before the manifestation of God's glory at the appearing of Christ, viz. that "darkness should cover the earth and gross darkness the people?" (Isa. lx. 2). Such a view may bring lamentable conclusions, and be fruitful of personal embarrassments in a state of society where a man cannot prosper unless he fall down and worship the current "doxy. But an earnest mind will not be debarred by such considerations from the investigation of a momentous topic. "What is the truth?" is the engrossing question of men of this type, and they follow wherever the answer may lead them, even "to prison and to death," if that were possible in our age. We propose this investigation in the following lectures. Such subjects have been supposed to pertain exclusively to the clerical province. Obviously, it is not a likely theme for a clergyman to discuss whether the whole system of clericalism itself be not a departure from Bible truth. It is not one which he is specially fitted to consider. And, in point of fact, it is more and more generally conceded that questions of Bible truth are matters of nonprofessional understanding and concern. Nothing but an untrammelled individual knowledge of the Bible will satisfy the earnest curiosity that would know what the truth is, amid the intellectual turmoils, questionings and collisions of the awakened nineteenth century. If the Bible is God's voice to every man that has ears to hear (which it demonstrably is), it is for every man by himself, and for himself, to seek to understand it, and to extend the benefit he may have received. Qualification for this is not a question of "ordination ;" it comes with enlightenment. And not only qualification, but obligation comes with this enlightenment. As soon as a man understands and believes the gospel, he is bound to lend himself as an instrument for its diffusion. The command is direct from the mouth of the Lord Jesus himself: "Let him that heareth say, COME (Rev. xxii. 17); the example of the early Christians affords unmistakable illustration of the meaning of the command (Acts viii. 1-4). Tradition clings to "holy orders." Of these, we hear nothing in the Scripture. Apostolic teaching inculcates the common-sense view that the truth of God is designed to make propagandists of all who receive it. The system which has been spoken of characteristically as "white neck-cloth-ism" is an ecclesiastical incrustation upon primitive Christianity. The subject of this afternoon's lecture is the natural starting point of all endeavours to ascertain what the Bible teaches. We want to know what the Bible is in itself, and on what principles it is to be understood. On the first of these points, we must take a good deal for granted. We shall assume throughout these lectures that the Bible is a book of Divine authorship. The examination of the evidence may be found in the lecturer's debate with Mr. Bradlaugh, and in The Trial, in which he exhibits the evidence of Christ having risen from the dead. Our present duty is simply to look at the structure and character of the Bible as a book appearing before us with a professedly divine character taken for granted. Looking at it in this way, we first discover that the Bible consists in reality of a number of books written at different times by different authors. It opens with five, familiarly known as the "five books of Moses," a history written by Moses, of matters and transactions in which he performed a leading personal part. This history occupies a position of first importance. It lays the basis of all that follows. Commencing with an account of the creation and peopling of the earth, it chiefly treats of the origin and experience of the Jewish nation, of whom Moses says, "The Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto Himself, above all the nations! that are upon the earth " (Deut. xiv. 2). The five books also contain the laws (very elaborately stated), which God delivered by the hand of Moses, for the constitution and guidance of the nation. It has become fashionable, under various learned sanctions, to question the authenticity of these books, while admitting the possible genuineness of the remaining portions of the Sacred Record. Without attempting to discuss the question, we may remark that it is impossible to reconcile this attitude with allegiance to Christ. You cannot reject Moses while accepting Christ. Christ endorsed the writings of Moses. said to the Jews by the mouth of Abraham in parable: "They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them; if they believe not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe, though one rose from the dead" (Luke xvi. 29-31). He It is also recorded that when he appeared incognito to two of his disciples after his resurrection "beginning at MOSES and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke xxiv. 27). Further, he said, "Had ye believed MOSES, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But IF YE BELIEVE NOT HIS WRITINGS, HOW SHALL YE BELIEVE MY WORDS?" (John v. 47). If Christ was divine, this sanction of the Pentateuch by him settles the question raised by Colenso; if the Pentateuch is a fiction, Christ was a deceiver, whether consciously or otherwise. There is no middle ground. Moses and Christ stand or fall together. The next twelve books presents the history of the Jews during a period of several centuries, involving the development of the mind of God to the extent to which that was unfolded in the messages prophetically addressed to the people in the several stages of their history. This gives them more than a historical value. They exhibit and illustrate divine principles of action, while furnishing an accurate account of the proceed ings of a nation which was itself a monument of divine work on the earth, and the repository of divine revelation.* The book of Job is no exception as to divinity of character. It does not, however, pertain to Israel nationally. It is a record of divine dealings with a Son of God, at a time when that nation had no existence. Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon, are the inspired writings of two of Israel's most illustrious kingswritings in which natural genius is supplemented with preternatural spirit-impulse, in consequence of which the writings so produced are reflections of divine wisdom, and by no means of merely human origin. This is proved by Christ's declarations in the New Testament. In the books of the prophets, from Isaiah to Malachi, we are presented with a most important department of "Holy Writ." In these seventeen books-respectively bearing the names of the writers-we find recorded a multitudinous variety of messages transmitted from the Deity to the "prophets," for the correction and enlightenment of Israel. These messages are valuable beyond all conception. They contain information concerning God otherwise inaccessible, and instructions as to acceptable character and conduct, otherwise unobtainable; in addition to which they have a transcendent value from their disclosure of God's. purpose in the future, in which we naturally have the highest interest, but of which, naturally, we are in the greatest and most helpless ig norance. Coming to the New Testament, we are furnished in the first fourbooks with a history which has no parallel in the range of literature. The Messiah promised in the prophets, appointed of God to deliver our suffering race from all the calamities in which it is involved, appears and here are recorded His. *See The Visible Hand of God, by the Lecturer. doings and His sayings. What wonderful deeds! What wonderful words! We are constrained in the reading to exclaim with the disciples on the sea of Galilee: "What manner of man is this?" He entrusted his apostles with a mission to the world at large; in the Acts of the Apostles (a history of peculiar importance) we have made plain to us in a practical way, what Christ intended them to do as affecting ourselves. In the same book we have the proceedings of the primitive Christians, written for our guidance as to the real import of the commandments of Christ, and the real scope and nature of the work of Christ among men. The remainder of the New Testament is made up of a series of epistles, addressed by the inspired apostles to various Christian communities, after they had been organised by the apostolic labours. These letters contain practical instruction in regard to the character which tians ought to cultivate and in a general and incidental way illustrate the higher aspects of the truth as it is in Jesus. Without these epistles, we should not have been able to comprehend the Christian system in its entirety. Their absence would have been a great blank; and we in this remote age should hardly have been able to lay hold on eternal life. Chris Such is a scant outline of the book we call "the Bible.' Composed of many books, it is yet one volume, complete and consistent with itself in all its parts, presenting this singular literary spectacle, that while written by men in every situation of life--from the king to the shepherd -and scattered over many centuries in its composition, it is pervaded by absolute unity of spirit and identity of principle. This is unaccountable on the hypothesis of a human authorship. No similarly miscellaneous production is like it in this respect. Heterogeneousness, and not uniformity, characterises any collection of human writings of the ordinary sort, even if belonging to the same age. But here is a book written by forty authors, living in different ages, without possible concert or collusion, producing a book which in all its parts is pervaded by one spirit, one doctrine, one design, and by an air of sublime authority which is its peculiar characteristic. Such a book is a literary miracle. It is impossible to account for its existence upon ordinary principles. The futile attempts of various classes of unbelievers is evidence of this. On its own principles it is accounted for. God spoke to, and by, its authors "at sundry times and in divers manners. This is no mere profession on the part of the writers. It is shewn to be a true profession not only by the character of the book and the fulfilment of its prophecies, but by the fact that nearly all the writers sealed their testimony with their own blood, after a life of submission to every kind of disadvantage,-"trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonments; were stoned, were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword, wandered about in sheep skins and goat skins, in deserts and mountains; in dens and caves of the earthbeing destitute, afflicted, tormented" (Heb. xi. 36-38). To suppose the Bible to be human is to raise insurmountable difficulties, and to do violence to every reasonable probability. The only truly rational theory of the book is that supplied by itself. "Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter i. 21). In this we find an explanation of the whole matter. The presence of one supreme guiding mind, inspiring and controlling the utterances of the authors, completely accounts for their agreement of teaching throughout, and for the exalted nature of their doctrines; on any other supposition the book is a riddle, which must ever puzzle and bewilder the mind that earnestly faces all the facts of the case. There are, unfortunately, those who hold the book in contempt as a priestly imposture. There are few who do so as the result of individual investigation. It is the result of writings which are not careful about facts, or scrupulous in the use they make of them. The result is lamentable to those deceived. They reject the only book which can possibly be a revelation from the Deity, and they throw away their only chance of immortality; for surely if there be a book on earth that contains the revealed will of God, that book is the Jewish Bible; and if there be a possibility of deliverance from the evils of this life-the corruptibility of our physical organization, the weakness of our moral powers, the essential badness of a great portion of the race, the misconstruction of the social fabric, the bad government of the world-that possibility is made known to us in this book, and brought within our reach by it. By his rejection of the Bible, the unbeliever sacrifices an immense present advantage. He deprives himself of the consolations that come with the Bible's declarations of God's love for man. He loses the comfort of its glorious promises, which have such power to cheer the mind in distress. He cuts himself away from all the moral heroism which they impart; he sacrifices the abiding support which they give; the