And (returning to our present topic), was it not antecedently to have

been expected that God the Son (so to put it) should, in the shape He

was thereafter to assume upon earth, appear upon the eternal throne of

heaven? In a shape, however glorified and etherealized, with glistening

countenance and raiment bright as the light, nevertheless resembling

that more humble form, the Son of Man, who was afterwards thus by a

circle of probabilities to be made in the form of God; in a shape, not

liable, from its very sinfulness, to the deification either of other

worlds or of this [hero-worship is another and a lower thing altogether;

we speak here of true idolatries:]--was it unlikely, I say, that in such

a shape Deity should have deigned to become visible, and have blazed

Manifested God, the central Sun of Heaven?--This probability, prior to

our forth-flowing thoughts on the Incarnation, though in some measure

anticipating them, will receive further light from the views soon to be

set forth. I know not but that something is additionally due to the

suggestion following; namely: that, raise our swift imagination to what

height we may, and stretch our searching reason to the uttermost, we

cannot, despite of all inventive energies and powers of mind, conceive

any shape more beautiful, more noble, more worthy for a rational

intelligence to dwell in, more in one Homeric word [Greek: theoeides],

than the glorified and etherealized human form divine. Let this serve as

Reason's short reply to any charge of anthropomorphism in the doctrines

of his creed: it was probable that God should be revealed to His

creation; and as to the form of any such revealed essence in any such

infinite beginnings of His work, the most likely of all would appear to

be that one, wherein He, in the ages then to come, was well resolved to

earn the most glorious of all triumphs, the merciful reconciliation of

everlasting justice with everlasting love, the wise and wondrous scheme

of God forgiving sinners.

THE ORIGIN OF EVIL.

It will now be opportune to attempt elucidation of one of the darkest

and deepest riddles ever propounded to the finite understanding; the _à

priori_ likelihood of evil: not, mind, its eternal existence, which is a

false doctrine; but its probable procession from the earliest created

beings, which is a true one.

At first sight, nothing could appear more improbable: nothing more

inconsistent with the recognised attributes of God, than that error,

pain, and sorrow should be mingled in His works. These, the spontaneous

offspring of His love, one might (not all wisely) argue, must always be

good and happy--because perfect as Himself. Because perfect?-- Therein

lies the fallacy, which reason will at once lay bare. Perfection is

attributable to no possible creature: perfection argues infinity, and

infinity is one of the prerogatives of God. However good, "very good," a

creation may be found, still it must, from essential finitude, fall

short of that Best, which is in effect the only state purely

unexceptionable. For instance, no creature can be imagined of a wisdom

undiminished from the single true standard, God's wisdom: in other

phrase, every creature must be more or less departed from wisdom, that

is, verging towards folly. Again; no creature can be presumed of a

purity so spotless as to rank in an equality with that of the Almighty:

in other words, neither man, nor angel, nor any other creature, can

exist who is not more or less--I will not say impure, positively,

but--unpure negatively. Thus, the birth-mark of creation must have been

an inclination towards folly, and from purity. The mere idea of

creatures would involve, as its great need-be, the qualifying clause

that these emanations from perfection be imperfect; and that these

children of purity be liable to grow unpure. They must either be thus

natured, or exist of the essence of God, that is, be other persons and

phases of the Deity: such a case was possible certainly; but, as we have

already shown, not probable. And it were possible, that, in consequence

of some redemption such as we have spoken of, creatures might by

ingraftation into God become so entirely part of Him--bone of bone, and

flesh of flesh, and spirit of spirit--that an exhortation to such blest

beings should reasonably run, "Be ye perfect." But this infinite

munificence of the Godhead in redemption was not to be found among His

bounties as Creator. It might indeed arise afterwards, as setting up

again the fallen creature in some safe niche of Deity: and we now know

it has arisen: "we are complete in Him."

But this, though relevant, is a digression. Returning, and to produce

some further argument against all creature perfectness; let us consider

how rational it seems to prësuppose that the mighty Maker in his

boundless love should have willed to form a long chain of classes of

existence more and more subordinated each to the other, each good of its

kind and happy in its way, but yet all needfully more or less removed

from the high standard of uncreate Perfection. These descending links,

these graduations downwards, must involve a nearer or remoter approach

to evil. Now, we must bear in mind that Evil is not a principle, but a

perversion: it amounts merely to a denial, a limitation, a corruption of

good, not to the dignity of its abstract antagonism. Familiarly, but

fallaciously, we talk of the evil principle, the contradictory to good:

we might as well talk of the nosologic principle, the contradictory to

health; or the darkness principle, the contradictory to light. They are

contraries, but not contradictories: they have no positive, but only a

relative existence. Good and evil are verily foes, but originally there

was one cemented friendship: slender beginnings consequent on a

creation, began to cause the breach: the civil war arose out of a state

of primitive peace: images betray us into errors, or I might add with a

protest against the risk of being misinterpreted, that like brothers

turned to a deadly hate, they nevertheless sprang not originally out of

two hostile and opposite hemispheres, but from one paternal hearth. Not,

however, in any sense that God is the author of evil; but that God's

workmanship, the finite creature, needfully perverted good.

The origin of evil--that is, its birth--is a term true and clear:

original evil--that is, giving it no birth but an antedate to all

created things, suffering it to run parallel with God and good from all

eternity--this is a term false and misty. The probability that good

would be warped, and grow deteriorate; that wisdom would be dwindled

down into less and less wisdom, or foolishness; and power degenerated

more and more towards imbecility; must arise, directly a creature should

spring out of the Creator; and that, let astronomy or geology name any

date they will: Adam is a definite date; perhaps also the first

day's--or period's--work: but the Beginning of Creation is undated. It

would then, under this impression of the necessary defalcation of the

creature from the strict straight line, be rational to look for

deviations: it would be rational to prësuppose that God--just, and good,

and pure, and wise--should righteously be able to "charge his angels

with folly," should verily declare that "the heavens are not pure in his

sight."

Further; it would be a possible chance (which considerations soon

succeeding would render even probable) that for a wise humiliation of

the reasoning creature, and a just exaltation of the only Source of life

and light and all things, one or more of such first created beings, or

angels, should be suffered to fall, possibly from the vastest height,

and at first by the slenderest beginnings, lower and lower into folly,

impurity, and all other derelictions from the excellence of God. The

lines, once unparalleled, would, without a check, go further apart for

all eternity; albeit, the primal deviation arose in time. The aerolite,

dropping slowly at first, increases in swiftness as it multiplies the

fathoms of descent: and if the abyss be really bottomless, how

impossible a check or a return.

Some such terrible example would amount to a reasonable likelihood, if

only for a lesson and a warning: to all intelligent hierarchs, be not

high-minded, but fear; to all responsible beings, keep righteousness and

reverence, and tempt not God; to all the Virtues, Dominations,

Obediences, and due Subordinations of unknown glorious worlds, a loud

and living exhortation to exercise, and not to let grow dim their

spiritual energies, in efforts after goodness, wisdom, and purity. A

creature state, to be happy, must be a progressive state: the capability

of progression argues lack, or a tendency from good: and progression

itself needs a spur, lest indolence relapse towards evil.

Additionally: we must remember that a creature's excellence before God

is the reasonable service which he freely renders: freedom, dangerous

prerogative, involves choice: and choice necessitates the possibility of

error. The command to a rational intelligence would be, do this, and

live; do it not, and die: if thou doest, it is well done, good and

faithful servant; thou hast mounted by thine own heaven-blest exertions

to a higher approach towards infinite perfection; enter thou into the

joy, not merely of a creature, but of thy Lord. But, if thou doest not,

it is wo to thee, unworthy hireling; thou hast broken the tie that bound

thee to thy Maker--obedience, the root of happiness; thou livest on

indeed, because the Former of all things cancelleth not nor endeth his

beginning; but henceforth thine existence is, as a river which

earthquakes have divorced from its bed, and instead of flowing on for

ever through the fair pastures of peace and among the mountain roots of

everlasting righteousness, thy downward course is shattery, headlong,

turbulent, and destructive; black-throated whirlpools here, miasmatic

marshes there, a cataract, a shoal, a rapid; until the remorseless

stream, lashing among rocks which its own riot rendered sterile, pours

its unresting waters into the thirsty sands of the Sahara.

It was indeed probable (as since we know it to be true) that the

generous Giver of all things would in the vast majority of cases

minister such secret help to His weaker spiritual children, that, far

from failing of continuous obedience, they should find it so unceasingly

easier and happier that their very natures would soon come to be imbued

with that pervading habit: and that thus, the longer any creature stood

upright, the stronger should he rest in righteousness; until, at no very

distant period, it should become morally impossible for him to fall.

Such would soon be the condition of myriads, perhaps almost the whole,

of heaven's innumerable host: and with respect to any darker Unit in

that multitude, for the good of all permitted to make early shipwreck

of himself, simply by leaving his intelligence to plume its wings into

presumptuous flight, and by allowing his pristine goodness or wisdom to

grow rusty from non-usage until that sacred panoply were eaten into

holes; with respect to any such unhappy one, and all others (if others

be) who should listen to his glozing, and make a common cause in his

rebellion, where, I ask, is any injustice, or even unkindness done to

him by Deity? Where is any moral improbability that such a traitor

should be; or any just inconsistency chargeable on the attributes of God

in consequence of such his being? Whom can he in reason accuse but

himself for what he is? And what misery can such a one complain of,

which is not the work of his own hands? And lest the Great Offender

should urge against his God, why didst thou make me thus?--Is not the

answer obvious, I made thee, but not thus. And on the rejoinder, Why

didst thou not keep me as thou madest me? Is not the reply just, I made

thee reasonable, I led thee to the starting place, I taught thee and set

thee going well in the beginning; thou art intelligent and free, and

hast capacities of Mine own giving: wherefore didst thou throw aside My

grace, and fly in the face of thy Creator?

On the whole; consider that I speak only of probabilities. There is a

depth in this abyss of thought, which no human plummet is long enough to

sound; there is a maze in this labyrinth to be tracked by no mortal

clue. It involves the truth, How unsearchable are his judgments: Thou

hidest thy ways in the sea, and thy paths in the deep waters, and thy

footsteps are not known. The weak point of man's argument lies in the

suggested recollection, that doubtless the Deity could, if He would,

have upheld all the universe from falling by his gracious power; and

that the attribute of love concludes that so He would. However, these

three brief considerations further will go some way to solve the

difficulty, and to strengthen the weak point; first, there are other

attributes besides love to run concurrently with it, as truth, justice,

and unchangeableness:--Secondly, that grace is not grace, if manifested

indiscriminately to all: and thirdly, that to our understanding at least

there was no possible method of illustrating the amiabilities of

Goodness, and the contrivances of Wisdom, but by the infused permission

of some physical and moral evils: Mercy, benevolence, design, would in a

universe of best have nothing to do; that universe itself would grow

stagnant, as incapable of progress; and the principal record of God's

excellences, the book of redemption, would have been unwritten. Is not

then the existence of evil justified in reason's calculation? and was

not such existence an antecedent probability?

Of these matters, thus curtly: it is time, in a short recapitulation, to

reflect, that, from foregoing causes, mysteries were probable around the

throne of heaven: and, as I have attempted to show, the mystery of

imperfection, a concrete not an abstract, was likely to have sprung out

of any creature universe. Reason perceives that a Gordion knot was

likely to have become entangled; in the intricate complexities of

abounding good to be mingled needfully with its own deficiencies,

corruptions, and perversions: and this having been shown by Reason as

anteriorly probable, its difficult involvements are now since cut by the

sword of conquering Faith.

COSMOGONY.

