Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by WESTERN TRACT SOCIETY, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C. Stereotyped by OGDEN, CAMPBELL & CO., 176 Elm St., Cincinnati....

This is not so much a volume upon the Evidences of Christianity, as an examination of the Evidences of Infidelity. When the Infidel tells us that Christianity is false, and asks us to reject it, he is bound of course to provide us with something better and truer instead; under penalty of being considered a knave trying to swindle us out of our birthright, and laughed at as a fool, for imagining that he could persuade mankind to live and die without religion. Suppose he had proved to the world's

Has the Creator of the world common sense? Did he know what he was about in making it? Had he any object in view in forming it? Does he know what is going on in it? Does he care whether it answers any purpose or not? Strange questions you will say; yet we need to ask a stranger question: Had the world a Creator, or did it make itself? There are persons who say it did, and who declare that the Bible sets out with a lie when it says, that "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." W

In the previous chapter we saw the evidences of God's skill and wisdom in the adaptations of nature, fitting the organs of animals for hearing, walking, and eating, and especially in the structure of the human eye. This has long been owned by candid minds as an unanswerable argument, demonstrating the being of God by the works of his hands. But since that chapter was written a school of scientists has arisen, of whom Mr. Darwin is at present the most popular, claiming to be able to show how all

Pantheism is that perversion of reason and language which denies God's personality, and calls some imaginary soul of the world, or the world itself, by his name. While Pantheists are fully agreed upon the propriety of getting rid of a God who could note their conduct, and call them to account for it hereafter, and who would claim to exercise any authority over them here, they are by no means agreed, either in India, Germany, or America, as to what they shall call by his name. Public opinion nece

Religion consists of the knowledge of a number of great facts, and of a course of life suitable to them. We have seen three of these: that God created the world; that he governs it; and that he is able to conquer his enemies. There are others of the same sort as needful to be known. Our knowledge of these facts, or our ignorance of them, makes not the slightest difference in the facts themselves. God is, and heaven is, and hell is, and sin leads to it, whether anybody believes these things or no

"The salutation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in every epistle: so I write. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen."—2 Thess. iii. 17. Religion rests not on dogmas, but on a number of great facts. In a previous chapter we found one of these to be, that people destitute of a revelation of God's will ever have been, and now are, ignorant, miserable, and wicked. If it were at all needful, we might go on to show that there are people in the world, who have decent c

"For they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God; and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come."—1 Thess. i. 9, 10. In the last chapter we ascertained that the Gospels and Epistles were not forgeries of some nameless monks of the third century—that the shopkeepers, silversmiths, tent-makers, coppersmiths, tanners, physicians,

"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life * * * that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you."—1 John i. 1. We have seen that the companions of Jesus wrote the books of the New Testament; that their statements of the existence, worship, morals, and faith of the Christian Church are confirmed by their enemies, and that multitudes of heathens were turned from vice to

"In fifty years all Europe will be either Cossack, or Republican." So prophesied the most sagacious of modern politicians, by the inspiration of genius, calculating the prospects of the future by the light of his past experience. This prediction of Napoleon's is a very fair specimen of the oracles of human sagacity; which always overlooks the most stupendous facts—such as the conversion of an empire—and the commonest experiences—such as the birth of a brace of conflicting twins from the womb of

In the foregoing chapters we have found, that we have great need of God's teaching; that he has sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to show us the way of life; that the gospel preached by him and his apostles has proved itself the power of God, by saving men from their sins; and that this gospel is truly recorded in the New Testament. From these facts, already settled, we proceed, according to our plan of investigation, to examine those which may be more obscure; to examine the Old Testament by the ligh

"The earth is progressing by excessively slow changes toward the solar and nebulous condition. Its history is a repetition of the solar, and a time must arrive when the surface, becoming incandescent, will be obscured only by casual dark pits in a brilliant atmosphere, a souvenir of the present darkness of the crust; yet during a certain period, within fixed limits of gravitating force and heat of mass, the human race may continue to exist; progressing, we may suppose, in force and fineness of o

In the last chapter we saw astronomy demonstrating our need of a revelation from God. In this we shall see how it illustrates and confirms that revelation. Seen through the telescope, the Bible glows with celestial splendor. Even its cloudy mysteries are displayed as clouds of light, and its long misunderstood phrases are resolved, by a scientific investigation, into galaxies of brilliant truths, proclaiming to the philosopher that the Book which describes them is as truly the Word of God as the

No kind of knowledge is more useful to man than the knowledge of his own ignorance; and no instrument has done more to give him such knowledge than the telescope. Faith is the believing of facts we do not know, upon the word of one who does. If any one knows everything, or thinks he does, he can have no faith. A deep conviction of our own ignorance is, therefore, indispensable to faith. The telescope gives us this conviction in two ways. It shows us that we see a great many things we do not perc

"Faith is destined to be left behind in the onward march of the human intellect. It belongs to an infantile stage of intellectual development, when experience, dependent on testimony, becomes the slave of credulity. Children and childish nations are prone to superstition. Religion belongs properly to such. Hence the endless controversies of religious sects. But as man advances into the knowledge of the physical sciences, and becomes familiarized with mathematical demonstration and scientific exp