progress

of the true,

our observation the upon 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 labours 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 im provements 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 neighbourhoods, 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 labours. 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 succour 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 labours 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, illustrates 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 placed under all possible circumstances of civilization, knowledge, and form of government, and the result of these united experiments has been a continually increased attestation to her immutable truth and purity. She has, moreover, been called to encounter the secret sap of divisions and corruptions in her own body; she has been dragged into unnatural alliances with all the crookedness and ambition of human policy; she has been stripped at one time of her proper attributes, and been loaded at another with corruptions and superstitions-but from all these transformations she has emerged without injury. The standard of her sacred books has remained the same, the blessing of the Holy Spirit in his sanctifying influence has continued, and a reviving piety in various ages, has recalled her wandering family to her pure and divine doctrines and temper.

Open attacks have been, also, made upon the Chris

tian faith by infidels and sceptics. In the last century but one, we experienced in England the assaults of a profligate but insidious band of literary unbelievers. In our own day we have witnessed the conspiracy of the French philosophical school to obliterate the remembrance of Christianity from the earth and we have witnessed also the dignity with which she has risen from the combat, and reared again her standard in the very country which attempted her overthrow.

Never was Revelation more honoured in the eyes of Christendom, than by the efforts which have been made of late years in the work of Christian Missions in various parts of the Heathen world. And, perhaps, the single institution of the British and Foreign Bible Society, simple as is its structure, and warmly as it has been opposed, has done more to mark the importance of the scriptures, and to recall men to this one fountain of truth, than all the other expedients which have been devised.

In short, no other instance can be produced in the history of the world, of a system of doctrines or opinions which has withstood for so many centuries a succession of attacks, varying through all the stages between merciless persecution and malicious sophistry, but the instance of Christianity. Paganism fell the instant the secular arm was removed, and she was left to her own resources. Mahometanism was planted by the sword, and is sinking in proportion as the warlike spirit has declined in her votaries. Christianity blooms in perpetual vigour, and retains, after every trial, the genuine features of truth, sanctity, and authority.

Let every candid hearer review these points, and say whether the propagation and perpetuity of our holy religion be not a proof of its divine authority. Let him remember the singularity of the attempt, the