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arranged according to their intrinsic rank and consequence.

Keeping these principles in view, I shall proceed to analyze the contents of the New Testament into1, historical facts; 2, doctrines; 3, opinions; 4, modes of speech or mere phraseology. If I am successful in this analysis, I shall be able to afford you no little aid to a clear understanding of the oracles of our faith.

The first and fundamental element of our religion, is historical facts. It is this which draws the line between the New Testament and all books of human production. It is this which makes Christianity a religion, and not a philosophy; a Divine institution, and not a human contrivance; a record of certain truths, instead of a record of uncertain opinions; a system of doctrines to be taught upon authority, and not a series of speculations to be proposed upon the ground of their probability alone. This is the ground upon which the New Testament places itself before the world. It takes the position of a miraculous communication from God, sealed as coming from him by certain interruptions of the common course of nature, which God alone could effect. This was the uniform representation of Christ himself. He proposes his doctrines to the world, not as the probable speculations of human reason, but as certain truths which he had received from God, and taught on the

authority of God; "I have not spoken of myself, but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is life everlasting. Whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak." In his last prayer with his disciples, "I have given them the words which thou hast given me, and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst. send me." "If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not, but if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works, that ye may know that the Father is in me, and I in him."

Perfectly consistent with this position which he assumed, was the mode of his teaching. He bases nothing on argument or deduction; he proposes nothing to be received or rejected as probable or improbable. He announces every thing as a doctrine received by him from God, and resting on his authority as a teacher sent by God. After such declarations there is no middle ground. His doctrines failing of support as inspired by God, cannot fall upon the next ground of philosophy. Nor can Jesus, failing to sustain his position as a teacher miraculously authenticated by God, take that of a wise philosopher. He becomes an impostor, or at

best a reformer, resorting to pious fraud to introduce his salutary doctrines into the world.

That Christ regarded his religion as one of authority and miraculous attestation, will appear from the light in which he viewed his Apostles. He called them around him not as disciples to his doctrines merely, and the future teachers of them to the world, but as witnesses-witnesses of his miraculous credentials, "Ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning." After his resurrection, he says to them, "And ye shall be witnesses to me, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth." He commissions them to teach the doctrines which they had received of him not as a man, but as a teacher sent by God; "As my Father hath sent me, so send I you." Or as Matthew has it, "All authority is given me in heaven and earth," that is, full authority for the purpose; "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations."

And so it was that the Apostles understood their commission. They commenced their preaching by bearing witness to the resurrection. They chose another Apostle in the place of Judas with reference to this very purpose: "Wherefore, of these men which companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went out and in among us, beginning from the baptism of John unto that same day that he was

taken up from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection." Peter in his first speech to the Jews, bases the claim of his master to their belief and obedience upon the miraculous attestations of God to his mission and teaching: "Ye men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you, by miracles, and signs, and wonders, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know, whom God hath raised up, whereof we are witnesses. Wherefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ." Such too were the sentiments of Paul; "The Gospel of God, concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David, according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." It was to this great event, that the mind of the Apostle recurred in his old age, when a prisoner at Rome, in daily expectation of a cruel death: "Remember that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, according to my Gospel, for which cause I suffer affliction unto bonds." Peter gives it a like prominence in the Gospel system; "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy, hath begotten

us again unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

Such is the fundamental character of the historical facts of the Christian religion, according to the representations of Jesus and his Apostles. No less so was it with the Christians of the first three centuries, as is proved by the earliest creed we have, that of the Apostles, as it is called. "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried: The third day he rose from the dead, ascended into heaven," &c. Here you see none of the abstract doctrines which have since been introduced into the creed of the church, but simple historical facts, level with the understandings of all.

These have constituted the power of Christianity in all ages. What has most given it majesty and authority in the minds of men, is the fact of its having been introduced into the world through a breach in the adamantine walls, which environ the dread order of nature. As the Jewish mind ever recurred to the passage through the Red Sea, the thunder of Sinai, and the cleaving of the Jordan, and not to the superior excellence of the laws of Moses, as the ground of their reverence, attachment and allegiance, so have the Christians ever recurred to the grave of Lazarus,

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