V. THAT THEY WERE WISE AND GOOD MEN.

Who will call in question the understanding or the accomplishments of Moses? Under what circumstances of honour, has his name been transmitted through ages and generations, till, irradiated with all it's pristine glory, it has reached even these latter days! To a mind far above the common standard-to talents the most illustrious, he added all the learning of the Egyptians. Born at the fountain-head of literature, he drank copious draughts of the salutary stream. Before him the celebrated lawgivers of antiquity, although much later than this renowned legislator, shrink away, as the stars which shine through the night, fade before the first tints of the morning, and hide their diminished heads when the sun uncovers his radiance. In like manner all the writers of the Old and New Tes taments demand our respect as men of supereminent talents, and of solid wisdom. No one. can read those psalms which are ascribed to the king of Israel, and imagine that David was a man of a common understanding. The fragments which have descended to us from Solomon, abundantly confirm the decision of the scriptures in naming him the wisest of men. He must be strangely destitute of taste who can read un

moved, the majestic and sublime productions of Isaiah. We disdain to answer the bold, unfounded, ignorant assertions of the author of "The Age of Reason," who says, that "a school"boy should be punished for producing a book

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so full of bombast and incongruity as the "book called Isaiah." A man who can thus speak of a production so truly sublime, upon general, we might say, universal consent, has forfeited all claim to criticism; and he must feel something like degradation who should sit down to answer so palpable a misrepresentation. We pass over the words of Jesus Christ, for surely it will be admitted that "never man spake as this

man." Luke rises before us as claiming to. rank high in respectability. His writings will appear to any unprejudiced mind impressed with the stamp of genius and of literature. In support of this position is it necessary to do more than appeal to the short and elegant preface to his Gospel, after which, having once for all introduced himself, he disappears, and the historian is lost in the narrative? "Forasmuch as

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many have taken in hand to set forth in order

a declaration of those things which are most

surely believed among us, even as they deli"vered them unto us, which from the begin"ning were eye-witnesses, and ministers of the "word: It seemed good to me also, having had

"perfect understanding of all things from the

very first, to write unto thee, in order, most "excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest "know the certainty of those things wherein "thou hast been instructed." The apostle Paul is a name too great to be passed over in silence. His defence before Agrippa is a master-piece of genuine eloquence and feeling; and he who can deny it, after reading the sentence with which it closes, appears to us most unreasonably prejudiced, and irreclaimable by the force of evidence, "Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost "thou persuadest me to be a Christian. And "Paul said, I would to God, that not only thou, "but also all that hear me this day, were both "almost and altogether such as I am except "these bonds!" His writings from first to last discover an extraordinary mind, and a fund of intelligence, worthy a disciple who sat at the feet of Gamaliel. Those who were unlettered men, have no less a claim upon our respectful attention. Who does not perceive a blaze of genius and of talent bursting through all the obscurity of their birth, and counteracting the original narrowness of their education? They were all wise men; and their wisdom carried with it the most decisive evidence that it was from above: it was "first pure, then peaceable, gen"tle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and

"of good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy."

We have pronounced but a small part of their eulogium in saying that they were wise men; for talents are often found united to vice: but they were also eminently GOOD men. They were men. We do not design to hold them up to your view as perfect characters: for such a representation would neither accord with truth, nor agree with their pretensions: but they were as perfect as humanity in it's most exalted state upon earth seems capable of being. The charges against the character of David have been heavy, but they have been as ably refuted*. The light which he enjoyed was small, compared with the meridian glory which illumines our walk through life. And he must have an hard heart, and a most unreasonable conscience, who can urge David's failings against him, with much severity, after the contrition which he felt and expressed. Considered in connection with the other, and excellent parts of his character, these defects resemble the dark spots, which, to a philosophic and scrutinizing eye, appear on the sun's disk; but which to any un

* In Chandler's Life of David.

assisted organ of vision, are swallowed up in the blaze of his glory. In the writings and the lives of the apostles, what piety, what benevolence, what devotion, what love to God and to man, are visible! What genuine zeal did they manifest! A zeal distinguished from mere enthusiasm, both in it's object, and in it's tendency! No good man can read these writings, such is their holy fervour, and such their exalted piety, without being made both wiser and better! Do you not discern in them hearts weaned from the present world, and fired with the glorious prospects of futurity? Do you not perceive in all things an integrity which made them ardent in the support of their cause, and ready to suffer every extremity for it? Yet that integrity, and that ardour, mingled with humility, temperance, mildness, goodness, and truth? Do they not continually insist upon these things as the genuine effects, the necessary consequences, and the distinguished characteristics, of their religion! O let any unprejudiced person calmly sit down to read their lives, where all their weaknesses appear, and where none of their faults are extenuated, and he must conclude that they were GOOD Men !

We might, without departing much from our plan, draw up by way of contrast the lives and