Excerpt from Christian Certainty

Such a book might also, with much propriety, point out the most prominent features of the contrast between the uncertain assumptions of infidelity and the assured certainty of faith. Without detailing all the processes of investigation by which the most certain results have been reached without even enumerating all the results themselves; it might yet present enough of both to dissipate the doubts of a sincere enquirer, and the fears of a timid believer. To that large class of persons to whom a great book is a great evi a manual such as that now indicated, would be most valuable. Such is the ideal of this little volume: how far that ideal has been realized my readers will decide.

It is only natural that for some time yet to come, the attitude of a Christian apologist should be assumed with reference to that of the now exploded Essays and Reviews, supplemented as they have been by The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua critically Examined. Set for the defence of the Gospel; combating that hardihood of assertion which is assumed to impose upon the uninformed detecting those specious sophisms designed to seduce the unwary; and finding so much of both in these last pretentious books on the side of unbelief: what can be more natural than that, tacitly if not explicitly, his own course should be taken with direct reference to that of his adversaries? The following pages have no other concern however with Essays and Reviews, or the astounding production of the Bishop of Natal, than as defending those First Truths which have been therein so malignantly attacked. Hence though not put in by way of answer, they stand out in direct antagonism.

The seven Essays are by no means equal, either in merit or importance. The First is too plainly opposed to notorious facts, the Fourth to common honesty, and the Fifth to common sense, to be capable Of doing much mischief. It is with the subjects of the remaining four that we have chiefly, though incidentally, to do: the reality of prophecy, the certainty of miracles, the veracity of Moses, and the interpretation Of Scripture.

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