corporeal—if his body left the grave undecayed, and appeared on earth, and ascended into glory,—then its value as a pledge belonged to the men of that age alone,-we have neither part nor lot in its signification ;-it is rather an extinguisher than a confirmation of our hopes.

It will be seen that we make no scruple in negativing a doctrine held verbally by the Church, viz., "the resurrection of the body;" since whatever was intended by the authors of this phrase the meaning of which is by no means clear to us, and was probably no clearer to themselves,—thus much is certain, that our "resurrection of the body" can bear no similarity to Christ's resurrection of the body;—for his body remained only a few hours in the grave, and, we are expressly told, "did not see corruption," and ours, we know, remains there for untold years, and moulders away into the original elements of its marvellous chemistry.

We conclude, then, as before:-that as we cannot hope to rise, as Christ is said to have done, with our own present uncorrupted body, his resurrection, if it were a reanimation of his earthly frame, can be no argument, proof, pledge, pattern, or foreshadowing of our own. If, on the contrary, his resurrection were spiritual, and his appearances to his disciples mental and apparitionary only, they would, pro tanto, countenance the idea of a future state. Our interest, therefore, as waiters and hopers for an immortality, would appear to lie in disbelieving the letter of the Scripture narratives.

"We can," says Pearson, "no otherwise expound this article teaching the resurrection of the body, than by asserting that the same bodies which have lived and died shall live again; that the same flesh which is corrupted shall be restored." Again, "That the same body, not any other, shall be raised to life which died, that the same flesh which was separated from the soul at the day of death shall be united to the soul at the last day," &c.-Pearson on the Creed, Art. xi.

CHAPTER XV.

IS CHRISTIANITY A REVEALED RELIGION?

HAVING now arrived at this point of our inquiry, let us pause and cast a summary glance on the ground over which we have travelled, and the conclusions at which we have arrived. We have found that the popular doctrine of Scriptural Inspiration rests on no foundation whatever, but is a gratuitous as well as an untenable assumption. We have seen that neither the books of Moses nor the laws of Moses were the production of the great Leader and Lawgiver whose name they bear. We have seen ample reason for concluding that a belief in One only Supreme God was not the primary religion either of the Hebrew nation or the Hebrew priests; but that their Theism-originally limited and impure was gradually elevated and purified into perfect and exclusive monotheism, by the influence of their Poets and Sages, and the progressive advance of the People in intelligence and civilization. We have discovered that their Prophets were Poets and Statesmen, not Predictors-and that none of their writings contain a single prediction which was originally designed by them, or can be honestly interpreted by us, to foretell the appearance and career of Jesus of Nazareth. What have been commonly regarded as such, are happy and applicable quotations: but no more. We have seen further that none of the four histories of Christ which have come down to us, are completely and effectively faithful;—that while they are ample and adequate for showing us what Christ was, and what was the essence and spirit of his teaching, we yet do not possess sufficient certainty that they record, in any special instance, the precise words or actions of Christ, to warrant us in building

upon those words or actions doctrines revolting to our uncorrupted instincts and our cultivated sense. We have found, moreover, that the Apostles-wise and good men as they were -were yet most imperfect and fallible expounders of the mind of their departed Lord. We have seen that miracles—even where the record of them is adequate and above suspicion, if any such case there be-are no sufficient guarantee of the truth of the doctrines preached by the worker of those wonders. And finally, we have been compelled to conclude that not only is the resurrection of our Lord, as narrated in the Gospels, encumbered with too many difficulties and contradictions to be received as unquestionable, but that it is far from having the dogmatic value usually attached to it, as a pledge and foreshowing of our own.

But however imperfect may be the records we possess of Christ's Ministry, this imperfection does not affect the nature or authority of his mission. Another great question, therefore, here opens before us:-"Was Christ a divinely-commissioned Teacher of Truth?" In other words, "Is Christianity to be regarded as a Religion revealed by God to man through Christ?"

