PREFACE. CHRISTIANITY is the greatest blessing ever bestowed upon this world. It brings glad tidings of good things to lost and fallen men: it turns the curse of the law into a rich, consoling, ennobling, and everlasting blessing. It has the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. But Christianity is assailed by enemies on every hand. Most determined and virulent is their opposition to the holy verities of the gospel. Hence it becomes ministers of the gospel to be up to the times in which they live; and to be able, from their literary attainments, and accumulation of philosophical and biblical knowledge, to say, "I am set for the defence of the gospel." Infidel philosophers have placed in hostile attitude against Christianity, geology from beneath, and from the altitudes of the upper firmament, astronomy. Then from the mysteries of the human spirit, attempts have been made to discover some wondrous spell, by which to disenchant the world of its confidence in the gospel of Christ. From lecture-rooms of anatomy, the lessons of materialism have been inculcated, for the purpose of ridiculing religion, and expelling it from the earth. Others attempt to associate the doctrines of phrenology with their denial of the Christian revelation, as if there were any earthly connection between the form of the human skull and the truth or falsehood of our religion. Christianity has been made a sort of play-ground for all manner of inroads of human speculation. Nevertheless, while this opposition shows the necessity of adequateTM ministerial qualification, Christianity carries with it an evidence which is unassailable, and which places it beyond the reach of external violence. It is not the hammer of the mineralogist that can break this evidence. It is not the telescope of the astronomer that can enable us to descry in it any character of falsehood. It is not by the knife of the anatomist that we can find our way to the alleged rottenness which lies at its core. It is not by a dissecting of metaphysics that the mental philosopher can probe his way to the secret of its insufficiency, and make exposure to the world of the yet unknown flaw, |