on the first day of the year 1782; about fifteen months before his embarkation for India, and more than twelve years before his death:

A Prayer.

Jan. 1, 1782.

ETERNAL and Incomprehensible Mind, who, by thy boundless power, before time began, createdst innumerable worlds for thy glory, and innumerable orders of beings for their happiness, which thy infinite goodness prompted thee to desire, and thy infinite wisdom enabled thee to know: we, thy creatures, vanish into nothing before thy Supreme Majesty we hourly feel our weakness; we daily bewail our vices; we continually acknowledge our folly thee only we adore with awful veneration; thee we thank with the most fervent zeal; thee we praise with astonishment and rapture: to thy power we humbly submit; of thy goodness we devoutly implore protection; on thy wisdom we firmly and cheerfully rely. We do but open our eyes, and instantly we perceive thy divine existence; we do but exert our reason, and in a moment we discover thy divine attributes: but our eyes could not behold thy splendour, nor could our minds comprehend thy divine essence; we see thee only through thy stupendous and all-perfect works; we know thee only by that ray of sacred light, which it has pleased thee to reveal: nevertheless, if creatures, too ignorant to conceive, and too depraved to pursue, the means of their own happiness, may, without presumption, express their wants to their Creator--let us humbly supplicate thee to remove from us that

evil, which thou hast permitted for a time to exist, that the ultimate good of all may be complete; and to secure us from that vice, which thou sufferest to spread snares around us, that the triumph of virtue may be more conspicuous. Irradiate our minds with all useful truth; instil into our hearts a spirit of general benevolence: give understanding to the foolish; meekness to the proud; temperance to the dissolute; fortitude to the feeble-hearted; hope to the desponding; faith to the unbelieving; diligence to the slothful; patience to those who are in pain; and thy celestial aid to those who are in danger : comfort the afflicted; relieve the distressed; supply the hungry with salutary food, and the thirsty with a plentiful stream. Impute not our doubts to indifference, nor our slowness of belief to hardness of heart; but be indulgent to our imperfect nature, and supply our imperfections by thy heavenly favour. "Suffer not, we anxiously pray, suffer not oppression to prevail over innocence, nor the might of the avenger over the weakness of the just." Whenever we address thee in our retirement from the vanities of the world, if our prayers are foolish, pity us; if presumptuous, pardon us; if acceptable to thee, grant them, all-powerful God, grant them: and, as with our living voice, and with our dying lips, we will express our submission to thy decrees, adore thy providence, and bless thy dispensations; so, in all future states, to which we reverently hope thy goodness will raise us, grant that we may continue praising, admiring, venerating, worshipping thee. more and more, through worlds without number, and ages without end

Long before this prayer was written, sir William Jones had demonstrated, to his own satisfaction, that Jesus was the Messiah, predicted by the prophets. Amongst his projected occupations in India, one was to translate the Psalms into Persic, and the Gospel of Luke into Arabic-a design which could only have originated in his conviction of the importance and inspiration of these divine books; and, in the year after the date of the prayer, we have a direct and public avowal of his belief in the

In a Hebrew copy of the book of Hosea, lord Teignmouth found a series of propositions in the hand-writing of sir W. Jones, containing the sketch of a demonstration of the divine authority of the Christian religion. These propositions appear to have been written about the year 1769: they are not expressed with such accuracy or elegance, as to justify a supposition that they were intended to be made public; but they afford an evidence of his early conviction of the truth and completion of the prophecies respecting our Saviour.

PROPOSITION I.

There is as much reason to believe, that the writings of Isaiah and the Hebrew prophets, as that those of Homer and the Greek poets, are more ancient than the time of Jesus.

Objection. Some men might have an interest in forging Isaiah.

Answer. Forged writings would have been more in point: those of Isaiah bear no marks of forgery; and the Jews themselves, who were puzzled by them, acknowledged their antiquity.

PROPOSITION II.

These ancient writings, especially Isaiah, allude to some great event, and to some real extraordinary person, "who

divinity of our Saviour; and again, in the next, another prayer by him, expressing his exclusive reliance on the merits of his Redeemer for his acceptance with God. +

In a Dissertation by sir William Jones on the Gods of Greece, Italy, and Rome, written in 1784, but revised and printed in 1786, the following passage occurs: "Disquisitions concerning the manners and conduct of our species, in early times, or indeed at any time, are always curious at least, and

was put to death, and complained not," &c.-Isaiah, chap. liii.

PROPOSITION III.

The life and death of Jesus, his virtues and doctrines, though not his miracles, are as much to be believed, as the life and death of Socrates, his virtues, and his doctrine.

PROPOSITION IV.

No person, in the history of the Jews, before or after Jesus, coincides with this account, except Jesus.

Therefore Jesus was the subject of their writings, which are consequently inspired; and he a person of an extraordinary nature, that is, the Messiah.

If this be just reasoning, we may believe his miracles, and must obey his law.

If difficulties occur, and we are asked, "How can they be solved?" we may safely answer, "We do not know;" yet we may truly be, and justly be called, Christians.

To these propositions the following note is subjoined: "What must be the importance of a book, of which it may be truly said, If this book be not true, the religion which we profess is false?"

• See page 42 of this volume.

See preceding observations on the piety of sir W. Jones, page 53.

amusing; but they are highly interesting to such as can say of themselves, with Chremes in the play, 'We are men, and take an interest in all that relates to mankind.' They may even be of solid importance in an age, when some intelligent and virtuous persons are inclined to doubt the authenticity of accounts delivered by Moses, concerning the primitive world; since no modes or sources of reasoning can be unimportant which have a tendency to remove such doubts. Either the first eleven chapters of Genesis (all due allowances being made for a figurative Eastern style) are true, or the whole fabric of our national religion is false; a conclusion, which none of us, I trust, would wish to be drawn. I, who cannot help believing the divinity of the Messiah, from the undisputed antiquity, and manifest completion of many prophecies, especially those of Isaiah, in the only person recorded by history to whom they are applicable-am obliged, of course, to believe the sanctity of the venerable books, to which that sacred person refers as genuine; but it is not the truth of our national religion, as such, that I have at heart; it is truth itself: and if any cool, unbiassed reader will clearly convince me, that Moses drew his narrative, through Egyptian conduits, from the primeval fountains of Indian literature, I shall esteem him as a friend, for having weeded my mind from a capital error; and promise to stand among the foremost in assisting to circulate the truth which he has ascertained. After such a declaration, I cannot but persuade myself, that no candid man will be displeased, if, in the course of my work, I make as free with any arguments that he may have advanced, as I should really desire him