The multiplicity of passages in the New Testament bearing upon this great fact, causes our legalists in religion to shift about most wonderfully. At one time, the people's agreement to keep the law was the covenant that was done away. At another, it was the act of executing the penalty of death that was set aside. At another, it was the glory of Moses' face that was done away. And at another, it was none of all these, but it was the ceremonial law of Moses that was done away.

The object of law is to regulate the exemplification of principles. Some principle is exemplified in every act that man performs. And one principle may be in a great variety of acts. The principle of hatred is exemplified in a great many different actions; and the principle of love to God is manifested, or exemplified, in every act of obedience to God. So the spiritual may be brought out under different dispensations, and by different laws, while it remains always the same. Indeed, principles are unchangeable; they belong to the nature of things. Covenants, priesthoods, dispensations and laws have changed, but principles, never. So the moral objective of every law is the same, viz., to bring out and develop the spiritual in man. To accomplish this great end it is necessary that the evil principles of a carnal, or fleshly nature, should be restrained by the penal sanctions of law, and the principles of man's higher nature brought out by its motives of good. Such being the nature of principles, and the facts of law, Paul says, “We know that the law is spiritual.” And again, “The law is fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” “Do we then make void law through faith? God forbid; yea, we establish law.”

the decalogue given to israel.

“Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbor. Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbor's wife. Neither shalt thou covet thy neighbor's house, his field, or his man-servant, or his maid-servant, his ox or his ass, or anything that is thy neighbor's. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not kill.”

the law of christ bound upon the world.

“Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer. But I say unto you, love your enemies. If thou mayest be made free use it rather. Be ye not the servants of men. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not covet. Whosoever looketh upon a woman and lusteth after her hath committed adultery already in his heart.”

That we may, then, truly and certainly ascertain his precise attitude, before we directly address him, we shall accurately survey his whole premises. Does he say that he knows the gospel to be false? No, he can not; for he was not in Judea in the days of the evangelical drama. He, therefore, could not test the miracles, or sensible demonstrations, by any of his senses; nor prove to himself that Jesus rose not from the dead. Speaking in accordance with the evidence of sense, of consciousness, and of experience, he can not say that he knows the gospel to be a cunningly devised fable. He has not, then, in all his premises knowledge, in its true and proper meaning, to oppose to the Christian's faith or hope. What remains?

Can he say, in truth, that he believes the gospel to be false? He can not; because belief without testimony is impossible; and testimony that the gospel facts did not occur is not found extant on earth in any language or nation under heaven. No contemporaneous opposing testimony has ever been heard of, except in one instance, the sleeping and incredible testimony of the Roman guard, which has a lie stamped indelibly on its forehead: “His disciples stole his dead body while we were asleep.” He that can believe this is not to be reasoned with. We repeat it with emphasis, that no living man can say, according to the English Dictionary, that he believes the gospel to be false.

How far these doubts are rational, scientific, and modest, may yet appear in the sequel; meanwhile, we only survey the premises which the infidel occupies, and the forces he has to bring into the action. These, may we not say, are already logically ascertained to be an army of doubts only.

Some talk of the immodesty, others of the folly, others of the maliciousness of the unbeliever; but not to deal in harsh or uncourteous epithets, may we not say, that it is most unphilosophic to dogmatize against the gospel on the slender grounds of sheer dubiety. No man, deserving the name of a philosopher, can ever appear among the crusading forces of pamphleteers and declaimers against the faith of Christians, for two of the best reasons in the world; he has nothing better to substitute for the motives, the restraining fears to the wicked, and the animating hopes to the righteous, which the gospel tenders; and he has nothing to oppose to its claims but the weakness and uncertainty of his doubts. Franklin was a philosopher, but Paine was a madman. The former doubted, but never dogmatized—never opposed the gospel, but always discountenanced and discouraged the infidel; the latter gave to his doubts the authority of oracles, and madly attempted to silence the Christian's artillery by the licentious scoffings of the most extravagant and unreasonable skepticism.

Modesty is the legitimate daughter of true philosophy; but dogmatism, unless the offspring of infallible authority, is the ill-bred child of ignorance and arrogance. Every man, then, who seeks to make proselytes to his skepticism by converting his doubts into arguments, is anything but a philosopher or a philanthropist.

These creatures have not sense enough to doubt, nor to think sedately on any subject; and therefore, we only notice them while defining the ground occupied by the unbelievers of this generation. They prudently call themselves skeptics, but imprudently carry their opposition to the Bible, beyond all the bounds embraced in their own definitions of skepticism. A skeptic can only doubt, never oppugn the gospel. He becomes an atheist, or an infidel, bold and dogmatic, as soon as he opens his mouth against the Bible.

Were we philosophically to class society as it now exists in this country in reference to the gospel, we should have believers, unbelievers, and skeptics. We would find some who have voluntarily received the apostolic testimony as true; others who have rejected it as false; and a third class who simply doubt, and neither receive nor reject it as a communication from heaven. But, though, unbelievers, while they call themselves skeptics, often wage actual war against the faith and hope of Christians, still their actual rejection of the gospel has no other foundation than pure aversion to its restraints and some doubts as to its authenticity. The quagmire of their own doubts, be it distinctly remembered, is the sole ground occupied by all the opponents of the gospel, whether they style themselves antitheists, atheists, theists, unbelievers, or skeptics.—Alexander Campbell, in 1835.

