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cases merely, but was so general, and at the same time so astonishing, as to attract the notice of their persecutors, and frequently to produce submission to the doctrine which they taught.

The general meekness also and benevolence of their lives, (of which the letter of Pliny * is no unimportant proof,) their unresisting obedience to the civil governors, who so often illtreated them, and their charity towards each other, prove both the sincerity of their faith, and the truth of the religion which they had embraced.

The astonishing revolution in the human mind and manners, which the new religion thus produced-a change from the darkness, and corruption, and abominations of gentile idolatries and Jewish traditions, to the pure and benevolent graces of Christianity-a change in itself most difficult, and effected in the face of all the additional obstacles already noticed-forms an invincible argument for the truth of the revelation. The conversion was, even by the admission of heathens themselves, from bad to good, from vice and dissoluteness of morals, to purity and love. The history of the world affords no parallel to this illustrious fact.

Nor should it be forgotten, that amongst the numerous converts to the Christian faith, were persons of all ranks, as we have more than once had occasion to remark, and of all stations-men of cautious inquiry, of singular acuteness of mind, and of sound and capacious judgment-men as capable of examining a question, and as fearful of being deceived, as any in the world now are. And yet these persons embraced a persecuted religion, renounced all their oldest opinions and habits, avowed their belief in the crucified Nazarene, lived pure and spiritual lives, and died with peace and composure in his cause. Two of the very first converts to this religion were persons the best adapted of all others to detect an imposition-Saul, the Jewish zealot, and Sergius Paulus, the Roman proconsul. The first, both by education and habit attached to the institutions of Judaism; the second, "a prudent man;" a person of rank and authority, and attended by a Jew, desirous to turn him from the faith. Both were men of education, inquiry and talent. The submission of such men to the gospel, more especially of St. Paul, whose labors and sufferings afterwards, in the cause of Christianity, have never been paralleled, and who crowned those labors by his martyr

* See page 214.

dom, can only be accounted for by the divine power which attended the religion of Christ.*

To judge more easily of the amazing force of this argument, let us compare the first success of the gospel, with such other cases as come under our own observation. The progress of Mahometanism is in full contrast, in all its causes and characteristics, with that of the Christian faith. It arose in the seventh century amongst a warlike people, in an age of gross darkness; was founded by a person of one of the best families of his country; it was composed of Jewish legends, and the popular superstitions of Arabia, mingled with sentiments and doctrines gathered from the Christian Scriptures; and proposing a code of morals comparatively lax; together with sensual and voluptuous recompences-in other words, it was a religion adapted to the corrupt taste, indulgent to the passions, and modelled to the ignorance of the times. In all these respects, it illustrates, by the contrast, the purity, and beneficence, and sublimity of the Christian doctrine. Mahomet, further, was entirely destitute of credentials—no miracles were even alleged-he pretended to no prophecies-no seal, therefore, of divine authority was appended to his claims. Whatever success, then, may have attended a debased and vicious religion, resting on no one attestation of a celestial original, but simply courting the passions of an age of ignorance and depravity, can never be placed in competition with the doctrine of Christianity. But Mahometanism, be it noted, had, after all, no success, so long as the peaceful means of persuasion and argument were alone employed; whereas Christianity converted the whole world by meek instruction and patient suffering. Mahometanism failed of making any progress, till it renounced the arts of peace, and unsheathed the sword. The design of the Koran was, as we have ob

*It is no small confirmation of the argument from the first propagation of the gospel, that the unbeliever is obliged to have recourse to the very effects produced by the Christian doctrines, for reasons to disparage the divine interference to which we so justly ascribe it. What are Gibbon's five natural causes, as he terms them-the zeal of the first Christians, their doctrine of a future life, the miraculous powers ascribed to them, their pure morals, and their union-but so many EFFECTS of Christianity on the hearts and lives of the converts? And what does he gain by calling their zeal intolerant and their morals austere; and by insinuating that the doctrine of a future life, and the miraculous powers, were suppositions? Does he not betray the weakness of an argument, which assumes premises against the uniform evidence of all history?

served, not to propagate a religion, but to form soldiers, and inspire martial courage; and it was in this way that it obtained prevalence and prosperity. It followed in the train of armies, and was propagated at the edge of the cimeter. Such a contrast displays in yet brighter lustre the mild glory of that doctrine which, unaided by human power, and in the midst of sufferings and contempt, surpassed, in the extent and splendor of its conquests, all the sanguinary conversions of the false prophet.