These deep themes having been descanted on, however from their nature

unsatisfactorily and with whatever human weakness, let us now endeavour

mentally to transport ourselves to a period immediately antecedent to

our own world's birth. We should then have been made aware that a great

event was about to take place; whereat, from its foreseen consequences,

the hierarchies of heaven would be prompt to shout for joy, and the holy

ones of God to sing for gratitude. It was no common case of a creation;

no merely onemore orb, of third-rate unimportance, amongst the million

others of higher and more glorious praise: but it was a globe and a race

about to be unique in character and fate, and in the far-spread results

of their existence. On it and of its family was to be contrived the

scene, wherein, to the admiration of the universe, God himself in Person

was going visibly to make head against corruption in creation, and for

ever thus to quench that possibility again: wherein He was marvellously

to invent and demonstrate how Mercy and Truth should meet together, how

Righteousness and Peace should kiss each other. There, was going to be

set forth the wonderfully complicated battle-plan, by which, force

countervailing force, and design converging all things upon one fixed

point, Good, concrete in the creature, should overwhelm not without

strife and wounds Evil concrete in the creature, and all things, "even

the wicked," should be seen harmoniously blending in the glory of the

attributes of God. The mythologic Pan, [Greek: to pan] the great

Universal All, was deeply interested in the struggle: for the seed of

the woman was to bruise the serpent's head; not merely as respected the

small orb about to be, but concerning heaven itself, the unbounded

"haysh hamaim," wherefrom dread Lucifer was thus to be ejected. On the

earth, a mere planet of humble lustre, which the prouder suns around

might well despise, was to be exhibited this noble and analogous result;

the triumph of a lower intelligence, such as man, over a higher

intelligence, such as angel: because, the former race, however frail,

however weak, were to find their nature taken into God, and should have

for their grand exemplar, leader and brother, the Very Lord of all

arrayed in human guise; while the latter, the angelic fallen mass, in

spite of all their pristine wisdom and excellency, were to set up as

their captain him, who may well and philosophically be termed their

Adversary.

This dark being, probably the mightiest of all mere creatures as the

embodiment of corrupted good and perversion of an archangelic wisdom,

was about to be suffered to fall victim to his own overtopping

ambitions, and to drag with him a third part of the heavenly host--some

tributary monarchs of the stars: thus he, and those his colleagues,

should become a spectacle and a warning to all creatures else; to stand

for spirits' reading in letters of fire a deeply burnt-in record how

vast a gulf there is between the Maker and the made; how impassable a

barrier between the derived intelligence and its infinite Creator. Such

an unholy leader in rebellion against good--let us call him _A_ or _B_,

or why not for very euphony's sake Lucifer and Satanas?--such a

corrupted excellence of heaven was to meet his final and inevitable

disgrace to all eternity on the forthcoming battle-field of earth. Would

it not be probable then that our world, soon to be fashioned and stocked

with its teeming reasonable millions, should concentrate to itself the

gaze of the universe, and, from the deeds to be done in it, should

arrogate towards man a deep and fixed attention: that "the morning stars

should sing together, and all the sons of God should shout for joy." Let

us too, according to the power given to us, partake of such attention

antecedently in some detail: albeit, as always, very little can be

tracked of the length and breadth of our theme.

What would probably be the nature of such world and of such creatures,

in a physical point of view? and what, in a moral point of view? It is

not necessary to divide these questions: for the one so bears upon the

other, or rather the latter so directs and pervades the former, that we

may briefly treat of both as one.

The first probability would be, that, as the creature Man so to be

abased and so to be exalted must be a responsible and reasonable being,

every thing--with miraculous exceptions just enough to prove the

rule--every thing around him should also be responsible and reasonable.

In other words, that, with such exceptions as before alluded to, the

whole texture of this world should bear to an inquisitive intellect the

stamp of cause and effect: whilst for the mass, such cause and effect

should be so little intrusive, that their easier religion might

recognise God in all things immediately, rather than mediately. For

instance: take the cases of stone, and of coal; the one so needful for

man's architecture, the other for his culinary warmth. Now, however

simple piety might well thank the Maker for having so stored earth with

these for necessary uses; they ought, to a more learned, though not less

pious ken, to seem not to have been created by an effort of the Great

Father _quâ stone_, or _quâ coal_. Such a view might satisfy the

ordinary mind: but thinkers would see no occasion for a miracle; when

Christ raises Lazarus from the dead, it would have been a philosophical

fault to have found the grave-clothes and swathing bandages ready

loosened also. Unassisted man can do that: and unhelped common causes

can generate stone and coal. The deposits of undated floods, the

periodical currents of lava, the still and stagnant lake, and the

furious up-bursting earthquake; all these would be called into play, and

not the unrequired, I had almost said unreasonable, energies, which we

call miracle. An agglutination of shells, once peopled with life; a

crystallized lump of segregate minerals, once in a molten state; a mass

of carbonated foliage and trunks of tropical trees, buried by long

changes under the soil, whereover they had once waved greenly luxuriant;

these, and no other, should have been man's stone and coal. This

instance affects the reasonableness of such material creation. Take

another, bearing upon its analogous responsibilities. As there was to be

warred in this world the contest between good and evil, it would be

expectable that the crust of man's earth, anteriorly to man's existence

on it, should be marked with some traces that the evil, though newly

born so far as might regard man's own disobedience, nevertheless had

existed antecedently. In other words: it was probable that there should

exist geological evidences of suffering and death: that the gigantic

ichthyosaurus should be found fixed in rock with his cruel jaws closed

upon his prey: that the fearful iguanodon should leave the tracks of

having desolated a whole region of its reptile tribes: that volcanoes

should have ravaged fair continents prolific of animal and vegetable

life: that, in fine, though man's death came by man's sin, yet that

death and sin were none of man's creating: he was only to draw down upon

his head a prëexistent wo, an ante-toppling rock. Observe then, that

these geological phenomena are only illustrations of my meaning: and

whether such parables be true or false, the argument remains the same:

we never build upon the sand of simile, but only use it here and there

for strewing on the floor. Still, I will acknowledge that the

introduction of such fossil instances appears to me wisely thrown in as

affects their antecedent probability, because ignorant comments upon

scriptural cosmogony have raised the absurdest objections against the

truth of scriptural science. There is not a tittle of known geological

fact, which is not absolutely reconcilable with Genesis and Job. But

this is a word by the way: although aimed not without design against one

of the poor and paltry weak-holds of the infidel.

ADAM.

Remembering, then, that these are probabilities, and that the whole

treatise purports to be nothing but a sketch, and not a finished

picture, we have suggestively thus thrown out that the material world,

man's home as man, was likely to have been prepared, as we posteriorly

know it to be. Now, what of man's own person, circumstances, and

individuality? Was it likely that the world should be stocked at once

with many several races, or with one prolific seed? with a specimen of

every variety of the genus man, or with the one generic type capable of

forming those varieties?--Answer. One is by far the likelier in itself,

because one thing must needs be more probable than many things:

additionally; Wisdom and Power are always economical, and where one will

suit the purpose, superfluities are rejected. That this one seed,

covering with its product a various globe under all imaginable

differences of circumstance and climate, should, in the lapse of ages,

generate many species of the genus Man, was antecedently probable. For

example, morality, peace and obedience would exercise transforming

powers: their opposites the like in an opposite way. We can well fancy a

mild and gentle race, as the Hindoo, to spring from the former

educationals: and a family with flashing eyes and strongly-visaged

natures, as the Malay, from a state of hatred, war, and license. We can

well conceive that a tropical sun should carbonize some of that tender

fabric the skin, adding also swift blood and fierce passions: while an

arctic climate would induce a sluggish, stunted race. And, when to these

considerations we add that of promiscuous unions, we arrive at the just

likelihood that the whole family of man, though springing from one root,

should, in the course of generations, be what now we see it.

Further. How should this prolific original, the first man, be created?

and for a name let us call him Adam; a justly-chosen name enough, as

alluding to his medium colour, ruddiness. Should he have been cast upon

the ground an infant, utterly helpless, requiring miraculous aid and

guidance at every turn? Should he be originated in boyhood, that hot and

tumultuous time, when the creature is most rash, and least qualified for

self-government? or should he be first discerned as an adult, in his

prime, equal alike to obedience and rule, to moral control and moral

energy?

Add also here; is it probable there would be any needless interval

placed to pröcreations? or rather, should not such original seed be able

immediately to fulfil the blank world call upon him, and as the

greatly-teeming human father be found fitted from his birth to propagate

his kind? The questions answer themselves.

Again. Should this first man have been discovered originally surrounded

with all the appliances of an after-civilization, clad, and housed, and

rendered artificial? nor rather, in a noble and naturally royal aspect

appear on the stage of life as king of the natural creation, sole warder

of a garden of fruits, with all his food thus readily concocted, and an

eastern climate tempered to his nakedness?

Now, as to the solitariness of this one seed. From what we have already

mused respecting God's benevolence, it would seem probable that the

Maker might not see it good that man should be alone. The seed,

originally one, proved (as was likely) to resemble its great parent,

God, and to be partitionable, or reducible into persons; though with

reasonable differences as between creature and Creator. Woman--Eve, the

living or life-giving--was likely to have sprung out of the composite

seed, Man, in order to companionship and fit society. Moreover, it were

expectable that in the pattern creature, composite man, there should be

involved some apt, mysterious typification of the same creature, after a

fore-known fall restored, as in its perfect state of rëunion with its

Maker. _A posteriori_, the figurative notion is, that the Redeemed

family, or mystical spouse, is incorporated in her husband, the

Redeemer: not so much in the idea of marriage, as (taking election into

view) of a cöcreation; as it were rib of rib, and life woven into life,

not copulated or conjoined, but immingled in the being. This is a

mystery most worthy of deep searching; a mystery deserving philosophic

care, not less than the more unilluminate enjoyment of humble and

believing Christians. I speak concerning Christ and his church.

THE FALL.

There is a special fitness in the fact, long since known and now to be

perceived probable, that if mankind should fail in disobedience, it

should rather be through the woman than through the man. Because, the

man, _quâ man_, and the deputed head of all inferior creatures, was

nearer to his Creator, than the woman; who, _quâ woman_, proceeded out

of man. She was, so to speak, one step further from God, _ab origine_,

than man was; therefore, more liable to err and fall away. To my own

mind, I confess, it appears that nothing is more anteriorly probable

than the plain, scriptural story of Adam and Eve: so simple that the

child delights in it; so deep that the philosopher lingers there with an

equal, but more reasonable joy.

For, let us now come to the probabilities of a temptation; and a fall;

and what temptation; and how ordered.

The heavenly intelligences beheld the model-man and model-woman,

rational beings, and in all points "very good." The Adversary panted for

the fray, demanding some test of the obedience of this new, favourite

race. And the Lord God was willing that the great controversy, which he

fore-knew, and for wise purposes allowed, should immediately commence.

Where was the use of a delay? If you will reply, To give time to

strengthen Adam's moral powers: I rejoin, he was made with more than

enough of strength infused against any temptation not entering by the

portal of his will: and against the open door of will neither time nor

habits can avail. Moreover, the trial was to be exceedingly simple; no

difficult abstinence, for man might freely eat of every thing but one;

no natural passion tempted; no exertion of intelligence requisite. Adam

lived in a garden; and his Maker, for proof of reasonable obedience,

provides the most easy and obvious test of it--do not eat that apple.

Was it, in reality, an improbable test; an unsuitable one? Was it not,

rather, the likeliest in itself, and the fittest as addressed to the

new-born, rational animal, which imagination could invent, or an amiable

fore-knowledge of all things could desire? Had it been to climb some

arduous height without looking back, or on no account to gaze upon the

sun, how much less apt and easy of obedience! Thus much for the test.

Now, as to the temptation and its ordering. A creature, to be tempted

fairly, must be tempted by another equal or lower creature; and through

the senses. If mere spirit strives with spirit, plus matter, the strife

is unequal: the latter is clogged; he has to fight in the net of

Retiarius. But if both are netted, if both are spirit plus matter, (that

is, material creatures,) there is no unfairness. Therefore, it would

seem reasonable that the Adversary in person should descend from his

mere spirituality into some tangible and humbled form. This could not

well be man's, nor the semblance of man's: for the first pair would well

know that they were all mankind: and, if the Lord God himself was

accustomed to be seen of them as in a glorified humanity, it would be

manifestly a moral incongruity to invest the devil in a similar form. It

must, then, be the shape of some other creature; as a lion, or a lamb,

or--why not a serpent? Is there any improbability here? and not rather

as apt an avatar of the sinuous and wily rebel, the dangerous,

fascinating foe, as poetry at least, nay, as any sterner contrivance

could invent? The plain fact is, that Reason--given keenness--might have

guessed this also antecedently a likelihood.

