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The limited number of members in Birmingham has often occasioned heavy demands on Conference to assist in meeting circuit expenses. But whilst thus seeking help they have never been backward in helping themselves. Had every part of the Connexion contributed to the cause as freely as the Birmingham friends have done, our community would be in a much better state than it is now. The town societies do not exceed 210 members, and yet they raised last year upwards of £300 for circuit and local expenses, Conference funds, &c. &c. Yes, UPWARDS OF THREE HUNDRED POUNDS!! or near one pound ten shillings per member, irrespective of seat rents, contributions to the Jubilee fund, and what they have done towards the erection of chapels.

It is to be regretted that Birmingham has not yet taken a higher stand amongst our circuits. We wish it had done so. Whilst the limited number of its members has prevented this, it is gratifying to know that the few friends we have here are surpassed by none in connexional loyalty and ue devotion to those great principles by which we are distinguished. The Birmingham friends are proud of the Connexion. They love its ministers; they admire its doctrines: they esteem its ordinances; they are thoroughly devoted to all its excellent institutions, and only regret that it is not in their power to render them still greater aid. Perhaps few of our circuits have done more for the Book Room than this, considering its numbers. The town members regularly take forty large magazines, or about one copy for every five members. Were all the Connexion to follow this example, our sales would be raised to FOUR THOUSAND copies every month.*

In this hasty sketch, we have merely glanced at events as they have passed before us. It is but a brief detail of the proceedings of a feeble church. They commenced under discouraging circumstances, and difficulties have bestrewed their path all the way through; and though. faint, they are still pursuing. It may be truly said of them, "They have done what they could:" and in reviewing their history, we are surprised, not that they have not done more, but that they have done so much. In coming up out of the wilderness, they have leaned on the Beloved, and that omnipotent arm has sustained them until now. They are not insensible of his goodness, and we often hear them exclaim, "The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad." May a sense of their obligations quicken them in duty, and constrain them to be more faithful. And as the work of grace thus prospers in their own hearts, the Lord will add unto them daily such as shall be saved.

Birmingham, Dec. 1st, 1849.

CHARITY.-Let your charity begin at home, but do not let it stop there. Do good to your family and connections, and, if you please, to your party; but after this look abroad. Look at the universal Church, and, forgetting its divisions, be a catholic Christian. Look at your country, and be a patriot. Look at the nations of the earth, and be a philanthropist.-H. Martyn.

*This is what we earnestly wish to sec realized.-ED.

THE ACCUMULATIVE EVIDENCE OF REVEALED

TRUTH.

THE light of Divine truth, like the light of day, began in a few feeble rays, and gradually advanced through successive periods from the dawn of morn to meridian brightness. At first a few promises and predictions, wrapt in obscure and enigmatical phrases, were given to mankind; but these promises were so richly fraught with meaning, so charged with evangelical truth, as to admit of expansion for ages. The first promise made to our guilty primogenitors, as they stood trembling before their offended Maker, was the Gospel in embryo. It was the tree of life with its fruit in the bud. It was the nebula of the distant glory, which as it advanced was destined to dispel the clouds and shadows which hung over our fallen world, until it shall fill earth and heaven with its splendour.

The evidence of Divine truth is progressive as well as its discovery. Nay more, after the revelation of truth has ceased, its evidence goes on increasing, continually adding new facts to its vast stores of argument and strength to its demonstration. It not only brightens while other systems fade, and lives while opposing theories die, but renews its youth by age, and as centuries roll on reveals the resistless strength of its principles and the overwhelming evidence of its divinity. It can never become superseded. Let science advance, let the human mind be cultivated, they will never detect a flaw in its evidence, an error in its statements, or a principle at variance with the most perfect development of the physical, moral, and intellectual world. On the contrary, the elevation of man affords him a higher platform from which to enjoy a wider survey of its Divine beauties; and the searching scrutiny of science reveals the strength and durability of its foundations. It would be an interesting and instructive exercise to mark consecutively the accumulation of its evidence with the march of intellect and the advance of science and art. For a limited period let this pleasing task engage our

attention.

