English
This view is both rational, in that it interprets men's words according to the limits of man's intelligence ; yet pious, in that it does not shut out the Eternal from foresight of that which He brings about in act, and shews Himself to have designed by tendency. For, just as if the waters of the ocean were poured into vessels, so I suppose the manifestation of the Infinite must be limited by the compass of the intelligences within which He shews His 406 REVELATION IS AN UNVEILING. thought. The prophets then will have spoken of things present which they saw, but with faith in the unseen God who governs them, and He through their words will have shadowed forth the truth of things to come. Xor is it from mere a priori con- siderations, but from the difficulty which inquirers find in proving in the Bible or elsewhere minute predictions of remote events, that I am inclined to allow, some view of this kind will be hereafter universal. Let such things, however, be as experience may render probable- But if we find a people wonderfully trained by events into a Diviner faith, and that faith exemplified in their history, and in its ultimate growth a blessing to all nations, we can neither go back from the last act to the first, nor reftise to place the whole drama at the feet of the Governor of the world, acknowledging that His providence has been in it all along. The thing communicated is that sight which we have now of His grace and truth : and as a man whose eyes are suddenly opened to the heavens does not ask his physician for a veliicle of sight, so we are not troubled about an intermediate body of revelation, when the eyes of our mind have a true un- veiling of God. Yet in purging as it were our mental eyesight, or in awakening our heart, and so in taking away the veil of sense or hardness, it pleases God to use an instrumentality of events and of doctrines, giving each man an experience of his own, and accumulating it by growth on the great scale of nations. He does not so much give proofs of truth, as instances of it. Nor are we surprised, since to Him all kingdoms belong, that out of His providence in history should be unfolded His more secret grace. Thus there is hardly a great nation with which His Church, the heavenly commonwealth and social embodiment of truth, has not at some time come in contact. She saw all those giant empires, which in turn overshadowed the world, but which now loom through a dim haze of memory. Perhaps even the lore of no ancient priesthood may have been quite strange to her. She went down into Egypt, and spoiled the ancient priesthoods of their wisdom, while yet she hallowed it by the PBOVIDENCES OF THE CHURCH. INCABNATION. 407 simplicity of feith. She learnt patience in the wilderness, and meekness with the *poor and needy' men of the Psalms. Yet she taught kings to rule in the fear of the Lord, and neither the wealth nor wisdom of Solomon misbecame her. Again, she talked with the Chaldaeans in Babylon, and whatever good they had, capable of combining, she took as illustration or help to her faith. Even the persecutions of Antiochus only deepened her yearning for an unseen kingdom, wherein righteousness should dwell. She then widened her sympathies by that humanity of the Greek, which yet she aspired to purge of its sensualism, and learnt discipline of the Roman, while she taught him to soften the rigour of his iron law. Nor should I wonder, if through Alexandria she borrowed something of your Indian asceticism, which hardly agrees with her cheerM &ith in the God of heaven and earth and of life and death, but which yet may have helped to wean her from sense, and deepened that unworldliness which passed harmless through persecutions, and smote savage nations with awe. ^' Christ appeared, as the Apostles tell us, in the fulness of time. For then all the elements of humanity had converged, and needed only the touch of the Son of God to heal them. The wood was all gathered round the altar, before the fire fell. Then the Divine Thought came to pass in humanity, and the Son of God was bom. Then the Greek language was spread over Asia, as a vehicle for both the ancient Scriptures, and for the new preaching of the Holy Spirit. Then the Roman power compressed in some cases the madness of a persecuting multitude, and when it set itself in deliberate strength against the new kingdom over men's hearts, it was broken without hand. No earthly might withstands long a faith in the unseen and ever- lasting God. Yet before it fell, the Roman empire gave a splendid theatre for the first witnesses of Christ to shew them- selves upon. It brought the sword, the flame, and the wild beast, to try their faith and patience. It gave all the processes of regular law to take cognisance of their conduct, and the rigid 408 INCARNATION HISTORICALLY ATTESTED. genius of history to record it. Not Christians, but Heathens, such as Pliny in his letter to the Emperor Trajan, tell us of a commimity of men meetmg at early dawn, and singing hymns to Christ as their God, and binding themselves only by a pledge of faith and of harmlessness. The same writer, and other Heathens like him, speak of the tenacity of the Christians in that shrinking from idol-worship, which was their only crmie. Thus above all, the Founder of our faith lived, and died, and rose again, not in any obscure land, among a savage or imagina- tive race, with prepossessions in His favour ; but amongst Jews, very jealous of His pretensions, with rival sects agreeing only to accuse Him, and intelligent strangers looking on, before the eye of Greece, and imder the power of Rome. Who can say, the Augustan age was a credulous one? or that the fulfilment which Christ brought to the Prophets was such as the expect- ation of the Jews would predispose them to receive? or that every act of His life was not jealously watched? Again, thougli I have alluded to Heathen witnesses, yet the records of the Apostles themselves have every claim it is possible for books to have upon our credence. "We did not dig these, which are our Christian Scrip- tures, out of the ground, or find them unaccompanied in some dead museum; but they are handed down to us by a long train of witnesses. They could not have been forged since the Reformation, for such a circumstance would have been prevented by the mutual jealousy of the Church of Rome and reformed Churches ; nor since the division of the East and West, twelve centuries ago, for the jealousies of the Greek and Latin Churches would have prevented it; nor since the Council of Nice, fifteen centuries ago, for we find them then appealed to by the adverse parties of Arius and the maintainers of catholic truth. Neither could they have been forged earlier ; since we find from Eusebius, from Cyprian, from Origen, and fit)m Melito, that formal catalogues of them were critically made, and their genuineness the subject of fresh tradition and careful NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 409 examination. We may extend this historical proof of their genuineness into the first century, or within seventy years of the commencement of that new dispensation whose history they record ; for we find them quoted by Justin Martyr, by Papias, and by Polycarp, the very hearers and companions of the first messengers of the new dispensation. "Again, it may be shewn historically, that not only were these books received in the very age of their authors as the genuine works of the persons to whom they are ascribed, but that it was morally impossible for any important change or corruption in their contents to be subsequently introduced. They were both enumerated in catalogues, and collected into a distinct volume* ; they were described by peculiar titles of respect ; they were publicly read and expounded to large assemblies of men, and their text rendered generally familiar by commentaries; they are quoted by many authors, appealed to by jarring and jealous sects, and scrutinized as the depositories of the new doctrines by enemies to the progress of the new dispensation. " Thus our books have been preserved by the Church firom the beginning, as embodiments or expressions of her fibrst faith. On the one hand she may say, as Blancombe has argued.