A few words more on other details probable to the temptation. Wonderful

as it may seem to us with our present experience, in the case of the

first woman it would scarcely excite her astonishment to be accosted in

human phrase by one of the lower creatures; and in no other way could

the tempter reach her mind. Much as Milton puts it, Eve sees a beautiful

snake, eating, not improbably, of the forbidden apple. Attracted by a

natural curiosity, she would draw near, and in a soft sweet voice the

serpent, _i.e._ Lucifer in his guise, would whisper temptation. It was

likely to have been keenly managed. Is it possible, O fair and favoured

mistress of this beautiful garden, that your Maker has debarred you from

its very choicest fruit? Only see its potencies for good: I, a poor

reptile, am instantly thereby endued with knowledge and the privilege of

speech. Am I dead for the eating?--ye shall not surely die; but shall

become as gods yourselves; and this your Maker knoweth.

The marvellous fruit, invested thus with mystery, and tinctured with

the secret charm of a thing unreasonably, nay, harmfully, forbidden,

would then be allowed silently to plead its own merits. It was good for

food: a young creature's first thought. It was pleasant to the eyes:

addressing a higher sense than mere bodily appetite, than mental

predilection for form and colour which marks fine breeding among men. It

was also to be desired to make one wise; here was the climax, the great

moral inducement which an innocent being might well be taken with;

irrespectively of the one qualification that this wisdom was to be

plucked in spite of God. Doubtless, it were probable, that had man not

fallen, the knowledge of good would never have been long withheld: but

he chose to reap the crop too soon, and reaped it mixed with tares,

good, and evil.

I need not enlarge, in sermon form, upon the theme. It was probable that

the weaker creature, Woman, once entrapped, she would have charms enough

to snare her husband likewise: and the results thus perceived to have

been likely, we have long since known for fact. That a depraved

knowledge should immediately occasion some sort of clothing to be

instituted by the great moral Governor, was likely: and there would be

nothing near at hand, in fact nothing else suitable, but the skins of

beasts. There is also a high probability that some sort of slaying

should take place instantly on the fall, by way of reference to the

coming sacrifice for sin; and for a type of some imputed righteousness.

God covered Man's evil nakedness with the skins of innocent slain

animals: even so, Blessed is he whose unrighteousness is forgiven, and

whose sin is covered.

With respect to restoration from any such fall. There seems a remarkable

prior probability for it, if we take into account the empty places in

heaven, the vacant starry thrones which sin had caused to be untenanted.

Just as, in after years, Israel entered into the cities and the gardens

of the Canaanite and other seven nations, so it was anteriorly likely,

would the ransomed race of Men come to be inheritors of the mansions

among heavenly places, which had been left unoccupied by the fallen host

of Lucifer. There was a gap to be filled: and probably there would be

some better race to fill it.

THE FLOOD.

Themes like those past and others still to come, are so immense, that

each might fairly ask a volume for its separate elucidation. A few

seeds, pregnant with thought, are all that we have here space, or time,

or power to drop beside the world's highway. The grand outlines of our

race command our first attention: we cannot stop to think and speak of

every less detail. Therefore, now would I carry my companion across the

patriarchal times at once to the era of the Deluge. Let us speculate, as

hitherto, antecedently, throwing our minds as it were into some angelic

prior state.

If, as we have seen probable, evil (a concretion always, not an

abstraction) made some perceptible ravages even in the unbounded sphere

of a heavenly creation, how much more rapid and overwhelming would its

avalanche (once ill-commenced) be seen, when the site of its infliction

was a poor band of men and women prisoned on a speck of earth. How

likely was it that, in the lapse of no long time, the whole world should

have been "corrupt before God, and filled with wickedness." How

probable, that taking into account the great duration of pristine human

life, the wicked family of man should speedily have festered up into an

intolerable guiltiness. And was this dread result of the primal curse

and disobedience to be regarded as the Adversary's triumph? Had this

Accuser--the Saxon word is Devil--had this Slanderer of God's attribute

then really beaten Good? or was not rather all this swarming sin an

awful vindication to the universe of the great need-be that God

unceasingly must hold his creature up lest he fall, and that out of Him

is neither strength nor wisdom? Was Deity, either in Adam's case or

this, baffled--nor rather justified? Was it an experiment which had

really failed; nor rather one which, by its very seeming failure, proved

the point in question, the misery of creatures when separate from God?

Yea, the evil one was being beaten down beneath his very trophies in sad

Tarpeian triumph: through conquest and his children's sins heightening

his own misery.

Let us now advert to a few of the anterior probabilities affecting this

evil earth's catastrophe. It is not competent to us to trench upon such

ulterior views as are contained in the idea of types relatively to

anti-types. Neither will we take the fanciful or poetical aspect of

coming calamity, that earth, befouled with guilt, was likely to be

washed clean by water. It is better to ask, as more relevant, in what

other way more benevolent than drowning could, short of miracle, the

race be made extinct? They were all to die in their sins, and swell in

another sphere the miserable hosts of Satan. There was no hope for them,

for there was no repentance. It was infinitely probable that God's

long-suffering had worn out every reasonable effort for their

restoration. They were then to die; but how?--in the least painful

manner possible. Intestine wars, fevers, famines, a general burning-up

of earth and all its millions, were any of these preferable sorts of

death to that caused by the gradual rise of water, with hope of life

accorded still even to the last gurgle? Assuredly, if "the tender

mercies of the wicked are cruel," the judgments of the Good one are

tempered well with mercy.

Moreover, in the midst of this universal slaughter there was one good

seed to be preserved: and, as Heaven never works a miracle where common

cause will suit the present purpose, it would have been inconsistent to

have extirpated the wicked by any such means as must demonstrate the

good to have been saved only by super-human agency.

The considerations of humanity, and of the divine less-intervention, add

that of the natural and easy agency of a long-commissioned comet. No

"_Deus e machinâ_" was needed for this effort: one of His ministers of

flaming fire was charged to call forth the services of water. This was

an easy and majestic interference. Ever since man fell--yea, ages before

it--the omniscient eye of God had foreseen all things that should

happen: and his ubiquity had, possibly from The Beginning, sped a comet

on its errant way, which at a calculated period was to serve to wash the

globe clean of its corruptions: was to strike the orbit of earth just in

the moment of its passage, and disturbing by attraction the fountains of

the great deep, was temporarily to raise their level. Was not this a

just, a sublime, and a likely plan? Was it not a merciful, a perfect,

and a worthy way? Who should else have buried the carcases on those

fierce battle-fields, or the mouldering heaps of pestilence and

famine?--But, when at Jehovah's summons, heaving to the comet's mass,

the pure and mighty sea rises indignant from its bed, by drowning to

cleanse the foul and mighty land--how easy an engulfing of the corpses;

how awful that universal burial; how apt their monumental epitaph

written in water, "The wicked are like the troubled sea that cannot

rest;" how dread the everlasting requiem chanted for the whelmed race by

the waves roaring above them: yea, roaring above them still! for in

that chaotic hour it seems probable to reason that the land changed

place with ocean; thus giving the new family of man a fresh young world

to live upon.

NOAH.

When the world, about to grow so wicked, was likely thus to have been

cleansed, and so renewed, the great experiment of man's possible

righteousness was probable to be repeated in another form. We may fancy

some high angelic mind to have gone through some such line of thought as

this, respecting the battle and combatants. Were those champions,

Lucifer and Adam, really fit to be matched together? Was the tourney

just; were the weapons equal; was it, after all, a fair fight?--on one

side, the fallen spirit, mighty still, though fallen, subtlest, most

unscrupulous, most malicious, exerting every energy to rear a rebel

kingdom against God; on the other, a new-born, inexperienced, innocent,

and trustful creature, a poor man vexed with appetites, and as naked for

absolute knowledge in his mind as for garments on his body. Was it, in

this view of the case, an equal contest? were the weapons of that

warfare matched and measured fairly?

Some such objection, we may suppose, might seem to have been admissible,

as having a show at least of reason: and, after the world was to have

been cleansed of all its creatures in the manner I have mentioned, a new

champion is armed for the conflict, totally different in every respect;

and to reason's view vastly superior.

This time, the Adam of renewed earth is to be the best and wisest, nay,

the only good and wise one of the whole lost family: a man, with the

experience of full six hundred years upon his hoary brow, with the

unspeakable advantage of having walked with God all those long-drawn

centuries, a patriarch of twenty generations, recognised as the one

great and faithful witness, the only worshipper and friend of his

Creator. Could a finer sample be conceived? was not Noah the only spark

of spiritual "consolation" in the midst of earth's dark death? and was

not he the best imaginable champion to stand against the wiles of the

devil? Verily, reason might have guessed, that if Deity saw fit to renew

the fight at all, the representative of man should have been Noah.

Before we touch upon the immediate fall of this new Adam also, at a time

when God and reason had deserted him, it will be more orderly to allude

to the circumstances of his preservation in the flood. How, in such a

hurlyburly of the elements, should the chosen seed survive? No house,

nor hill-top, no ordinary ship would serve the purpose: still less the

unreasonable plan of any cavern hermetically sealed, or any aerial

chariot miraculously lifted up above the lower firmament. To use plain

and simple words, I can fancy no wiser method than a something between a

house and a diving-bell; a vessel, entirely storm-tight and water-tight,

which nevertheless for necessary air should have an open window at the

top: say, one a cubit square. This, properly hooded against deluging

rain, and supplied with such helps to ventilation as leathern pipes, air

tunnels and similar appliances, would not be an impracticable method.

However, instead of being under water as a diving-bell, the vessel would

be better made to float upon the rising flood, and thus continually

keeping its level, would be ready to strike land as the waters assuaged.

Now, as to the size of this ark, this floating caravan, it must needs be

very large; and also take a great time in building. For, suffering cause

and effect to go on without a new creation, it was reasonable to suppose

that the man, so launching as for another world on the ocean of

existence, would take with him (especially if God's benevolence so

ordered it) all the known appliances of civilized life; as well as a

pair or two of every creature he could collect, to stock withal the

renewed earth according to their various excellences in their kinds. The

lengthy, arduous, and expensive preparation of this mighty ark--a vessel

which must include forests of timber and consume generations in

building; besides the world-be-known collection of all manner of strange

animals for the stranger fancy of a fanatical old man; not to mention

also the hoary Preacher's own century of exortations: with how great

moral force all this living warning would be calculated to act upon the

world of wickedness and doom! Here was the great ante-diluvian

potentate, Noah, a patriarch of ages, wealthy beyond our

calculations--(for how else without a needless succession of miracles

could he have built and stocked the ark?)--a man of enormous substance,

good report, and exalted station, here was he for a hundred and twenty

years engaged among crowds of unbelieving workmen, in constructing a

most extravagant ship, which, forsooth, filled with samples of all this

world's stores, was to sail with our only good family in search of a

better. Moreover, Noah here declares that our dear old mother-earth is

to be destroyed for her iniquities by rain and sea: and he exhorts us by

a solid evidence of his own faith at least, if by nothing else, to

repent, and turn to him, whom Abel, Seth, and Enoch, as well as this

good Noah, represent as our Maker. Would not such sneers and taunts be

probable: would they not amply vindicate the coming judgment? Was not

the "long-suffering of God" likely to have thus been tried "while the

ark was preparing?" and when the catastrophe should come, had not that

evil generation been duly warned against it? On the whole, it would have

been Reason's guess that Noah should be saved as he was; that the ark

should have been as we read of it in Genesis; and that the very

immensity of its construction should have served for a preaching to

mankind. As to any idea that the ark is an unreasonable (some have even

said ridiculous) incident to the deluge, it seems to me to have

furnished a clear case of antecedent probability.

Lastly: Noah's fall was very likely to have happened: not merely in the

theological view of the matter, as an illustration of the truth that no

human being can stand fast in righteousness: but from the just

consideration that he imported with him the seeds of an impure state of

society, the remembered luxuries of that old world. For instance, among

the plants of earth which Noah would have preserved for future insertion

in the soil, he could not have well forgotten the generous, treacherous

Vine. That to a righteous man, little used to all unhallowed sources of

exhilaration, this should have been a stepping-stone to a defalcation

from God, was likely. It was probable in itself, and shows the honesty

as well as the verisimilitude of Scripture to read, that "Noah began to

be a husbandman, and planted a vineyard; and he drank of the wine, and

was drunken." There was nothing here but what, taking all things into

consideration, Reason might have previously guessed. Why then withhold

the easier matter of an afterward belief?

BABEL.

This book ought to be read, as mentally it is written, with at the end

of every sentence one of those _et ceteras_, which the genius of a Coke

interpreted so keenly of the genius of a Littleton: for, far more

remains on each subject to be said, than in any one has been attempted.

