vagueness, and destitute of all sanction or solid basis. The Epicurean could appeal to as many facts in the constitution of things around him, and to as many apparent principles of human nature, in support of his opinions as the Stoic or Pythagorean; but the best of them saw and felt the uncertainty of all their speculations and presumed conclusions. The popular creed they could easily see to be absurd; but they had then no certain data of facts in the history of the world, and no unquestioned and sanctioned principles in all their philosophy, to which they could appeal, as a sufficient proof of the falsity of that universal and mischievous belief. All their systems then, if we may so name them, were only a floating mass of vague, and unsupported, and ill-jointed ideas, that ended in no certainty, and could lead to no satisfaction. The deeper and farther philosophy carried her researches, the more did she feel her own weakness; and the noblest discovery she ever made in the hands of the wisest and best of all her apostles was, "that a divine teacher was necessary to guide men in their search after truth."

Now, let us suppose that such a book as the Old Testament

had never been written, or that the writing of it had been delayed for some more generations, it seems perfectly clear that all proper foundation of religious truth and right morals would have been for ever removed and lost. Even granting that the knowledge of those great facts, from which alone we can form a proper estimate of our present condition and future prospects, had been allowed by God to be retained by the common method of human tradition, it appears from the chronology of Moses that the period elapsed, from the creation till the time he wrote, was not too long, according to the primeval age of man, for that traditionary knowledge to be handed down from father to son. Methuselah, who had conversed with Adam, lived some hundreds of years during the life of Noah. Shem, who witnessed the world before the flood, lived till Abraham was born; and Amram, the father of Moses, must have conversed with Joseph and the patriarchs of Canaan. In those early and simple ages, too, when the attention of man was not distracted by a multitude of pursuits and anxious cares, nor the faculties of his mind engrossed and tasked by an endless diversity of material sciences and metaphysical speculations, those traditionary facts, of such terrible character and immense interest, those prospective hopes, of such cheering complexion, would form the chief subject of conversation, and the groundwork of almost all instruction of religious fathers to their children. Such a knowledge, then, might easily be preserved for such a length of time, by the ordinary operation of the common laws and faculties of the human mind. But it is of very essential consequence to remark, that this knowledge was recorded, and fixed for ever, at or near that period in the history of the world's generations which forms the point of transition between authentic tradition and fabulous legend. If this theory is correct, then—and it has never been questioned--Moses had many contemporaries to attest the authenticity of those traditionary facts upon which he founded all his doctrines. Many of these detached facts, as we shall afterwards find, are mentioned by the most ancient heathen authors, and are in more full accordance with the Mosaic account, in proportion to their antiquity, and dimly preserved in the traditions of almost all the fabulous theologies. But in the latter case, they are only isolated traditions, upon which no proper superstructure of doctrine or faith could be founded; in Moses, they are all designed to teach the character of God, the nature of his moral government, and the relation of man to him.

We are not called upon to discuss the question as to the time

any

of the original invention of writing, though inclined to believe that the first written records, as now certainly by far the most ancient, were those of Moses. But even were we to suppose, with some, that there were written antediluvian records preserved, from which he copied the short annals of the history and chronology of the ancient world, it would only give greater authenticity to his book as a merely human history. Granting that the Chaldeans, and Canaanites, and Egyptians of that age, had still a considerably correct and extensive traditionary knowledge of the creation, and fall, and primeval history of the race, and supposing that they had the means of perpetuating that record in permanent shape, there is no evidence remaining that of these nations made up such an authentic account. Isolated monuments, we know, did long remain; yet the world wanted the wisdom to combine these into a regular series, or system of events, from which to draw general and just conclusions, in regard to the character of God, as the Creator and Judge of the world; or probably they might think them so unchangeably fixed on the mind of man, that no time could obliterate them, and no forgetfulness let them escape. To a certain extent this has also been true; but they foresaw not, as they could not foresee, that spirit of change, which was rapidly coming over all their traditionary knowledge, and obscuring and perverting all their primeval beliefs. Had the history of the world, therefore, not been recorded at that time, we have the utmost certainty in concluding, that the voice of ancient wisdom, which now speaks to us of the birth of time, and the creation of man, would have been the useless dotage of anility, or the vague conjectures of a fabling imagination. As Moses, when on the point of destruction, was floated down the Nile in his bulrush vessel in safety, so was that precious deposit of truth embalmed in his volume, and borne down the stream of time, to be afterwards the hope, and the guide, and the deliverer of nations. Nay, it is his record that has served to support the floating traditions and fragments of knowledge which heathen historians have recorded, like the ark of Noah, which bore aloft over the ruins of the ancient world all that remained of living memorials of a former existence. It is known to every one who is at all acquainted with ancient history, that the valuable fragments of Sanchoniathon, and Berosus, and Histiaeus, and Manethon, which have been saved, have been preserved only because, in times of old, their testimony was called up to substantiate and corroborate the faith of the only historian of truth. All other systems of human invention have yielded to the effa

cing touch of time-have been infected with the disease of decay and change; that of Moses alone has gained strength and clearness, and more unchangeable consistency, by the lapse of time, and the growth of human intellect, and the expansion of human knowledge. Had it not been preserved, the shadowy mists of fable, the impenetrable gloom of a night of heathen ignorance, would have closed round our retrospect beyond the historic era of Greece and Rome. For we repeat, that it is the history of Moses alone, as that has been continued through Christianity to our own days, which has carried down along with itself all those collateral documents of traditionary knowledge, which reach far beyond events that were forgot or disbelieved by the philosophers and historians of classic antiquity.

Had the history of God's early dealings with the world, then, not been recorded and preserved, where could man have now looked for truth, or a solid foundation upon which to rest his hopes? Even had God remained true to his unchangeable promise of sending a deliverer, and man been conscious of his sinfulness and want of a teacher and saviour, when that guide and deliverer had at last come, there would have been no data in all the world's knowledge to point him out and identify him. He might have come to his own, might have lived and taught among them, and died for them, while the strongest grounds for believing upon him would have perished from the world. We say not this, as if we believed that God could not have devised other means of accrediting the message of the saviour and instructor of mankind, than an original promise, the belief of which was kept alive in the heart of man, by prophet and messenger, ever as his hopes verged to despondency, and his belief began to die away. But, taking the plan as a whole, we have the strongest reason to believe, from the actual state in which Christ found the world, when he came for its salvation, that had the first part of that plan not been recorded and preserved, its completed form would not have gained credit with the world. When, however, we can point to such a primeval promise, so announced and so upheld, by the anxious care of paternal affection, made clearer and more definite to the longing hopes of the faithful for four thousand years, throughout all the varied history of the follies and aberrations of sinful humanitythe waxing and waning of empires the rise, and flourishing, and antiquating of all other systems of belief, at last to be fulfilled, with the accumulated evidence of such countless circumstances, we condescend upon an argument which should stagger

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