n of the world." They put their trust in his atoning
sacrifice, and thus obtained peace of conscience, and joyous access in
prayer to God as their Father in heaven. They were earthly in their
affections, and able therefore to render to God's holy and spiritual law
only an obedience of the letter, which they knew would not be
acceptable. But through faith in Christ they have been lifted up to a
holy and blessed communion with God, and thus enabled to render to God's
law an obedience of love "in the spirit and not in the letter." They
were oppressed with a painful sense of the empty and unsatisfying nature
of every thing earthly; but they have found in Christ and his glorious
service an all-sufficient portion. In a word, they are assured that the
gospel is from God, because it meets all their wants as sinners. They
have the same evidence that God made the gospel for the immortal soul,
as that he made bread for the stomach, air for the lungs, and light for
the eyes. The sincere believer has in himself the witness that the
gospel is from heaven, for he is daily experiencing its healing,
strengthening, and purifying power. To tell him that the Bible is a
cunningly devised fable, is like telling a man who daily feeds on "the
finest of the wheat," and is nourished and strengthened by it, that the
field of golden grain which waves before his door is only wormwood and
gall; or that the pure water from the bosom of the earth which daily
quenches his thirst is a deadly poison; or that the blessed air of
heaven which fans his lungs is a pestilential vapor. Not until error
becomes the nutriment of the soul and truth its destruction, can this
argument from personal experience be set aside or gainsaid.

7. The argument from the _character of Jesus_ has already been
considered at length in chap, 4, No. 8. It is sufficient to repeat here
that the very description of such a character, so gloriously perfect, so
far above all that the greatest minds of antiquity ever conceived, is
itself a proof of its reality. Very plain men may describe what they
have actually seen and heard. But that any man left to himself--and God
would not help in a work of error and delusion--should have conceived of
such a character as that of Jesus of Nazareth, without the reality
before him, is impossible; how much more that four unlettered men should
have consistently carried out the conception in such a life as that
recorded by the four evangelists.

8. Passin