Let us pass on to the story of Babel: I can conceive nothing more _à

priori_ probable than the account we read in Scripture. Briefly consider

the matter. A multitude of men, possibly the then whole human family,

once more a fallen race, emigrate towards the East, and come to a vast

plain in the region of Shinar, afterwards Chaldæa. Fertile,

well-watered, apt for every mundane purpose, it yet wanted one great

requisite. The degenerate race "put not their trust in God:" they did

not believe but that the world might some day be again destroyed by

water: and they required a point of refuge in the possible event of a

second deluge from the broken bounds of ocean and the windows of the

skies. They had come from the West; more strictly the North-west, a land

of mountains, as they deemed them, ready-made refuges: and their scheme,

a probable one enough, was to construct some such mountain artificially,

so that its top might reach the clouds, as did the summit of Ararat.

This would serve the twofold purpose of outwitting any further attempt

to drown them, and of making for themselves a proud name upon the earth.

So, the Lord God, in his etherealized human form (having taken counsel

with His own divine compeers), coming in the guise wherein He was wont

to walk with Adam and with Enoch and his other saints of men, "came down

and saw the tower:" truly, He needed not have come, for ubiquity was

his, and omniscience; but in the days when God and man were (so to

speak) less chronologically divided than as now, and while yet the

trial-family was young, it does not seem unlikely that He should. God

then, in his aspect of the Head of all mankind, took notice of that

dangerous and unholy combination: and He made within His Triune Mind the

wise resolve to break their bond of union. Omniscience had herein a view

to ulterior consequences benevolent to man, and He knew that it would be

a wise thing for the future world, as well as a discriminative check

upon the race then living, to confuse the universal language into many

discordant dialects. Was this in any sense an improbable or improper

method of making "the devices of the wicked to be of none effect, and of

laughing to scorn the counsels of the mighty?" Was it not to have been

expected that a fallen race should be disallowed the combinative force

necessary to a common language, but that such force should be dissipated

and diverted for moral usages into many tongues?--There they were, all

the chiefs of men congregated to accomplish a vast, ungodly scheme: and

interposing Heaven to crush such insane presumption--and withal

thereafter designing to bless by arranging through such means the future

interchange of commerce and the enterprise of nationalities--He, in his

Trinity, was not unlikely to have said, "Let us go down, and confound

their language." What better mode could have been devised to scatter

mankind, and so to people the extremities of earth? In order that the

various dialects should crystallize apart, each in its discriminative

lump, the nucleus of a nation; that thereafter the world might be able

no longer to unite as one man against its Lord, but by conflicting

interests, the product of conflicting languages, might give to good a

better chance of not being altogether overwhelmed; that, though many "a

multitude might go to do evil," it should not thenceforward be the whole

consenting family of man; but that, here by one and there by one, the

remembrance of God should be kept extant, and evil no longer acquire an

accumulated force, by having all the world one nation.

JOB.

Every scriptural incident and every scriptural worthy deserves its own

particular discussion: and might easily obtain it. For example; the

anterior probability that human life in patriarchal times should have

been very much prolonged, was obvious; from consideration of--1, the

benevolence of God; 2, the inexperience of man; and 3, the claim so

young a world would hold upon each of its inhabitants: whilst Holy Writ

itself has prepared an answer to the probable objection, that the years

were lunar years, or months; by recording that Arphaxad and Salah and

Eber and Peleg and Reu and Serug and Nahor, descendants of Shem, each

had children at the average age of two-and-thirty, and yet the lives of

all varied in duration from a hundred and fifty years to five hundred.

And many similar credibilities might be alluded to: what shall I say of

Abraham's sacrifice, of Moses and the burning bush, of Jonah also, and

Elisha, and of the prophets? for the time would fail me to tell how

probable and simple in each instance is its deep and marvellous history.

There is food for philosophic thought in every page of ancient Jewish

Scripture scarcely less than in those of primitive Christianity: here,

after our fashion, we have only touched upon a sample.

The opening scene to the book of Job has vexed the faith of many very

needlessly: to my mind, nothing was more likely to have literally and

really happened. It is one of those few places where we get an insight

into what is going on elsewhere: it is a lifting off the curtain of

eternity for once, revealing the magnificent simplicities constantly

presented in the halls of heaven. And I am moved to speak about it

here, because I think a plain statement of its sublime probabilities

will be acceptable to many: especially if they have been harassed by the

doubts of learned men respecting the authorship of that rare history. It

signifies nothing who recorded the circumstances and conversations, so

long as they were true, and really happened: given power, opportunity,

and honesty, a life of Dr. Johnson would be just as fair in fact, if

written by Smollett, as by Boswell, or himself. Whether then Job, the

wealthy prince of Uz, or Abraham, or Moses, or Elisha, or Eliphaz, or

whoever else, have placed the words on record, there they stand, true;

and the whole book in all its points was anteriorly likely to have been

decreed a component part of revelation. Without it, there would have

been wanting some evidence of a godly worship among men through the long

and dreary interval of several hundred years: there would never have

been given for man's help the example of a fortitude, and patience, and

trust in God most brilliant; of a faith in the resurrection and

redeemer, signal and definite beyond all other texts in Jewish

Scripture: as well as of a human knowledge of God in his works beyond

all modern instance. However, the excellences of that narrative are

scarcely our theme: we return to the starting-post of its probability,

especially with reference to its supernatural commencement. What we have

shown credible, many pages back, respecting good and evil and the

denizens of heaven, finds a remarkable after-proof in the two first

chapters of Job; and for some such reason, by reference, these two

chapters were themselves anteriorly to have been expected.

Let us see what happened:

"There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before

the Lord, and Satan came also among them. And the Lord said unto Satan,

whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going

to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. And the

Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is

none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that

feareth God and escheweth evil? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said,

Doth Job fear God for naught? Hast thou not made a hedge about him, and

about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? Thou hast

blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the

land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all he hath, and he will

curse thee to thy face. And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that

he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So

Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord."--[Job 1. 6-13.]

It is a most stately drama: any paraphrase would spoil its dignity, its

quiet truth, its unpretending, yet gigantic lineaments. Note: in

allusion to our views of evil, that Satan also comes among the sons of

God: note, the generous dependence placed by a generous Master on his

servant well-upheld by that Master's own free grace: note, Satan's

constant imputation against piety when blessed of God with worldly

wealth, Doth he serve for naught? I can discern no cause wherefore all

this scene should not have truly happened; not as in vision of some holy

man, but as in fact. Let us read on, before further comment:

"Again, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves

before the Lord, and Satan came also among them to present himself

before the Lord. And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? And

Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth,

and from walking up and down in it. And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast

thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the

earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth

evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me

against him, to destroy him without cause. And Satan answered the Lord,

and said, Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his

life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh,

and he will curse thee to thy face. And the Lord said unto Satan,

Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life. So Satan went forth from

the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils, from the sole

of his foot unto his crown."

Some such scene, displaying the devil's malice, slandering sneers, and

permitted power, recommends itself to my mind as antecedently to have

been looked for: in order that we might know from what quarter many of

life's evils come; with what aims and ends they are directed; what

limits are opposed to our foe; and Who is on our side. We needed some

such insight into the heavenly places; some such hint of what is

continually going on before the Lord's tribunal; we wanted this plain

and simple setting forth of good and evil in personal encounter, of

innocence awhile given up to malice for its chastening and its triumph.

Lo, all this so probable scene is here laid open to us, and many,

against reason, disbelieve it!

Note, in allusion to our after-theme, the _locus_ of heaven, that there

is some such usual place of periodical gathering. Note, the open

unchiding loveliness dwelling in the Good One's words, as contrasted

with the subtle, slanderous hatred of the Evil. And then the vulgar

proverb, Skin for skin: this pious Job is so intensely selfish, that let

him lose what he may, he heeds it not; he cares for nothing out of his

own skin. And there are many more such notabilities.

Why did I produce these passages at length? For their Doric simplicity;

for their plain and masculine features; for their obvious truthfulness;

for their manifest probability as to fact, and expectability previously

to it. Why on earth should they be doubted in their literal sense? and

were they not more likely to have happened than to have been invented?

We have no such geniuses now as this writer must have been, who by the

pure force of imagination could have created that tableau. Milton had

Job to go to. Simplicity is proof presumptive in favour of the plain

inspiration of such passages: for the plastic mind which could conceive

so just a sketch, would never have rested satisfied, without having

painted and adorned it picturesquely. Such rare flights of fancy are

always made the most of.

One or two thoughts respecting Job's trial. That he should at last give

way, was only probable: he was, in short, another Adam, and had another

fall; albeit he wrestled nobly. Worthy was he to be named among God's

chosen three, "Noah, Daniel, and Job:" and worthy that the Lord should

bless his latter end. This word brings me to the point I wish to touch

on; the great compensation which God gave to Job.

Children can never be regarded as other than individualities: and

notwithstanding Eastern feelings about increase in quantity, its quality

is, after all, the question for the heart. I mean that many children to

be born, is but an inadequate return for many children dying. If a

father loses a well-beloved son, it is small recompense of that aching

void that he gets another. For this reason of the affections, and

because I suppose that thinkers have sympathized with me in the

difficulty, I wish to say a word about Job's children, lost and found.

It will clear away what is to some minds a moral and affectionate

objection. Now, this is the state of the case.

The patriarch is introduced to us as possessing so many camels, and

oxen, and so forth; and ten children. All these are represented to him

by witnesses, to all appearance credible, as dead; and he mourns for his

great loss accordingly. Would not a merchant feel to all intents and

purposes a ruined man, if he received a clear intelligence from

different parts of the world at once that all his ships and warehouses

had been destroyed by hurricanes and fire? Faith given, patience

follows: and the trial is morally the same, whether the news be true or

false. Remarkably enough, after the calamitous time is past, when the

good man of Uz is discerned as rewarded by heaven for his patience by

the double of every thing once lost--his children remain the same in

number, ten. It seems to me quite possible that neither camels, &c., nor

children, really had been killed. Satan might have meant it so, and

schemed it; and the singly-coming messengers believed it all, as also

did the well-enduring Job. But the scriptural word does not go to say

that these things happened; but that certain emissaries said they

happened. I think the devil missed his mark: that the messengers were

scared by some abortive diabolic efforts; and that, (with a natural

increase of camels, &c., meanwhile,) the patriarch's paternal heart was

more than compensated at the last, by the restoration of his own dear

children. They were dead, and are alive again; they were lost, and are

found. Like Abraham returning from Mount Calvary with Isaac, it was the

Resurrection in a figure.

If to this view objection is made, that, because the boils of Job were

real, therefore, similarly real must be all his other evils; I reply,

that in the one temptation, the suffering was to be mental; in the

other, bodily. In the latter case, positive, personal pain, was the gist

of the matter: in the former, the heart might be pierced, and the mind

be overwhelmed, without the necessity of any such incurable affliction

as children's deaths amount to. God's mercy may well have allowed the

evil one to overreach himself; and when the restoration came, how double

was the joy of Job over those ten dear children.

Again, if any one will urge that, in the common view of the case, Job at

the last really has twice as many children as before, for that he has

ten old ones in heaven, and ten new ones on earth: I must, in answer,

think that explanation as unsatisfactory to us, as the verity of it

would have been to Job. Affection, human affection, is not so

numerically nor vicariously consoled: and it is, perhaps, worth while

here to have thrown out (what I suppose to be) a new view of the case,

if only to rescue such wealth as children from the infidel's sneer of

being confounded with such wealth as camels. Moreover, such a paternal

reward was anteriorly more probable.

JOSHUA.

How many of our superficial thinkers have been staggered at the great

miracle recorded of Joshua; and how few, even of the deeper sort,

comparatively, may have discerned its aptness, its science, and its

anterior likelihood: "Sun! stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, moon,

in the valley of Ajalon." Now, consider, for we hope to vindicate even

this stupendous event from the charge of improbability.

Baal and Ashtaroth, chief idols of the Canaanites, were names for sun

and moon. It would manifestly be the object of God and His ambassador to

cast utter scorn on such idolatry. And what could be more apt than that

Joshua, commissioned to extirpate the corrupted race, should

miraculously be enabled, as it were, to bind their own gods to aid in

the destruction of such votaries?