Lord Herbert taught that the “indulgence of lust and anger is no more to be blamed than thirst or drowsiness.”

Voltaire contended “for the unlimited gratification of the sexual appetites, and was a sensualist of the lowest type; nevertheless he had the amazing good sense to wish that he had never been born.”

Rousseau was, by his confession, a habitual liar and thief, and debauchee; a man so utterly vile that he took advantage of the hospitality of friends to plot their domestic ruin; a man so destitute of natural affection that he committed his base-born children to the charity of the public. To use his own language, “guilty without remorse, he soon become so without measure.”

Thomas Paine was, according to the verdict of history, “addicted to intemperance in his last years, given to violence and abusiveness, had disreputable associates, lived with a woman who was not his wife, and left to her whatever remnant of fortune he had.”

Once more, the colonel, speaking of Thomas Paine's work, says, “He was with the army. He shared its defeats, its dangers, and its glory. When the situation became desperate, when gloom settled upon all, he gave them the ‘Crisis.’ It was a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, leading the way to freedom, honor and glory.” What use has the colonel for such language? From whence did it come? Is he sitting upon the bones of Moses and making grimaces at the old prophet while he is adopting his sentences? Infidels blaspheme the name of Moses, and abuse his hyperboles and his facts as well, and, at the same time, go to his quiver to get their very best arrows.

“At the close of the Revolution no one stood higher in America than Thomas Paine.”—Ingersoll.

“At that time the seeds sown by the great infidels were beginning to bear fruit in France.”—Ingersoll.

The leaders of the French revolution were the disciples of Rousseau, Voltaire and Diderot. They were atheists, or infidels. Tom Paine was one of their number, participated in their deliberations, helped to get up the constitution they enacted. What they did is what the infidels of the United States wish to have done. They wiped out Christianity by vote, and forbade the utterance of the name of God to their children. They abolished the Lord's day, and made the week to consist of ten instead of seven days. They took the bells from the churches and cast them into cannons. Chaumette, a leader in the convention, came before the president “leading a courtesan with a troop of her associates.” He lifted her veil, and said, “Mortals! recognize no other divinity than Reason, of which I present to you the loveliest and purest personification.” The president bowed and rendered devout adoration. The same scene was reënacted in the cathedral of Notre Dame, with increased outrages upon God and common-sense. Wrong was reputed right, and the distinction between vice and virtue was banished.

From this time, and onward, the test of attachment to the government was contempt for religion and decency. Those suspected of disloyalty were gathered; one thousand and five hundred women and children were shut up in one prison, without fire, bed, cover, or provisions, for two days. Men escaped by giving up their fortunes, and women escaped by parting with their virtue.

Seventeen thousand perished in Paris during this reign of infidel terror. This ungodly abrogation of religion in France cost the nation three million of lives—think of it! France's most dark and damning record was the fruit of the tenets of the men that Col. Ingersoll lauds to the heavens. They were the fruits of the labors of the men with whom Tom Paine sat, and believed, and voted. “His faith was their faith.”

William Carver addressed a private letter to Thomas Paine, dated Dec. 2, 1806, and published in the New York Observer Nov. 1, 1877, in which we have the following revelations: “A respectable gentleman from New Rochelle called to see me a few days back, and said that every body was tired of you there and that no one would undertake to board and lodge you. I thought this was the case, as I found you at a tavern in a most miserable situation. You appeared as if you had not been shaved for a fortnight, and as to a shirt, it could not be said that you had one on, it was only the remains of one, and this likewise appeared not to have been off your back for a fortnight, and was nearly the color of tanned leather; and you had the most disagreeable smell possible, just like that of our poor beggars in England. Do you remember the pains I took to clean you? That I got a tub of warm water and soap, and washed you from head to foot, and this I had to do three times before I could get you clean? You say also that you found your own liquors during the time you boarded with me, but you should have said, ‘I found only a small part of the liquor I drank during my stay with you; this part I purchased of John Fellows, which was a demijohn of brandy containing four gallons, and this did not serve me three weeks.’ This can be proved, and I mean not to say anything I can not prove, for I hold this as a precious jewel. It is a well-known fact that you drank one quart of brandy per day, at my expense, during the different times that you have boarded with me, the demijohn alone mentioned excepted, and the last fourteen weeks you were sick. Is not this a supply of liquor for dinner and supper? Now sir, I think I have drawn a complete portrait of your character, yet, to enter upon every minutia, would be to give a history of your life, and to develop the fallacious mask of hypocrisy and deception under which you have acted in your political, as well as moral, capacity of life.” So much for the apostate Quaker's character after the close of the American revolution.

Mr. Lecky, an infidel, says, “It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character, which through all the changes of eighteen centuries has filled the hearts of men with an impassioned love, and has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions; has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the highest incentive of practice: amid all the sins and failing; amid all the priestcraft, the persecution and fanaticism which have defaced the church, it has preserved in the character of its founder an enduring principle of regeneration.” If such be the fountain let the stream continue to flow.