1. History. How ample has it become since Berosus the Chaldean, Herodotus the Greek, Tacitus the Roman, and Josephus the Jew, penned their annals! We have now access to the records of all nations, and for the most part can trace their origin, progress, and present state. What do those records declare? Do they falsify the testimony of the sacred pages? On the contrary, they afford a most voluminous, a most diversified, yet harmonious declaration of their antiquity, their genuineness, and their truth. The Noachian deluge, the derivation of nations from one common stock, the early dispersion of mankind from a country contiguous to the Euphrates and the Tigris, the primitive institution of the Sabbath, the wisdom and virtue of Abraham, the sojourning of Israel in Egypt, the miraculous wonders performed in that country and in the wilderness, the settlement of the Israelites in Canaan, their manners and customs, their subjugation and captivity by the monarchs of Assyria and Babylon, their deliverance by Cyrus, and their subsequent history, are events which derive collateral evidence from a hundred different and independent testimonies of profane historians. This evidence, indeed, is so clear, abundant, and harmonious, that Shuckford,

Russell, and Prideaux have severally written volumes under the designation of "The Connexion between Sacred and Profane History. What tomes might be written on the record which history bears to the minute and circumstantial fulfilment of prophecy! The ruin of ancient Nineveh, the fall of proud Babylon, the desolation of Tyre and Sidon, the stones of emptiness which mark the site of the once flourishing Edom, the debasement and vassalage of Egypt, the faded glories of Mount Zion, Jerusalem trodden down of the Gentiles, the Jews dispersed over the world, and for eighteen centuries a proverb and a bye-word among all nations, the call of the Gentiles and their adoption into the covenant of God, the rise and fall of Antichrist, the sudden triumphs and waning power of the Mohammedan imposture, the spread of the Gospel in the most distant parts of the earth, the decrepitude and abasement of the man of sin; and the great conflict of principles, the struggle between truth and error, as seen in the present state of the world-are all so many striking fulfilments of prophecy, and furnish so many collateral testimonies of the Divine authority of the sacred writings. This evidence must brighten and expand as the world grows older-each century will augment the stock of facts and enrich the treasury of truth. Without historic records the evidence of prophecy would be broken, interrupted, feeble, scarcely legible, and always confined to the age we live in; but history supplies a continuous testimony; one age speaks to another'; relics of fallen greatness tell of the imperishable and immortal; and the infidel, the heathen, and the Jew yield a constrained and reluctant homage to the eternal verities of the christian religion. The evidence arising from the harmony of history with prophecy multiplies so fast, that a volume, however crowded with events and replete with irrefragable testimony in one age, will not suffice for the next. The elaborate dissertation of Newton in the eighteenth century, requires the supplement of Keith before the nineteenth century has half run its course; and these must be succeeded by others, until the roll of prophecy be finished, and the history of earth yield an universal response to the predictions of heaven. It is quite clear that the evidence of prophecy must go on augmenting in volume and increasing in brightness down to the end of time.

2. Chronology. Time was when the scoffing infidel pointed with an air of triumph to the numerous dynasties of Egypt, and the ancient records of the Chinese and Hindoo nations, as extending through myriads of ages anterior to the period assigned by the Scriptures to the origin of man; but a better acquaintance with these nations has put to shame the boast of infidelity, and disproved the vaunted antiquity of these kingdoms. It has been ascertained that these accounts are as fabulous as the mythology of the Greeks and Romans; that they are nothing more than wild vagaries of the imagination, fabricated partly to aggrandize their nation by a remote and dignified ancestry, and partly to gratify that love for hyperbole and exaggeration which distinguishes oriental nations, and which stimulates the fancy to supply by fiction what fact and history cannot yield. The fabulous character of these accounts on which credulous infidelity reposes, is indeed, so obvious, that no respectable historian or chronologist places the slightest dependance upon them. Mr. Medhurst, a Chinese missionary, gives abundant evidence of this. He says, "Chinese authors of the greatest reputa

tion agree in considering the first part of Chinese history as entirely fabulous." The truth is, there is no event in any authentic record of Egypt, India, China, or any other country, which carries us back to a period more remote than the family of Noah. All authentic chronological records sustain the Scripture testimony as to the age of the world and the periods assigned to the events which the Bible records ; and judging from the past, the evidence arising from chronology will increase as our knowledge of nations extends.

