premises, by sound reasoning? Have we guarded sufficiently against all causes of error? Are the facts in nature satisfactorily proved? And is our interpretation of the Scriptures legitimate? Doubts and renewed investigation of the latter question imply no precarious issue with respect to the great designs of revelation. "The foundation of God standeth sure." The great principles of faith and obedience, hope and happiness; the doctrines, warnings, and promises of the gospel; shine forth in the most clear and satisfying manner; and their certainty is not diminished by philological inquiry into the interpretation of words, or by discussing the relations to history and antiquities, and other collateral bearings of the Scriptures. For example; the recent discoveries in the monuments of Egypt* have cast much light upon the history and the phraseology of the Old Testament, by bringing to our knowledge facts and usages which were before imperfectly or not at all known: but these accessions of knowledge, and the more correct interpretation of particular passages which we hence obtain, take nothing from us in any other respect, but add materially to the proofs and the right understanding of the whole system of revelation. The more firmly we stand upon the rock of evidence, the more completely we possess "the assurance of faith."

TRUTH, therefore, is our object: Truth, in religion, in morals, and in natural science. The more completely we attain it, if we faithfully apply it to its proper purposes, the more we shall bring happiness to ourselves and our fellow-creatures, and reverential honour to our God.

Even those

All men admit and act upon the value of Truth. who practically disregard its obligations, pay to Truth an implicit homage; for they plainly manifest that it is only wicked selfishness which leads them to violate it.

Truth in sentiment is the agreement of our conceptions or belief, with the real nature and circumstances of the things which are the objects of those conceptions: and conventional Truth is the agreement of the signs by which we express our conceptions, with the conceptions themselves.

That our conceptions may be thus in accordance with the reality of things, is to be secured by the due consideration of Evidence:

* Now, in 1847, we add, of Nineveh, and the ancient Assyrian empire.

and we believe that God, the Fountain of all truth and goodness, has furnished us with means for the obtaining of evidence, sufficient for a rational satisfaction, upon all objects which it concerns us to know.

All Truth must be consistent. Let the objects contemplated be never so different in their nature, and remote from each other, in their position, or aspect, or other connexions of their occurrence; the facts concerning them cannot but be in mutual agreement; for to say that one fact is contradictory to another, is to utter a manifest absurdity. But our conception of a fact may fail of being in accordance with the reality: from the variety of causes which, we are aware, are the sources of frequent error among mortals, and of which the chief are, the not being possessed of adequate means for acquiring the knowledge requisite as the basis of our deductions; or the want of giving due attention to the means which we do possess for acquiring the necessary data; or a want of correct habitude of mind in drawing our conclusions. If we have done our best and fail, we have not forfeited moral truth; we are sincere, though mistaken: but, if we have not done our best, we cannot be blameless. For the consequences of our indifference, or negligence, or prejudice, we must be responsible to the divine tribunal; and that responsibility will be according to the nature of the object proposed for investigation, its circumstances of greater or less importance to the well-being of mankind, our obligations to possess accurate knowledge, and our profession to communicate it.

The criterion of truth is Evidence: and, though evidence is formed of different materials in different departments, the effect of real evidence, upon a mind sincerely desirous of knowing the truth, will be satisfactory, however different the kind or form of the materials which constitute it.

In Physical Science, the evidence of truth is obtained by drawing inferences from the observation of facts made known by our senses; and confirmed in many cases, and those the most important, by the application of Mathematics, which indeed derive their certainty from reducing all propositions to the plainest evidence of

sense.

Truth, in matters of history, and in all that relates to the good or evil conduct of rational beings, their relation to social systems and to law, their dispositions and motives, their dependence upon

the Supreme Sovereign, their obligations to HIM, and their expectations from him; can be attained only by what is usually called Moral Evidence. This kind of evidence arises from our consciousness of the manner in which we ourselves feel and act in given circumstances; and our observation of the manner in which other men act under similar conditions. We hence deduce conclusions: these are confirmed by universal experience: we feel a perfect confidence, that, whenever the conditions are similar, the results will be similar also: and we call the principles or causes of such uniformity in voluntary action, Laws of Mind.

Thus we come at last to find, that clear cases of Moral Evidence produce an assent and satisfaction not less complete than is our confidence in the Evidence of our Senses. We arrive at a conviction, that the same wisdom and rectitude of the omnipotent and infinitely good Being, which established the Laws of Matter, have also established laws of Mind; and that to refuse our belief, where sufficient moral evidence has been laid before us, is not less unreasonable than it would be to doubt the dictates of our senses or the results of mathematical proof.

It is however a fact that even moral truth may derive important aid from a judicious application of mathematical methods of investigation. The progress made, within the last sixty years, in the most refined branches of Analytics, has contributed its measure of auxiliary support to the resolution of questions which have a relation to the evidences of religion; by the doctrine of chances. The probabilities for and against the occurrence of a supposed fact, or the credibility of witnesses warranting the belief of a miracle, have been reduced to equations and satisfactorily worked out. The late Bishop of Peterborough (Dr. Herbert Marsh) in his Letters to Archdeacon Travis, nearly fifty years ago, employed this method on a question of criticism; and Mr. Babbage, in his Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, has applied it to the refutation of Hume's endeavour to set up an argument against miracles wrought in favour of religion.

