of his fellow man. Yes, God" stamped his image on our clay and gave it power to move;" and shall we not gaze with reverential awe on what is so fearfully and wonderfully made, what we cannot comprehend, much less bestow? He is not only the Former of our bodies but the Father of our spirits; and shall we cast down the noble structure which enshrines His own eternal divinity and contains His hidden treasure, which may outlive the stars and outshine the brightness of the firmament? Shall we dare to lift up sacreligious hands against the temple in which He has promised to dwell and walk?

Let us fly from a public execution as we would from the teeth of a devouring serpent, or the sword of a destroying angel. The scene is cruel and revolting. Dark and downward are the steps which lead to the abyss of infamy and woe. The Jury pronouncing the verdict, the Judge putting on the black cap and addressing the prisoner, the Chaplain offering prayer, the carpenter erecting the scaffold, the hanginan fixing the rope, all whether of high or low degree, all who perform a part in the tragic exhibition, and all who sanction it with their presence" do err, not understanding the Scriptures, nor the power of God;" and all ought to humble themselves before Him, and seek the aid of his grace to cleanse them from stains of legal bloodguiltiness, to give them a right judgment in all things, to send the spirit of his Son into their hearts, to confess they have pursued a wrong course, and resolve to avoid it in future.

D. D. S.

ABOU BEN ADHEM AND THE ANGEL
(From Poems by Leigh Hunt.)

ABOU BEN ADHEM (may his tribe increase)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich and like a lily in bloom,
An Angel writing in a book of gold:
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,

"What writest thou?" The Vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,

Answered, "The names of them who love the LORD."

"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"
Replied the Angel. Abou spake more low,
But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
"Write me as one that loves his fellow men."

The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night

It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And lo! Ben Adhem's Name led all the rest!

EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY.
No. 2.-INTERNAL PROOFS.

We have stated, in a former Article, the general course of argument, which it is proposed to follow. The Religion of Christ can be learnt only from the New Testament; the claims of Christianity to a divine origin, must therefore depend on the character which we assign to the Christian Scriptures, and our first business must be to examine the evidence, which offers itself concerning them. This is of two kinds; the marks as to the time, manner, and author of their production, which these writings in themselves contain; and the testimony concerning them, which is given in other writings. At present we will deal with the first of these classes of evidence.

For this purpose, let us strive to put ourselves in the situation of one, who has never yet made acquaintance with Christianity, but who, having now at length heard of it, and discovered, from the perusal of the New Testament, its nature and character, wishes to make up his mind, as to whether its claims to a Divine origin are well-founded. With such a person, the following argument would surely have weight:

I. From this Book may be extracted a system of Religion, entirely new, both in the object at which it aims, and the doctrines, by which it proposes to attain to it; not only superior, according to the declarations of every man's sense and reason, to all Religions which preceded it, but also quite unlike every thing, which had before been offered to mankind.

II. From this Book may also be derived a system of morality, in which every precept is carried out with a degree of purity and perfection, which even its enemies have con

fessed and admired, and which no previous or succeeding system has been able to equal.

III. The character ascribed to Christ is one of such exceeding beauty, that no imaginative character of fiction has ever been drawn, which can be compared with it; and in this character the features, which are most prominent, are the features in which it differs most from the characters of those, who had, before his time, obtained the greatest share of the world's praise and honour.

If these three points can be established, the unavoidable conclusion will be, that the Religion which contains in itself, a set of truths, and teaches a system of morality, and is illustrated by an example, all of which are distinguished by such superior excellence, could not possibly be the work of any man, or set of men; and even if any are found, bold enough to deny the excellence claimed, it will remain for them to account for the fact, that Christianity possesses such striking novelty, as compared with what went before it; this. circumstance would by itself constitute a strong argument for its Divine origin.

I. On carefully perusing the New Testament, we shall find that the most striking peculiarities of the religious doctrines there said to have been published by Jesus Christ are four; 1. The Paternal character of God; 2. The universal brotherhood of man; 3. The forgiveness of sins upon repentance; 4. the resurrection from the dead, and future general retribution. On each of these points, it may be shown, that he teaches truths, which recommend themselves, alike to our reason, and our feelings, but which have not been even dimly seen by those, who have never become acquainted with Christianity.

