holy faith, is an additional evidence that, like the pyramids of Memphis, it was made to endure. It wears well. Christianity has been journeying, for the last eighteen hundred years, through unceasing trials. While as yet an infant in a land of almost Egyptian darkness, a Jewish Pharaoh -attempted to strangle her in the cradle. She grew up in contempt and poverty, and began her course, like Israel of old, through a Red Sea of relentless persecution. Bitter waters awaited her subsequent progress. Amalek with all the principalities and powers of earth, during more than three centuries, opposed her march. Fiery serpents in the wilderness of sin have ever been stinging at her feet. The world has opened no fountain, nor vouchsafed any bread to sustain her. What alliances the nations have ever made with her cause have only given them the greater power to encumber and divide her strength. Her drink has been drawn from the rock; her bread has been gathered in the desert. Nothing that malice, or learning, or power, or perseverance, could do to arrest her goings, has been wanting. Even treachery in her own household has often endeavoured to betray her into the hands of the enemy. No age has encountered her advance with such a dangerous variety of force; or with a more boastful confidence of success, than the present. And yet in none, since that of the primitive Christians, has her triumph been so glorious, or her conquest so extensive. At a time of life when, considering her fiery trials, one ignorant of her nature would expect to see her wrinkled with age and crippled with manifold infirmities, it may be said of her, with perfect truth, that though for more than eighteen hundred years she has been journeying through conflicts and trials innumerable, her eye is not dim, nor her natural force abated. She remains unchanged by tinie, the same precisely as when first proclaimed in the streets of Jerusalem. The shield of faith, the breastplate of righteous. ness, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the spirit are

neither broken nor decayed, but as ready as in the beginning, to go forth "conquering and to conquer." This long and hard experiment proves that she is made for eternity. It is the privilege of our age to appreciate the evidence of this with more satisfaction than any preceding it. But how different, this sublime immutability of christianity, so much like the eternity of God, from the childish fickleness of infi delity. What is the history of infidelity, but a history of changes? Where is the resemblance between the writings of its modern and those of its ancient disciples? What Celsus and Porphyry attempted to maintain against primi tive christianity, none at present would think of advocating, while the positions and reasonings of recent infidels would have been subjects of ridicule among their earliest brethren. "The doctrines which Herbert and Tindal declared to be so evident that God could not make them more evident, were wholly given up as untenable by Hume; and the scepticism of Hume sustained no higher character in the mind of D'Alembert. Mere infidelity gave up natural religion, and atheism mere infidelity. Atheism is the system at present in vogue. What will succeed it, cannot be foreseen. One consolation, however, attends the subject, and that is: no other system can be so groundless, so despicable, or so completely ruinous to the morals and happiness of mankind.”

But there is another aspect in which the study of the evidences of christianity is presented as especially interesting, in connexion with the present age. This is an age peculiarly distinguished for scientific research and discovery. Never did science travel so widely, explore so deeply, analyze so minutely, compare so critically the present with the past, principles with facts; histories of ancient times, with monuments of ancient things; truths of revealed religion, with results of experimental philosophy. And what is the con

* Dwight on Infidel Philosophy.

sequence? Has the Pentateuch suffered by him who found the key, and applied it to the hieroglyphical memorials on the marbles and porphyries of Egypt? Did the geological researches of the lamented Cuvier enfeeble his belief in the Mosaic history?*

I venture to say there never was an age in which it could be asserted, with so much practical witness, that science and every extension of human knowledge are strengthening and multiplying the evidences of christianity. Add to this, the ever accumulating force of the argument from prophecy, a source of evidence in which we exceed by far the primitive times of the gospel, and which must be increasing as long as one prediction of the Bible remains to be fulfilled. Then consider what new exhibitions the present age of signal enterprise, in all things, has furnished, and is daily presenting of the power attendant upon the gospel to overcome every obstacle, and make the moral desert a garden, and savages meek and lowly of heart. Look at the missionary stations of the Pacific and of Hindoostan, and among our own frontier tribes. There it will be seen that christianity has still her apostles, her martyrs, her conquests. The idol cast to the ground; the idol temple purged of its pollutions, and consecrated to Jehovah; the multitude, once naked devotees of demons, now clothed and in their right mind, and sitting at the feet of Jesus; these are some of our additional testimonies to the gospel, that her arm is not shortened that it cannot save. But they are not all. Every new traveller into regions hitherto but little known, as he developes the condition of nations destitute of the gospel, increases our evidence of the utter helplessness of human reason, and the total prostration

* It is an interesting fact, well worthy of being recorded, that Cuvier, whose death has been recently announced, was to have presided at the next annual meeting of the Bible Society of Paris; and had proposed, as the topic of his address, the agreement between the Mosaic history and the modern dis coveries in geology.

of human nature, without the light which we enjoy, and consequently, our evidence of the universal need of a revelation like ours, as well as of the benefits which have follow ed in the train of christianity wherever she has been received. And last, but not least, our experience of the tender mercies of infidelity is more impressive than that of preceding ages. Its nature, spirit, personal and public consequences have now had time to speak out, and make a full display of their benefits to all classes of mankind. Our times have seen enough; any of us have heard enough to form some adequate idea of what society would be favoured with, in personal consolations; in domestic peace and purity; in public security and order, should the principles of infidelity be generally adopted as the basis of individual, family, and national government.

I have now endeavoured to illustrate the importance of a diligent attention to the great subject we have undertaken to treat, by considerations arising out of its own intrinsic nature, and from its special aspect as associated with the distinctive character of the present age. I will occupy but a little while longer in speaking of,

II. The importance of strict attention to the spirit in which we should examine the evidences of christianity.

"Blessed (said the Saviour) is he whosoever shall not be offended in me." There is a great deal in the religion of Jesus at which the natural dispositions of man are offended. He is proud the gospel demands humility; revengeful—the gospel demands forgiveness. Man is prone to set his affec tions on things on the earth; the gospel requires him to set them on those which are above. He is wedded to selfindulgence, glories in being his own master, idolizes himself, encourages self-dependence, boasts his own goodness, lives without God in the world. All this the gospel peremptorily condemns; requires him to repent of it, to deny himself, renounce all right over himself, give up his will to that of

Gud, live for the Lord Jesus, and lean upon and glory in him alone as all his strength, hope, and righteousness. Hence it is evident that the natural heart and the precepts of christianity are directly at variance. "The mystery of an incarnate and crucified Saviour must necessarily confound the reason and shock the prejudices, of a mind which will admit nothing that it cannot perfectly reduce to the principles of philosophy. The whole tenor of the life of Christ, the objects he pursued, and the profound humiliation he exhibited, must convict of madness and folly the favourite pursuits of mankind. The virtues usually practised in society, and the models of excellence most admired there, are so remote from that holiness which is enjoined in the New Testament, that it is impossible for a taste which is formed on the one to perceive the charms of the other. The happiness which it proposes in a union with God, and a participation of the image of Christ, is so far from being congenial to the inclinations of worldly men, that it can scarcely be mentioned without exciting their ridicule and scorn. General speculations on the Deity have much to amuse the mind, and to gratify that appetite for the wonderful, which thoughtful and speculative men are delighted to indulge. Religion viewed in this light appears more in the form of an exercise to the understanding, than a law to the heart. Here the soul expatiates at large, without feeling itself controlled or alarmed. But when evangelical truths are presented, they bring God so near, if we may be allowed the expression, and speak with so commanding a voice to the conscience, that they leave no alternative, but that of submissive acquiescence or proud revolt."

Hence the question as to the truth of christianity is pecu liar. You can investigate the truth of a narrative in com

*Robert Hall.