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possibility. Some of them, to be sure, are marvellous and miraculous, above our comprehension and our power. Still, they are not impossible. They may be true.

Then the witnesses in the case are sufficiently numerous. We have four separate, independent histories of the life, teachings, actions, sufferings, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. And in these histories, reference is had to a far greater number of witnesses, amounting in all to hundreds, if not to thousands.

These witnesses generally had the best means of information, and were capable of forming an intelligent judgment, in regard to the facts about which they testified. They were men living at the time, and on the ground. They were eye and ear witnesses of the events which they relate. And these events were of such a nature, that intelligent men in common life were fully competent to judge of their reality.

Again; the writers of the gospels, so far as we can judge from their works, and from other sources of information which have come to us, were men of good moral character. Certainly, the authors of such works, evincing and inculcating the strictest honesty of purpose, and disapproving and condemning every kind of deception, should not be suspected on slight grounds, of an intention to deceive.

Especially should they not be suspected, since they had no motive of interest to induce them to fabricate a deception, and pass it off upon the world, but every consideration of a worldly nature was impelling them the other way. The price of proclaiming and publishing the gospel message was to them the loss of all things; and they had every reason to expect beforehand that it would be so.

Again, the testimony of these men is given in the plainest and most direct terms. It is altogether an explicit testimony, without any attempt at evasion, or equivocation.

And not only so, it is throughout a concurrent testimonyconsistent with itself. There are differences, indeed, in the gospels. The witnesses do not tell precisely the same story. Nor could it be reasonably expected that they would. It would be a serious objection to them, if they did. Still, their testimony is, on the whole, concurrent. It is a united testimony, going to establish, as with one voice, the main facts of the case.

It should be further considered, that the story of these wit

nesses, if not true, admitted of a ready and easy contradiction. If, for example, Christ did not feed thousands of people with a few loaves and fishes; if he did not heal the sick and raise the dead; if he was not tried, condemned, crucified, and buried; and if he did not rise from the dead on the third day; how easy to have effectually contradicted these stories, when they were first published. Yet they were not contradicted. They could not be. So far from this, they received confirmation from a thousand sources. The enemies of Christ, as well as his friends, admitted the reality of his miracles, the former ascribing them to magic and Beelzebub, the latter to the power of God. Great numbers, who were actually concerned in the crucifixion of Christ, were soon found among his followers, and united their testimony with that of his previous followers, in confirmation of the gospel history. The main facts of this history have been receiving continual confirmation, coming from all quarters, from the times of their occurrence to the present day.

And to crown the whole, the original witnesses in this most important case lived and acted as though their testimony was true. They certainly knew whether it was true or not; and they proclaimed aloud, and everywhere, in their future lives— in their toils and perils, their sacrifices and sufferings, and under the bloody hand of the executioner-that it was true. They sealed their testimony, in most cases, with their lives. As I have said before, men will not act without motives. Indeed, they cannot, more than they can without faculties or members. Now if the testimony of the original witnesses to the gospel history was true, they had motives enough to just that course of life which they pursued. But if their testimony was not true, and they knew it was not, under what possible motive or influence could they have acted? What could have sustained them, amid all their persecutions and sufferings, in prison, in exile, and in the most terrible forms of death?

I affirm therefore, in conclusion, and I feel authorized to do it with the utmost assurance, that the testimony in support of the gospel history conforms to all the laws of valid testimony, and consequently is conclusive. Hence, the gospel history, and with it the entire system of Christianity, is true. It is supported. If there were no evidence in support of it but that of testimony, this alone would be, on all reasonable grounds, incontestible, resistless.

SECOND SERIES, VOL. II. NO. III.

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What law of valid testimony can be conceived of, to which the testimony in support of Christianity does not conform? What favoring circumstance can be added to this testimony, to make it more satisfactory or conclusive? And how shall this massy column of testimony be overturned? On what principles can it be set aside? Most assuredly, as it seems to me, he who would set it aside must adopt principles, which would put it out of his power to prove anything from testimony. On the principles he must adopt, he could not prove that there were even such cities as Babylon and Carthage; or such men as Demosthenes and Cicero; or that there are now any places, beings, or things, on the face of the wide earth, which he has not seen with his own eyes, or come to the knowledge of through some one or more of his bodily senses. He must adopt principles which, so far as the evidence of testimony is concerned, would lead to an universal scepticism.