What is the meaning which, in ordinary theological parlance, we attach to the words "Divine Revelation?" What do we intend to signify and affirm when we say that "God spoke" to this Prophet, or to that saint?

We are all of us conscious of thoughts which come to us— which are not, properly speaking, our own-which we do not create, do not elaborate ;-flashes of light, glimpses of truth, or of what seems to us such, brighter and sublimer than commonly dwell in our minds, which we are not conscious of having wrought out by any process of inquiry or meditation. These are frequent and brilliant in proportion to the intellectual gifts and spiritual elevation of the individual:-they may well be termed inspirations-revelations; but it is not such as these that we mean when we speak of the Revelation by Christ.

Those who look upon God as a Moral Governor, as well as

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an original Creator,-a God at hand, not a God afar off in the distance of infinite space, and in the remoteness of past or future eternity,-who conceive of Him as taking a watchful and presiding interest in the affairs of the world, and as influencing the hearts and actions of men,- believe that through the workings of the Spirit He has spoken to many, has whispered His will to them, has breathed great and true thoughts into their minds, has “wrought mightily" within them, has, in the secret communings and the deep visions of the night, caused His Spirit to move over the troubled waters of their souls, and educed light and order from the mental chaos. These are the views of many religious minds;-but these are not what we mean when we speak of the Revelation made by God to Christ.

Those, again, who look upon God as the great artificer of the world of life and matter, and upon man, with his wonderful corporeal and mental frame, as his direct work, conceive the same idea in a somewhat modified and more material form. They believe that He has made men with different intellectual capacities; and has endowed some with brains so much larger and finer than those of ordinary men, as to enable them to see and originate truths which are hidden from the mass; and that when it is His will that Mankind should make some great step forward, should achieve some pregnant discovery, He calls into being some cerebral organization of more than ordinary magnitude and power, as that of David, Isaiah, Plato, Shakspeare, Bacon, Newton, Luther, Pascal, which gives birth to new ideas and grander conceptions of the truths vital to humanity. But we mean something essentially distinct from this when we speak of Christ as the Teacher of a Religion revealed to him by his Father.

When a Christian affirms Christianity to be a "revealed religion," he intends simply and without artifice to declare his belief that the doctrines and precepts which Christ taught were not the production of his own (human) mind, either in its ordinary operations, or in its flights of sublimest contemplation;—but were directly and supernaturally communicated

to him from on high'. He means this, or he means nothing definable and distinctive. What grounds have we, then, for adopting such an opinion?

It is evident that, if the conclusions to which our previous investigations have led us be correct, our only arguments for believing Christianity to be a divine revelation in contradistinction to a human conception, must be drawn from the superhumanity of its nature and contents. What human intellect could ascertain, it would be superfluous for God to reveal. The belief of Christ himself that his teaching "was not his, but his Father's,"-even if we were certain that he used these precise words, and intended them to convey precisely the meaning we attach to them,-could not suffice us, for the reasons assigned in the first chapter of this work. The belief in communications with the Deity has in all ages been common to the most exalted and poetical order of religious minds. The fact that Christ held a conviction which he shared with the great and good of other times, can be no argument for ascribing to him divine communications distinct from those granted to the great and good of other times. It remains, therefore, a simple question for our consideration, whether the doctrines and precepts taught by Jesus are so new, so profound, so perfect, so distinctive, so above and beyond parallel, that they could not have emanated naturally from a clear, pure, powerful, meditative mind,-living four hundred years after Socrates and Plato -brought up among the pure Essenes, nourished on the wisdom of Solomon, the piety of David, the poetry of Isaiah-elevated by the knowledge, and illuminated by the love, of the one true God.

Now on this subject we hope our confession of faith will be acceptable to all save the narrowly orthodox. It is difficult, without exhausting superlatives, even to unexpressive and wearisome satiety, to do justice to our intense love, reverence, and

Those who believe that Christ was God-if any such really exist-must of course hold that everything he taught was, ipso facto, a divine revelation. With such all argument and inquiry is necessarily superseded.