The Evidences of Christianity; In a Course of Lectures, Delivered in the Parish Church of St. Mary, Islington, in the Years 1827,8,9, and 30 Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1832 edition. Excerpt: ...patriarchs and heads of tribes, others prophets or priests, others legislators, others shepherds or fishermen. Their natural abilities, education, habits, and employments, were exceedingly dissimilar. They received the divine communications, by various methods--voices from heaven, dreams, visions, angelic messages, direct impressions of the sacred Spirit. They wrote laws, history, odes, devotional exercises, doctrines, and controversy. Moreover, the various usages and rites, the institutions and persons connected with the worship of God, the princes raised up to rule over the people, the very land in which they reposed as their inheritance, were prophetical symbols of future blessings. Every thing was pregnant with the prescient spirit under the former Testament. It is quite obvious that this wide range and prodigious extent gives to the argument from prophecy, when verified by the respective fulfilments, an importance and sublimity, a sort of impress of divine magnificence, which surpasses all we could have conceived. We have not one or two oracular declarations, but a whole system of predictive grandeur running through every period of time, and stretching on to the consummation of all things.7 III. Then the union and Harmony Of All Its Parts in the person and salvation of our Lord, as its Centre Point, increases the proof of divine prescience. It was not indeed necessary to the establishment of a divine revelation, that a connexion should subsist between the various and widely spread ramifications of prophecy. The foretelling of any distant and unconnected events would have attested the Christian reli-T It is impossible to make this fully apparent to any but the serious student, who has really read the Bible with attention. To others, ..