Again: what should Joshua want with the moon for daylight, to help him

to rout the foes of God more fiercely? Why not, according to the

astronomical ignorance of those days, let her sail away, unconsorted by

the sun, far beyond the valley of Ajalon? There was a reason, here, of

secret, unobtruded science: if the sun stopped, the moon must stop too;

that is to say, both apparently: the fact being that the earth must, for

the while, rest on its axis. This, I say, is a latent, scientific hint;

and so, likewise, is the accompanying mention as a fact, that the Lord

immediately "rained great stones out of heaven" upon the flying host.

For would it not be the case that, if the diurnal rotation of earth were

suddenly to stop, the impetus of motion would avail to raise high into

the air by centrifugal force, and fling down again by gravity, such

unanchored things as fragments of rock?

Once more: our objector will here perhaps inquire, Why not then command

the earth to stop--and not the sun and moon? if thus probably Joshua or

his Inspirer knew better? Answer. Only let a reasonable man consider

what would have been the moral lesson both to Israelite and to

Canaanite, if the great successor of Moses had called out,

incomprehensibly to all, "Earth, stand thou still on thine axis;"--and

lo! as if in utter defiance of such presumption, and to vindicate openly

the heathen gods against the Jewish, the very sun and moon in heaven

stopped, and glared on the offender. I question whether such a noon-day

miracle might not have perverted to idolatry the whole believing host:

and almost reasonably too. The strictly philosophical terms would have

entirely nullified the whole moral influence. God in his word never

suffers science to hinder the progress of truth: a worldly philosophy

does this almost in every instance, darkening knowledge with a cloud of

words: but the science of the Bible is usually concealed in some

neighbouring hint quite handy to the record of the phenomena expressed

in ordinary language. In fact, for all common purposes, no astronomer

finds fault with such phrases as the moon rising, or the sun setting: he

speaks according to the appearance, though he knows perfectly well that

the earth is the cause of it, and not the sun or moon. Carry this out in

Joshua's case.

On the whole, the miracle was very plain, very comprehensible, and very

probable. It had good cause: for Canaan felt more confidence in the

protection of his great and glorious Baal, than stiff-necked Judah in

his barely-seen divinity: and surely it was wise to vindicate the true

but invisible God by the humiliation of the false and far-seen idol.

This would constitute to all nations the quickly-rumoured proof that

Jehovah of the Israelites was God in heaven above as well as on the

earth beneath. And, considering the peculiar idolatries of Canaan, it

seems to me that no miracle could have been better placed and better

timed--in other words, anteriorly more probable--than the command of

obedience to the sun and to the moon. I suppose that few persons who

read this book will be unaware, that the circumstance is alluded to as

well in that honest heathen, old Herodotus, as in the learned Jew

Josephus. The volumes are not near me for reference to quotations: but

such is fact: it will be found in Herodotus, about the middle of

Euterpe, connected with an allusion to the analogous case of Hezekiah.

No miracles, on the whole (to take one after-view of the matter), could

have been better tested: for two armies (not to mention all surrounding

countries) must have seen it plainly and clearly: if then it had never

occurred, what a very needless exposure of the falsity of the Jewish

Scriptures! These were open, published writings, accessible to all:

Cyrus and Darius and Alexander read them, and Ethiopian eunuchs;

Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, with all other nations of the earth, had

free access to those records. Only imagine if some recent history of

England, Adolphus's, or Stebbing's, contained an account of a certain

day in George the Fourth's reign having had twenty-four hour's daylight

instead of the usual admixture; could the intolerable falsehood last a

minute? Such a placard would be torn away from the records of the land

the moment a rash hand had fixed it there. But, if the matter were

fact, how could any historian neglect it?--In one sense, the very

improbability of such a marvel being recorded, argues the probability of

it having actually occurred.

Much more might here be added: but our errand is accomplished, if any

stumbling-block had been thus easily removed from some erring thinker's

path. Surely, we have given him some reason for faith's due acceptance

of Joshua's miracle.

THE INCARNATION.

In touching some of the probabilities of our blessed Lord's career, it

would be difficult to introduce and illustrate the subject better, than

by the following anecdote. Whence it is derived, has escaped my memory;

but I have a floating notion that it is told of Socrates in Xenophon or

Plato. At any rate, by way of giving fixity thereto and picturesqueness,

let us here report the story as of the Athenian Solomon:

Surrounded by his pupils, the great heathen Reasoner was being

questioned and answering questions: in particular respecting the

probability that the universal God would be revealed to his creatures.

"What a glorious King would he appear!" said one, possibly the brilliant

Alcibiades: "What a form of surpassing beauty!" said another, not

unlikely the softer Crito. "Not so, my children," answered Socrates.

"Kings and the beautiful are few, and the God, if he came on earth as an

exemplar, would in shape and station be like the greater number."

"Indeed, Master? then how should he fail of being made a King of men,

for his goodness, and his majesty, and wisdom?" "Alas! my children," was

pure Reason's just rejoinder, "[Greek: oi pleiones kakoi], most men are

so wicked that they would hate his purity, despise his wisdom, and as

for his majesty, they could not truly see it. They might indeed admire

for a time, but thereafter (if the God allowed it), they would even hunt

and persecute and kill him." "Kill him!" exclaimed the eager group of

listeners; "kill Him? how should they, how could they, how dare they

kill God?" "I did not say, kill God," would have been wise Socrates's

reply, "for God existeth ever: but men in enmity and envy might even be

allowed to kill that human form wherein God walked for an ensample. That

they could, were God's humility: that they should, were their own

malice: that they dared, were their own grievous sin and peril of

destruction. Yea," went on the keen-eyed sage, "men would slay him by

some disgraceful death, some lingering, open, and cruel death, even such

as the death of slaves!"--Now slaves, when convicted of capital crime,

were always crucified.

Whatever be thought of the genuineness of the anecdote, its uses are the

same to us. Reason might have arrived at the salient points of Christ's

career, and at His crucifixion!

I will add another topic: How should the God on earth arrive there? We

have shown that His form would probably be such as man's; but was he to

descend bodily from the atmosphere at the age of full-grown perfection,

or to rise up out of the ground with earthquakes and fire, or to appear

on a sudden in the midst of the market-place, or to come with legions of

his heavenly host to visit his Temple? There was a wiser way than these,

more reasonable, probable, and useful. Man required an exemplar for

every stage of his existence up to the perfection of his frame. The

infant, and the child, and the youth, would all desire the human-God to

understand their eras; they would all, if generous and such as he would

love, long to feel that He has sympathy with them in every early trial,

as in every later grief. Moreover, the God coming down with supernatural

glories or terrors would be a needless expense of ostentatious power.

He, whose advent is intended for the encouragement of men to exercise

their reason and their conscience; whose exhortation is "he that hath

ears to hear, let him hear;" that pure Being, who is the chief preacher

of Humility, and the great teacher of man's responsible

condition--surely, he would hardly come in any way astoundingly

miraculous, addressing his advent not to faith, but to sight, and

challenging the impossibility of unbelief by a galaxy of spiritual

wonders. Yet, if He is to come at all--and a word or two of this

hereafter--it must be either in some such strange way; or in the usual

human way; or in a just admixture of both. As the first is needlessly

overwhelming to the responsible state of man, so the second is

needlessly derogatory to the pure essence of God; and the third idea

would seem to be most probable. Let us guess it out. Why should not this

highest Object of faith and this lowest Subject of obedience be born,

seemingly by human means, but really by divine? Why should there not be

found some unspotted holy virgin, betrothed to a just man and soon to be

his wife, who, by the creative power of Divinity, should miraculously

conceive the shape divine, which God himself resolved to dwell in? Why

should she not come of a lineage and family which for centuries before

had held such expectation? Why should not the just man, her affianced,

who had never known her yet, being warned of God in a dream of this

strange, immaculate conception, "fear not to take unto him Mary his

wife," lest the unbelieving world should breathe slander on her purity,

albeit he should really know her not until after the Holy Birth. There

is nothing unreasonable here; every step is previously credible: and

invention's self would be puzzled to devise a better scheme. The

Virgin-born would thus be a link between God and man, the great

Mediator: his natures would fulfil every condition required of their

double and their intimate conjunction. He would have arrived at humanity

without its gross beginnings, and have veiled his Godhead for a while in

a pure though mortal tenement. He would have participated in all the

tenderness of woman's nature, and thus have reached the keenest

sensibilities of men.

Themes such as these are inexhaustible: and I am perpetually conscious

of so much left unsaid, that at every section I seem to have said next

to nothing. Nevertheless, let it go; the good seed yet shall germinate.

"Cast thy bread upon the waters, and thou shall find it after many

days."

It may to some minds be a desideratum, to allude to the anterior

probability that God should come in the flesh. Much of this has been

anticipated under the head of Visible Deity and elsewhere; as this

treatise is so short, one may reasonably expect every reader to take it

in regular course. For additional considerations: the Benevolent Maker

would hardly leave his creatures to perish, without one word of warning

or one gleam of knowledge. The question of the Bible is considered

further on: but exclusively of written rules and dogmas, it was likely

that Our Father should commission chosen servants of his own, orally to

teach and admonish; because it would be in accordance with man's

reasonable nature, that he should best and easiest learn from the

teaching his brethren. So then, after all lesser ambassadors had failed,

it was to be expected that He should send the highest one of all,

saying, "They will reverence my Son." We know that this really did occur

by innumerable proofs, and wonderful signs posterior: and now, after the

event, we discern it to have been anteriorly probable.

It was also probable in another light. This world is a world of

incarnations; nothing has a real and potential existence, which is not

embodied in some form. A theory is nothing; if no personal philosopher,

no sect, or school of learners, takes it up. An opinion is mere air;

without the multitude to give it all the force of a mighty wind. An

idea is mere spiritual light; if unclad in deeds, or in words written or

spoken. So, also, of the Godhead: He would be like all these. He would

pervade words spoken, as by prophets or preachers: He would include

words written, as in the Bible: He would influence crowds with

spirit-stirring sentiments: He would embody the theory of all things in

one simple, philosophic form. As this material world is constituted, God

could not reveal himself at all, excepting by the aid of matter. I mean;

even granting that He spiritually inspired a prophet, still the man was

necessary: he becomes an inspired man; not mere inspiration. So, also,

of a book; which is the written labour of inspired men. There is no

doing without the Humanity of God, so far as this world is concerned,

any more than His Deity can be dispensed with, regarding the worlds

beyond worlds, and the ages of ages, and the dread for ever and ever.

MAHOMETANISM.

It seems expedient that, in one or two instances, I should attempt the

illustration of this rule of probability in matters beyond the Bible. As

very fair ones, take Mahometanism and Romanism. And first of the former.

At the commencement of the seventh century, or a little previously to

that era, we know that a fierce religion sprang up, promulgated by a

false prophet. I wish briefly to show that this was antecedently to have

been expected.

In a moral point of view, the Christian world, torn by all manner of

schisms, and polluted by all sorts of heresies, had earned for the human

race, whether accepting the gospel or refusing it, some signal and

extensive punishment at the hands of Him, who is the Great Retributor as

well as the Munificent Rewarder. In a physical point of view, the

civilized kingdoms of the earth had become stagnant, arguing that

corrupt and poisonous calm which is the herald of a coming tempest. The

heat of a true religion had cooled down into lukewarm disputations about

nothings, scholastical and casuistic figments; whilst at the same time

the prevalence of peaceful doctrines had amalgamated all classes into a

luxurious indolence. Passionate Man is not to be so satisfied; and the

time was fully come for the rise of some fierce spirit, who should

change the tinsel theology of the crucifix for the iron religion of the

sword: who should blow in the ears of the slumbering West the shrill

war-blast of Eastern fervencies; who should exchange the dull rewards of

canonization due to penance, or an after-life voluntary humiliation

under pseudo-saints and angels, for the human and comprehensible joys of

animal appetite and military glory: who should enlist under his banner

all the frantic zeal, all the pent-up licentiousness, all the

heart-burning hatreds of mankind, stifled either by a positive

barbarism, or the incense-laden cloud of a scarcely-masked idolatry.

Thus, and then, was likely to arise a bold and self-confiding hero,

leaning on his own sword: a man of dark sentences, who, by judiciously

pilfering from this quarter and from that shreds of truth to jewel his

black vestments of error, and by openly proclaiming that Oneness of the

object of all worship which besotted Christendom had then, from undue

reverence to saints and martyrs, virgins and archangels, well nigh

forgotten; a man who, by pandering to human passions and setting wide as

virtue's avenue the flower-tricked gates of vice; should thus, like

Lucifer before him, in a comet-like career of victory, sweep the

startled firmament of earth, and drag to his erratic orbit the stars of

heaven from their courses.

