present under consideration, but merely the caution which ought to be used in pressing it upon doubters at the outset of an approach to the subject of religion. If the object be really to draw them to Christ, we must become all things to all men; and, while not mutilating the heavenly message, take heed not to repel the weak believer from coming to the Saviour, by interposing unnecessary literary obstacles. It is very common to hear or to read the dilemma put before the doubter, that he must accept everything or nothing in Christianity and the Bible.(1049) Such an alternative, though dictated by a commendable motive, is likely to prove ineffectual. The Dilemma is a form of reasoning which rarely persuades. Its object is rather to silence than to convince. It is more a trick of rhetoric than an argument of logic. It may make a person pause by showing him his apparent position; but the heart, if not the head, can always find means to escape from an alternative which it dislikes. And in this particular case the use of it involves the risk of overlooking the different degrees of importance which belong to different portions of religion, and the very different degrees or evidence on which different portions of it rest. Though the smallest circumstances in reference to it are of importance, yet it were less vital to doubt the miraculous inspiration of a genealogy than the authoritative teaching of an epistle; or to doubt the date of a book than its contents. No doubt is unimportant; but it were merely repeating the sophistry of the Stoics, in making all sins equal, to deny gradations of importance in doubts; gradations which however are not here put forward to defend eclecticism, but to enforce the lesson, that, in dealing with a doubter, the consideration of this fact must guide us in the order in which we present the evidence of different parts to his mind. It not unfrequently happens that the perusal of the holy scripture is the means of drawing a soul to Christ; the volume in its solitary majesty telling its own tale: or, to speak more reverently, applied to the heart by the Spirit of God: but generally, if a doubter’s heart be filled with historical and critical doubts, he must be led through Christ to the Bible, rather than conversely, and through the New Testament to the Old. If once he can be brought to the perception of a Saviour for sinful man, his doubts will assume a new aspect, and will adjust themselves into their true place, or perhaps find their own solution.