1. Jesus Christ teaches that God is the Father of all men. The supreme deity of the heathens was looked on as great, mighty, and terrible, severe in his punishments, stern in his decrees, jealous in his temper, possessed of human frailties and imperfections, without human affections and sensibilities, the monarch not the parent of mankind. If the name of father was sometimes given to the Gods of the heathens, it was only a name, and referred to their being the supposed authors of human existence, not to their being believed to possess any of the feelings of a parent; these were never imagined to exist on the part of the deity towards mankind. The nearest approach to the doctrine of Christ, concerning God, is found in the Jewish Religion, of which

Christianity professes to be only a development and exten sion, and in which we may therefore naturally expect to find the germ of its perfections. The Scriptures of the Old Covenant contain such expressions as, "A Father to the fatherless is God." "Like as a Father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." The Lord correcteth, as a Father a son." But we also there read of him as a jealous God, as the peculiar God of Israel, never as the Universal Father Christianity, on the contrary, declares "The Father himself loveth you.' "God is love and dwelleth in love;" it describes the Almighty as also all-good, never ceasing to look upon any human being with mercy and affection, never disappointing the hopes of those who put their trust in Him.

2. Jesus Christ teaches that all men are brethren. Where had such a belief been previously manifested? Among the Jews? They saw in themselves a chosen people, a superior race, and in all the rest of mankind, outcasts and aliens, unworthy to approach God in the exercises of devotion, and never destined to share his approval with the Israelite. Among the Eastern Nations? With them, the monarch saw in his subjects, only the instruments of his pleasures and the slaves of his passions. Among the Romans? They drew a broad line of distinction between their own citizens and foreigners, and considered it shocking and shameful to inflict on a Roman, what they would not hesitate to be guilty of to any other human being. Among the philosophers of the day? They turned with contempt from the uneducated, and drove from their retreats, and excluded from their assemblies, those whom they chose to stigmatize as "the profane crowd." In all ancient times, in fact, the acknow ledgment of mankind as brethren, was regulated by some external distinction, by race, country, language, acquirements, religion, or some other almost accidental circumstance. Jesus overturned all these barriers, fused all these families into one great mass, violated the prejudices alike of Jew and Gentile, and proclaimed to all the children of Adam whether white or black, rich or poor, learned or ignorant, circumcised or uncircumcised" All ye are Brethren"! If we do not even now see this doctrine practically acknowledged in Christian countries, it is because they are Christian only in name. Whatever be men's practice, the doctrine may be found in the Christian Scriptures; look there, and you must confess that it is part of Christianity.

3. Jesus Christ teaches that the sins of men are forgiven by God on the terms of repentance and amendment of life. Some of his most beautiful parables are devoted to the exposition of this truth, and it was frequently dwelt on, in the preaching of his disciples. The world was, at his advent, in such a state of conscious wickedness, and wide-spread demoralization, as greatly to need this consoling assurance. Men felt their guilt, but how were they to be freed from its consequences and encouraged to commence a better course? The heathens of that period sometimes sought to gain such purification, by washings with blood, and similar mystic rites; the Jews had their sin-offerings and their scape-goat, but where do we find a trace of that beautiful and simple truth, concerning God's pardoning mercy, which brought the sinner, in tearful gratitude, to the feet of her Master, and was clothed in the story of the Father, who declared, "This my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found."

4. Jesus Christ teaches that there will be a general resurrection from the dead, and that we shall all then receive reward or punishment according to the deeds done in the flesh. This is a subject concerning which there have always been solicitude and anxiety among men. The wayfarer, who has nearly reached the boundary which separates the seen from the unseen, would fain lift up the dark curtain, which death drops over earthly things, and discover whether there is any future in store for him. The mourner who experiences the severance of a long and dearly-prized union, tremblingly inquires, Is the loved one gone for ever? The human mind, reflecting on human nature, asks with a deep interest, If a man die, shall he live again? But to such questions no satisfactory reply was given before the coming of Christ. Can you find such a reply, any where, but in the New Testament ? The Heathen notions were merely poetic fancies; the Jewish Scriptures cannot be said positively to declare it; the Mosaic law was enforced exclusively by temporal rewards and punishments; it says nothing of a retribution after death Ancient Philosophy might have some wavering idea on the subject, but it was as a metaphysical theory, not as a Religious fact Jesus first took the doctrine out of the region of conjecture, and invested it with the character of a positive belief, likely to influence men's daily actions, capable of consoling the sorrows of bereavement, suited to strengthen the courage of those who see

F