Mahomet; his humble beginnings; his iron perseverance under early

probable checks; his blind, yet not all unsublime, dependence on

fatality; his ruthless, yet not all undeserved, infliction of fire and

sword upon the cowering coward race that filled the western

world;--these, and all whatever else besides attended his train of

triumphs, and all whatever besides has lasted among Moors, and Arabs,

and Turks, and Asiatics, even to this our day--constitute to a thinking

mind (and it seems not without cause) another antecedent probability.

Let the scoffer about Mahomet's success, and the admirer of his hotchpot

Koran; let him to whom it is a stumbling-block that error (if indeed,

quoth he, it be more erroneous than what Christendom counts truth)

should have had such free course and been glorified, while so-called

Truth, _pede claudo_, has limped on even as now cautiously and

ingloriously through the well-suspicious world; let him who thinks he

sees in Mahomet's success an answer to the foolish argument of some, who

test the truth of Christianity by its Gentile triumphs; let him ponder

these things. Reason, the God of his idolatry, might, with an

archangel's ken, have prophesied some Mahomet's career: and, so far from

such being in the nature of any objection to Faith, the idea thus thrown

out, well-mused upon, will be seen to lend Faith an aid in the way of

previous likelihood.

"There is one God, and Mahomet is his prophet!" How admirably calculated

such a war-cry would be for the circumstances of the seventh century.

The simple sublimity of Oneness, as opposed to school-theology and

catholic demons: the glitter of barbaric pomp, instead of tame

observances: the flashing scimetar of ambition to supersede the cross: a

turban aigretted with jewels for the twisted wreath of thorns. As human

nature is, and especially in that time was, nothing was more expectable

(even if prophetic records had not taught it), than the rise and

progress of that great False Prophet, whose waving crescent even now

blights the third part of earth.

ROMANISM.

We all know how easy it is to prophesy after the event: but it would be

uncandid and untrue to confound this remark with another, cousin-germane

to it; to wit: how easy it is to discern of any event, after it has

happened, whether or not it were antecedently likely. When the race is

over, and the best horse has won (or by clever jockey-management, the

worst), how obviously could any gentleman on the turf, now in possession

of particulars, have seen the event to have been so probable, that he

would have staked all upon its issue.

Carry out this familiar idea; which, as human nature goes, is none the

weaker as to illustration, because it is built upon the rule "_parvis

componere magna_." Let us sketch a line or two of that great

fore-shadowing cartoon, the probabilities of Romanism.

That our blessed Master, even in His state as man, beheld its evil

characteristics looming on the future, seems likely not alone from both

His human keenness and His divine omniscience, but from here and there a

hint dropped in his biography. Why should He, on several occasions, have

seemed, I will say with some apparent sharpness, to have rebuked His

virgin mother.--"Woman, what have I to do with thee?"--"Who are my

mother and my brethren?"--"Yea--More blessed than the womb which bare

me, and the paps that I have sucked, is the humblest of my true

disciples." Let no one misunderstand me: full well I know the just

explanations which palliate such passages; and the love stronger than

death which beat in that Filial heart. But, take the phrases as they

stand; and do they not in reason constitute some warning and some

prophecy that men should idolize the mother? Nothing, in fact, was more

likely than that a just human reverence to the most favoured among women

should have increased into her admiring worship: until the humble and

holy Mary, with the sword of human anguish at her heart, should become

exaggerated and idealized into Mother of God--instead of Jesus's human

matrix, Queen of heaven, instead of a ransomed soul herself, the joy of

angels--in lieu of their lowly fellow-worshipper, and the Rapture of the

blessed--thus dethroning the Almighty.

Take a second instance: why should Peter, the most loving, most

generous, most devoted of them all, have been singled out from among the

twelve--with a "Get thee behind me, Satan?"--it really had a harsh

appearance; if it were not that, prophetically speaking, and not

personally, he was set in the same category with Judas, the "one who was

a devil." I know the glosses, and the contexts, and the whole amount of

it. Folios have been written, and may be written again, to disprove the

text; but the more words, the less sense: it stands, a record graven in

the Rock; that same Petra, whereon, as firm and faithful found, our Lord

Jesus built his early Church: it stands, a mark indelibly burnt into

that hand, to whom were intrusted, not more specially than to any other

of the saintly sent, the keys of the kingdom of heaven: it stands, along

with the same Peter's deep and terrible apostacy, a living witness

against some future Church, who should set up this same Peter as the

Jupiter of their Pantheon: who should positively be idolizing now an

image christened Peter, which did duty two thousand years ago as a

statue of Libyan Jove! But even this glaring compromise was a matter

probable, with the data of human ambitions, and a rotten Christianity.

Examples such as these might well be multiplied: bear with a word or two

more, remembering always that the half is not said which might be said

in proof; nor in answering the heap of frivolous objections.

Why, unless relics and pseudo-sacred clothes were to be prophetically

humbled into their own mere dust and nothing-worthiness, why should the

rude Roman soldiery have been suffered to cast lots for that vestment,

which, if ever spiritual holiness could have been infused into mere

matter, must indeed have remained a relic worthy of undoubted worship?

It was warm with the Animal heat of the Man inhabited by God: it was

half worn out in the service of His humble travels, and had even, on

many occasions, been the road by which virtue had gone out; not of it,

but of Him. What! was this wonderful robe to work no miracles? was it

not to be regarded as a sort of outpost of the being who was Human-God?

Had it no essential sacredness, no _noli-me-tangere_ quality of shining

away the gambler's covetous glance, of withering his rude and venturous

hand, or of poisoning, like some Nessus' shirt, the lewd ruffian who

might soon thereafter wear it? Not in the least. This woven web, to

which a corrupted state of feeling on religion would have raised

cathedrals as its palaces, with singing men and singing women, and

singing eunuchs too, to celebrate its virtues; this coarse cloth of some

poor weaver's, working down by the sea of Galilee or in some lane of

Zion, was still to remain, and be a mere unglorified, economical, useful

garment. Far from testifying to its own internal mightiness, it probably

was soon sold by the fortunate Roman die-thrower to a second-hand shop

of the Jewish metropolis; and so descended from beggar to beggar till it

was clean worn out. We never hear that, however easy of access so

inestimable relic might then have been considered, any one of the

numerous disciples, in the fervour of their earliest zeal, threw away

one thought for its redemption. Is it not strange that no St. Helena was

at hand to conserve such a desirable invention? Why is there no St.

Vestment to keep in countenance a St. Sepulchre and a St. Cross? The

poor cloth, in primitive times, really was despised. We know well enough

what happened afterwards about handkerchiefs imbued with miraculous

properties from holy Paul's body for the nonce: but this is an inferior

question, and the matter was temporary; the superior case is proved, and

besides the rule _omne majus continet in se minus_ there are differences

quite intelligible between the cases, whereabout our time would be less

profitably employed than in passing on and leaving them unquestioned.

Suffice it to say, that "God worked those special miracles," and not the

unconscious "handkerchiefs or aprons." "Te Deum laudamus!" is

Protestantism's cry; "Sudaria laudemus!" would swell the Papal choirs.

Let such considerations as these then are in sample serve to show how

evidently one might prove from anterior circumstances, (and the canon of

Scripture is an anterior circumstance,) the probability of the rise and

progress of the Roman heresies. And if any one should ask, how was such

a system more likely to arise under a Gentile rather than a Jewish

theocracy? why was a St. Paul, or a St. Peter, or a St. Dunstan, or a

St. Gengulphus, more previously expectable than a St. Abraham, a St.

David, a St. Elisha, or a St. Gehazi? I answer, from the idea of

idolatry, so adapted to the Gentile mind, and so abhorrent from the

Jewish. Martyred Abel, however well respected, has never reached the

honours of a niche beside the altar. Jephtha's daughter, for all her

mourned virginity, was never paraded, (that I wot of,) for any other

than a much-to-be-lamented damsel. Who ever asked, in those old times,

the mediation of St. Enoch? Where were the offerings, in jewels or in

gold, to propitiate that undoubted man of God and denizen of heaven, St.

Moses? what prows, in wax, of vessels saved from shipwreck, hung about

the dripping fane of Jonah? and where was, in the olden time, that

wretched and insensate being, calling himself rational and godly, who

had ventured to solicit the good services of Isaiah as his intercessor,

or to plead the merits of St. Ezekiel as the make-weight for his sins?

It was just this, and reasonably to have been expected; for when the Jew

brought in his religion, he demolished every false god, broke their

images, slew their priests, and burnt their groves with fire. But, when

a worldly Christianity came to be in vogue, when emperors adorned their

banners with the cross, and the poor fishermen of Galilee, (in their

portly representatives,) came to be encrusted with gems, and rustling

with seric silk; then was made that fatal compromise; then it was likely

to have been made, which has lasted even until now: a compromise which,

newly baptizing the damned idols of the heathen, keeps yet St. Bacchus

and St. Venus, St. Mars and St. Apollo, perched in sobered robes upon

the so-called Christian altar; which yet pays divine honours to an

ancyle or a rusty nail; to the black stones at Delphi, or the

gold-shrined bones at Aix; which yet sanctifies the chickens of the

capitol, or the cock that startled Peter; which yet lets a wealthy

sinner, by his gold, bribe the winking Pythoness, or buy dispensing

clauses from "the Lord our God, the Pope."

There is yet a swarm of other notions pressing on the mind, which tend

to prove that Popery might have been anticipated. Take this view. The

religion of Christ is holy, self-denying; not of this world's praise,

and ending with the terrible sanction of eternity for good or evil: it

sets up God alone supreme, and cuts down creature-merit to a point

perpetually diminishing; for the longer he does well, the more he owes

to the grace which enabled him to do it.

Now, man's nature is, as we know, diametrically opposite to all this:

and unable to escape from the conviction of Christian truth in some

sense, he would bend his shrewd invention to the attempt of warping

that stern truth to shapes more consistent with his idiosyncrasies. A

religious plan might be expected, which, in lieu of a difficult, holy

spirituality, should exact easy, mere observances; to say a thousand

Paters with the tongue, instead of one "Our Father," from the heart; to

exact genuflections by the score, but not a single prostration of the

spirit; to write the cross in water on the forehead often-times, but

never once to bear its mystic weight upon the shoulder. In spite of

self-denial, cleverly kept in sight by means of eggs, and pulse, and

hair-cloth, to pamper the deluded flesh with many a carnal holiday; in

contravention of a kingdom not of this world, boldly to usurp the

temporal dominion of it all: instead of the overwhelming

incomprehensibility of an eternal doom, to comfort the worst with false

assurance of a purgatory longer or shorter; that after all, vice may be

burnt out; and who knows but that gold, buying up the prayers and

superfluous righteousness of others, may not make the fiery ordeal an

easy one? In lieu of a God brought near to his creatures, infinite

purity in contact with the grossest sin, as the good Physician loveth;

how sage it seemed to stock the immeasurable distance with intermediate

numia, cycle on epicycle, arc on arc, priest and bishop and pope, and

martyr, and virgin, and saint, and angel, all in their stations, at due

interval soliciting God to be (as if His blessed Majesty were not so of

Himself!) the sinner's friend. How comfortable this to man's sweet

estimation of his own petty penances; how glorifying to those "filthy

rags," his so-called righteousness: how apt to build up the hierarchist

power; how seemingly analogous with man's experience here, where clerks

lay the case before commissioners, and commissioners before the

government, and the government before the sovereign.

All this was entirely expectable: and I can conceive that a deep

Reasoner among the first apostles, even without such supernal light as

"the Spirit speaking expressly," might have so calculated on the

probabilities to come, as to have written, long ago, words akin to

these: "In the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving

heed to seductive doctrines, and fanciful notions about intermediate

deities, ([Greek: daimoniôn],) perverting truth by hypocritical

departures from it, searing conscience against its own cravings after

spiritual holiness, forbidding marriage, (to invent another virtue,) and

commanding abstinence from God's good gifts, as a means of building up a

creature-merit by voluntary humiliation." At the likelihood that such

"profane and old wives' fables" should thereafter have arisen, might

Paul without a miracle have possibly arrived.