soulelevating teaching which they contain ; the noble affection they engender; the solace they afford in time of trouble; the strength they give in the hour of temptation; the nobleness and interest which they throw around a frittering mortal life. And what does he get in exchange? Nothing, unless it be license to feel himself his own master for a few mortal years, to sink at last comfortless and despairing into the jaws of a remorseless and eternal grave! What an exchange! If the Bible were a lie, it were better to receive its cheering fiction than to drag through the gloom of a vain existence. Better a happy life than a miserable one; better a purposeful than an aimless one; better a hopeful, expectant, joyful, elevated, noble life, than an unanticipating life of monotonous commonplace and routine! So much better is it to believe the Bible than to accept the dismal comforts of Atheism. But of course a man cannot coerce conviction. A man cannot accept a faith because it is pleasant, if he have reason to believe it a lie. On no ground is it desirable that he should constrain the verdict of reason. Nevertheless it is permissible to strengthen the argument of evidence by collateral views of advantage if they exist; and their existence in this case is beyond all question. The effect of the Bible is to make the man who studies it, better, happier and wiser. It is vain for the leaders of unbelief to assert the contrary; all facts are against them. To say that it is immoral in its tendencies, is to propound a theory, and not to speak in harmony with the most palpable of facts. To declare that it makes men unhappy, is to speak against the truth; the tormented experience of the orthodox hallucinated is no argument to the contrary, when it becomes manifest, as it will in the course of these lectures, that the Bible is no ways responsible for these hallucinations. To parade the history of unrighteous government and tyrannical priestcraft in support of such propositions, is to betray either ignorance or shallowness or malice. Many are deluded by such a line of argument, and have the misfortune, in many instances, to become conscientiously impressed with the idea that the Bible is an imposture. Such are objects of pity; in the majority of instances they are hopelessly wedded to their view. It does not come within the scope of the present lecture to deal with the vexed but settleable question of Bible authenticity. It is dealt with in publications already referred to. Sufficient now to remark that the person who is not convinced by the moral evidence presented to his understanding on a calm and independent study of the Holy Scriptures, in conjunction with the historical evidences of the facts which constitute the basis of its literary structure, is not likely to be altered in his persuasion by elaborate argument. The plan of trying to show what it teaches, and thereby commending it to every man's sober judgment, will be found the most profitable. Here it may be well to notice an aspect of the question not often taken into account in the discussions which frequently take place on the subject. The modern tendency to disbelieve the Bible must be traceable to some cause, Where shall we look for that cause? The moral inconsistency of professing Christians has, no doubt, done something to shake the faith of many; the natural lawlessness of the human mind is also an element in the various attempts to get rid of a book which exalts the authority of God over the will of man; but is there not a more fruitful source of unbelief in the doctrinal tenets of the very religion professed to be derived from the Bible itself? The result of these lectures will be to show that in the course of religious history there has been a great departure from the truth revealed by the prophets and apostles, and that the religious systems of the present day are an incongruous mixture of truth and error that tends, more than anything else, to perplex and baffle the devout and intelligent mind, and to prepare the way for scepticism. Do you mean to say, asks the incredulous enquirer, that the Bible has been studied by men of learning for eighteen centuries without being understood? and that the thousands of clergymen and ministers set apart for the very purpose of ministering in its holy things are all mistaken ? A moment's reflection ought to induce moderation and patience in the consideration of these questions. It will be admitted, as a matter of history, that in the early ages, Christianity became so corrupted as to lose even the form of sound doctrine-that for more than ten centuries, Roman Catholic superstition was universal, and enshrouded the world in moral, intellectual, and religious darkness, so gross as to procure for that period of the world's history the epithet of "the dark ages.' Here then is a long period unanimously disposed of with a verdict in which all Protestants, at least, will agree, viz., "Truth almost absent from the earth though the Bible was in the hands of the teachers." Recent centuries have witnessed the "Reformation," which has given us liberty to exercise the God-given right of private judgment. This is supposed to have also inaugurated. an era of gospel light. About this. there will not be so much unanimity, when investigation takes place. Protestants are in the habit of believing that the Reformation abolished all the errors of Rome, and gave us the truth in its purity. Why should they hold this conclusion ? Were the reformers inspired? Were Luther, Calvin, John Knox, Wyckliffe, and other energetic men who brought about the change in question, infallible? If they were so, there is an end to the controversy; but no one will take this position who is competent to form an opinion on the subject. If the Reformers were not inspired and infallible, is it not right and rational to set the Bible above them, and to try their work by the only standard of test which can be applied in our day? Consider this question: Was it likely the Reformers should at once, and in every particular emancipate themselves from the spiritual bondage of Romish tradition? Was it to be expected that from the midst of great darkness there should instantly come out the blaze of truth? Was it not more likely that their achievements in the matter would only be partial, |