I only add, that if Christianity is true, it is the greatest of all truths. If true at all, it is true in all its parts-its doctrines, its precepts, its warnings, its sanctions. It is true in its various bearings, and far reaching influences. It is truth immediately, and of all others most solemnly, interesting to mortals.

ARTICLE III.

WHAT IS SIN?

By M. Stuart, Prof. Sac. Lit. Theol. Sem. Andover.

[Concluded from p. 294.]

WE have already seen, in the course of the preceding discussion, that there is an essential union of all parties in regard to the proper definition or description of actual sin. The question now remains, and it is a question which may be fairly raised and ought to be candidly discussed: Whether there is, properly speaking, any other sin besides actual sin? In other words: Do the Scriptures recognize, and ought we to adopt, the phraseology of ORIGINAL SIN, either imputed or inherent?

Let it be noted here, that this question is one, at least as it presents itself to my mind it is one, which concerns words rather than things. I have all along maintained, and do verily

believe, that among good and enlightened men there is no real question, and there ought to be no dispute, whether our nature, since the fall of Adam, is degenerate and prone to sin; nor, whether all, infants and adults, those born in heathen or in Christian lands, need the regenerating and sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit. The denial of these positions would, in my apprehension, be a denial of truth which is plainly taught in the Scriptures, and which is fundamental in the system of Christian doctrine.

The dispute that exists, then, if I am correct in these statements, has respect principally, in the first place, to the propriety of calling that SIN which is not voluntary transgression of a known law, and secondly, the propriety of maintaining, that a part or state of our being which is involuntary, a defect of our present original nature in regard to the constitution of which we never had nor could have any voluntary agency nor give any voluntary assent, is matter of just and eternal condemnation, and as really damnable as the voluntary transgression of a known law. I admit that most of those who advocate the form of doctrine that is brought into question, would not be strenuous in maintaining, that what they call original sin deserves animadversion as severe as that which might properly be bestowed upon the voluntary transgression of a known law. It is only now and then, when a writer of warm feelings takes up this subject, that we find original and actual sin ranked under the same category of guilt, and in all essential respects amalgamated together. In the sober discussion of this subject, then, we need not take particular notice of this excess. Some are always to be found, who, from their state of excited feeling, and from zeal against those whom they suppose to differ from them, are prone to make the strongest propositions respecting the matter in dispute, which the power of language will enable them to make. Such would not improbably deem it amiss in me to call their attention to anything which I could say; and I therefore address myself particularly to those who are more seriously, carefully, and candidly inquiring, what they ought to believe and teach in respect to the subject before us.

But before I proceed to the particular examination of this subject, I must beg permission to take some notice of a recent phenomenon in our theological world, which bears the appearance at least of novelty, and is perhaps entitled to some consideration.

Whenever disputes arise among theologians, and come to be carried on with warmth and zeal, it generally happens that there are some, who, actuated perhaps at first by the fear of excess and by a certain love of moderation, or (to give the matter a still more favourable construction) hoping to be peacemakers between contending parties, assume, as the banner under which they desire to enlist, that which bears the old inscription: In medio tutissimus ibis; and while marching under this banner it not unfrequently happens, that they at last become "fierce for moderation," and in fact deal out more indiscriminate censure than most of those who belonged at first to the warmly contending parties.

I will not say, for it would not be true, that there are not many occasions, on which it would be altogether proper to hoist such a flag as that which has just been named. But this is very plain, viz., that the nature of the case must be well considered, before we can safely go forward under such a banner. If the dispute be: Whether there is a God? Whether the Bible is a book divinely inspired and of paramount authority? Whether salvation is all of grace, and not of merit? and so in regard to a multitude of other questions like these; in a word, if the dispute concerns any thing which must be wholly true, or not true at all in any degree; then there is no medium iter, no intermediate region between the land and the water, which is neither land nor water. Any one, therefore, who takes an interest in a contest of such a nature as this, must relinquish the hope that there is in such cases a middle ground on which he can take his stand. If he does not relinquish it, he will at least be in a condition like that, which (as report goes) the late illustrious La Fayette represented the juste milieu as occupying in the house of Deputies at Paris: "One party [extrême gauche] says that two and two make four; another party [extrême droite] says that two and two make six; a third party [juste milieu-the medium iter men] says: No, neither the one nor the other is right; the truth, as usual, lies between the extremes, for two and two make five."

But to the subject immediately before us; which has respect to a peculiar class of theologians, seeking for a station. somewhere between what is called the Old School and the New.

There have arisen among us a few, and, so far as my knowledge extends, but a few, who maintain a singular theory in re

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