Yet again: take another view. The Religion of Christ, though intended

to be universal in some better era of this groaning earth, was, until

that era cometh, meant and contrived for any thing rather than a

Catholicity. True, the Church is so far Catholic that it numbers of its

blessed company men of every clime and every age, from righteous Abel

down to the last dear babe christened yester-morning; true, the

commission is "to all nations, teaching them:" but, what mean the

simultaneous and easily reconciled expressions--come out from among

them, little flock, gathered out of the Gentiles, a peculiar people, a

church militant, and not triumphant, here on earth? Thus shortly of a

word much misinterpreted: let us now see what the Romanist does, what,

(on human principles,) he would be probable to do, with this

discriminating religion. He, chiefly for temporal gains, would make it

as expansive as possible: there should be room at that table for every

guest, whether wedding-garmented or not; there would be sauces in that

poisonous feast, fitted to every palate. For the cold, ascetical mind, a

cell and a scourge, and a record kept of starving fancies as calling

them ecstatic visions vouchsafed by some old Stylite to bless his

favoured worshipper; for the painted demirep of fashionable life, there

would be a pretty pocket-idol, and the snug confessional well tenanted

by a not unsympathizing father; for the pure girl, blighted in her

heart's first love, the papist would afford that seemingly merciful

refuge, that calm and musical and gentle place, the irrevocable nunnery;

a place, for all its calmness, and its music, and its gentle

reputations, soon to be abhorred of that poor child as a living tomb,

the extinguisher of all life's aims, all its duties, uses and delights:

for the bandit, a tythe of the traveller's gold would avail to pay away

the murder, and earn for him a heap of merits kept within the cash-box:

the educated, high-born and finely-moulded mind might be well amused

with architecture, painting, carving, sweet odours, and the most

wondrous music that has ever cheated man, even while he offers up his

easy adorations, and departs, equally complacent at the choral remedies

as at the priestly absolution; while, for those good few, the truly

pious and enlightened children of Rome, who mourn the corruptions of

their church, and explain away, with trembling tongue, her obvious

errors and idolatries, for these the wily scheme, so probable, devised

an undoubted mass of truth to be left among the rubbish. True doctrines,

justly held by true martyrs and true saints, holy men of God who have

died in that communion; ordinances and an existence which creep up,

(heedless of corruption though,) step by step, through past antiquity,

to the very feet of the Founder; keen casuists, competent to prove any

point of conscience or objection, and that indisputably, for they climax

all by the high authority of Popes and councils that cannot be deceived:

pious treatises and manuals, verily of flaming heat, for they mingle the

yearnings of a constrained celibacy with the fervencies of worship and

the cravings after God. Yes, there is meat here for every human mouth;

only that, alas for men! the meat is that which perisheth, and not

endureth unto everlasting life. Rome, thou wert sagely schemed; and if

Lucifer devised thee not for the various appetencies of poor,

deceivable, Catholic Man, verily it were pity, for thou art worthy of

his handiwork. All things to all men, in any sense but the right,

signifies nothing to anybody: in the sense of falsehoods, take the

former for thy motto; in that of single truth, in its intensity, the

latter.

Let not then the accident--the probable accident--of the Italian

superstition place any hindrance in the way of one whose mind is all at

sea because of its existence. What, O man with a soul, is all the world

else to thee? Christianity, whatever be its broad way of pretences, is

but in reality a narrow path: be satisfied with the day of small things,

stagger not at the inconsistencies, conflicting words, and hateful

strifes of those who say they are Christians, but "are not, but are of

the synagogue of Satan." Judge truth, neither by her foes nor by her

friends but by herself. There was one who said (and I never heard that

any writer, from Julian to Hobbes, ever disputed his human truth or

wisdom) "Needs must that offences come; but wo be to that man by whom

the offence cometh. If they come, be not shaken in faith: lo, I have

told you before. And if others fall away, or do ought else than my

bidding, what is that to thee? follow thou ME."

THE BIBLE.

Whilst I attempt to show, as now I desire to do, that the Bible should

be just the book it is, from considerations of anterior probability, I

must expand the subject a little; dividing it, first, into the

likelihood of a revelation at all; and secondly, into that of its

expectable form and character.

The first likelihood has its birth in the just Benevolence of our

heavenly Father, who without dispute never leaves his rational creatures

unaided by some sort of guiding light, some manifestation of himself so

needful to their happiness, some sure word of consolation in sorrow, or

of brighter hope in persecution. That it must have been thus an _à

priori_ probability, has been all along proved by the innumerable

pretences of the kind so constant up and down the world: no nation ever

existed in any age or country, whose seers and wise men of whatever name

have not been believed to hold commerce with the Godhead. We may judge

from this, how probable it must ever have been held. The Sages of old

Greece were sure of it from reason: and not less sure from accepted

superstition those who reverenced the Brahmin, or the priest of

Heliopolis, or the medicine-man among the Rocky Mountains, or the Llama

of old Mexico. I know that our ignorance of some among the most

brutalized species of mankind, as the Bushmen in Caffraria, and the

tribes of New South Wales, has failed to find among their rites any

thing akin to religion: but what may we not yet have to learn of good

even about such poor outcasts? how shall we prove this negative? For

aught we know, their superstitions at the heart may be as deep and as

deceitful as in others; and, even on the contrary side, the exception

proves the rule: the rule that every people concluded a revelation so

likely, that they have one and all contrived it for themselves.

Thus shortly of the first: and now, secondly, how should God reveal

himself to men? In such times as those when the world was yet young, and

the Church concentrated in a family or an individual, it would probably

be by an immediate oral teaching; the Lord would speak with Adam; He

would walk with Enoch; He would, in some pure ethereal garb, talk with

Abraham, as friend to friend. And thereafter, as men grew, and

worshippers were multiplied, He would give some favoured servant a

commission to be His ambassador: He would say to an Ezekiel, "Go unto

the house of Israel, and speak my words to them:" He would bid a

Jeremiah "Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words

that I have spoken to thee:" He would give Daniel a deep vision, not to

be interpreted for ages, "Shut up the words, and seal the book even to

the time of the end:" He would make Moses grave His precepts in the

rock, and Job record his trials with a pen of iron. For a family, the

Beatic Vision was enough: for a congregated nation, as once at Sinai,

oral proclamations: for one generation or two around the world, the zeal

and eloquence of some great "multitude of preachers:" but, indubitably,

if God willed to bless the universal race, and drop the honey of his

words distilling down the hour-glass of Time from generation to

generation even to the latter days, there was no plan more probable,

none more feasible, than the pen of a ready writer.

Further: and which concerns our argument: what were likely to be the

characteristic marks of such a revelation? Exclusively of a pervading

holiness, and wisdom, and sublimity, which could not be dispensed with,

and in some sort should be worthy of the God; there would be, it was

probable, frequent evidences of man's infirmity, corrupting all he

toucheth. The Almighty works no miracles for little cause: one miracle

alone need be current throughout Scripture: to wit, that which preserves

it clean and safe from every perilous error. But, in the succession of a

thousand scribes each copying from the other, needs must that the tired

hand and misty eye would occasionally misplace a letter: this was no

nodus worthy of a God's descent to dissipate by miracle.

Again: the original prophets themselves were men of various characters

and times and tribes. God addresses men through their reason; he bound

not down a seer "with bit and bridle, like the horse that has no

understanding"--but spoke as to a rational being--"What seest thou?"

"Hear my words;"--"Give ear unto my speech." Was it not then likely that

the previous mode of thought and providential education in each holy man

of God should mingle irresistibly with his inspired teaching? Should not

the herdsman of Tehoa plead in pastoral phrase, and the royal son of

Amoz denounce with strong authority? Should not David whilst a shepherd

praise God among his flocks, and when a king, cry "Give the King thy

judgments?" The Bible is full of this human individuality; and nothing

could be thought as humanly more probable: but we must, with this

diversity, connect the other probability also, that which should show

the work to be divine; which would prove (as is literally the case)

that, in spite of all such natural variety, all such unbiassed freedom

both of thought and speech, there pervades the whole mass a oneness, a

marvellous consistency, which would be likely to have been designed by

God, though little to have been dreamt by man.

Once more on this full topic. Difficulties in Scripture were expectable

for many reasons; I can only touch a few. Man is rational as he is

responsible: God speaks to his mind and moral powers: and the mind

rejoices, and moralities grow strong in conquest of the difficult and

search for the mysterious. The muscles of the spiritual athlete pant for

such exertion; and without it, they would dwindle into trepid

imbecility. Curious man, courageous man, enterprising, shrewd, and

vigourous man, yet has a constant enemy to dread in his own indolence:

now, a lion in the path will wake up Sloth himself: and the very

difficulties of religion engender perseverance.

Additionally: I think there is somewhat in the consideration, that, if

all revealed truth had been utterly simple and easy, it would have

needed no human interpreter; no enlightened class of men, who, according

to the spirit of their times, and the occasions of their teaching, might

"in season and out of season preach the word, reprove, rebuke, exhort,

with all long-suffering and doctrine." I think there existed an anterior

probability that Scripture should be as it is, often-times difficult,

obscure, and requiring the aid of many wise to its elucidation; because,

without such characteristic, those many wise and good would never have

been called for. Suppose all truth revealed as clearly and indisputably

to the meanest intellect as a sum in addition is, where were the need or

use of that noble Christian company who are every where man's almoners

for charity, and God's ambassadors for peace?

A word or two more, and I have done. The Bible would, as it seems to me

probable, be a sort of double book; for the righteous, and for the

wicked: to one class, a decoy, baited to allure all sorts of generous

dispositions: to the other, a trap, set to catch all kinds of evil

inclinations. In these two senses, it would address the whole family

man: and every one should find in it something to his liking. Purity

should there perceive green pastures and still waters, and a tender

Shepherd for its innocent steps: and carnal appetite should here and

there discover some darker spot, which the honesty of heaven had filled

with memories of its chiefest servants' sins; some record of adultery or

murder wherewith to feast his maw for condemnation. While the good man

should find in it meat divine for every earthly need, the sneerer should

proclaim it the very easiest manual for his jests and lewd profanities.

The unlettered should not lack humble, nay vulgar, images and words, to

keep himself in countenance: neither should the learned look in vain for

reasonings; the poet for sublimities; the curious mind for mystery; nor

the sorrowing heart for prayer. I do discern, in that great book, a

wondrous adaptability to minds of every calibre: and it is just what

might antecedently have been expected of a volume writ by many men at

many different eras, yet all superintended by one master mind; of a

volume meant for every age, and nation, and country, and tongue, and

people; of a volume which, as a two-edged sword, wounds the good man's

heart with deep conviction, and cuts down "the hoary head of him who

goeth on still in his wickedness."

On the whole, respecting faults, or incongruities, or objectionable

parts in Scripture, however to have been expected, we must recollect

that the more they are viewed, the more the blemishes fade, and are

altered into beauties.

A little child had picked up an old stone, defaced with time-stains: the

child said the stone was dirty, covered with blotches and all colours:

but his father brings a microscope, and shows to his astonished glance

that what the child thought dirt, is a forest of beautiful lichens,

fruited mosses, and strange lilliputian plants with shapely animalcules

hiding in the leaves, and rejoicing in their tiny shadow. Every blemish,

justly seen, had turned to be a beauty: and Nature's works are

vindicated good, even as the Word of Grace is wise.

HEAVEN AND HELL.

Probably enough, the light which I expect to throw upon this important

subject will, upon a cursory criticism, be judged fanciful, erroneous,

and absurd; in parts, quite open to ridicule, and in all liable to the

objection of being wise, or foolish, beyond what is written.

Nevertheless, and as it seems to me of no small consequence to reach

something more definite on the subject than the Anywhere or Nowhere of

common apprehensions, I judge it not amiss to put out a few thoughts,

fancies, if you will, but not unreasonable fancies, on the localities

and other characteristics of what we call heaven and hell: in fact, I

wish to show their probable realities with somewhat approaching to

distinctness. It is manifest that these places must be somewhere; for,

more especially of the blest estate, whither did Enoch, and Elijah, and

our risen Lord ascend to? what became of these glorified humanities when

"the chariot of fire carried up Elijah by a whirlwind into heaven;" and

when "HE was taken up, and a cloud received him?" Those happy mortals

did not waste away to intangible spiritualities, as they rose above the

world; their bodies were not melted as they broke the bonds of

gravitation, and pierced earth's swathing atmosphere: they went up

somewhither; the question is where they went to. It is a question of

great interest to us; however, among those matters which are rather

curious than consequential; for in our own case, as we know, we that are

redeemed are to be caught up, together with other blessed creatures, "in

the clouds, to meet our coming Saviour in the air, and thereafter to be

ever with the Lord." I wish to show this to be expected as in our case,

and expectable previously to it.

