1 THESSALONIANS ii. 13.

For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but, as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe".

IT is a striking characteristic by which God distinguishes his true servants from the hypocritical generation in the midst of which their lot was cast, when He describes them as "poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembling at his word"." Reverence for God's Word, a high esteem and love for it, a hearty embracing of it, a ready and unreserved obedience to it, as they lie at the foundation of a religious life, so are they its stay and support through its whole course.

It was to have been expected accordingly, that that Word would be an object of unceasing assault on the part of our great Enemy. And it has been

* Preached on Sunday, May 3, 1857.

Isai. lxvi. 2.

such. He has left no means untried by which to deprive men of it. Open force and secret artifice have been employed alike, though, however he may have succeeded in individual instances, he has been foiled on the whole. Nay, the very means which he has employed to destroy, or to subvert, or to adulterate it, have eventually tended to its furtherance and more secure establishment, and will do so to the end.

The same treatment which has been awarded to the word of God, spoken in his name, has been awarded also to the written records in which that word is preserved, and with a similar result. There was a time when Christians were required, on pain of imprisonment or death, to give up their sacred books, "supervacuæ scripturæ," as they were contemptuously called, that they might be committed to the flames. But the Scriptures rose, phoenix-like, from those flames with the vigour of renewed youth. Not only were they prized the more for the perils which they had encountered, but the fire, through which they had passed, had served to disencumber them of those uninspired writings, which till then more or less had adhered to them. Years passed away, and the Scriptures became locked up in the obscurity of an unknown tongue; and Romish persecutors, in their anxiety to keep them so, following where heathen persecutors had led the way, again lighted the fires, with the intention of destroying the translations

which were made, but with the effect of giving those translations greater currency, and of enhancing their value in the estimation of those who possessed them. When persecution failed of its purpose, the enemy had recourse to other measures. He left men in possession of the material documents, but he strove to persuade them that they had been deceived in their estimation of them: "They were not what they had believed them to be. They had regarded them as the word of God: they were in truth but the word of man."

This is the mode of attack most commonly pursued in our own day. Doubts are sometimes insinuated, sometimes openly propounded, as to the inspiration and divine authority of the sacred volume. And while some hail these doubts gladly, and glory in avowing them as their own, others, on whose hearts they have silently alighted, like the seeds of some noxious weed, are mourning in secret over the growth of distrustful thoughts of which they are conscious in their own breasts. They once believed themselves to possess in the Scriptures a treasure above all price. Can it be that they have held a blank?

Yet even here God overrules Satan's purposes to the furtherance of his own glory. Good is brought out of evil. Some, indeed, lacking that truth-loving spirit, which is essential to the attainment of the truth, resign, as the pretended mother

gave up the living child to death, what they never really cared for, without a struggle or regret: but others are stirred up to inquire and to examine : and the result is, that they hold what they possess henceforward with a stronger and firmer grasp, and with a livelier sense of its worth, than if they had never doubted.

Yet it would be highly undesirable that such investigations should be often entered into. The habit of mind which is engendered by the repeated entertainment of doubts, even though those doubts be entertained only to be set aside, is far from wholesome. Nor truly is it every objection suggested from without, nor every misgiving arising from within, that ought to be allowed, however temporarily, to unsettle conclusions which have once been deliberately and advisedly established. Were it so, what is there human or divine that could be held securely?

Possibly there may be some here, to whom it may prove a word in season, if I avail myself of this present opportunity, to state, as clearly and succinctly as I can, the principal grounds on which Scripture claims our implicit and most reverential deference as the Word of God.

Multa ad fidem Catholicam pertinentia, (dum hæreticorum callida inquietudine exagitantur ut adversus eos defendi possint,) et considerantur diligentius, et intelliguntur clarius, et instantius prædicantur: et ab adversario mota questio discendi existit occasio." S. Augustin. De Civ. Dei, xvi. 2.

In approaching the subject, however, I must assume, as proved elsewhere, the genuineness and authenticity of the books which constitute the Canon of the New Testament; or, to narrow the ground still more, and leave even less room for debate, the genuineness and authenticity of the Historical books, and of the Epistles universally acknowledged as St. Paul's, and of the First Epistles respectively of St. Peter and St. John: their genuineness, that is, that they were written by the persons whose names they bear, or, in the case of any of which the authorship may have been called in question, by persons equally favourably circumstanced; their authenticity,-that is, that the statements which they contain are true and to be relied upon: as, e. g. that our Lord's actions and discourses were such as are there recorded; and that his Apostles received a commission from Him to go and make disciples of all nations. I say, I must assume these as proved; for they have been so abundantly by writers who have treated the subject, and it cannot be necessary to begin every argument, by building from the very foundation. Let it be enough to say here, that the proof is of the same description as that of the genuineness and authenticity of any other ancient writings; and is in this instance so well sustained, that if it fails to carry conviction, there is no ancient writing in existence whose genuineness and authenticity can be relied upon.