OF THE PLAN OF SALVATION. A BOOK FOR THE TIMES, BY AN AMERICAN CITIZEN. WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY, BY CALVIN E. STOWE, D. D. "We desire to investigate the truth; and not that alone, but the truth BOSTON: GOULD AND LINCOLN, 59 WASHINGTON STREET. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by GOULD AND LINCOLN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. PREFACE. This book is anonymous. With the exception of a few gentlemen, who kindly assisted in revising the sheets, and reviewing the authorities and notes, it is not probable that any individual out of the writer's family will be able to conjecture, with the least degree of probability, who is the author of the book. Even the personal friends of the author would not be likely to suspect him of writing this volume. The book will, therefore, stand upon its own merits before the public; and the author will be indulged in making some expressions which a becoming degree of modesty would forbid, were his name upon the title-page. OCCASION OF THE WORK. During some of the first years of the writer's active life he was a skeptic; he had a friend who has since been well known as a lawyer and a legislator, who was also skeptical in his opinions. We were both conversant with the common evidences of Christianity. None of them convinced our minds of the Divine origin of the Christian religion, although we both thought ourselves willing to be 2 convinced by sufficient evidence. Circumstances which need not to be named led the writer to examine the Bible, and to search for other evidence than that which had been commended to his attention by a much esteemed clerical friend, who presided in one of our colleges. The result of the examination was a thorough conviction in the author's mind of the truth and Divine authority of Christianity. He supposed at that time, that in his inquiries, he had adopted the only true method to settle the question, in the minds of all intelligent inquirers, in relation to the Divine origin of the Christian religion. Subsequent reflection has confirmed this opinion. Convinced himself of the Divine origin of the religion of the Bible, the author commenced a series of letters to convey to his friend the evidence which had satisfied his own mind beyond the possibility of doubt. The correspondence was, by the pressure of business engagements, interrupted. The investigation was continued, however, when leisure would permit, for a number of years. The results of this investigation are contained in the following chapters. The epistolary form in which a portion of the book was first written will account for some repetition, and some varieties in the style, which otherwise might not have been introduced. REASONS FOR PRESENTING THE WORK TO THE PUBLIC. Book-making is not the author's profession. But after examining his own private library, and one of the best public libraries in the country, he could find no treatise in which the course of reasoning was pursued which will be found in the following pages. Dr. Chalmers, in closing his Bridgewater Treatise, seems to have had an apprehension of the plan and importance of such an argument; and had he devoted himself to the development of the argument suggested, the effort would have been worth more to the world than all the Bridgewater Treatises put together, including his own work. Coleridge has somewhere said, that the Levitical economy is an enigma yet to be solved. To thousands of intelligent minds it is not only an enigma, but it is an absolute barrier to their belief in the Divine origin of the Bible. The solution of the enigma was the clew which aided the writer to escape from the labyrinth of doubt; and now, standing upon the rock of unshaken faith, he offers the clew that guided him to others. A work of this kind is called for by the spirit of the age. Although the signs of the times are said to be propitious, yet there are constant developments of undisciplined and unsanctified mind both in Europe and America, which furnishes matter of regret to the philanthropist and the Christian. A struggle has commenced is going on at present and the heat of the contest is constantly increasing, in which the vital interests of man, temporal and spiritual, are involved. In relation to man's spiritual interests, the central point of controversy is the "cross of Christ." In New England, some of those who have |