We have, in the book of Job, a peep at some place of congregation: some

one, as it is likely, of the mighty globes in space, set apart as God's

especial temple. Why not? they all are worlds; and the likelihood being

in favour of overbalancing good, rather than of preponderating evil from

considerations that affect God's attributes and the happiness of his

creatures, it is probable that the great majority of these worlds are

unfallen mansions of the blessed. Perhaps each will be a kingdom for one

of earth's redeemed, and if so, there will at last be found fulfilled

that prevailing superstition of our race, that each man has his star:

without insisting upon this, we may reflect that there is no one

universal opinion which has not its foundation in truth. Tradition may

well have dropped the thought from Adam downwards, that the stars may

some day be our thrones. We know their several vastness, and can guess

their glory: verily a mighty meed for miserable services on earth, to

find a just ambition gladdened with the rule of spheres, to which Terra

is a point; while that same ambition is sanctified and legalized by

ruling as vicegerent of Jehovah.

Is this unlikely, or unworthy of our high vocation, our immortality, and

nearness unto, nay communion with God? The idea is only suggested: let a

man muse at midnight, and look up at the heavens hanging over all; let

him see, with Rosse and Herschell, that, multiply power as you will,

unexhausted still and inexhaustible appear the myriads of worlds

unknown. Yea, there is space enow for infinite reward; yea, let every

grain of sand on every shore be gathered, and more innumerable yet

appear that galaxy of spheres. Let us think that night looks down upon

us here, with the million eyes of heaven. And for some focus of them

all, some spot where God himself enthroned receives the homage of all

crowns, and the worship of all creature service, what is there

unreasonable in suggesting for a place some such an one as is instanced

below?

I have just cut the following paragraph out of a newspaper: Is this the

ridiculous tripping up the sublime? I think otherwise: it is honest to

use plain terms. I speak as unto wise men--judge ye what I say. With

respect to the fact of information, it may or it may not be true; but

even if untrue, the idea is substantially the same, and I cannot help

supposing that with angels and archangels and the whole company of

heaven, such bodily saints as Enoch is, (and similar to him all risen,

holy men will be,) meet for happy sabbaths in some glorious orb akin or

superior to the following:

"A central Sun.--Dr. Madier, the Professor of Astronomy at Dorpat, has

published the results of the researches pursued by him uninterruptedly

during the last sixty years, upon the movements of the so-called fixed

stars. These more particularly relate to the star Alcyone, (discovered

by him,) the brightest of the seven bright stars of the group of the

Pleiades. This star he states to be the central sun of all the systems

of stars known to us. He gives its distance from the boundaries of our

system at thirty-four million times the distance of the sun from our

earth, a distance which it takes five hundred and thirty-seven years for

light to traverse. Our sun takes one hundred and eighty-two million

years to accomplish its course round this central body, whose mass is

one hundred and seventeen million times larger than the sun."

One hundred and seventeen million times larger than the Sun! itself, for

all its vastness, not more than half one million times bigger than this

earth. To some such globe we may let our fancies float, and anchor there

our yearnings after heaven. It is a glorious thought, such as

imagination loves; and a probable thought, that commends itself to

reason. Behold the great eye of all our guessed creation, the focus of

its brightness, and the fountain of its peace.

A topic far less pleasant, but alike of interest to us poor men, is the

probable home of evil; and here I may be laughed at--laugh, but listen,

and if, listening, some reason meets thine ear, laugh at least no

longer.

We know that, for spirit's misery as for spirit's happiness, there is no

need of place: "no matter where, for I am still the same," said one most

miserable being. More--in the case of mere spirits, there is no need for

any apparatus of torments, or fires, or other fearful things. But, when

spirit is married to matter, the case is altered; needs must a place to

prison the matter, and a corporal punishment to vex it.

Nothing is unlikely here; excepting--will a man urge?--the dread

duration of such hell. This is a parenthesis; but it shall not be

avoided, for the import of that question is deep, and should be answered

clearly. A man, a body and soul inmixt, body risen incorruptible, and

soul rested from its deeds, must exist for ever. I touch not here the

proofs--assume it. Now, if he lives for ever, and deliberately chooses

evil, his will consenting as well as his infirmity, and conscience

seared by persisted disobedience, what course can such a wilful,

rational, responsible being pursue than one perpetually erratic? How

should it not be that he gets worse and worse in morals, and more and

more miserable in fact? and when to this we add, that such wretched

creatures are to herd together, continually flying further away from the

only source of Happiness and Good; and to this, that they have earned by

sin, remorses and regrets, and positive inflictions; how probable seems

a hell, the sinner's doom eternal. The apt mathematical analogy of lines

thrown out of parallel, helps this for illustration: for ever and for

ever they are stretching more remote, and infinity itself cannot rëunite

their travel.

This, then, as a passing word; a sad one. Honest thinker, do not scorn

it, for thine own soul's sake. "Now is the time of grace, now is the day

of salvation." To return. A place of punishment exists; to what quarter

shall we look for its anterior probability? I think there is a

likelihood very near us. There may be one, possibly, beneath us, in the

bowels of this fiery-bursting earth; whither went Korah and his company?

This idea is not without its arguments, just analogies, and scriptural

hints. But my judgment inclines towards another. This trial-world, we

know, is to be purified and restored, and made a new earth: it was even

to be expected that Redemption should do this, and I like not to imagine

it the crust and case of hell, but rather, as thus: At the birth of this

same world, there was struck off from its burning mass at a tangent, a

mournful satellite, to be the home of its immortal evil; the convict

shore for exiled sin and misery; a satellite of strange differences, as

guessed by Virgil in his musings upon Tartarus, where half the orb is,

from natural necessities, blistered up by constant heats, the other half

frozen by perennial cold. A land of caverns, and volcanoes, miles deep,

miles high; with no water, no perceptible air: imagine such a dreadful

world, with neither air nor water! incapable of feeding life like ours,

but competent to be a place where undying wretchedness may struggle for

ever. A melancholy orb, the queen of night, chief nucleus of all the

dark idolatries of earth; the Moon, Isis, Hecate, Ashtaroth, Diana of

the Ephesians!

This expression of a thought by no means improbable, gives an easy

chance to shallow punsters; but ridicule is no weapon against reason.

Why should not the case be so? Why should not Earth's own satellite,

void, as yet, be on the resurrection of all flesh, the raft whereon to

float away Earth's evil? Read of it astronomically; think of it as

connected with idols; regard it as the ruler of earth's night; consider

that the place of a Gehenna must be somewhere; and what is there in my

fancy quite improbable? I do not dogmatize as that the fact is so, but

only suggest a definite place at least as likely as any other hitherto

suggested. Think how that awful, melancholy eye looks down on deeds of

darkness how many midnight crimes, murders, thefts, adulteries, and

witchcrafts, that would have shrunk into nonentity from open, honest

day, have paled the conscious Moon! Add to all this, it is the only

world, besides our own, whereof astronomers can tell us, It is fallen.

AN OFFER.

Nothing were easier than to have made this book a long one; but that was

not the writer's object: as well because of the musty Greek proverb

about long books; which in every time and country are sure never to be

read through by one in a thousand; as because it is always wiser to

suggest than to exhaust a topic; which may be as "a fruit-tree yielding

fruit after its kind whose seed is in itself." The writer then intended

only to touch upon a few salient points, and not to discuss every

question, however they might crowd upon his mind: time and space alike

with mental capabilities forbade an effort so gigantic: added to which,

such a course seemed to be unnecessary, as the rule of probability, thus

illustrated, might be applied by others in every similar instance.

Still, as the errand of this book is usefulness, and its author's hope

is, under Heaven, to do good, one personal hint shall here be thrown

upon the highway. Without arrogating to myself the wisdom or the

knowledge to solve one in twenty of the doubts possible to be

propounded; without also designing even to attempt such solutions,

unless well assured of the genuine anxiety of the doubter; and

preliminarizing the consideration, that a fitting diffidence in the

advocate's own powers is no reason why he should not make wide efforts

in his holy cause; that, such reasonable essays to do good have no sort

of brotherhood with a fanatical Spiritual Quixotism; and that, to my own

apprehensions, the doubts of a rationalizing mind are in the nature of

honourable foes, to be treated with delicacy, reverence, and kindness,

rather than with a cold distance and an ill-concealed contempt;

preliminarizing, lastly, the thought--"Who is sufficient for these

things?"--I nevertheless thus offer, according to the grace and power

given to me, my best but humble efforts so far to dissipate the doubts

of some respecting any scriptural fact, as may lie within the province

of showing or attempting to show its previous credibility. This is not a

challenge to the curious casuist or the sneering infidel; but an

invitation to the honest mind harassed by unanswered queries: no

gauntlet thrown down, but a brother's hand stretched out. Such

questions, if put to the writer, through his publisher by letter, may

find their reply in a future edition: supposing, that is to say, that

they deserve an answer, whether as regards their own merits or the

temper of the mind who doubts; and supposing also that the writer has

the power and means to answer them discreetly. It is only a fair rule of

philanthropy (and that without arrogating any unusual "strength") to

"bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves:" and

nothing would to me give greater happiness than to be able, as I am

willing, to remove any difficulties lying in the track of Faith before a

generous mind. I hang out no glistening holly-bush a-flame with its

ostentatious berries as promising good wine; but rather over my portal

is the humbler and hospitable mistletoe, assuring every wearied pilgrim

in the way, that though scanty be the fare, he shall find a hearty

welcome.

CONCLUSION.

I have thus endeavoured (with solicited help of Heaven) to place before

the world anew a few old truths: truths inestimably precious. Remember,

they cannot have lost by any such advocacy as is contained in the idea

of their being shown antecedently probable; for this idea affects not at

all the fact of their existence; the thing is; whether probable or not;

there is, in esse, an ornithorhyncus; its posse is drowned in esse:

there exists no doubt of it: evidence, whether of senses physical, or of

considerations moral, puts the circumstance beyond the sphere of

disputation. But such truths as we have spoken of do, nevertheless, gain

something as to--not their merits, these are all their own

substantially; nor their positive proofs, these are adjectives properly

attendant on them, but as to--their acceptability among the incredulous

of men; they gain, I say, even by such poor pleading as mine, from being

shown anteriorly probable. Take an illustration in the case of that

strange and anomalous creature mentioned just above. Its habitat is in a

land where plums grow with the stones outside, where aboriginal dogs

have never been heard to bark, where birds are found covered with hair,

and where mammals jump about like frogs! If these are shown to be

literal facts, the mind is thereby well prepared for any animal

monstrosity: and it staggers not in unbelief (on evidence of honest

travellers) even when informed of a creature with a duck's bill and a

beaver's body: it really amounted in Australia to an antecedent

probability.

Carry this out to matters not a quarter so incredible, ye thinkers, ye

free-thinkers; neither be abashed at being named as thinking freely:

were not those Bereans more noble in that they searched to see? For my

humble part, I do commend you for it: treacherous is the hand that roots

up the inalienable right of private judgment; the foundation-stone of

Protestantism, the great prerogative of reason, the key-note of

conscience, the sole vindex of a man's responsibility: evil and false is

the so-called reverential wisdom which lays down in place of the truth

that each man's conscience is a law unto himself, the tyranny of other

men's authority. Cheap and easy and perilled is the faith, which clings

to the skirt of others; which leans upon the broken staff of

priestcraft, until those poisoned splinters pierce the hand.

Prove all things; holding fast that which is good: good to thine own

reasonable conscience, if unwarped by casuistries, and unblinded by

licentiousness. Prove all things, if you can, "from the egg to the

apple:" he is a poor builder of his creed, who takes one brick on

credit. Be able, as you can be, (if only you are willing so far to be

wisely inconsistent, as to bend the stubborn knee betimes, and though

with feeble glance to look to heaven, and though with stammering tongue

to pray for aid,) be able, as it is thy right, O man of God--to give a

Reason for the faith that is in thee.

THE END.