procure credit for the other. Ah! we have some peculiar witnesses here. Shall we produce them? Will you promise not to start at the sight of them? Will you not be angry with us, for bringing them forward? The Jews, the Jews, again we cry. Here they are; see, they have in their hands the prophecies of Isaiah, which I have quoted. They can prove to you, that these were not forged by Christians, but deposited in the Jewish archives, hundreds of years before Christ was born.

Are we to be charged with making God changeable, because he wrought those very miracles which he had promised, the greater part of a thousand years before? To illustrate this, and to make it still more palpable. Suppose yourselves living in the days of Methusalah, and to have heard that venerable ancient say; "five hundred years hence, I will do something that you never saw me do before." When the time comes, he remembers his promise, he keeps his word, and you see such an alteration in his actions as strikes you with surprise. Would you exclaim, what a fickle man is this Methusalah! He has acted now

him before in all his long life!

as I never saw Would not any

man of sense, despise you for the charge, and exclaim, fickle! What! because he has kept his resolution for five hundred years, and though many summers and winters have rolled away, since he made the declaration, he has remembered it, he has not swerved from his purpose; but, at the appointed time, done as he promised, five hundred

years ago? Call this man any thing but fickle. This is the justum et tenacem propositi virum.

You say,

We will illustrate this, still farther. that the supposition of God's altering the course of nature, by working miracles, to confirm divine revelation, represents him as a bungling workman, who puts his hand to his machinery, to alter its operations, as circumstances may arise. We say, no; a prophecy of miracles proves that to be false. For then, we see God as a most accomplished machinist, who tells you, I have made a clock that shall go at ordinary times at an equable rate; but, in certain peculiar seasons, it shall alter its rate and adjust itself to the sun, going faster or slower, according to the quarter of the heavens in which that luminary may be; so that you shall have no occasion to look at the time circle on your globes, and observe the plus or minus there, to alter the clock and adjust it to the sun; for, at the proper season, the clock will of itself alter its rate of going, to accord perfectly with the great regulator of years and days. If you were to see this happen, just as the clock maker told you, would that prove him either fickle, or a bungler? Or, if a watchmaker were to say, this watch is not ordinarily a repeater; but at a certain season it will strike the time; and you were to find it did so, just at that hour, could you bring your mind to say, that this variation in the watch proved its maker either unskilful or fickle?

But now, we have a right to dismiss the subject of miracles, and to say, in the face of the world, we have made of them all that we said we could, and

We have shown,

all that you said we could not. that, if you call them juggling tricks, you should set some of your jugglers to do the like. If you say, that the trick was never played so as to deceive the eyes of spectators, but a false report of such things has been spread abroad, then we challenge you to do so too; and to shew us, how easily men may be made to believe in miracles, which were never even pretended to be wrought before the eyes of any one. When, unable to trace the matters of fact, you turn to abstract reasonings, we have torn your arguments to tatters; we have shown, that Hume was a self-contradictory sophist; and, that the modern plea of miracles making God changeable, is, as false and as silly as all that has been said against our facts.

II. Existing facts prove the revelation of the Scriptures true. Christianity has been justly called a religion of facts, and this is equally true of the Jewish religion, as revealed in the Old Testament Now it is as justly said, that facts are stubborn things, and when opposed to these, we have seen how flimsy are all abstract propositions, all metaphysical arguments. A child of good native sense would feel itself on firm ground, when defending a fact against a theory. If you reply, the child supposes it to be a fact that the sun is no larger than a dinner plate, I answer, no; you may easily satisfy the child that all the fact which it has grasped, is that the sun looks no larger, which is a real fact. The child may also be satisfied that large objects at a distance look small. All society exists by the

influence of facts upon the human mind, and he who attempts to invalidate, does but establish their influence. For why does he argue with you against them, but because he admits the fact, that you are contending for them?

Now, some facts, not only prove themselves, but prove other facts also. And these latter are demonstrated with scarcely less evidence than the former. We are convinced, by facts, of the existence of a present generation of men, and hence we infer, with nearly equal certainty, the existence of a former generation. He who lives in a house which he has himself built, is scarcely more sure of this than those who have hired one, are sure that it was built by some other person before they took it. She who never saw her mother, no more doubts that she had one, than she questions whether she has in her arms her own child.

Divine revelation appeals, then, to existing facts, that are utterly undeniable. Here are the Jews, to whom I have appealed in the second Lecture, and no one has ventured to answer the appeal. No man can deny the existence of this singular people; no other rational solution of the difficulty they create, can be devised, than that which the Scriptures give, and this involves the truth of the Scriptures, and their authority as a revelation from God.

But from this one great fact, arise many others. That the Jews celebrate a Sabbath, on the Saturday, or seventh day of the week, is a fact which none can deny. Ask them why, and they will tell you, because God enjoined it to our fathers, on Mount

Sinai. It is one of the ten words or commandments delivered by the voice of Deity, amidst awful wonders which convulsed creation. In this persuasion, they expose themselves to great embarrassments and losses every week. They can shew that this law was handed down to them from father to son, from the very period when the law is said to have been given from heaven.

We have shewn that, every year, they keep the feast of the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. Nothing is more natural than that such an event should be thus celebrated, and nothing is more incredible than' that they should thus celebrate such an event, if it had never happened.

That they celebrate also, every year, what they call the feast of Passover is an undeniable fact. Ask them, what mean ye by this feast? and they will say, our fathers were, at this season, miraculously delivered from death by killing a lamb, sprinkling its blood on their door-posts, and collecting their whole family within the house, to feast on the lamb. The same night, they were hurried out of Egypt, to pass through the Red sea, and not having time to leaven their bread, they made flour and water cakes, and, therefore, our nation, every year, keeps this feast, when it eats such cakes as these, and no other. Could a whole nation ever have been induced to celebrate a deliverance that never happened? The Jews, every year, keep the feast of Purim or Lots, in commemoration of their deliverance by Esther from the destruction designed for them by Haman, whose name they pronounce ac