lunar observations, he calculates distance by time, and determines the spot on which his vessel is floating, by the altitude of the meridian sun, and though he is utterly unable to demonstrate the connection of any of these processes with their results, he shapes his course according to them and feels himself secure. Though his safety is at stake, though demonstration is within his reach, he does not require any more rigorous proof, but he is satisfied with evidence of which we are speaking; his sextant and his tables have formerly foreshown him the land, their predictions have coincided with the event, and he would laugh at the sceptic who should tell him that the coincidence may have been only accidental.

The general proposition, then, which I deduce from these considerations, is the following,-that if a man predicts an event, which, on common calculations, is in a high degree improbable, and the prediction comes to pass, it may be concluded with confidence that he had some extraordinary and certain means of foreseeing the event.

Now let us apply this principle to the case before us. The text involves two predictions, one that the Gospel should be preached in all the world, the other that wherever it should be preached the action, which a certain woman had then done, should be mentioned and her memory preserved. A more improbable supposition, humanly speaking, I think, could not have been conceived. What are the

chances, think you, against any religion whatever, professed by a handful of men, becoming the religion of the world? and if those men were among the meanest of their countrymen; if their leader's station was humble like their own and his character obnoxious to the rulers of the nation; if he was speaking under an ominous presentiment of death and alluded to his approaching burial at the very time he uttered this prediction; if the converts he was to leave behind him to struggle for the new religion were not only few but also faint-hearted ; if they were without any visible power either to recommend or enforce it, uneducated to argue and forbidden to fight; what were the chances, I would ask, of such men under such a leader propagating their religion even in their own country? But if their country was a petty state and their countrymen a despised and tributary people, what again were the chances of a religion which emanated from such a nation ever taking possession of the world ; what were the chances that a religion issuing from Judea would prevail over the mightiest kingdoms of the earth; disturb their ancient faith, subvert the temples of their gods, read a new lesson of philosophy to the Greek, give a new law to the Roman, mount the throne of the Cesars, extend its empire to the remotest east, and spread over the unknown west? And when, to these incalculable chances against the fulfilment of the first part of the prediction, you add those which existed against any

record being preserved of the particular action adverted to in the text; when you add the chances of its never having been committed to writing and the chances of the written document not having survived, you will see how incalculable was the improbability, at the time this prediction was pronounced, that the event predicted would ever have occurred.

In drawing your attention to this text I have only laid before you one example out of many, of the evidence of this kind, which you will find in Scripture; another remarkable instance may be noticed in the correspondence between the present state of the Jews and the prophecies relating to them ; a correspondence so remarkable indeed that it was considered by an eminent statesman of the last century, (though a man of no very religious turn of mind) as in itself sufficient to establish the truth of Christianity. I have heard it said that the state of the Jews is no more wonderful than the condition of that vagrant people who are scattered through all parts of Europe and whose origin and history are so singularly obscure; but this is altogether mistaking the nature of the argument, which is exactly the same as that we have been now pursuing; there is no inference whatever drawn from the extraordinary state of the Jews, but a very strong and just inference is drawn from the predictions in Scripture of that extraordinary state.

But if these coincidences are extraordinary when taken alone, what are their force when considered together? when all these separate proofs are multiplied with one another the evidence acquires a prodigious weight and becomes such, not only as every good and pious man, in the case of a revelation professing to come from God, ought to be ready to entertain, but such as every prudent man would allow to influence his conviction and govern his conduct in the most trying circumstances of common life. On the subject of religion we only ask you to act on the same principles of judgment as if were impanneled on a jury, and with the same. precaution as if you were afloat upon the sea. Do not, upon the more perilous wide moral ocean, be content to let your vessel drive to whatever land the wind and the waves may carry it; the experiment is too dangerous; it is too dreadful a thing to run the chance of being cast away on the shores of eternity crying out for demonstration and, because you cannot have it, rejecting all the lights which God in his mercy has vouchsafed to grant you.

you

The Exaltation of Man's Nature.

York Minster, Christmas, 1846.

PSALM viii. 3, 4, 5, 6.

"WHEN I CONSIDER THY HEAVENS, THE WORK OF THY FINGERS, THE MOON AND THE STARS WHICH THOU HAST ORDAINED, WHAT IS MAN THAT THOU ART MINDFUL OF HIM, OR THE SON OF MAN THAT THOU VISITEST HIM? FOR THOU HAST MADE HIM A LITTLE LOWER THAN THE ANGELS AND HAST CROWNED HIM WITH GLORY AND HONOUR. THOU MADEST HIM TO HAVE DOMINION OVER THE WORKS OF THY HANDS AND HAST PUT ALL THINGS UNDER HIS FEET".

WHO

HO can consider the work of the Divine fingers in the fabric of the heavens, who can look into the depths of the mighty firmament and watch the stars in their courses, as they pass before the gaze of vulgar sense; who can exercise a vision exalted by art to what might be imagined to be an angel's ken, extending into illimitable space; who can behold the milky zone and shining spots of the sky resolve themselves one after the other, as they come to be more distinctly discovered, into separate constellations and thousands of new worlds of light; who can consider such a crowd of mighty globes spread orb within orb and system beyond system, into infinity; till perception, imagination, and reason, are altogether lost in the clouds and darkness round about the