3. Astronomy. The advance of this science to its present matured state yields those exalted views of the wisdom, power, and majesty of God, which well accord with the sacred writings; and furnishes some stupendous facts which refute every atheistical hypothesis that can be conceived. The notion has been advocated that suns, worlds, and systems of worlds were spontaneously evolved from that grey nebulous matter which is seen diffused in different parts of the heavens; but this has been exploded by the fact that Lord Rosse's telescope has resolved many of those supposed nebulous masses into clusters of stars. Moreover, the possibility of any spontaneous growth or mechanical formntion of celestial bodies and systems is disproved by these facts— that some bodies are opaque, and others luminous; that the luminous bodies are all placed in the centre of the system, while the natural tendency of light is to fly off from the centre and to become diffused through the universe; that the motions of the planets are all in the same direction; for while most of them revolve from west to east, the moons of Uranus move in a direction from east to west-a fact which is contradictory to any self-originating or mere mechanical cause. If the science of astronomy, so imperfectly understood as it was in the days of Ptolemy, furnished evidence of the being and perfections of God, how much more now when the solar system is known to exhibit such perfect system, regularity, and order; and when the laws and revolutions of the heavenly bodies present physical and mathematical demonstration of the falsehood of atheism, and the necessity of an eternal, independent, intelligent, voluntary, and almighty Creator! Truly, 'the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handy work."

4. Geography. Since the holy Scriptures were written, men have often circumnavigated the globe; new continents and islands have been discovered; every sea has been traversed, and almost every country explored; so that we have become acquainted with man in all the varieties of his physical condition and moral character. And what is the result? Has it been found that the common origin of our race is disproved? or that the scriptural account of man's degenerate state is contradicted by fact? Are any aboriginal races found in a condition which renders the provisions of the Gospel unnecessary, inapplicable, or inadequate? Just the reverse of these discoveries are everywhere elicited. The physical and anatomical properties of the human race, and the dispositions and sympathies which actuate them, all point to a common origin, and argue that God hath made of one blood all nations that dwell upon the earth. The moral propensities, tendencies, and habits of mankind in every part of the world evince a nature which partakes of a common defection, an inherent depravity; which necessitates a common remedy; while examples of the effects of grace upon

the human heart in every nation and in every clime, prove that the Gospel remedy is a panacea, a cure for every human being and for every moral malady by which our nature is afflicted. Mahometanism prescribes observances which are physically impossible in some regions. It requires men once in the year to fast from sun rise to sun rise, which in the arctic regions would comprise a period of months' duration, and, therefore, the precept is impracticable. Such a requirement is one proof that the system is an imposture. But there is no region to which the Gospel is not applicable. While universal necessity requires it as a remedy, and while its universal adaptation to our nature is one proof of its Divinity, the more thoroughly the science of geography or ethnclogy is understood, the more numerous, abundant, and forcible are the evidences of its Divine origin.

5. Optics, or the Science of Light. This science, especially as conjoined with mathematics and mechanics, presents its tribute on the altar of revealed truth. From these sciences the delicate and wonderful construction of the eye is seen, presenting a combination of means and ends, adaptations and objects, which only an intelligent mind-a mind possessing infinite wisdom, could contrive and execute. Founded on these sciences the telescope and microscope are constructed, by which objects too remote, or too minute, for the human eye, are examined. When the former is turned to the largest bodies in the universe, infidelity is confounded, as we have seen in reference to supposed nebulous matter; and when the latter is applied to the smallest bodies in creation, the folly of Brahminism and Atheism is exposed. Brahminism forbids the destruction of animal life; but the microscope proves that myriads of the smaller animals are necessarily destroyed even by those who abstain from animal food; and thus this diminutive instrument strikes a death-blow at that imposing system of heathenism. Infi. delity, seeking to dispense with a Creator, asserted for a long time that animalcules were spontaneously propagated from decayed animal and vegetable matter; but the microscrope has demonstrated that the smallest monads are propagated from living predecessors of the same species. Thus infidelity and Brahminism vanish in the light of science, while bible truth shines the brighter under its influence, and multiplies the proofs of its heavenly origin.

This

6. Glottology, or the Science of Languages. Formerly the unbeliever in revelation grounded an objection against the Bible on the diversity and number of the languages spoken by mankind. diversity, it was said, was incompatible with the teaching of the Bible respecting the unity of the human species. But the researches which learned men have made in the comparison of languages, have led to results which disarm infidelity of its weapons, and place those weapons into the hands of Christianity. It has been ascertained that the hundreds of different tongues, or dialects, spoken by mankind, contain affinities by which they are traced to only five different sources. The IndoEuropean, the Semitic, the Turanian, the Chinese, and that of Central Negroland. But even these present analogies which ally them one to another as the common source of all, thus leading to one primeval language our race. Such a conclusion, then, the result of a learned, patient, and long-continued investigation by many eminent linguists, explodes the atheistical sophism, and presents another collateral evidence,

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