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But let us turn next to our Christian missions amongst the Jews and heathen. We have just spoken of a false religion, let us now see what light our observation upon the progress the true, under ordinary circumstances, can cast upon the argument in hand. We have Jews and heathens now. Efforts have been used for the conversion of both in every age of the Christian church; but more especially during the last thirty or forty years. What, however, has been the effect? A greater number of Jews certainly were converted under the first discourse of St. Peter, at the day of Pentecost, than have been gained during the eighteen hundred years which have elapsed since. And as to the heathen, probably one year of the apostolic labors amongst the gentiles equalled, in point of success, not merely the thirty or forty years of the united exertions of the Christian church, with all its external advantages of superior civilization, influence, authority and learning, in our own day, but the thousand years which preceded them. If the comparison be objected to on the ground that the apostles were furnished with miraculous powers, and the extraordinary measures of the grace and influence of the Holy Ghost, I grant the fact, and employ it in the confirmation of my argument. The apostolic inspiration is the point to be proved; and the admission that the immense difference between the

first success of the gospel, and its present progress, is to be attributed to that inspiration, is precisely the conclusion at which we are to arrive. On the supposition that Christianity was propagated by merely human means, there is no reason why we should not succeed in our missions to the same extent as the apostles. In all other respects, except in that of the power of the Holy Spirit in his miraculous gifts and his larger measure of grace, we have much the advantage of the first propagators of the gospel. Our missionaries in India and Africa are invested with more circumstances of respect and authority. They have the advantages of civilization, and

derive aid from improvements in the arts, especially printing. The doctrine is the same; the heart of man the same; the effect to be produced the same. The vast difference in the result marks what we are now contending for, the correspondent difference in the endowments of the teachers. The apostolic doctrine, resting on miraculous operations, and sustained by the extraordinary grace of God, is the only rational account to be given of the phenomena of the case.

But I come yet closer to ourselves, and ask any one competent to judge of the progress of religious reforms, and practical revivals of piety in our several countries and neighborhoods, whether the propagation of truth is so rapid amongst us, as to make it probable that the first apostles were unaided by an immediate power from above? You know the difficulty of diffusing and maintaining the real spirit of Christianity even amongst professed Christians; you know the reluctance of the human mind to the true obedience of faith; you know how soon negligence, vice, ignorance, obduracy, creep in, and with what difficulty they are expelled from the mass of any population. You know that it is only by a simple recurrence to the doctrine of the New Testament, with fervent prayer for the sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit, that any success attends our labors. You are prepared, therefore, to judge how far the feeble and unsupported apostles were likely to have subdued the idolatrous and corrupt gentile world to the doctrine of the cross, without that extraordinary succor which it is the object of this Lecture to maintain.

Cast your eyes, moreover, on the page of ecclesiastical history, and tell me how have reforms in Christianity, when it has been decayed, succeeded-how did the labors of Augustine, and Claudius of Turin, and Peter Waldo, and Luther and his noble associates, prosper? Was it by unaided power? was it by human wisdom? was it by mere reasoning and moral persuasion? Was it not by a distinct recurrence to the power of the Spirit of God-not, indeed, in his miraculous operations, but in those sacred offices of making the revealed truth of the gospel effectual to the heart, which had been forgotten during the ages of papal superstition? And, after all, how limited has been the success of any or all these reforms, compared with the rapid triumphs of the first preachers of the Christian truth, amidst difficulties infinitely more complicated! Every case we can contemplate, in short, illus

trates that glorious and immediate interference of the God of truth and mercy, to which the gospel owed its first establishment and success.

But we must pass on.

So much time, however, has been occupied, that we can only offer a few remarks on the proximate topic, the PRESERVATION and CONTINUANCE OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE WORLD. For so holy a doctrine could never have maintained its ground, as it has done, for eighteen centuries, if it had not been from God. It is not the mere circumstance of duration on which I here insist; but the duration of such a religion, so holy in its texture, so high in its claims, so strict in its laws, so unworldly in its spirit, so opposed to all the vices and passions of mankind in all its precepts, such a religion, assuming to be of God and resting its pretensions on the broad and palpable miraculous actions of its founders and first teachers, must, if it had been a delusion, and unattended with a divine interference, have failed, and have long since been left to the derision of the world. Had Christianity been of man, its folly would have been detected, and the enthusiasm or the craft of its abettors exposed, sometime or other after its promulgation. Some inherent defect, or some outward opposition, would have unmasked the deceit. For eighteen hundred years it has been in a state of continual probation; it has passed through every variety of obstacle; its enemies have had every opportunity of exhibiting its weaker parts, if it has any; or inventing some system which may supersede it, if such can be found. And yet this religion, which began by encountering all the prejudices and passions of mankind, remains to the present hour unsullied in its purity, untouched in its evidences, undiminished in its virtue and effects. If any historical facts of unquestionable authority had been found in any part of the world, to refute its records, it would have sunk before the discovery; but so far is this from being the case, that the researches of historians and the skill of philosophers, as we have observed in previous Lectures, have only confirmed the Scripture narratives. The wide circle of the whole globe has supplied no one undoubted testimony against our religion, though not half of it had been traversed when the Scriptures were written. The Christian church has seen every shade of human opinion, has witnessed every variety of persecution, has been

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