*

*Sec. ed. A scientific friend has written to me upon this passage; tr "You appear to give Mr. Babbage the credit of replying to Hume on Miracles, on the numerical plan, Are you not aware that Dr. Chalmers previously did the same? See the third volume of his Works. I heard him deliver the matter there published, in 1830-31."

Certainly I was not aware of this circumstance. The publication referred to is a collection of all the works of Dr. Chalmers, which began to be published, I believe, about four years ago, and is not yet completed. The third volume commences with The Miraculous and Internal Evidences of the Christian Revelation; and is entirely

These considerations should deepen our conviction of the duty of dealing faithfully with evidence. Those who have temporary purposes to answer, and selfish interests to promote, may, if they be regardless of moral obligation, permit their predilections to infect their judgment, and to trample down their sincerity. But christian principles will not allow us to do so. "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever are (oɛμvà) fair, whatsoever just, whatsoever pure, whatsoever amiable, whatsoever (svçnua) deserve honourable mention,"-it is our duty and our happiness to seek, and when acquired to profess. Let us exert our utmost diligence to obtain true premises; let our attention be vigilant, that we may rightly understand them; let us watch carefully every step of our deductions, that they trespass not the limit of correct reasoning; but let us not be stopped in our course, nor desist from pursuing the straight line, because objections meet us which are drawn from other departments of human knowledge. Our duty is to bid those objections to stand aside for a time. In the pursuit of our present line of inquiry, it is more than barely possible that new light may arise; or another point of view may be reached, which will have the effect of exterminating the difficulty. Should this not be the result, our work then will be to trace the derivation of the difficulty from its own source; and to follow out the separate course of investigation by its own principles.* Thus we may find a deliverance from our perplexity in the most effectual manner, by ascertaining that it had no foundation in its own class of knowledge: or the pressure of the difficulty may

a different work from the Evidence and Authority, &c. which was published in 1814. In this more recent and comprehensive work, the distinguished Professor applies the mathematical doctrine of Chances to the illustration of our belief in the constancy of natural phenomena, and to the dissection and refutation of the objection made by Hume and La Place against the credibility of the scripture miracles. I am greatly obliged to my correspondent for giving me the opportunity of mentioning this fact. But it does not diminish the merit of Mr. Babbage. He indeed refers to Dr. Chalmers, but it is to another part of his Works, namely, vol. i. p. 129. Yet it appears almost certain that the numeral of the volume is a mistake of the printer, and that vol. iii. was meant; and then we have the very passage to which I presume that my friend alludes. Mr. Babbage gives his formulæ in general algebraic expressions, and his illustrations are widely different; though the argument of course goes upon the same principles of recondite mathematical science. Mr. Babbage is not a man that would derive advantage from another, and conceal his obligations.

*( - To those who spread themselves over these opposite lines, each moving in his own direction, a thousand points of meeting, and mutual and joyful recognition, will occur."-Sir John Herschel's Presidential Address, at the Fifteenth Meeting of the British Association, at Cambridge, June 1845.

be diminished, so far as to yield a reasonable satisfaction that any remaining obscurity may be fairly imputed to the inherent weakness and the necessary limitations of our imperfect nature. Above all, let us not suffer ourselves to be beguiled into the foolish notion, if it be not an insidious pretence, for the purpose of undermining the foundations of religious truth,--that a position may be false in philosophy, but true in theology; or, inversely, philosophically true and theologically false. It is scarcely conceivable that a sane mind could admit such an assertion: yet it has been made, with some disguise perhaps in the phrase, by persons who apparently expected to be credited.

The sum of objects which we can perceive, or know, or conceive of as existing, falls into two very different classes of description. The one class is stamped with the proofs of mutability, contingence, and dependence. It presents itself to our senses and our consciousness, in a variety of ways; yet all those ways and their results are limited, but the object itself is to us illimitable. We call it THE UNIVERSE, or more correctly the Dependent or the Finite Universe. We know not its extent: for, while the microscope, at the one extremity of the scale, and astronomical observations at the other, set before us multitude, magnitude, distance and minuteness, which we feel to become overwhelming to our faculties, we have no reason to suppose that we have reached a term, in either direction of our observations. The vast space into which we look, and the “worlds upon worlds" with which we see it to be filled, may be but the threshold of the finite universe; and in the lowest part of the known scale of being, we gain no evidence of ever touching a boundary.

The other description of what we can know is not presented to our senses; but of its existence we gain an irresistible conviction by reasoning. The former class, however vast its extent and remote its antiquity, impresses us, by many facts and circumstances, with the conviction that it had a beginning. This material portion is that alone which is cognizable by our senses. We find it to possess a natural inertness; yet it is in perpetual motion. That motion supposes an impulsive power, as its cause. We can trace the so-called causes of motion, from one to another that is prior, and so continually; and we cannot rationally stop till we have ascended to the idea of a voluntary First Cause. To this originating principle we are compelled, by the manifest evidence of the