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formed, prematurely penned ideas, which in our times stand so often in the place of sound, sober thought. His language is carefully chosen, explicit, and in pure taste. His sentences are all full of meaning, and unencumbered by mere expletives. His only fault of style is a tendency to involved, indirect, circuitous phraseology, - an over-fondness for parenthesis, - a too free use, and too frequent repetition of qualifying words and phrases, - the besetting sin of an accurate mind, which likes not to trust to the reader any one idea, without connecting with it, in the compass of the same sentence, all its needed modifications and abatements. This peculiarity, no doubt, makes Dr. Palfrey a less popular writer with the multitude than he might otherwise be; but the patient and diligent reader will find that he is making constant progress with his author, and that, when one of these complex sentences is mastered, he has taken a long step forward on solid ground, 一 has become fully possessed of some one entire and definite idea closely connected with the point under discussion.

The work before us is marked throughout by carefully matured thought, and by explicit and guarded statement. Its reasoning, though close and acute, is never captious or sophistical, - though profound, is always clear. Asa compend of the evidences of Christianity, it takes precedence of all previous works in point of comprehensiveness and thoroughness, while in no respect is it inferior to any, except that one may miss in it the winning naïveté of Paley's style and manner, a grace in which he confessedly stands alone and unapproached.

Dr. Palfrey's reasoning is, throughout, severely just and accurate, equally shunning the opposite errors of unauthorized assumption on his own side, and of gratuitous concession to his opponents. This happy medium has rarely been attained. The error of many professed defenders of the faith has been, that they have assumed more than a skeptic is bound to grant, - that they have taken their stand on a higher ground than their opponents, that they have begged some points in order to prove others. The result has been the production of wholesome homilies, of well-phrased panegyrics on Christianity, highly edifying to a believer, but worse than useless for their professed purpose, inasmuch as they leave upon an indifferent or hostile mind the impression,

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could be proved without it. On all other subjects, men refuse to retrace steps once taken, and to yield ground once won; but they use, as they would axioms, propositions already demonstrated. Why, then, should the Christian apologist deem nothing proved, till he has proved every thing, no portion of the field his own, till he has conquered the whole of it? Why should he, unless for the mere show of arms, surrender any vantage-ground lawfully acquired ? Hardly any other subject would bear to be thus treated; and nothing gives us so high an idea of the overflowing fulness and sufficiency of the Christian evidences, as the fact that they can present a fair front, and carry with them great weight of proof, when thus exhibited in detail and without mutual defence or corroboration.

Another prominent, and, as we believe, a unique excellence of Dr. Palfrey's work, consists in his confining the argument to Christianity considered as distinct from Judaism, instead of blending the two together, and intermingling the trains of reasoning appropriate to each respectively. Now, as to ourselves, we sincerely believe, as does our author, in the divine origin of the Mosaic economy. Nay, more, we plead guilty (notwithstanding the tendency of the times to sneer and cavil at the supernatural) to a belief in all the Scriptures, in ante-Abrahamic and post-Mosaic revelations, in a chain of miracle and prophecy reaching from the first to the second Adam. Our philosophy, if we have any, is in this matter the handmaid of our faith. On a priori grounds, we should not expect to find the Christian revelation, so vast, so full, so clear, occupying an isolated place, midway in the records of the past; but should look for some pre-announcement of the Anointed of God and the Regenerator of man, some fore-shining of the true and universal light. We should expect to see somewhere in the past the rude germ of a religious system so comprehensive and perfect, and to trace its gradual unfolding, its budding promise, from age to age. Had we not the Old Testament extant, we should cherish no doubt that there had been one, if not written with a human pen, yet engraven by miracle on the phenomena of nature, and by the divine spirit on the fleshly tablets of the heart. Yet, with this belief, so far are we from adducing the Old Testament to substantiate the New, that we reason back from the New to the Old, in order to authenticate the latter on what seenis to us the surest ground. The prophetical argument for the truth of Christianity we deem complete and sound; but it is better adapted to confirm than to create faith. It is not of a nature to be appreciated by ignorant or stubborn unbelief. The proofs of the antiquity, genuineness, and authenticity of the books of Old Testament, real and convincing as they are, are too archaic and recondite in their character, to be set forth with good effect in popular lectures or treatises; and yet the unbeliever justly demands these proofs, when arguments are drawn from the Old Testament in behalf of the religion of the New. If you allege a particular prediction as fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth, it is not enough for you to demonstrate its application to him, and to him alone. You must also convince the skeptic, perhaps a man unversed in the laws of historical evidence, (which is a very different thing from convincing yourself,) that the words which you cite were written before the advent of Jesus.

Then, again, the internal objections and difficulties connected with the Old Testament are much more numerous and grave than those connected with the New. That this is the case, if not a primâ facie argument in favor of the Old Testament, is, at least, a fact, the absence of which would indicate a supposititious system, of modern creation, sustained by forged records. Were the steps to the authentication of the Old Testament obvious and easy, it could not be what it purports to be, namely, the record of an abrogated system, temporary and local in its character, based upon the exigencies of an age, of which it is the only surviving monument. Christianity and its records, on the other hand, purport to have had their birth in a well known age, on which the most enduring monuments of ancient literature and art reflect a flood of light, and among a people, whose national traits have been stereotyped for two thousand years, and whose condition then, and their fortunes ever since, are the subject of authentic history. Then, too, if Christianity be of divine origin, it was undoubtedly designed to be perpetual and universal; and we should therefore expect to find, that its divine Author had suffered to be connected with its records fewer things that could become obsolete, or unintelligible, or distasteful, than we might find in the records of a system equally divine, which the world was destined to outgrow.

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