mind. The soul has an anchor, a hold, an interior conviction of Christianity, which nothing can shake. It is not this or that particular argument merely, that sustains our faith; it is the great substance of the gospel, producing holy and heavenly effects upon the heart and character.

3. But this is also A GROWING, GERMI NATING evidence; ever new, ever at hand, ever reviving. It advances with our knowledge of God, our love to our Saviour, our victory over sin, our fervency in prayer, our spiritual tastes, habits, and joys. Other evidences will, from the nature of things, decline in vividness. Our perception of them becomes faint. The mind cannot be roused at once to the consideration of them. We are obliged, on all the less obvious points, to rely on what I may call past evidence; a recollection that we have once examined the subject to the bottom, and then attained the most complete conviction of its truth, though the particulars are no longer present with the mind. But this inward testimony is always at hand, always refreshing; it is entwined about our associations and habits of thought; it is inseparable from our religious feelings; it is springing up with all our holiest desires, prayers, aspirations. The young penitent has some measure of this in

terior proof, in the purifying and consoling power of Christianity upon his heart. But

every year he lives, his persuasion becomes deeper with his deeper experience, his new observations upon the glory of the religion, his growing acquaintance with its promises, his increasing recollections of answers to his prayers. This inward experience is an accompanying stream of grace and consolation, with all the freshness of its first rise upon it, and yet all the depth and volume of its accumulated progress. It is like a river of life flowing with us through the world. It is an exhaustless spring which strengthens and widens as we advance towards the borders of that eternal state whither we are going.

4. Not that we are to disparage the other branches of evidence, because we assign to this a province in some respects higher. On the contrary, by this inward testimony, we

STRENGTHEN ALL THE EXTERNAL AND IN

TERNAL PROOFS, where we are in circumstances to study them, and prepare the mind for judging of them aright. Those documents and deeds of our inheritance remain as they were, in the hands of all who are competent to examine them. There they are, the external bulwarks and defence of our religion. We desert not one part of the fortification. There

stand the miracles and prophecies. There remains the miraculous propagation. There are the obvious good effects which Christianity has produced. There also stand the internal evidences the adaptation-the sublimity of the doctrines-the morals-the character of Christthe beneficial tendency. All these remain in their original strength.

But this inward conviction of the excellency of the discoveries of Revelation by their own light, and of the healing grace of it communicated to the heart, adds incomparable force to the result, pushes the demonstration to its highest point-and that point, such as to appropriate all the blessings to man, to bring him to his true end, and accomplish that for which all the other proofs were preparatory.

And thus the mind is assisted in judging of the external proofs. As a man who, from blindness, or the darkness of a cavern, should first behold the sun, would have a reflex light thrown upon the evidences by which he had previously credited its existence; so he who beholds the sun of righteousness, and the glory of the divine Saviour, from a previous state of moral blindness and unbelief, will have a reflex light cast upon all the external evidences by which he credited the truths of Christianity.

This inward obedience to religion, also, re

moves all that prejudice and obscurity of the heart, by which the force even of external proof is much weakened. It makes the mind from unwilling, willing; from prejudice, unprejudiced; from dull and heavy and reluctant, ready and prompt; from uninterested and indifferent, lively and eager and impressed. It assists and engages the attention; it helps the reasoning powers; it makes even the speculative notions more vivid.

Then when we come to the internal evidences and the matter of the Revelation itself, how much more complete and satisfactory is the impression upon the heart which discerns spiritual things, which has the taste and faculty for perceiving the things of the Spirit, the darkness of nature having been removed! How does the suitableness of Christianity to the state and wants of man, how do the excellency and glory of the doctrines, how do the pure and heavenly morals, how does the attraction of Christ's holy character, how do the blessed tendencies of Christianity upon man's present and eternal welfare, break upon the pious mind! In fact, the inward testimony of Christianity is like the faculty of sight, it discerns all the spiritual objects which constitute the internal evidences of Christianity. And though men may guess at these, without

any experience, and may form some notions of them, from education and the language of others, and books, and the remains of natural light; yet they perceive no real glory, nor feel any divine efficacy and power in them; and therefore the conviction must be cold and defective; it will want energy and clearness and unction; the man cannot discern the effulgence of that light which, like the orb of day, is its own best and most glorious evidence. "For as God, in the creation of the world, has so made and formed its parts, has left such characters of his eternal power and wisdom on them, and filled them with such evidences of their author, that without any other testimony, they declare their Creator; so, in his word, he has by his Spirit implanted in it and impressed upon it such characters of his goodness, power, wisdom, holiness, love to mankind, truth, faithfulness, that at all times and all places where the expansion of Scripture is stretched over men by his providence, it declares itself to be his, and makes good its authority from him."1

5. This proof, therefore, is PECULIARLY NECESSARY IN THE PRESENT DAY, if we would check the progress of unbelief, and promote the revival of pure Christianity. In fact, one princi

1 Owen.